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The Utility Possibilities Frontier. The utility possibilities frontier is a graphic representation of a two-person world that shows all points at which A’s utility can be increased only if B’s utility is decreased. The Utility Possibilities Frontier.
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The Utility Possibilities Frontier • The utility possibilities frontier is a graphic representation of a two-person world that shows all points at which A’s utility can be increased only if B’s utility is decreased.
The Utility Possibilities Frontier • Any point inside the utility possibilities frontier is inefficient. At point A, both I and J could be better off. • Point B is preferable to point A. • Both B and C are efficient, but may not be equally desirable.
The Sources of Household Income • Households derive their incomes from three basic sources: • from wages or salaries received in exchange for labor • from property—that is, capital, land, and so forth; and • from government.
Wages and Salaries • All factors of production are paid a return equal to their marginal revenue product—the market value of what they produce at the margin. • The rewards of a skill that is limited in supply depend on the demand for that skill. People with rare skills can make enormous salaries.
Wages and Salaries • Human capital is the stock of knowledge, skills, and talents that people possess; it can be inborn or acquired through education and training. • Compensating differentials are differences in wages that result from differences in working conditions. Risky jobs usually pay higher wages; highly desirable jobs usually pay lower wages.
Income from Property • Property income is income derived from ownership of real property and financial holdings. It takes the form of profits, interest, dividends, and rents. • The amount of property income that a household earns depends on: • how much property it owns, and • what kinds of assets it owns.
Income from Government • Transfer payments are payments by the government to people who do not supply goods or services in exchange. • Transfer programs are part of the government’s attempts to offset some of the problems of inequality and poverty.
The Distribution of Income • Economic income is the amount of money a household can spend during a given period without increasing or decreasing its net assets. • Wages, salaries, dividends, interest income, transfer payments, rents, and so forth are sources of economic income.
Money Income • Money income is a measure of the income used by the Census Bureau. Because it excludes noncash transfer payments and capital gains income, it is less inclusive than “economic income.”
The Lorenz Curve • The Lorenz curve is a widely used graph of the distribution of income, with cumulative percentage of families plotted along the horizontal axis and cumulative percentage of income plotted along the vertical axis.
The Lorenz Curve • If income is equally distributed, there is no shaded area. • More unequal distributions of income produce Lorenz Curves that are farther from the 45-degree line.
The Gini Coefficient • The Gini coefficient is a commonly used measure of inequality of income derived from a Lorenz Curve. It can range from zero (maximum equality) to a maximum of 1 (maximum inequality).
Differences Between African-American Households, White Households, and Single-Person Households
Poverty • In simplest terms, poverty is the condition of people who have very low incomes. • The poverty line is the officially established income level that distinguishes the poor form the nonpoor. It is set at three times the cost of the Department of Agriculture’s minimum food budget.
The Distribution of Wealth • The distribution of wealth is much more unequal than the distribution of income. Wealth is passed from generation to generation and accumulates. • Some argue that unequal distribution of wealth is a natural consequence of risk taking in a market economy.
The Redistribution Debate • Philosophical arguments against redistribution: • The market, when left to operate on its own, is fair. “One is entitled to the fruits of one’s efforts.” • Taxation of income for redistribution purposes is against “freedom of contract” and the protection of property rights.
The Redistribution Debate • Practical arguments against redistribution: • Taxation and transfer programs interfere with the incentives to work, save, and invest. • Bureaucratic waste and inefficiency is inevitable in the administration of social programs.
The Redistribution Debate • Arguments in favor of redistribution: • A wealthy country, such as the United States, has the moral obligation to provide all its members with the necessities of life. The Constitution does carry a guarantee of the “right to life.”
The Redistribution Debate • Arguments in favor of redistribution: • Utilitarian justice is the idea that “a dollar in the hand of a rich person is worth less than a dollar in the hand of a poor person.” If the marginal utility of income declines with income, transferring income from the rich to the poor will increase total utility.
The Redistribution Debate • Arguments in favor of redistribution: • Rawlsian justice is a theory of distributional justice that concludes that the social contract emerging from the “original position” would call for an income distribution that would maximize the well-being of the worst-off member of society.
The Works of Karl Marx • Marx did not write very much about socialism or communism. • He wrote a critique of capitalism, but was not very clear about what would replace it. • In one essay he wrote, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
The Works of Karl Marx • The labor theory of value, stated most simply, is the theory that the value of a commodity depends only on the amount of labor required to produce it. • The owners of capital are able to extract “surplus value” out of labor.
Redistribution Programs and Policies • The income tax is progressive—those with higher incomes pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes.
Expenditure Programs • The Social Security system is a federal system of social insurance programs. It includes three separate programs that are financed through separate trust funds: • the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program, • the Disability Insurance (DI) program, and • the Health Insurance (HI, or Medicare) program.
Expenditure Programs • Public assistance, or welfare, consists of government transfer programs that provide cash benefits to: • families with dependent children whose incomes and assets fall below a very low level, and • the very poor, regardless of whether or not they have children.
Expenditure Programs • The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program is designed to take care of the elderly who end up very poor. • Unemployment compensation is a state government transfer program that pays cash benefits for a certain period of time to laid-off workers who have worked for a specified period of time for a covered employer.
Expenditure Programs • Medicaid and Medicare are in-kind government transfer programs that provide health and hospitalization benefits: • Medicare to the aged and their survivors and to certain of the disabled, regardless of income, and Medicaid to people with low incomes.
Expenditure Programs • Food stamps are vouchers that have a face value greater than their cost and that can be used to purchase food at grocery stores. • Housing programs are designed to improve the quality of life for low-income people. • The Earned Income Tax Credit is an important program that allows lower income families with children a credit equal to a percentage of all wage and salary income against their income taxes.
