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Go Home Mind the Gap

POLITICS AUGUST 12, 2009

Mind the Gap

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

Should we care about economic inequality? That question is the subtext for most debates in American politics. It just remains below the surface because the party that thinks we shouldn't care about inequality--I'll give you one guess--has an endless string of obfuscations ("death tax," "small business," "tollgate to the middle class") to avoid admitting that it doesn't care about inequality.

There are, however, some real reasons not to care about income inequality, and right-wingers who don't have to run for public office are happy to admit it. A new paper by the Cato Institute's Will Wilkinson, which compiles all the reasons why we shouldn't worry our pretty little heads about inequality, has drawn a lot of attention. It's a usefully honest and relatively persuasive iteration of the belief system that undergirds right-wing thought.

Alas, it still isn't very persuasive. Wilkinson begins by pointing out that, while the gap between how much the rich and the non-rich earn has exploded, the gap between how much the rich and the non-rich consume has remained fairly stable. And that's true. But Wilkinson misunderstands the implications of this fact. "Suppose you made a million dollars last year and put all but $50,000 of it in a shoebox," he writes. (He must have enormous feet.) "Now imagine you lose the box. What good did the $950,000 do you?"

Wilkinson's point--money only has value if you eventually spend it--may be true. Yet most rich people don't put their money in shoeboxes. They invest it so they, their children, or young trophy wives can one day spend even more of it. And, indeed, the gap in wealth (how much money you have) has grown even faster than the gap in income. Meanwhile, the middle class has tried to keep pace with the rich by spending beyond its means, sending average household debt skyrocketing. Tell me why this should make us feel better about inequality?

Wilkinson's most interesting argument holds that material inequality between the rich and the non-rich lags behind the wealth and income gaps. For one thing, he argues that the luxury goods rich people own offer only marginal improvement over the cheap stuff that poor people own. For instance, he compares the luxurious Sub-Zero PRO 48 refrigerator to a standard IKEA fridge. Despite the vast difference in cost ($11,000 vs. $350), he writes, "The lived difference ... is rather smaller than that between having fresh meat and milk and having none." He also notes that rich people have used some of their increased income merely bidding up the price of positional goods, like fancy real estate or elite college tuition, forcing them to buy the same stuff at higher prices. Wilkinson thinks this goes to show that there's "an often narrowing range of experience" between being rich and being poor, so inequality isn't that big a deal.

In fact, Wilkinson is inadvertently bolstering the strongest liberal argument against inequality: it's inefficient. In case you're unfamiliar with this argument--as Wilkinson seems to be; he doesn't rebut or even mention it anywhere in his paper--it runs like this: Taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor helps the latter more than it hurts the former (at least until you create serious work-incentive effects, a point which most liberals think we're not close to). Wilkinson is saying the rich are getting little (in the case of luxury goods like refrigerators) or zero (in the case of real estate and higher tuition) actual benefit from their rising incomes. So why not take some of that income away and use it to buy extremely useful but currently unaffordable things for the non-rich, like, oh, basic medical care?

Watch Chait and Wilkinson face off over the inefficiency of inequality (and check out the rest of the debate here)

 

 

 

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85 comments

Chait's argument comes down to "the poor need it more." But his solution depends on creating a favored class of poor people, namely those living inside the boundaries of the U.S. If his argument is morally correct, then clearly the money must go to Africa and other desperately poor areas of the world.

- Karl

July 27, 2009 at 10:04pm

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"Taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor helps the latter more than it hurts the former (at least until you create serious work-incentive effects, a point which most liberals think we're not close to)." What does "work-incentive effects" mean here? Thanks!

- South

July 28, 2009 at 2:30am

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Chaitt misunderstands at least two aspects if the Wilkinson argument about inequality: -- Chait's patronizing argument that redistribution would benefit the poor more than it hurts the rich is NOT an argument against "inequality." The differing marginal utilities of money (the key to the argument) might coincide with in inequality in wealth or income, or they might not. -- The argument about unjust forms or equality arising from nonmarket circumstances isn't a tautology as Chaitt implied, rather it is an argument that inequality is ASSOCIATED with bad effects and injustice in many places, but when you look deeper you find that the problems are not caused by the inequality, rather than the inequality and problems are symptomatic of deeper problems, e.g. despotism. The rest of this piece is shot through with similarly shoddy arguments and no data. A disappointing effort.

- DWAnderson

July 30, 2009 at 1:07pm

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South, By "work-incentive effects," Chait means the impact that increasingly high marginal tax rates would have on high income people to work. If the marginal tax rate were 100% on income over, say, $5 million, there would be NO incentive to work to bring in MORE than $5 million, because 100 cents of every dollar goes right to the government. The incentive to be more productive, then, falls as the tax rates rise. But Chait's argument (quite reasonable, I think) is that top tax rates in the high 30's or 40s would not have such an effect. That is, people will continue to work to earn more money, even if they are being taxed at 40 cents on each extra dollar.

- Steve

July 31, 2009 at 2:33pm

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DWAnderson...this is Rawls 101. It's a question of justice. I really don't see how you can seriously say that inequality is only "associated" with bad effects and injustice; what do you mean when you say that they are symptomatic of "despotism"? Since I last checked, we live in a democratic republic. The idea is that wealth is one cause, and a huge on at that, of inequality of opportunity. Similarly, we can see how race, gender, or religion can potentially affect equality of opportunity. The idea is that we live in meritocracy, and that everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances into which they are born. And while Chait could have cited a few studies, I really don't see it as a failure of his argument that he simply assumes that wealth has an enormous effect on one's opportunities. I strongly recommend you check out Justice as Fairness: A Restatement if you really wish to understand what Chait is going for. Also, South, the idea of work-incentives is that when the taxation on the rich reaches a certain point, it leads to a decrease in the incentive for the rich to work, and thus brings down the wealth of rich and poor alike. See Rawls' account of the difference principle. As for Karl, you might have a point; it's unclear, however, how international justice should dictate the distribution of wealth, particularly since in certain countries wealth might not have the same effects on opportunities as in this one. (Maybe DW Anderson's comments about despotism are relevant in this context.)

