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The Libertarian Podcast: Should We Worry About Income Inequality?
This week on The Libertarian podcast, I’m leading Richard Epstein through a discussion of income inequality. Is it the disaster that liberals are making it out to be? What do progressive proposals to address the situation get wrong? What are some free market approaches that could help the poor? And are conservatives destined to lose this fight because of the Left’s appeal to emotion? All that below or on your mobile device if you subscribe to The Libertarian via iTunes or your favorite podcast service.
Published in Economics
Headstart has no demonstrated no gains over its entire 40 year history.
Keeping the cost of living under control is far more important than income inequality.
I never understood why income inequality was a problem. When I did not have much money, I wanted more money, not for rich people to have less.
I think there is more of a view that being rich is not the result of hard work as much as luck and connections. I’d imagine most people get the experience of what a CEO does from vapid corporate speeches and soundbites.
“Income equality” would mean “everybody makes minimum wage”.
Doesn’t sound like a good thing.
One of the main complaints from the left about “income inequality” is that a tiny few very wealthy people can use their resources to purchase political power.
On its surface, that almost makes sense.
But a far more efficient way to purchase political power is to use government funds to buy the votes of the poor, subsidizing poverty as a side effect.
[added:]
Or to direct union dues to political causes.
My understanding is that global poverty has gone down considerably in the last few decades. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have enough economic growth that even the poorest people have enough food, housing, etc. Poverty is a solvable problem. Income inequality is not solvable, and it’s not a problem.
I think the GOP should brand themselves as the party that fights against poverty. It’s sounds nice, and even better, it’s the truth.
The solution to this would be to collect the wallets of those proposing income equality. We have to start somewhere.
Yes. I don’t think most people realize how much more money the government has to spend than any billionaire or corporation. They’ll complain that the government props up McDonalds and Walmart by providing welfare to its workers, but they don’t realize (or won’t acknowledge) that the government has much, much more money to spend than either of those corporations.
I think the whole notion of income inequality is flawed. It’s basically just a handful of people saying, “Some people have a lot more money than me, and that’s just WRONG!” Far be it for me to throw about the word malcontent, but… malcontent.
The progressives want the rich and powerful to be less rich and powerful. That kind of makes sense in a superficial way. However, their method to achieve that goal is to make the rich and powerful transfer their money to an entity much richer and more powerful than them.
I realize that with the federal government $18 trillion in debt, it’s not really rich, but since it can borrow money now and let someone else figure out how to pay it back later, the government can spend as if it is rich.
“Your wealth does not cause my poverty. Failing to understand this is the cause of most bad economic thinking.” – P. J. O’Rouke