Cui Bono?

Fellow St. Louisan Yogi Berra is reputed to have said that in theory there is not difference between theory and practice but in practice there is. When George Will lauds the virtues of concentrated wealth and monopolies:

Every day the Chinese go to work, Americans get a raise: Chinese workers, many earning each day about what Americans spend on a Starbucks latte, produce apparel, appliances and other stuff cheaply, thereby enlarging Americans’ disposable income. Americans similarly get a raise when they shop at the stores that made Sam Walton a billionaire.

[…]

Monopoly profits are social blessings when they “signal to the ambitious the wealth they can earn by entering previously unknown markets.” So “when the wealth gap widens, the lifestyle gap shrinks .” Hence, “income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful” because “it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas, and it turns luxuries into common goods.” Since 2000, the price of a 50-inch plasma TV has fallen from $20,000 to $550.

I think there’s something he needs to explain. If, as he claims, leaving wealth in the hands of the wealthy:

The best way to (in Barack Obama’s 2008 words to Joe the Plumber) “spread the wealth around,” is, Tamny argues, “to leave it in the hands of the wealthy.” Personal consumption absorbs a small portion of their money and the remainder is not idle. It is invested by them, using the skill that earned it. Will it be more beneficially employed by the political class of a confiscatory government?

results in more business investment and greater prosperity in the United States, how is it even as the income of the wealthiest has skyrocketed real domestic business investment has lagged?

Over the last thirty years we have imported inexpensive goods from China and exported jobs. While there is some benefit to the average Joe in the cheap manufactured goods coming into the United States, most of the benefit is going to the wealthiest.

There is a balance to be sought. We aren’t realizing it right now and the reason we aren’t is that, rather than purchasing U. S. goods and services with the dollars they obtain through trade, the Chinese are buying Treasury bonds. That does very little for the average American but lots for politicians, Goldman-Sachs, Warren Buffett, and the people the federal government actually spends money on (healthcare providers and wealthy elders).