Fiscal Policy and the Saving Glut of the Rich

Since the 1980s, the United States has experienced a pronounced saving glut of the rich, a large accumulation of assets among the top 1% of earners. We argue that this development partly reflects a shift in the financing of redistributive policies, from inflationary finance in the 1960s and 1970s to debt finance backed by future taxation beginning in the early 1980s. The central insight is that, in the presence of a progressive tax system, a switch from inflationary to debt financing leads to debt accumulation by top earners. We develop a New Keynesian model with borrowers and savers in which redistributive transfers can be either funded or unfunded. Unfunded transfers generate fiscal inflation that erodes the real value of public and private debt, redistributing wealth through asset revaluation effects. Funded transfers, by contrast, are financed through future taxes borne primarily by high-income households, which respond by accumulating claims on both households and the government. Using a structurally estimated version of the model, we find that the shift from unfunded to funded redistribution in the 1980s contributed significantly to the subsequent saving glut of the rich.