What do you think about income inequality?

kluge
Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:32:48 +0000

=Nicole12:

But you still haven’t said why the increased concentration of wealth is “bad”. If you don’t envy the rich, why would your children?

Because my concern with a continually increasing concentration of wealth has nothing to do with “envy.” I assume my kids will wind up on the relatively affluent end of the spectrum. In terms of personal wealth I figure they’ll be okay.

My concern with increasing concentration of wealth is this: extremes are bad for society. The extremes in terms of concentration of wealth are, on the one hand, everyone has exactly the same amount of wealth, and on the other, one person owns everything, everyone else has nothing. Of course, neither extreme is ever experienced, but as you approach the extreme social malignancies increase. With no disparity of wealth, incentive to create and achieve are blunted. With extreme disparity of wealth, the talented poor cannot achieve success, the elite wield power regardless of personal talent or merit, and the powerless majority becomes restive. In a society with a healthy degree of wealth disparity the rich are richer than the middle class, and there are still poor people, but the gaps between them aren’t insurmountable. Hard working poor people can consistently become middle class; clever and industrious middle class can become wealthy; lazy and foolish rich can become poor. And “a rising tide lifts all boats” which gives everyone a stake in increasing overall national wealth.

I view the distribution of wealth in the U.S. from the 1940’s to the 1970’s to represent a healthy balance between the extremes. But for the past 30 years we’ve been moving steadily away from that balance and toward the extreme of concentration of more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands. It has become harder (and rarer) for the poor and middle class to move up, and it’s become harder (and rarer) for the wealthy and their offspring to fail badly enough to drop down the scale. Increases in national wealth have not benefited anyone below about the 90th percentile for the past 3 decades, with the bulk of that increase in wealth accruing to the very wealthy. There’s no reason for the vast majority of Americans to care if the nation’s wealth increases - they won’t see any of that increase themselves anyway - their boats stopped rising thirty years ago. I don’t think that that creates a healthier society. If the trend continues I foresee a disfunctional social order and attendant strife. That’s why that’s not the kind of nation I want to bequeath to my children and grandchildren.

I also perceive the ad hominem disparagement of people who raise this concern - sneering accusations that they’re just motivated by “jealousy” or “hate the rich” as being distasteful examples of the triumph of propaganda over rational debate. I mean - that claim pretty much drowns out any thoughtful assessment of the issue, doesn’t it?