- JB

July 31, 2009 at 2:54pm

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Jonathan et al: It is compelling, and hopefully convincing, to remember that the right's and libertarian's appeal to markets, and often "free" markets, in support of whatever their current jihad, is far and away the weakest part of any possible argument. For market theory says that market failures must be corrected to insure efficiency. And the definitive proof of market failure is persistent economic profits (that means profits above a return on invested capital, say the current interest rate). In the inequality argument, accumulated excess profits lead to income, wealth, and therefore consumption inequalities in favor of those doing the accumulating. This is a clear and now clearly persistent market failure. One of the jobs of government is to correct persistent market failures (no one else will do that, certainly not the accumulators, and unarguably not the markets themselves). So these inequalities must be corrected by government in the interest of economic efficiency. They have the tools: taxing powers, regulatory powers, anti-trust legal powers. Their "market" arguments about almost anything have absolutely NO foundation in any economic theory, and we should take every opportunity to eliminate these specious arguments. Of course, this forces them onto ground that is much more difficult to defend. If you hear "market" mouthed by the right, that is a preamble to an unsupportable lie that is destructive to the economic system.

- Steve Bannister

August 4, 2009 at 12:38pm

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Where does this acculumulation of wealth usually end up? It's distributed to the families' descendants, creating a tiny class of super-welfare babies who must have less incentive to be creative than anyone on the planet. Is it productive that Sam Walton's great grandson may end up being a Senator, or in and out of rehab? Also, the right winger fails to account the intense stress poverty creates; there are studies of children that the stress, malnutrition, bad diet can actually lower their IQ. So many factors of poverty perpetuate inequality.

- Dave

August 11, 2009 at 1:22am

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Taking money from the rich and "giving" it to the poor doesn't increase economic efficiency. It creates a system of dependents. Taxing the rich at a higher rate and using it to fund publicly valuable infrastructure is efficient. Taking those revenues from the rich and using them to provide opportunities to the poor for improvement is efficient. But "giving" it to the poor doesn't. Bannister: Curious - free-markets are not founded in any economic theory? How about Arrow and Debreu and General Equilibrium, for one? Is your statement based on sad ignorance or an education steeped solely in marxist economic thought (that's really the same thing, but it was more fun to write it that way)?

- reb

August 11, 2009 at 1:23am

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Simple: I don't like feudalism, not the medieval kind, and not the modern corporate kind. If corporations actually acted like market actors (rather than rent-seekers) and didn't grow so huge and dominant, I'd be in favor of a "free-er market," but they don't, so I'm not.

- mmathog

August 11, 2009 at 3:32am

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Bravo, Steve. In plain English, the market doesn't work. Or, more descriptively, if the market is like Swiss cheese, with the holes being the places where the rules of the market don't work (because of unequal access to information, monopoly power, etc.), then it's quite possible that the holes are in fact so big that it's not really appropriate to describe what you're looking at as "cheese."

- Mike

August 11, 2009 at 8:18am

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As a Republican I'll tell you without any obfuscation that I don't care about economic inequality. What I care about is the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming richer, not the gap between them becoming smaller.

- Greg Pomeroy

August 11, 2009 at 8:25am

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Jonathan, I would be curious if you have any real data to support your assertions that the wealth or consumption gap is widening. As far as I am aware there is no good data on wealth or consumption disparity to say nothing of trends.

- dtohmatsu

August 11, 2009 at 9:04am

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"So why not take some of that income away...?" Because taking anything away from anyone without their permission constitutes theft. Mr. Chait apparently legitimizes theft.

- Les

August 11, 2009 at 9:24am

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Most people (including liberals and progressives) don't see income equality as a goal -- but they do see political equality and economic mobility as necessities. The problem with the huge income disparities that have developed along with increasingly politically conservative/economically libertarian governance is that the concentration of wealth and decline of the middle class such governance encourages undermines both political equality and economic mobility. Conservative's won't admit it, but their economic philosophy is designed to serve the interests of those who already have much, and are afraid of losing even a little of it, and/or are adamantly opposed to contributing to the the common good. You can't serve such interests and at the same time serve the broader interests of those who have little (the vast majority of young people who will not enjoy significant inherited resources) but are ambitious to create more. Liberals for more than 30 years now have made the mistake of agreeing with the mistaken conservative notion that taxation is a transfer of resources between individuals. But, it is not. In a healthy economy with a strong middle class it is a necessary transfer of resources between generations. We have neglected that fact, catered to the rich and fearful, and brought our economy to a standstill.

- esmense

August 11, 2009 at 9:40am

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Why is it that you assume incentives to work for the productive class but excuse the dependent class rom this calculus. If the nonproductive associate a higher utility from the marginal dollar increase in income, then the incentive to earn an extra dollar should be placed upon them by reducing income redistribution. More workers producing increases the size of the pie for societal needs. Giveaways to the dependent class from the productive class diminish the incentives to work across the spectrum of all workers.

- David NC

August 11, 2009 at 9:47am

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More stealing from the rich to give to the poor dribble. Don't you guys EVER get a new act?

- Mike

August 11, 2009 at 9:49am

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Don't you just love it when someone on the left purports to tell us what the "right" really thinks. How condescending and clueless are you?

- Howard

August 11, 2009 at 10:15am

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"In fact, Wilkinson is inadvertently bolstering the strongest liberal argument against inequality: it's inefficient." ******** ah yes, restricting liberty in the name of "efficiency". all sorts of warm and fuzzy pictures come into my head when i ponder that idea. jon chait's inadvertently lays bare american liberalism, and it aint very pretty.

- Franco-American

August 11, 2009 at 10:27am

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Your argument is also flawed. If taking from the rich and giving to the poor worked, Africa would be doing far better than it is. Each country has been given billions in aid and nothing comes of it because they haven't had to earn it. Doesn't our history with welfare show the same thing? Close the achievement gap by encouraging parents to be involved in their children's education.

- Portlandskeptic

August 11, 2009 at 10:30am

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So Wilkinson's argument is a "relatively persuasive iteration of the belief system that undergirds right-wing thought" but it "isn't very persuasive." Really, Jonathan? It's persuasive but it isn't very persuasive? You rest your summation of the defects in Wilkinson's argument on the verb "very"? Is this supposed to count for subtlety?

- C. G. Bond

August 11, 2009 at 10:38am

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I agree with Mike (this is just the same old act) but for a different reason. I don't think Chait's real goal here is making a point about economic inequality. His real point is, again, about health care and his view that it is the moral responsibility of the "rich" to pay for the unaffordable health care of the "poor".

- Lewis

August 11, 2009 at 11:01am

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A point that both Wilkinson and Chait fail to mention is recent research that suggests a close statistical relationship between high levels of income inequality and political corruption. This makes perfect sense to an Aristotelian. If you make unnatural amounts of money, you will probably take unnatural means to protect it. Ever wonder why you never see Jack Abramoff in Sweden?

