I found an interesting confluence of ideas between this op-ed at the Wall Street Journal on income inequality contrasting the experiences of Red States and Blue States and the article I mentioned previously on real-life economic experiments. The places with the greatest income inequality are Washington, DC, New York, and Connecticut. These are also not coincidentally the places where its citizens are most concerned about income inequality.
Here’s my modest proposal. DC and the two states can take strenuous measures to reduce income inequality. In five years we’ll come back and see how things have fared. Any predictions?
That’s an easy one. In five years the inequality will have worsened, and the assessment will be that the policy remedies simply didn’t go far enough, so a doubling down will be necessary.
That’s an easy one! My prediction is that your modest proposal will not be adopted. Strenuous efforts will probably not be taken to reduce income inequality; insofar as they are, they will not be limited to those locations.
Godot will not have arrived.
So blue states have the greatest income inequality so they want to enact more of the policies that have created the income inequality in the first place.
No reason to think they’re not getting the results that they want.