The inequality obsession

Also on the pages of Opinion Journal today is a column by Arthur C. Brooks, professor of public administration at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Administration and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.  According to Professor Brooks the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer.

The general view among liberals is that economic inequality is socially undesirable because it makes people miserable; they propose to solve the problem through redistributive policies such as higher income taxes. As a scholar working in the field of public policy, I have long witnessed egalitarian hand-wringing about the alleged connection between inequality and unhappiness. What first made me doubt this prevailing view was that when I questioned actual human beings about it, few expressed any shock and outrage at the enormous incomes of software moguls and CEOs. They tended rather to hope that their kids might become the next Bill Gates.

And in fact, the evidence reveals that it is not economic inequality that frustrates Americans. Rather, it is a perceived lack of opportunity. To focus our policies on inequality, instead of opportunity, is to make a serious error -- one that will worsen the very problem we seek to solve and make us generally unhappier.

If there is a flaw in the professor's argument, it's his impliction that liberal politicians are simply mistaken, and that they are unaware that what they propose will worsen the problem of inequality.  They know perfectly well.  Their objective is to control, not to solve problems.