- Impre

August 11, 2009 at 11:20am

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What "dependent class" are you conservatives resentfully raving about here? The elderly, the vulnerable young, the ill and disabled? These "dependents" will always be with us and will always require the assistance of others. That is a true statement about the human condition -- not a statement of political ideology. The mark of a decent and workable society is how well it is able to care for these dependents while, at the same time, broadly providing the common resources (education, material, commercial and social infrastructure,etc.) that allow the able bodied and productive to create both personal wealth and social value. How many of you raving about the "dependent" class have taken on the FULL RESPONSIBILITY for the health and welfare of your parents? How many of you could afford to? And if you could afford to, could you at the same time afford to take on the full responsiblity, and pay the true cost, for the education of your children? And if you did these things alone, but made no contribution to the general welfare -- the maintenance of systems that support the economic life of the country -- how long would you be able to continue to meet those responsibilities? Stop kidding yourself that you are raging against "liberals." Your rage is aimed at the realities of life and the inevitability of adult responsibilities. Grow up.

- esmense

August 11, 2009 at 11:22am

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So instead of sneering at us, tell us how you do think, Howard. Tell us how you justify gross inequality of opportunity.

- MSL

August 11, 2009 at 11:24am

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I would say the Africa-as-failure example is off base because tremendous amounts of wealth from African industry and foreign "handouts" are squandered and stolen by the despotic African "rich", so don't go blaming the huddled masses there. Domestically speaking, there seems to be a biased assumption that all of this increased tax redistribution will be handed out to baby mamas with five illegitimate kids and their drug dealing baby-daddies. True, THAT has to stop because it only perpetuates the cycles of crime and poverty that are destroying our metropolitan cores. Most of that redistributed money should go towards infrastructure that allows the disadvantaged to rise on their own - like better institutional care for unwanted and un-nurtured children of the aforementioned baby-mama daddies, better schools, safer cities where businesses will locate and provide jobs, etc.. The money wouldn't just be doled out for chips and beer.

- Mike N

August 11, 2009 at 11:38am

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The second lesson in econ 101 is the inevitable trade-off between equity and efficiency. The more we try to divide the pie equally, the smaller the pie gets. And if we focus on making the biggest pie possible, the slices become more unequal. Equality taken to the extreme (communism), rendered nearly everyone dirt poor. Perhaps it is their far greater understanding of economics, that makes Repub's less supportive of equality. It was after all, America's focus on productivity & efficiency which led us to our current economic superpower status. The focus on equity led the communist regimes to economic disaster. The choice is ours.

- Mr. econ teacher

August 11, 2009 at 11:43am

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Wilkinson's assertion of the exclusivity of absolute well-being would actually have merit if applied to the entire society holistically (economically). When internal economic inequality is lessened between groups the entire society improves absolutely as well as relatively when compared to its previous position.

- Tom

August 11, 2009 at 11:46am

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Except that the rich get richer only if the poor get poorer ... e.g. wage stagnation and outsourcing.

- Ellie

August 11, 2009 at 12:07pm

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Picking up on the comment about Africa, Jim Rogers tells a great story about the effect of western charity on Africa. He witnessed a shipment of clothes sent by an American church group to a poor African nation get taken by the local bosses so they could be sold instead of given to the needy. This had been going on so long that it had essentially put the local clothing factories out of business, and the intellectual and human capital needed to produce clothing in this country was nearly gone as a result. He had seen similar effects from food donations, which had been seized and sold and as a result put many local farmers out of business. (Who can compete with a seller whose cost of goods sold is zero?) Living off government largess does not liberate the poor - to the contrary, it forms a permanent underclass that becomes reliant on that largess. (One could make an analogy with trust fund babies here, which is why I'm more ambivalent on the estate tax than most libertarian-leaning people I know.) I'm painting with a broad brush here, but overall I agree with the commenter who is more concerned with everyone getting richer on an absolute basis rather than the relative levels of wealth. And as Winston Churchill so eloquently put it, "for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

- Mike

August 11, 2009 at 12:07pm

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Portlandskeptic -- We do very little "taking from the rich and giving to the poor" in this country. We do take from the young and give to the elderly, poor or not. We also have, over the last 30 years, chose to increasingly over-tax young earners, in the low earning, high personal investment (education & training, home & family formation, business startup, career establishment, etc.) stage of life, in order to minimize taxation on elders in their highest earning, asset rich years. Elders who belong to a generation that was heavily subsidized by public investment in their own youth.

-

August 11, 2009 at 12:12pm

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Take from the rich, give to the poor. Pretty soon you have no rich but everyone is poorer.

- JohnB

August 11, 2009 at 1:04pm

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Wilkinson and Chait both are wrong, because their arguments aren't germane to the subject they're supposedly debating: the marginal utility of a dollar to a pauper, as opposed to to a millionaire. In the video, Wilkinson says, "It's just not clear that the redistribution [of a dollar from a millionaire to a pauper] is going to be utility maximizing in any way." And Chait replies, "You're right. Poor people have a much higher propensity to consume than do rich people." But Wilkinson and Chait both are wrong, because propensity to consume (to which both men were relating this matter) is irrelevant to the utility of that dollar to the two respective recipients. For example, it's obvious that $1,000 being given to a pauper will have a vastly higher impact raising his subsequent happiness than will $1,000 being given to a millionaire, and the reason for this has nothing whatsoever to do with propensity to consume; it has to do instead with the fact that the pauper's wealth (if, say, he had owned only $1,000 before the donation) has been raised 100%, whereas the millionaire's wealth will have been raised no more than one-tenth of one percent (and less if he had owned more than $1,000,000). In other words the REAL falsity of economic theory regarding "welfare" is its unstated but implicit assumption, within Pareto's welfare function, that each dollar added to wealth is equal to each other dollar added to wealth; or, in other words, the false assumption that: A unit of currency is also a unit of utility. That false assumption is basic to today's (mainstream) economic theory. Based on Pareto (who was not merely a founder of today's economics, but also a founder of fascism, and a hero to Mussolini), the only possible problems from economic inequality concern such macro issues as whether a given economy has the correct amount of saving and investing, where "correct" refers to the amount of saving or investing that will maximize the per-capita wealth, regardless of any consideration of equity or inequity. In other words, today's economic theory assumes that a dollar added to one person's wealth is equivalent to a dollar that's added to another person's wealth. (Philosophers debate endlessly the interpersonal comparability of utilities, but this assumption is, nonetheless, there, in mainstream economics, philosophers or no.) I therefore propose replacing Pareto optimality by a function which instead treats each wealth-increment as a ratio dividing it by each given recipient's prior wealth, so that economic theory will finally acknowledge that a dollar given to a pauper raises happiness vastly more than does a dollar given to a millionaire. Obviously, according to this reformulation of economic theory, an economy like Denmark, where wealth is very equitably distributed, would be superior to an economy like the U.S., where wealth is very inequitably distributed. (Both, of course are, in per-capita GDP terms, comparable countries, so that wealth-distribution is the key here.) As it so happens, several international ratings of nations on the basis of "happiness" have been published, and, in most of them, Denmark scores as #1, whereas the U.S. scores somewhere in the second quartile, only slightly above the international average. Therefore, such a reformulation of economic theory, replacing the fascist assumption of today's economic theory, and instituting in its stead a welfare function which recognizes that total utility is a function not just of total dollars (or pounds, or euros, etc.) but also of the distribution of those assets, would be vastly more realistic, and thus more scientific, than today's myth-based mainstream economics, which has (by no mere coincidence) done so much to entrench and favor the interests of the aristocracy. The basic difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is that the former is based upon supporting mainstream economic theory, whereas the latter is dissatisfied with that but is unfortunately confused regarding how to replace it. I have here presented a proposal identifying what I believe most desperately needs to be replaced, and with what.

