I was wondering when these super conservative groups, such as the Heritage Foundation, would start using the "inequality is good" argument. There's a lot to like about an utopian society based solely on meritocracy. But the truth is there are large numbers of people who cannot compete on equal footing due to circumstances that are/were out of their control. It's like taking a Chinese class with a bunch of Chinese students and you're the only one who doesn't know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese. <p>Using the Google founders as the example of "inequality being good" is ridiculous. Most people don't have a problem with rewarding innovative work; people have problems with not providing a baseline for those who can't. In a pure pay for performance society, those who can't perform, won't get paid. Is this fair? On the surface, well yes, maybe. But what if the REASON for their non-performance is based on systematic oppression and lingering effects thereof? Is a pure pay for performance system still fair? <p>What about the handicapped, depressed, and otherwise ill affected?<p>The pay for performance (or inequality is good) argument is fine when no one gets hurt, when the low performers, say, will get a 1% instead of 10% bonus. But when we're talking about the lower levels of society, where people can literally go homeless or die of untreated disease, then it's not so easy to come up with these fantasy theories.<p>
Like all things, though, some moderation is probably a good idea. Even if this argument makes perfect logical sense, it makes apes unhappy to see other apes getting way more bananas than they are, and if you start to talk politics rather than simply economics, this has practical consequences. Better to balance things out a little bit before things get out of hand and the apes with few bananas vote in someone with truly bad ideas about redistributing wealth.<p>I once saw a not-really-serious idea by a center-left economist that having money is good and just, as the article says, but perhaps what should be taxed are the very visible bananas (fancy cars, "bling") that the better off apes use to flaunt their wealth.
The popularity of this argument depends almost completely on who you choose for your examples.<p>Most people seem to agree when you talk about Sergey Brin and Larry Page? They started a company from nothing, added trememdous value to the world, and pocketed some big bucks for themselves. Rock on, those are the kind of guys who make you feel fine, even positive, about income inequality. <p>Next in line come the CEOs who take over an existing company and help themselves to some of the wealth. Some of these CEOs do such a good job generating growth that most people feel fine about it (Google's still a good example - nobody seems to feel that Eric Schmidt's weath is undeserved). But Grasso's payday (what was it, $160M?) upset a lot of people. And Semel's severance package is truly bewildering to me. <p>And lastly, we do have some of the genuinely worrisome wealth (mabye worse than the 17th century England or Saudi Arabia kind) in the US. This is what PG wrote about when he discussed the intersection of wealth and political power. For example, I heard about the CEO of a large military contractor. He was elected to the second highest office in the land, where he used his influence to start a war and destroy another country's infractructure. Later, he awarded no-bid contracts to his former company - but he refuses to say who he met with and when.<p>We need to distinguish between good inequality and bad inequality, and there's still plenty of the bad kind out there. The key is to fight corruption, not wealth. <p>
I agree cglee. im all for capitalism but cannot stand it when privileged conservatives use few remarkable examples of immigrant success to gloss over the inequalities of opportunity that are entrenched in and still plague American society.<p>
You're right. I extrapolated to where I sense the Heritage Foundation was hinting at. Word for word, if it came from an apolitical source, there would be nothing to argue against.