The Great Income Inequality Sham
1st May 2014
If you’ve ever met a Texan, you know that Texans love bragging about their state. You’ve probably heard the endless list—the bigness, the freedom, the trucks, the barbeque, the pride, the football—and, like many others, you’ve probably rolled your eyes. So please forgive me, for as a new-ish resident of the Lone Star State, I’d like to add one more item to that long, rambling list: No one in Texas seems to be talking all that much about Thomas Piketty.
If that name rings a bell, it’s because you’ve been reading the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or basically anything on the Internet for the past few weeks. Piketty, described by the Times as “the latest overnight intellectual sensation,” is a French economist whose new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”—you know, as opposed to the Kapital that Marx wrote about—bemoans income inequality, exposes various flaws in our global economy, and calls for confiscatory global wealth taxes in order to stop Richard Branson from having all that fun.
I hate him already. ‘Well, damn the French!’ — John Cleese
Once you look past the patent silliness and First World problems of the almost-rich mentally scapegoating the already-rich, it becomes increasingly clear why income inequality has become the anxiety of choice for the upper-middle-class left. If you’re mad about your neighbor’s private jet, after all, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to ignore the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who was just denied access to a quality charter school—thanks, of course, to the charter-blocking policies of the politicians you voted (and perhaps raised funds) for.
Got it in one.
It’s quite timely—and telling—that Donald Sterling, the inarguably horrible man at the helm of the L.A. Clippers, was scheduled to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles NAACP this month. Despite being outed as one of the most over-the-top racists in recent American memory, Sterling had donated sizable amounts to the civil rights group. It probably made him feel good.
It certainly made the NAACP feel good — race hustlers don’t come cheap; the problem is that they don’t stay bought.
Somewhere, you see, there might be a rich man kiteboarding right now off the coast of his private island. It is not confirmed, but he may have a supermodel riding on his back. One thing is sure: He does not have to go to the post office. We must stop him. Things like embarrassingly horrible government schools, and the kids trapped in them, can wait.