- Eric Zuesse

August 11, 2009 at 1:07pm

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There's a basic misunderstanding about the causes that underlie ineffecient market outcomes. Conservatives seem to believe these causes to reflect the unnatural impact of redistributive policies imposed by the public sector on the otherwise efficient allocation of resources by unfettered markets. That's doesn't seem to be the case. Most skewed market outcomes are caused by internal shifts in advantage that are required to maintain a firm's competitiveness. This is in and of itself neither a good or bad thing. The point is that rational economics doesn't provide an answer to what a just social distribution of wealth ought to be. As any social science the lack of constants debilitates its ability to provide a rational answer. Hence, humans make these up based on “non-rational” arguments. Whether income equality is an expression of efficient or inefficient allocation of scarce resources (the heart of the science of economics) cannot be determined unequivocally. Is the excess income of one group an expression of their ability to better allocate and utilize scarce resources and therefore a justifiable claim to their wealth can be made? Or is it an expression of inefficient allocation (as Veblen would argue in the Theory of the Leisure Class) as those who have less can allocate scarce resources more productively as economic theory using opportunity cost analysis would support (opportunity cost analysis would immediately refute Wilkinson’s silly argument about the $950,000 lost in the shoebox and the relative merits of redistributive policies as the loss incurred could easily be offset by benefits that accrue to the collective, making all better off). Obviously this is an unstable system and provides no answer either for conservatives or liberals. That’s why the discussions are endless circular arguments. The political discussion in the United States has come to a halt because an unstable system such as free markets has become the substitute for the idea of America. For conservatives the perception of the inherent rational free market has become an expression of cultural identity. That case has been fortified during the Cold War and subsequently after the end of the Cold War as Reagan/Thatcher policies took hold across the entire political spectrum as they proclaimed history’s end as the victory of free market economies over command economies. The latter had already demonstrated its failure in comprehensive manner. What is important, if not vital, is the emergence of an understanding of the limits of economic analysis and that free markets are true social institutions subject to various distortions caused by the human agents that make up these markets either acting as individuals or in collectives. In addition to this understanding it is important to decouple American cultural identity, such as the pursuit of happiness, from erroneous free market concepts.

- Jack Clumpkens

August 11, 2009 at 1:17pm

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Question: What is the responsiblity of the poor for their continuing poverty, year after year, redistribution program after redistribution program, generation after generation? You focus on what the rich can do for them. Fair enough. The question should be asked. But what is wrong of the rich focusing on what the poor can do for themselves and pointing our their responsibility for their plight?

- Englemann

August 11, 2009 at 1:25pm

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Missing in the discussion are some of the factors that contribute to inquality. In times of great technological change, economic advantage accrues to pioneers/first movers. We've clearly been in a time of great economic change for the past 25-30 years. On the lower end of the economic scale, we have record numbers of unskilled immigrants, on top of a large underclass characterized by factors that all but guarantee a life of poverty: single, uneducated parenthood, etc. The USA spends enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars on social programs, with little to show for it. How will adding higher taxes, for more transer payments, change the outcome? These programs have been in existence for over 40 years and they don't work.

- Californiaskeptic

August 11, 2009 at 1:26pm

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mr. chait, how can you honestly turn the key issue in the USA into a partisan one? i am a right leaning unaffiliated. what i have seen from, GOP and DEM alike is an obscene fascination with big money, big business, big gov't. this may be the one truly post-partisan issue all DC agrees on. the little guy be damned. wall st gets off scot-free? no re-regulation? hedge funds remain immune to regulation? create something called a financial consumer protection dept? what about SEC, FINRA? while the FED gets to watch the REAL elitists? maddoff was a sideshow! why are the DEMS just continuing, abetting GOP policy? so it not a partisan issue. the whole DC+WS connection is bi-partisan.

- mike flynn

August 11, 2009 at 1:51pm

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So, the main argument here is, "since the rich aren't doing much with their wealth other than investing it -- thereby creating more inequality in the future -- why don't we take some of those moneys and apportion them to the poor." Ughhh, that's going to work so well... Thit argument runs in tandem with the now-popular environmentalist advice to Western nations to have fewer children because developing countries produce too many already. I can't help but wonder sometimes whether a reality check enters into the authors' minds at any point in the process.

- Elena V

August 11, 2009 at 2:03pm

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The worst part, even worse than the tired argument, is equating CATO, a libertarian think-tank, withe "Right." It is not a doppelganger, and never has bee, especially in foreign policy. But even on domestic policy, CATO is a fairly reliable gauge of where the libertarian Right is, and nothing more. The mainstream is represented by AEI, IMHO.

- butchie b

August 11, 2009 at 2:08pm

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Black people are actually less employed and less educated since the Great Society. Look up the history of Eugenics, you'll find out the real reason behind the minimum wage.

- anon

August 11, 2009 at 2:32pm

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No, we should NOT mind the inequality gap. To admit that the gap between top and bottom is a legitimate issue is to open the door to Class Warfare which leads you to the insane conclusion that the only "fair" society is one where there's literal equality of outcomes. What happens is the Left focuses solely on those at the top; demonizing them in order to make the moral case for taxing them out of existance. I have no personal love for those at the top, but I admit they are the ones who drive our economy, create wealth, and grow GDP. And lowering their taxes increases their abililty to do all these things. What we should focus on instead is the quality of the safety net for those at the bottom. The ONLY legitimate question that should be asked is "is the net adequate"? If not, then fix it.

