Paul Krugman keeps banging the drum about the supposed problem of the rich getting too rich. Alan Reynolds battles against this phony crisis here.
Putting aside the debate over the meaning of various statistics, the deeper question is whether it is really a problem that some people earn much more than others. If, for example, someone who revives a company (as Steve Jobs has done) and then cashes in big on the stock options, why is that any concern of anyone else?
What’s going on here is the Left’s effort to play the envy card in order to elect more politicians who are overt redistributionists. They think that many voters are foolish enough to believe that money in the hands of successful entrepreneurs (or sports stars, entertainers, and others who rake in a lot) is bad and must be countered with higher taxes so the government can spend it instead. The trouble with that notion is easy to see. Rich people (Oprah, for instance) often do productive and charitable things with their money, whereas the government is rife with wasteful and counterproductive spending.
