Two recent news items highlight the issue of income inequality in America. First, a study by the Pew Research Center found that the net worth of the upper 7 percent has risen by 28 percent since 2009 while the net worth of everybody else has dropped by 4 percent. Second, a recent poll conducted by Gallup found that 52 percent of Americans—an all-time high—think the government should “redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.”
Income inequality receives more attention from the left than from the right. Conservatives usually view it as a consequence of a capitalist economy in which individuals of naturally unequal talents operate. It may be regrettable in the short term, but over the long term the same free market that produces inequality raises everybody’s standard of living. Today’s man of few means enjoys a better quality of life than did John D. Rockefeller a century ago, because of progress produced through capitalism.
But that should not be the end of the story. Many of the Founders, whom conservatives rightly admire, were worried about income inequality, even though the concept of governmental redistribution was foreign to them. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and their allies did not see wealth per se as a problem, but they worried about the potential for moneyed interests to tilt policy in their direction, at the expense of the public good.
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