As I think I’ve mentioned before I get about three ideas for blog posts for each post that I actually begin writing and, of the posts I actually start writing, perhaps 25% end up in the bit bucket for various reasons. Right now, in reaction to the Slate series I mentioned below on income inequality, I’m mulling over the idea of writing a post on income inequality in the second ward of Chicago. Not the United States. Not Illinois. Not Cook County or even just Chicago. The Chicago second ward. Here’s a map of the Chicago wards if you’re not that familiar with the city.
My guess offhand is that there’s considerable income inequality just within that ward which includes a great deal of the Loop. (Indeed, there’s considerable income inequality just within zipcodes.) What are its sources? Social consequences? Political implications?
Is there anything to be learned from such an exercise? I’m not sure.
Here’s where I’m going with this. It’s unquestionably true that incomes among the top 5% of income earners are enormously higher than among the bottom 5% of income earners. No argument. Some attribute the increasing inequality to the ultra-rich having incomes that are too high. I think it’s that most people who aren’t among the rich (top 5% of income earners) don’t have higher incomes. However, incomes among the bottom 95% of American income earners are enormously higher than the incomes of the bottom 95% of Chinese income earners. What are the sources of that inequality? Social consequences? Political implications?
If there were a policy approach that would raise the incomes of 95% of Americans to the detriment of 95% of Chinese would it be moral? I know it might be politically popular here but would it be moral?
And here’s the hard one. If there were a policy approach that would raise the incomes of 95% of Chinese to the detriment of 95% of Americans would that be moral?
The easy way around such questions is to say that such decisions aren’t up to policy makers to make but IMO that’s simply a head fake. Policy makers make decisions that have implications of this sort practically every day and I sincerely doubt that our society will change into some sort of anarcho-capitalist Utopia in the foreseeable future.
Over the period of the last 30 years the incomes of poor people all over the world have risen spectacularly and, realistically, much of that increase was to the detriment of most income earners in the United States. These income earners are also consumers and in their role as consumers they’ve benefited from the lower costs of goods sold in the United States that have been a consequence of that change. For many it probably wasn’t that good a deal.
Reversing that trend (if such a thing be possible) would almost certainly mean reversing the betterment of lives (not everybody’s but a lot of people’s) in places other than the United States. Right thing to do?