- JohnR

August 11, 2009 at 2:57pm

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Do a bit more research Dave. You'll find that only a tiny minority of people in the top 1% inherited their wealth. Most of them are first generation wealthy who earned it themselves. And if it's only those who inherited their wealth who've set your hair on fire, then you would be advocating only a tax on inheritances...instead of significant hikes in marginal rates for everyone.

- JohnR

August 11, 2009 at 3:01pm

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What Mr. Chaiot and his cohorts fail to take in consideration is the dellta between people and their ability, interests, and determination. It would be a sad day win in the interests of equity we deincentivized achievement. The disincentive effects of taxation are well documented as is the failure of policies to mandate an egalitarian social structure via income/asset redistribution. I pose to theMr. Chait what Dr. Thomas Sowell would ask: Wheres your evidence? What is your alternative? And what are the unintended consecquences vs the desired results

- bmarks

August 11, 2009 at 3:06pm

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Inequality is the sign of a healthy and functioning economic system. Equal outcomes are the sign of a sclerotic, non-functioning economy where poverty is universal. Wealth re-distribution has been debunked so many times it's not worth arguing about any more. The real question we have to ask is, why are we allowing sanctimonious busybodies to get away with these ridiculous ideas? How can we force them to put their money where their mouth is, and re-distribute their wealth, meanwhile leaving the rest of us alone? How can we rid society of these phony psychopathic do-gooders, who are creating so much class envy and immoral entitlement?

- Rick

August 11, 2009 at 3:07pm

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another espouser of the Robin Hood theory of prosperity.... create prosperity for the impoverished masses without giving them the skills and tools to stay out of the gutter... Your theory of bringing the prosperous into the gutter too is absolutely insane... what's your AGI.. maybe political pundits salaries should also be 'capped' with a new Barry mandate

- patsyd

August 11, 2009 at 3:16pm

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Give me a break! Let those that are concerned with 'economic inequality' eat cake! Those that make 250k or 250M should not pay more than the deadbeats who make a living off of my taxes. Flat tax for all! Everyone should pay taxes, not just those at the mid to upper end of the income spectrum. Watch how quickly entitlements go down when the slugs of society now have to carry their own weight!

- Thomas Jefferson

August 11, 2009 at 3:17pm

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Could it be that ole Jon. is just a socialist pacifist who is hiding behind his 'holiness' , equality baloney because he hates the free enterprise system? Perhaps he is unaware of the facts of freedom and personal liberty. So he puts it down as an ideology which doesn't care , of course, he depends upon liberalism as his 'fact check.' He is also unaware of the generosity of the American people over 200 years helping the small per centage of people who emotionally, physically, and intellectually cannot care for themselves. Churches and charities have aided these people for generations. Taxpayers have too. Much of the so called 'needy' today, are not those I mentioned. Instead, liberals like Jon. want us to believe that those who are gangsters, illegals, the lazy, are all to be included in those that all should care for. Facts Jon., are that about 5% of Americans cannot care for themselves. Americans want to aid them. We do not want to aid those who just because liberals deem them to be poor or unfortunate or blessed as minorities or blessed as illegals should be ' our brother's keeper' concern. They are not.

- Glenn Koons

August 11, 2009 at 3:33pm

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Re your refrigerator argument, that it's "inefficient" - all liberty is inefficient to a social engineer. This country was founded to adfvance life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not efficiency. All Americans need robust defense of liberty as the state tries to control more and more of their lives.

- Mark

August 11, 2009 at 3:49pm

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It's always funny to see people try and explain how the other side thinks. Especially when they channel General 'Buck' Turgidson while doing it. By those qualifications this article is a laugh riot.

- Joe Ryan

August 11, 2009 at 3:53pm

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Mr. Chait, The hypocracy coming from the left wing is staggaring. I would like propose a formal tax audit of all Members of Congress and Administration Officials. I suspect we already know who pays "their fair share of the taxes" HINT: It's not Nancy's crew. I await the statistics on charitable giving as well. Once liberals start putting their money where their mouth is and start voluntarily giving up tax shelters and write downs for pie in the sky asset depreciation and pay the 50%+ tax rates they want to hoard on $100K+ professionals with salary-driven income, they (You) will only look like a bunch of fools. Grow up and smell reality infants!

- JohnR PVB

August 11, 2009 at 3:58pm

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A far more important question is why are the poor poor and getting poorer in the first place? It seems to me that it has a lot to do with skyrocketing high school dropout rates (1.3M students per year now drop out), mushrooming rates of teenage pregnancy (there are 400K babies born to teen parents each year), ballooning rates of young men joining gangs and/or acquiring criminal records, etc etc etc. Over a 30-year period, we are talking about some 50M folks doing everything they can to stay poor and get poorer. Sure poor folks have inferior schools and the like, but there are college-bound students in even the poorest schools sitting in the desks next to future dropouts. And the poor could do a lot to improve the quality of the schools…it is not “evil rich folks” or “republicans” making inner-city schools so dangerous they need metal detectors, giant fences, security guards, etc. It is other poor people living in the area. Some of us persevere through highschool, college and maybe grad school. Some of us wait to have children until we are financially and emotionally ready. These people generally do well in life and become “rich.” Others choose a different path. To say we should tax the former to help the latter seems unfair and un-American.

- BJV

August 11, 2009 at 4:01pm

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The operative word here is "taking." What power has elevated the secular world of journalism and government to the place in which one my ask the other to take and that institution does so. Taking without a spiritual dimension is merely naked aggression, not virtue. Indeed, 'taking' is never"morally" justified. Not so with giving.

- Steven

August 11, 2009 at 4:07pm

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eric Zuesse said: a dollar given to a pauper raises happiness vastly more than does a dollar given to a millionaire. The problem is that, if the above is true, then the same is true about a dollar given to a person with $0 and a dollar given to a person who has $5000. So, if you give a pauper $5000, you have already disincetivized work.

- michael

August 11, 2009 at 4:16pm

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Given that the foundations for a market system - property rights and contract laws - are themselves publicly provided by the government, it's ridiculous to argue that government intervention in the economy is "wrong". In fact, a market system IS government intervention in the economy.

