No sooner had the Census Bureau released its annual survey showing the poverty rate for 2005 was unchanged at 12.6% while real median household income rose by 1.1 %, than than the Democrats started complaining about income inequality. “Growth alone is not the answer,” the New York Times editorialists hectored. “What have been missing are government policies that help to ensure that the benefits of growth are broadly shared,” the Times wrote, mentioning the need for “a progressive income tax,” by which it means tax increases for many readers of The New York Sun.

But to the extent that “the rich” are getting richer — and, as the Wall Street Journal editorialized Saturday, they are, though not as dramatically as during the final years of the Clinton presidency — it’s not clear that raising taxes on the rich would help matters. The rich are getting richer, after all, in part because of a long bull market. If the stock market were to decline sharply, it would have the effect of reducing income inequality — but it would also hurt the non-rich.

The graphic that ran alongside the Wall Street Journal editorial showed that in 2001 and 2002, the percentage share of total income that was earned by the top 1% of income earners decreased. But by lots of other measures, those were disappointing years for the American economy, years of layoffs in which jobhunters had tough times finding work.

So while the Times claims that growth alone is not the answer, leveling alone is not the answer, either. Not least of the reasons is that the tax code, both at the federal level and in New York City and State, is already so “progressive” that our governments are essentially mortgaged to the rich. It’s almost a “Hedge Fund Government,” whereby the government’s revenues are increasingly dependent on stock market performance.

In New York State, last we checked, the wealthiest 3% of taxpayers, those who made more than $200,000 a year, paid 42.4% of all income taxes. At the federal level, according to the Wall Street Journal, the top 5% of the taxpayers paid 57.1% of federal taxes.When the rich get poorer, in that scenario, huge government budget deficits open up, government workers get laid off, and programs beloved by left-wingers — from senior centers to government-run schools — feel the pain.

It’s hard to see what is progressive about pursuing, in the name of decreasing income inequality, policies, such as a more “progressive” income tax, that have such unprogressive effects as holding government programs for the poor hostage to the rich or precipitating economic downturns that hurt the poor. The real progressives are those like Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, who understood the destructiveness of high marginal tax rates on all persons, and bet on the proposition that a rising tide lifts all boats.