9780465082933Much political debate in recent years, especially since the publication of Thomas Piketty‘s highly publicized book on capital, has focused on the ills associated with income inequality.

Thomas Sowell‘s latest book — Wealth, Poverty, and Politics — tackles the topic from a perspective that’s often ignored. Applying his “compared to what?” question to the topic, half of Sowell’s book reminds us that geographic, cultural, and social factors have guaranteed some degree of inequality throughout the entire history of the human race. Rather than ascribing income differences within and between nations to malevolent factors, Sowell explains, we should seek to understand the factors that have allowed some individuals, groups, regions, and countries to succeed more easily than others.

After turning his attention to political factors that influence wealth and poverty, Sowell questions whether those with the lowest incomes are likely to benefit much from government efforts to reduce inequality.

Some might regard the spread of prosperity to human beings in general as the prime criterion of economic success. Others, especially those who believe that the poor are poor because the rich are getting rich at their expense, may be more likely to see the prime criterion as being a reduction or elimination of economic “gaps” and “disparities,” which are equated with “inequities.” Many people may be in favor of both these things, and think of them as complementary goals, when in fact beyond some point there are inescapable trade-offs that can make the two goals incompatible in practice, however desirable they may seem together in theory. If everyone’s income doubles, for example, that will almost certainly reduce poverty but it will also increase economic “gaps,” “disparities” and “inequities.” Some nations have in fact had their real per capita income double, over varying periods of time.

Obviously, some people may value the spread of prosperity more than the reduction of inequality, while others prefer the opposite. When China, after the death of Mao, abandoned the original Communist emphasis on economic egalitarianism and adopted more market-oriented reforms under Deng Xiaoping — who said, “Let some people get rich first” — the economic growth rate hit new highs and literally hundreds of millions of people rose out of poverty. … But such market-driven rises in per capita personal income have not been evenly spread in China, any more than in other places and times, whether within nations or between nations.

When prosperity is widespread, even if not equalized, that may be of more significance to those released from the worst deprivations of grinding poverty than would reductions in the statistical gaps between the poor and the rich. A low-income mother whose sick baby’s chances of dying in infancy have been cut in half, as a result of rising prosperity, is unlikely to think of this as inconsequential, much less a grievance, even if she learns that a rich mother’s baby’s smaller chances of dying in infancy have also been cut in half or by more than half.

Preoccupation with “disparities,” “gaps” and “inequities” has largely been the hallmark of the intelligentsia, the media and politicians. Yet the people whose lives have been most changed by rising levels of prosperity around the world have often been those who were most lacking in basic things before.

Sowell thus reminds us of the danger of pursuing as our top goal “the victory of some abstract vision, in defiance of reality or in disregard of the truth and the fate of fellow human beings.”