- David Minnich

August 11, 2009 at 4:24pm

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Why worry about income inequality and its moral significance when millions of Americans, inter alia, are out of work; loosing homes through foreclosure; filing for bankruptcy; witnessing their retirement savings disappear and paying extortion money to private medical insurance companies? Why should we think that we are on a slippery slope to to the destruction of democracy and rule by the rich? Didn't we elect BHO and has he not protected us from the amoral lobbyists of K Street? The unstated assumption of the right-wing is that economic inequality is the natural order of society. The slippery slope they concern themselves with is the slide to totalitarianism. Government programs to ameliorate poverty,etc, erode freedom, liberty and the persuit of happiness. The new right-wing theory is the Liberals are really fascists--"Liberal Fascists." The totalitarian state is right around the corner under Democratic Party rule. The "death panels" are going to take over and send our old and defenseless to their early deaths. Sarah Palin: Democrats=Fascists=Nazi=death panels. It is so easy to understand. Hell, yes!!

- Lawrence Gulotta

August 11, 2009 at 4:25pm

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One question I have for the author and most of you who commented on this. What gives you, or the government the right to decide how much and from who you take and how much and to who you give it? Or put another way, Who the Hell are you to decide who should get the fruits of my labor? Our Constitution guarantees equal opportunity to pursue happiness, wealth, etc. It does not guarantee equal outcomes. I don't envy those who have more or make more $ than me. I don't pity those who have less or make less $ than me. For better or worse, 99% of people in this country are where they are in life as a result of their own decisions, work ethic, morals, values, etc. Deal with it.

- Common Sense

August 11, 2009 at 4:25pm

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Actually, our empirical data for the US shows a slowing rate of economic growth over the past 30 years coupled with a sharply rising level of inequality. The tradeoff pointed out by economics 101 is empirically unsupportable by real-world data. Dave Minnich MA, Economics

- David Minnich

August 11, 2009 at 4:34pm

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Interestingly, the best argument I've seen for caring about inequality is a book by another guy who's also called Wilkinson: Richard Wilkinson's arresting book on the impact of inequality on health, Unhealthy Societies. Look it up!

- emigdio

August 11, 2009 at 4:56pm

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What really matters is the cause of economic inequality. If due to a systemic bias or oppression then it is clearly an issue that can and should be addressed. But if economic inequality is the result of effort, discipline or just the luck of the draw, then leave it alone. Taking by force is stealing, even if the government does it for you.

- Norm

August 11, 2009 at 6:00pm

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Democrats are again offering their constituents the tired Alinsky/class warfare rope with which these constituents will be hanging themselves. Every time Democrats have the political power to attack capital with higher taxes and regulations the workers lose jobs and standard of living. The capital essential for higher productivity and higher standards of living for all goes into mattresses or leaves the country for more favorable investment climes elsewhere. In the coming future, the rich will remain wealthy probably somewhere offshore while the workers line up for soup and sell apples on the corner here in the U.S. For the Democrat machine, it is imperative that their major constituents never are allowed to understand that without capital there are no profits to tax and no jobs - you will work for yourself, build your own cabin, grow your own food and live hand to mouth. It gets harder and harder to empathize with those who swallow the Democrat's class warfare line, cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

- Arturo

August 11, 2009 at 6:03pm

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"Taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor helps the latter more than it hurts the former..." So, by that statement libs acknowledge that it is perfectly OK to hurt someone in pursuit of their goal of "social justice."

- mark nelson

August 11, 2009 at 6:04pm

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MSL - inequality of result does not equal inequality of opportunity.

- Howard

August 11, 2009 at 6:12pm

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Wilkinson has one great skill I relly appreciate, he presents his argument in reader-friendly mode. That is a huge advantage for non-economists such as me. He is really cleave. However, he also a populist, he sometimes sounds like a new Charles Evan Hughes, like when he says, on a piece at The WEEK on "health care v. democracy": "The fact that American voters have repeatedly resisted a move to any system of universal health care underscores for many liberals the danger of leaving the protection of basic rights to the discretion of the democratic public. And so, in one of the profound ironies of American politics, even the Democratic Party abjures the fundamental democratic responsibility of honest persuasion when it comes to nailing down its contested vision of our basic rights". The paper has some really interesting points however, I think he is right in some points about the com¡nsumption indexes as a much better guide to measure distribution of wealth.

- Aparicio

August 11, 2009 at 6:20pm

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I believe this article and the philosophy behind it are missing the point. In this country, multi-generational poverty is due to a culture of poverty that includes a lack of good parenting, no interest in education, short time horizons, and no commitment to the community. These problems are not going to be fixed by a government hand-out. We have been giving vast sums of money to poor people for generations now without any progress. Society must expect more of it's citizens before we will see any real progress.

- sceptic

August 11, 2009 at 6:23pm

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I am perplexed that the argument of justice does not make an appearance in this article. Going back to the Web entrepreneur’s example I’d like an answer to three questions: 1. Hasn’t the Web entrepreneur already contributed to the well-being of that inner-city kid by creating a company worth billions? I think my life is richer because of the products all those Web entrepreneurs have brought into it. If the Web entrepreneur hadn’t made such a contribution, then her company would be worth nothing. 2. Isn’t it an imposition of a value system to dictate that the Web entrepreneur MUST pay a “slightly” higher tax rate? Why not take the position that the Web entrepreneur has the demonstrated ability to better manage assets and thus it benefits society at large to let her keep her money, rather than giving it to the inner-city kid, on the less-founded speculation that it may be better spent in his college education? 3. Shouldn’t, at the end of the day, be the Web entrepreneur who decides what to do with the money she earned?

- Alfredo

August 11, 2009 at 6:27pm

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I find it hard to reconcile the vast expanses of palatial estates I see in the Hamptons with the notion that the poor and rich have similar spending habits. In any event, Mr. Wilkinson seems to pay no attention to the psychological benefits of wealth. Wealth buys peace of mind; it buys a sense of freedom, the ability to escape an oppressive job or environment. It, therefore, buys critical components of happiness, if not happiness itself. Given this reality, it hardly seems important that the rich and poor can both purchase refrigerators capable of chilling orange juice.

- Andy D.

August 11, 2009 at 6:38pm

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"Social Darwinism" ring a bell? "God grants prosperity to those of faith" sound familiar? Both have been articles of faith for the Right for a long time. That said, Liberalism has always been a theory rather than a true philosphy. That's why "limosine Liberals" have been around a while as well.

- Puller58

August 11, 2009 at 6:41pm

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Jonathan, Repeating. You have asserted that the gap in wealth and consumption is widening. What is your evidence for this. If you will not respond, does the TNR have an ombudsman or public editor with whom I can pursue this matter?

