Hmm, I see very few folks who think income equality is a problem in any sense.
EconomicallyOddly enough, I think that some of the folks on the left have a point:
income equality has grown over time. I think that is quantifiable and one of several uncontroversial metrics show as much. Where I differ with folks on the left is the cause and meaning of that equality.
On the top end, technical innovation has increased the resources sharp, motivated, and fortunate people can muster and increased the practical maximum income/revenue. In addition, they are growing the economy while taking a healthy share. We all would be poorer without Sam Walton & Bill Gates.
On the bottom end, we have let in millions of dirt poor illegal aliens with poor skills and no English. They have swelled the ranks of the poor and driven down the wages of Americans already in that economic strata. Folks squawk about how we still have a poverty rate of X%. Well, when we continually import poor folks with no skills, that rate is not going to fall much.
SociallyA system that devalues labor deflates the worth of the difficult, and few will do the difficult. When people stop working hard at the difficult, the system will crumble.
I think we are quickly approaching de Tocqueville's Kentucky.
When he floated down the Ohio River, he saw Ohio on the right and Kentucky on the left. The terrain & natural resources were interchangeable. What was different was the cultures: on the right, no slavery and on the left, slavery. On the right, he saw everyone working and industrious, at every level of job, from laborer to manager. On the right, he saw burgeoning industry as all worked and were rewarded. On the left, he saw a lack of development. On the left, he saw that only the slaves busted their humps and non-slaves considered such heavy toil beneath themselves.
Today, in those places where illegal aliens have taken the heavy labor jobs and made such occupations less socially acceptable to Americans. Like JJ wrote, we have devalued labor, both in wages and socially. Fewer Americans, many of whom have not the talents to do much more than such jobs, are willing to do them.
Americans in that social strata get a lesser wage than previously and no respect for working. Why bother, when they can get no respect for sitting around on the dole?
Is There No Level of Economic/Social Inequality That Is Worrisome?I previously mentioned Brazil, where I think inequality (social & economic) is most definitely a serious problem. No one here has engaged that example, despite several of our largest metro areas trending that way(1). I'm not sure why, maybe because it is too messy or tough a problem that can not be addressed with either anecdote or textbook principle.
Brazil and many LA countries are countries without a robust middle class. Tehre is only the masses of poor and the thin crust of the affluent. Is this a problem?
On the continuum of inequality, where colonial/post-American revolutionary America was least unequal (majority land owning farmer class) to where only one or a few on top have the economic wherewithal to exercise liberties (such as Saudi Arabia) and the rest are dirt poor,
is there any point along that continuum where any of y'all would say, "Here, and no further!" Be that motivated by morality (can not bear to see the USA as a feudal or latin society) or practicality (such deep inequality curtails movement and liberties of both dirt poor and affluent).
(1) When folks with engineering degrees making $100K+ can no longer live near work in Los Angeles, but must commute 2-3 hours each way, I think it is safe to say they have driven out the middle class (lower, middle, and upper middle classes).
