This year, the American Left has dusted off one of its all-time favorite “issues,” the supposedly unfair distribution of income. Politicians who appeal to envy for votes the way McDonald’s appeals to hunger for sales will undoubtedly be sounding the theme.
The New York Times led the campaign off with a bit of advocacy journalism prominently placed on page 1. Recently, the Washington Post has piled on, but the indefatigable Alan Reynolds here rips apart the two pieces it has run.
It’s good stuff.
The trouble with the statistical approach taken by the leftists is that it ignores individual effort. One of the Post writers complains that “The richest fifth of households took hom 50.4 percent of all income, the largest share since the government began tracking data in 1967.” Even if accurate (Reynolds attacks the data), so what? Why does it follow that government needs to do anything because some people succeed more than others?
The Post’s Sebastian Mallaby advocates a set of new redistributionist policies and Reynolds torpedoes them. But that won’t make any difference to politicians who are looking for “issues.” Undoubtedly, we will hear the likes of John Edwards talking about plans for taking from the wealthy and giving to the poor.