- dtohmatsu

August 11, 2009 at 6:48pm

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Inequality is a good thing. You want achievers to reap the rewards. The system allows anyone a chance to achieve whatever they desire (rags to riches). Inequality in that sense is good. The people I know that complain the most made poor choices in their life and have no one to blame but themselves. Others that don't have much are perfectly happy and some that have much seem always to be miserable. The part about utility of wealth is on the mark, but I use my own wealth to take my family on several vacations a year, go to the spa frequently, and spend money on services to make our life comfortable. I grew up poor and enjoy being ale to do those things now. So yes, having money is way better than not having money. My happiness is the same, but comfort is better. Anyway, I think inequality is a good thing and the degree has only increased because the stakes of winning and losing in a globalized world are much higher. The bottom 50% or so in our society today have it better than the bottom 50% collectively throughout most of human history. What's glaring is that the top 1% or 5% have never had it this good. So what? You can knock them down a little, but I bet you would hurt the rest even more in doing so. Libs are so unsophisticated as to not realize this even though there is ample evidence to support it.

- Ryan

August 11, 2009 at 7:57pm

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I would go the heart of what Jonathan means by "justice." To my mind, utilitarianism is an unjust moral philosophy. Partly, that's because the emperor has no clothes -- we can't actually calculate 'utility', or even estimate it (despite numerous attempts to do so). But mostly, that's because utilitarianism swallows up all other ethical norms in favor of maximizing the almighty but incalculable Utility. Consider the argument that taking $1000 from the rich man causes him to lose a small amount of utility, while giving it to the poor man gives him far greater utility. On the surface, it seems plausible. But now, what is the negative utility generated when we create a society that loses sight of Thou Shalt Not Steal? More plainly, what kind of pain do we inflict on the rich man *and all men* when our earnings can be arbitrarily garnished, not for the common good, but simply for the good of favored constituents? Cry me a river, Rich Man, say the liberals. But we should all pause and think about how important it was to the Founding Fathers to value property rights, to say to the government that property cannot be taken without just compensation. Utilitarianism can't see the value in property rights, because it can only compute the immediate utility of redistribution. Too bad that utility isn't calculable; then we might be able to see the secondary effects of eliminating the ethical taboo on theft.

- Jeff

August 11, 2009 at 8:46pm

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Maybe there aren't enough truly luxury items for the wealthy to spend their money on - except large tracts of land, huge mansions with staff, large boats and planes, and political power. Starships, private planets, and ways to truly extend the human lifespan are just not available right now, so the extra cash has to go in the shoebox.

- Andrew P

August 11, 2009 at 9:42pm

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Equality of opportunity, always. Equality of outcome, never. "Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat other human beings as chattel." -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

- Bill

August 11, 2009 at 10:39pm

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Chait gave it all away with his comment about "trophy wives." He would love it if about 10% of all taxpayers paid everything, including their trophy wives, of which there are relatively few. By the by, I have been married for 52 years and I paid $1.2 million in taxes for 2008, but I know that down deep I am not paying enough. And yes, I have a trophy wife.

- dick

August 11, 2009 at 11:11pm

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Aside from Wilkinson's argument itself (which either isn't online, or which Chait doesn't bother to link to), there are a few peculiarities about Chait's presentation of the issues: 1) First, there's the use of the word "care" as a partisan divider (supposedly, Democrats "care" about inequality, Republicans don't) -- but the real issue isn't who "cares" about economic equality, but rather who would like to *force* economic equality by taking money out of the hands of those with more and giving it to those with less. As for "caring" itself, it's worth pointing out that many studies show Republicans as a group tend to be more charitable than Democrats. 2) And speaking of other people's money, it's interesting that the so-called "efficiency" argument is almost always applied to third parties -- it would be curious, e.g., to see Chait's response to a request for money from, say, me, on the grounds that his income is greater than mine, and hence less "efficiently" spent (as a good liberal, he'd understand that this hand-over wouldn't be close to creating "serious work-incentive effects"). A common thief, in fact, could use such an argument to make a case that he/she is performing an important economic function -- but most people would find something seriously wrong with that picture. In other words, the third-party (not to say god-like) point of view that assumes it can first collect and then "efficiently" distribute all of a society's wealth is deeply flawed, both economically and morally. Such a point of view is also fundamentally different from the simpler sociological observation that extra income tends to be spent on non-essentials, which seems to be Wilkinson's rather obvious point. 3) Continuing the theme of the liberal-Democrat propensity to try to get their hands on other people's money, it's just a bit amusing-ironic to see Chait complain that at least some of the "rich" *will* try to protect themselves from such seizures by even going so far as to forsake their Republicans and infiltrate the Democrats! Guess these aren't the same Democrats that care about economic inequality. Oh, that devious bastard Soros! 4) "Apparently," says Chait, "it's fair to complain about special interests when they subvert the libertarian agenda but not otherwise." No -- it's fair to complain about special interests when they attempt to use the power of the state to further those interests, but not otherwise. 5) "Today," says Chait, in a pitch-perfect rendition of the Envy-monger's Complaint, "that same [low def] television gives me slightly less enjoyment because I realize that I'm missing out on a better picture." No doubt. The remedy, however, is not to try to take money for a new TV from someone else, but rather to earn it. Which is the appropriate remedy to envy-based "care" about economic inequality across the board.

- Larry

August 11, 2009 at 11:27pm

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JB Rawls 101 .... favor the unfavored. Fine, but a corollary to Rawls is that if you executed his strategy 100 times over, what you get is poverty. The reality of human nature is that the productive will shut down without incentives and you get less overall wealth. So, the unfavored get more of much less, and thus are less well off. Sorry, that's reality. I've always wondered if Rawls would change his mind if confronted with reality of 100 (or 1000) experiments that show how his strategy just doesn't work. What we should be talking about is the optimal level of taxation for overall wealth. Obama's current obsession with equality at the expense of overall wealth hurts us all, politics aside. We should be educating and giving opportunity, not promoting envy.

- g

August 12, 2009 at 12:00am

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You way the wealth and consumption gap is widening. What is your evidence for this???

- dtohmatsu

August 12, 2009 at 12:49am

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There will always be inequality in wealth. For the poor who dont like it, it pushes them to better themselves. It can be done. However it takes work and effort. therin lies the rub. they want wealth but dont want to work for it.

- Lynn

August 12, 2009 at 2:42am

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Most of the poor in America are in their position due to poor choices and not a lack of opportunity.

