Brad Polumbo uses a National Review Online column to ponder young adults’ intense fascination with inequality.
Thanks to people like [Bernie] Sanders, the idea that income inequality is the “defining issue of our time” has been burned into the collective consciousness of my generation, so much so that a GenForward survey found that economic inequality was one of the highest political priorities of most young Americans. But in our outrage over “income inequality,” my generation is manufacturing a crisis — in a capitalist economy, inequality can be a good thing.
It’s easy to see why my classmates might think our current distribution is fundamentally unfair. The top 1 percent of American households control almost 40 percent of our country’s wealth, and the U.S.’s Gini coefficient, a common measure of economic inequality, is .41, making us one of the most lopsided large countries. But is that really something to be ashamed of?
America is one of the more unequal countries in the world, but it’s also the richest, and we have one of the highest standards of living among large countries. Inequality statistics should truly trouble only those who make the mistake of viewing economic progress as a zero-sum game.
Actual living standards escape measurement by inequality metrics. Struggling countries such as Ethiopia and India are more equal than the U.S — but only because it’s easy to be equal when everyone’s pockets are empty. And if 99 percent of the population got a 1 percent wage hike, but the top 1 percent got a 2 percent raise, inequality would increase, even though living standards have improved for all.
