What to Do About Wealth Inequality?
9th April 2018
Paul Mirengoff takes a look at this fake problem.
The Washington Post asked twelve “experts” what to do about our nation’s “staggering economic inequality.” The Post’s Jeff Stein sets up his article by noting that the 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the poorest 80 million households, and “the richest citizens continue to capture the lion’s share of new wealth.” Indeed, “the top 5 percent has captured 74 percent of the wealth created in this country since 1982.”
I’m not sure “captured” is the right word. It’s likely that the top 5 percent played a key role in creating that wealth.
This is what comes from people reading Rawls in college. They get the idea that there are vast herds of ‘wealth’ wandering around out there just waiting for somebody with a cage to ‘capture’ it, without the prospect that somebody had a hand in creating that wealth even crossing their minds. Somehow wealth just happens, and the problem is sharing it around ‘fairly’.