- Janet

August 12, 2009 at 4:36am

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Inequality comes from an ailment of the human heart. The ailment has been around since Cain. This makes the problem a spiritual issue and not solvable by laws and taxes. Laws do not alter the heart or change living standards; at best they reluctantly constrain behavior. If more effort were spent trying to illuminate the heart condition of man, instead of just taking money, perhaps hearts would be softened. Were that to happen, there would be a joyful free flow of money to the poor with a concomitant effort to lift the poor from poverty rather than leave them there. Governmental wealth redistribution leads to alienation and wrath. When people choose to redistribute their wealth from compassion, that leads to utopia.

- Roger Bannister

August 12, 2009 at 7:09am

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If society/government tells people from the very beginning, "Everyone will have the same living standards. No exceptions," people will simply not work as hard as they would if they were told, "You will enjoy living standars based on how much money you can earn in the economy." I guess the real question is how important relative inequality is compared to absolute levels of wealth and income. In other words, is it better to be "equal" in a poor country than on the lower end of the income/wealth scale in a wealthy country even if one has more access to goods and services in the wealthy country.

- Spiral

August 12, 2009 at 9:03am

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I believe in equality of opportunity. To the extent that inner city kids are shortchanged by worse educational standards or health care standards, we as a nation should make necessary changes to alter that situation. I do not believe that most conservatives would object to that. What they would object to is destroying the incentive to excel, which is already quite prominent in the European countries liberals so admire. The main problem with these countries is that there is no social mobility. All of the upper middle class professionals I met when I lived in Europe came from upper middle class families. It is different here. That is why the "tired and poor" of Emma Lazarus' poem emigrated here in the first place, not to mention religious oppression. One generation after my family emigrated from Europe, essentially all of us have achieved upper middle class status. That could not happen in Europe. I wish to preserve that upward mobility potential here, and that is why I vigorously oppose Obama's vision of America. And, like Limbaugh, I hope his vision does not succeed. That is not the same thing as hoping America does not succeed.

- Bob Ennis

August 12, 2009 at 1:05pm

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Take a deep breath, folks. Chait is hardly advocating a dictatorship of the proletariat. Any sane person will admit that some level of inequality will always exist in any society, and that this is a good thing. The question is whether a democratic society must tolerate the ever-increasing levels of inequality which inevitably follow as those who have attained wealth use it to influence political outcomes and rig the rules of the game in their favor.

- Django48

August 12, 2009 at 1:54pm

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aka Larry Larry: Wilkinson is a very smart guy and I think in this small exchange was more impressive than Chait who seemed ponderous. That said I am more on Chait’s side on this issue but don’t agree with him that that the utilitarian argument is the best one for “income redistribution”, which phrase itself needs some unpacking. As to your points 1. I think to the word “care” is apt in viewing a liberal libertarian spectrum of thought on what I will refer to as income redistribution. Chait misguided his own position by in fact talking about taking from the rich guy and giving it to the poor guy, which then allows you fairly to talk about “forcing”. The social mechanism underlying this debate is taxation and progressive taxation at that. Taxes are the implementation of social policy. And there are two big issues which arise in this debate: progressive taxation—the rich pay more as a matter of marginal rates; and what help hands ought to be given as a matter of social policy. If the metaphysics of liberalism includes proactive government trying to extend warranted helping hands in contrast with that libertarianism which looks to minimize government’s role and leave people to their own devices after the social infrastructure is ensured—roads, security and the like—and minimize the notion of a commonwealth, then I think caring going to these differences. I make no moral judgment in that distinction as both social visions are normatively defensible, but, rather, than an empirical one. 2(1) Respectfully, I think your second point is not responsive to the real issue, which I tired to give some brief sketching to above, and I blame Chait for getting the discussion off track by making A giving money to B a fulcrum of his arguments. 2(2) Chait also, as I suggested, obscures the issues by arguing that the argument from efficiency is the most compelling one for liberals arguing for income distribution. Nobody wants inefficiency but I can imagine certain social policies that are relatively inefficient but humane and just and consistent with the idea of commonwealth. To exclude that from the range of argument is to distort and emasculate the liberal case. 3/4. There may be some susceptibility to labels in the argument here. True the argument at the highest levels is traceable back to first principles of governance animating specific policies; but the concrete issues are the specifics of particular polices, the balances and compromises those policies entail, their means and effects in relation to their purposes and so on. Otherwise the discussion is rather airy. 5. The television example is ludicrous and is consistent with the distortion of the issue by Chait’s conflation of the personal with the social and political. The issue is not being given money to buy a better television; the issue is social policies helping with the necessaries of life including health care and education and urban renewal for a few.

- itzik basman to brigitte bardot

August 12, 2009 at 2:09pm

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"The issue," says Itzik, "is not being given money to buy a better television; the issue is social policies helping with the necessaries of life including health care and education and urban renewal for a few." But there's a distinction between the theme of economic equality and that of helping the poor. How we might best do the latter, or how much obligation we have as either individuals or a society to do that, is a matter for another discussion -- here, Chait's focus is on the former. So, for example, it might turn out that the best way to help the poor would be by *increasing* inequality -- making both the rich and the poor richer, but with the effect that the rich become even more so; similarly, and on the other hand, it might be that the the best way to reduce inequality/increase equality would only be by making the poor worse off, with the "consolation" that the condition of the rich gets even worse. It's the latter scenario that makes Chait's focus on "caring" about inequality so iniquitous, and it explains why, in this context, as opposed to a context of helping the poor, Chait's television example is so apt, however revealing. I think there's a real moral illness underlying such a pseudo-"caring", though it's widespread certainly, as illustrated by an old peasant joke: A farmer working his field discovers a genie in a bottle, which genie promises to grant the farmer any wish on one condition: that whatever he gives to the farmer he gives double to the farmer's neighbours. The farmer thinks for just a minute, then says "put out one of my eyes."

- London Hyatt

August 13, 2009 at 10:46am

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"Redistribution" needs to be unpacked. I don't know of anyone for whom it means simply taking cash from the wealthy and writing checks to the poor. What it is generally thought of is taking cash from the wealthy and spending it on equal-access programs that enhance the possibility of a real meritocracy. For example, taxing the rich at a higher marginal rate in order to pay for poor children to be competitive with their middle class peers; or so that the poor elderly may live out their years in somewhat comfort conditions; or that victims of drug abuse may turn their lives around; or that everyone will have access to the restorative benefits of parks; or the empowerment of public libraries. The goal is not that everyone's bank accounts should line up, but their potential.

- Eli

August 13, 2009 at 12:36pm

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London Hyatt?

- itzik basman

August 14, 2009 at 1:20pm

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