<P> Upward redistribution of income is responsible for about 43% of the projected Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years . </P> <P> Disagreeing with this focus on the top - earning 1%, and urging attention to the economic and social pathologies of lower - income / lower education Americans, is conservative journalist David Brooks . Whereas in the 1970s, high school and college graduates had "very similar family structures", today, high school grads are much less likely to get married and be active in their communities, and much more likely to smoke, be obese, get divorced, or have "a child out of wedlock ." </P> <P> The zooming wealth of the top one percent is a problem, but it's not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college . It's not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock . It's not nearly as big a problem as the nation's stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent . </P> <P> Contradicting most of these arguments, classical liberals such as Friedrich Hayek have maintained that because individuals are diverse and different, state intervention to redistribute income is inevitably arbitrary and incompatible with the concept of general rules of law, and that "what is called' social' or distributive' justice is indeed meaningless within a spontaneous order". Those who would use the state to redistribute, "take freedom for granted and ignore the preconditions necessary for its survival ." </P>

The marginal tax rate on labor income for many workers in the united states is almost