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Inequality has been in the news a lot lately. On one hand, you have conservatives who cry “class warfare” every time someone brings the subject up. Why should we penalize the successful? On the other hand, you have liberals who claim that the capitalist system is fundamentally flawed and that change can only come from the government. It’s like Marx, but with data.

There’s one thing that makes this debate so maddening: they’re both right.

Let’s set aside the extremists in both camps. I don’t think we’re going to build an Anarcho-Syndicalist utopia anytime soon. Nor do I foresee the rich ever going on strike.

And lest we forget: the USA was never exactly a paragon of egalitarianism. Our government was built to protect the interests of the “opulent minorities”. It used to be that conservatives yearn for the days of old when society lived by perfect family values. Now it’s liberals who year for the days when society was perfectly equal. Both are lies.

The Conservative side

Are the rich “job creators”? Well yeah, they kinda are. New money goes to people who have put hard work into building something. Old money goes to people whose grandfather did something extraordinary enough to earn them a trust fund.

Of course you have “robber barons” who make their money by exploiting and manipulating others. I think that one way or another these people usually get what’s coming to them in the long run. By and large, I would posit that most industrialists are good people who want to do good things.

And for that matter, what’s wrong with inequality? Why does everything have to be an us vs them battle between the haves and have nots? We certainly know that inequality is correlated with anemic economic growth. But is inequality the symptom or the disease?

The Liberal side

Liberals struggle with the same question: what’s wrong with inequality? Clearly inequality is a much more complex subject than how fat your paycheck is. And I think even the most hard-core liberals will admit that it’s not possible or even preferable to completely do away with income inequality. There’s always going to be some wealth differential in society.

Is inequality really just a result of some people successfully hoarding all the wealth? Or is it a symptom of a deeper problem?

For instance, we know that minorities are hit especially hard by inequality. Apart from the obvious ethical and moral problems of slavery, being bought and sold as a commodity without a getting a paycheck is certainly not good for African Americans’ economic situation. Nor is having expected women to be “barefoot and pregnant” for all those years good for their employment prospects.

I think that high inequality is both a symptom and a problem. The rich can afford good educations. They can afford good medical care. They can afford to run for office. They can afford to start businesses. Accumulating wealth makes it easier to accumulate more wealth.

What can we do?

So what exactly are rich going to do with all of that money the rich don’t really need anyway? Before you start to pull out the smallest violin in the world, hear me out. I think most of the top 0.01% of wealth holders realize they have too much damn money. How should we fix this problem?

Should the rich give generously to charity? Should they give their money to Uncle Sam? Should they give it to each other in an effort to improve society?

The point I’m trying to make here is that even if we as a society could agree to mass income redistribution, we still have to figure out how that should work. This is no simple task.

I think there are some obvious wins here. We need to give the poor equal access to healthcare. We need to figure out how to make sure education goes to those who can actually succeed rather than those who had their educations handed to them on a silver platter.

I think that using the government as a mechanism to redistribute wealth is fraught with peril. Many times they end up being corporate welfare dressed in liberal clothing. Why should companies pay their employees a living wage when they can just let the government pick up their food bills? Why should companies invest in educating their workforce when they can just discard them and hire fresh graduates whose educations were paid for by government grants? Why should companies treat their people as anything but disposable when they can just rely on the government to pay them to be unemployed?

I think the solution is for the government to level the playing field so to speak.

Single adults with no dependents just don’t need a lot of money. And yet, they make the same as a single mother of 4 if not more. That’s ok though. We can make sure the mother of 4 can feed her family by providing giving her food to make up the difference. We can make sure that she can provide for her children by giving her a good education. We can make sure she has the resources to give her children proper medical care.

What government programs shouldn’t do is give people $x for making less than $y. They shouldn’t make single mothers work exorbitant hours and then throw them off welfare . They shouldn’t pay people to be unemployed. Nor should we create a downward spiral of dependency on the state.

We just need to make sure everyone is playing by the same rules.