‘All this talk of wealth inequality is stupid.’
14th November 2010
I am finding the spate of recent articles about the huge and growing inequality of wealth in the US pretty tedious. I suspect they are making some basic mistakes. They usually take the form of saying the wealthiest X percent of the US population owns Y percent of the wealth, where Y is a much bigger number than X. What I don’t get is, why should I care about the relationship of X and Y?
Envry and resentment–emotions that ‘progressives’ clutch close to their bosoms to make up for the fact that every time they try to improve conditions they only get worse.
We humans are an envious breed, but we mostly put our own wealth ahead of equality. And if I could be a few thousand dollars a year better off, at the cost, so to speak, of some guy who lives in some gated paradise I don’t even drive by, becoming millions richer than he already is, well that is a sacrifice I am prepared to make. As long as he is not around to rub my face in the fact that while he’s buying a new jet, I’m just buying a riding mower, I don’t care.
Ah, but Democrats do, and they’re the ones passing the silly laws … and, unfortunately, writing the tax code.