The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson today weighs in with an informed column on cultural changes affecting income inequality. His conclusion: it’s not necessarily bad and its roots are too complicated to do much about anyway. He also hopes the debate doesn’t devolve into an empty exercise in “class warfare.” The term bothers me because it’s invariably employed to head off any discussion of class at all. I don’t agree with any of it, but the piece is well worth reading.
The Kicker
12:27 PM - June 7, 2007
Samuelson says there’s nothing to be done
Warns to avoid “class warfare”
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It would be more interesting if Samuelson hadn't been writing essentially the same column over and over again for the last twenty years.
He takes Levy and Temin's interesting thesis about social norms and business practices having an effect on income inequality, passes it through his meat grinder of a mind, and concludes that market forces, not social norms, are the true drivers of inequality. Hence the proscription of "class warfare" thinking.
Robert Samuelson is the Leibniz of Economics. Everything is for the best in the best of all possible economies.
Posted by Cornelius Dribble
on Thu 7 Jun 2007 at 01:18 PM