In recent years, Joseph Stiglitz has focused on the issue of income inequality. And last week, he testified before the Senate Budget Committee. The topic was, Opportunity, Mobility, and Inequality in Today’s Economy. It’s all standard stuff around here, but it can’t be repeated enough. Every day I hear parts of the conservative disinformation campaign. There’s always someone like Greg Mankiw around to argue, “We really don’t have inequality; and even if we do, we have equality of opportunity; and even if we don’t, it doesn’t really matter; and even if it does, there’s nothing we can do about it; and even if there is, we shouldn’t because income inequality is good!” If such people were honest, they would just say, “We don’t care!”
Stiglitz’s paper is fairly short and if you are interested in the subject, I highly recommend reading it. But I’ll give you the rundown here. He makes eight points, but there is overlap, so I’ve whittled them down to six points:
Inequality is the result of policies. This gets back to what I was talking about this morning in, Warren Buffett Counter-Counterargument. Conservatives claim the privilege of the rich is “God given” or “natural.” It’s the old libertarian belief that capitalism is natural, as though modern capitalism is anything close to that.
The Rich are compensated according to their value to the economy. This is part of that same “natural” argument. Robert Reich wrote an excellent article countering this, The “Paid-What-You’re-Worth” Myth. But Stiglitz makes a great point, “If we look at those at the top, they are not those who have made the major innovations that have transformed our economy and society; they are not the discoverers of DNA, the laser, the transistor; not the brilliant individuals who made the discoveries without which we would not have had the modern computer.” No they aren’t! They are people who are good at “figuring out how to get a larger share of the nation’s pie, rather than enhancing the size of that pie.”
Trickle-down is a lie. Milton Friedman’s old canard that income inequality was great because everyone was doing better has been shown to be a cruel lie.
Inequality is bad for economic growth. Another conservative argument is that inequality is good for growth. Stiglitz points out that the 2008 financial crisis proved that this was a lie. But the truth is that our economic performance for the last 35 years has shown this to be true. The only reason anyone has ever taken this talking point seriously is because the rich push it.
Inequality makes us a less democratic nation. Just check out McCutcheon vs FEC where the Supreme Court Strikes Blow for Oligarchy.
Inequality is bad for the federal budget. I don’t think this is a particularly important issue. It is true. But a more important truth is that conservatives don’t care about the budget deficit. They just use it as a convenient cudgel to push for cutting social spending. If they really cared about the issue, they would call for at least some increase in taxes. They don’t so they don’t care.
It’s sad that we even have to discuss income inequality. It is yet another issue like global warming. I discussed the three stages of global warming denial in, It’s Raining, But Not for Long. At one time, income equality was an issue open to debate. But the more clear the data get, the more extreme the conservative arguments get. Yet they aren’t held accountable. The newest excuse for doing nothing is accepted as being as valid as the last one was.
We really should be talking about solutions. I started a series of articles, “Income Inequality Solutions.” But I haven’t worked on in the last couple of months. I’ll have to get back to that. Until then, here are the first two articles:
Income Inequality Solutions 1: Estate Tax
Income Inequality Solutions 2: Higher Inflation
Ramesh Ponnuru is a remarkable conservative writer. I’ve used him more than any writer in my 
Twenty-five years ago, Margaret Thatcher’s infamous poll tax (officially known as the Community Charge) was put into effect. It was the beginning of the end for the “Lead Lady.” But I’m afraid that Americans don’t much understand what it was all about. Until that point, the tax was basically a property tax: the fancier your digs, the more you paid. So it was fairly progressive. Thatcher had it changed to a flat tax. This is a standard conservative desire to flatten the tax code. This is always portrayed as a matter of fairness, but it is nothing of the kind. The more money people have, the less taxes effect their live styles. The real point of such taxes is to push money from poor to rich. If conservatives ever got their beloved flat tax, two things would be obvious. First, the rich would pay less because they have the resources to hide income and wealth. Second, conservatives would immediately work to make per capita taxes equal, rather than tax rates. Margaret Thatcher was an evil woman who was not only bad for the people of the United Kingdom, she was terrible for the United States in how she inspired Ronald Reagan. I wish there were a hell where they could both rot for eternity.
Here is California today, it is Cesar Chavez Day. And it also happens to be his birthday, which is tidy. But just like Martin Luther King Jr, we celebrate the mythic Chavez rather than the man. And that’s just fine. But the man deserves to be remembered. He was a curious fellow. For example, he was a vegan and he seems to have been against the notion of money. Although I don’t agree with him on either issue, I greatly respect the beliefs and I think it speaks well of any many to have principled beliefs that counter the social norms.
Bill Maher is kind of a jerk. He’s also pretentious and he thinks he’s way smarter than he actually is. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t right. Or insightful. And on Friday’s episode of Real Time, he had some great advice for the Democratic Party. I know its great advice because I’ve been offering it to the Democrats myself for a while. It all comes down to my long held believe that the Democrats should stop trying to win the “swing voters.” For one thing, I’m not even sure such voters exist. And if they do, they don’t jump from Democrat to Republican based upon policy. If anything is going to win their votes, it is going to be clarity of vision.
Martin Longman got me thinking in his article, 
As you probably know, I’m a fan of Joe Biden. But this isn’t because of his policy ideas. He’s quite all right in that area, but there are a number of things I don’t like. For example, he has always been a “tough on crime” guy, and that has led to our extreme prison problems and the racial inequality that has gone along with them. But Biden is probably the best retail politician in America. No one seems as genuine as he does.
Nate Silver wrote a bizarre article at FiveThirtyEight last night, 
If we take Silver’s article as fundamentally serious, it shows that Silver really doesn’t understand the nature of the many complaints about his new venture. All it shows is that there is a correlation: since leaving The New York Times, Krugman has been critical of Silver. But that’s not the only thing that happened when Silver left. He also greatly expanded his work and has put out articles about global warming and economics. These are fields that are distinctly different from poll aggregation. So the correlation could just as reasonably cause one to conclude, “Krugman doesn’t like Silver since he branched out into fields he clearly knows nothing about.” Or there could be other reasons. The “leaving The Times” narrative seems highly unlikely.
Recent research proves it: scientific