Engine of Inequality

Chapter 3What Makes Us So Unequal

So why is income inequality such a problem? The reality is that some people work harder, learn more skills, risk more and are more intelligent than others. That is why there is income inequality. And that is not a negative outcome.

– Dave Majernik, Vice Chairman of the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Republican Committee*

The views above are not unusual. They are most often spoken or thought when the parlous economic plight of many African-American households is considered,¹ but racism is not the only reason some believe that inequality is inevitable. As another commentator said, “The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.”² A bit more charitably, some attribute American inequality to “organic capitalism,” which is said to determine success by skill and then to reallocate wealth when rich people are foolish enough to squander it.³

When inequality is put this way, then the only way to read all the data in Chapter 2 is to conclude that anyone who earns or owns less does so because they're pretty much no good. Thus, the indolent in one generation breed slackers in the next, women are inherently less equal than men, Blacks are similarly and personally inadequate, and pernicious thinking then validates regressive policy that allows the prosperous to keep what they have and then to amass still more.

If inequality is indeed endemic, then a radical solution far ...