7 Inequality, monetary policy, and the gold standard
I. Introduction
The economists who endorse the normative policy prescription to redistribute income also typically subscribe to the positive empirical claim that the distribution of income in the United States became much more unequal in the 1980s. Symmetrically, there is a strong correlation between economists who reject “egalitarian” tax and welfare policies and those who argue that many standard measures overstate the concentration of income and wealth among the richest Americans. As a result, the typical arguments about income inequality – at least in the context of the United States – tend to focus on the 1980s, and the normative/positive claims tend to go together as ...
