There But for Fortune – Phil Ochs
Ezra Klein comments on Obama’s claim that inequality is “the defining challenge of our time.”
Income inequality is easy to worry about. It offends our moral intuitions. Its tears into the fabric of the American dream.
…
But is inequality really the country’s most pressing problem? Imagine you were given a choice between reducing income inequality by 50 percent and reducing unemployment by 50 percent. Which would you choose?
He then goes on to argue that inequality is not the “central challenge to growth” in the economy. But that wasn’t the argument. The argument is that the degree of inequality in our society is a disaster.
I would be very happy to concede slower economic growth if that came attached to massive improvements in economic equality. I happen to believe that a more equal society wouldn’t necessarily restrict growth (and might well improve it), but even if it did, that’s a trade I would take every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Perhaps it’s just my Rawlsian inclinations here, but it does not seem particularly radical to me to suggest that improving the condition of those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy is far more important than a system-wide goal of growth.