Ever hear people moaning and wailing about income / wealth distribution? What percentage of people think it's a problem?
Income / wealth distribution in the United States is not what people think it is nor what they'd prefer it to be. It's worse. Ezra Klein has a good summary of work done by Dan Ariely and Micheal Norton in 2011. Side note: I wondered why their work, fascinating and very well presented, was not getting more attention. Now it seems a compelling video has gone viral.
This is fascinating stuff and a number of components are worth consideration. Ariely points out that Republicans and Dems are not far apart with respect to both estimates of distribution and their expressions of preference.
So how do achieve what we prefer? How to get more even distribution? Some free market types (I'm a free market type) would say we need better education, more stable families, and the kids need to eat their spinach. True, true, and true. But, a free market implies unequal distribution. There is an unequal distribution when it comes to ability, innate tendencies, and appearance. Besides the market's kind of funny. It rewards musicians like KISS (there is no accounting for taste) and it rewards different abilities at different times. Does anyone think Mark Zuckerberg would be a gazillionaire if he was born in 1920? I think Malcolm Gladwell addresses this in Outliers - see point 3.
No a free market implies unequal distribution. To the extent we don't like that we should re-distribute. So, let's shed a lot of the regulation of markets, many of which are designed to address equity in society and engage in re-distribution efficiently. People, despite what they say, aren't against re-distribution. They are, and should be, against inefficient re-distribution or policies that yield inefficiencies. Start with eliminating the Minimum Wage and we can work our way to simplifying the tax code. Have a simple, flat, efficient tax that yields revenue efficiently so that we can, in part, re-distribute.
Let's stop enacting education policy under the absurd assumption that every kid should go to college. We've got it backwards. We think that college is the ticket to this person being able to earn a good living so that we don't need to re-distribute. Get 'em out of school and trained to earn a living and he'll be able to make it. To the extent he does not help him out with direct income subsidies.
No, free market types should be all in favor of re-distribution.
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