Wednesday, January 22, 2014

[hbkqvspg] Open mindedness about economic inequality

The most striking sentence of Paul Krugman's blog post is near the end: "We could have a debate about whether rising inequality is a problem, and whether measures intended to curb it would do more harm than good."

That rising inequality is a problem is not a settled question. That measures intended to curb it, for example, raising the minimum wage or strengthening labor unions, will do more good than harm is not a settled question -- they are questions worthy of debate.  This is coming from one of the most left-leaning of economists!

Those who assume that these questions are "obviously" settled, or attempt to win the debate by ridiculing the opposition, are not helping their cause.  These are genuinely difficult questions.

The devil's advocate raises: historical examples of civilizations which flourished for a very long time despite inequality; inequality failing to accurately measure "happiness"; measures to curb it introducing market distortions; the difficulty of implementing such measures without various forms of corruption and people cheating.

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