COWS recommends raising taxes and spending more

The Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), has released a report on Wisconsin's growing income inequality. The report can be viewed in a PDF file in its entirety.

The report states:

At the very top of the income distribution—the richest five percent of the population—the story is more extreme. Income at the very top grew by nearly 60 percent.

From the mid 1980s to the mid 2000s, the average real income of Wisconsin families in the bottom fifth of earnings grew only 7 percent.

Income at the middle of the income distribution in Wisconsin grew somewhat faster but was still rather sluggish, with income up only 14 percent ($6,583) over the 17-year period.

The report then goes on to recommend fixes for this problems and states this in it's conclusion:

Wisconsin’s growth and prosperity are not being equally shared. The rewards of prosperity have been concentrated on the richest 20 percent of families. As a state, this should be of substantial concern, not only because of the slow growth in incomes for the remaining 80 percent of families, but also because increasing disparity comes with substantial social costs.

To prevent a deepening divide between the rich and poor
in our state, Wisconsin should pursue a number of strategies:

• raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation
• building the skills and education of Wisconsin’s workers
• adequately funding the child care subsidy program for low-income working families
• promoting awareness of BadgerCare Plus and expanding it in 2009 to make
• health insurance available to low-income childless adults
• continuing to modernizing the unemployment insurance system
• reforming regressive taxes

Taking these steps would help keep Wisconsin’s economy growing, and ensure that all residents of the state would benefit from that growth.