Both flows -- of money and water -- are amoral and help some but hurt others. But the amorality doesn’t make it outcome positive, acceptable or tolerable Finding a fix is not a moral question.
The status quo isn’t necessarily self-justifying as some social Darwinists suggest. On the other hand, it can’t be fairly attributed to some evil instinct bred into the rich who won’t stop until they have it all.
The question of motivation shouldn’t distract us from acknowledging that disparities in economic power are linked to political distortions as well.
Political rhetoric notwithstanding, most stable societies engage in various redistributional schemes to offset this tendency. Here in America our Federal policies, starting with the income tax -- always more or less progressive -- target that goal.
There’s no obvious strategy that provides an immediate or lasting solution. Finding answers is particularly difficult because of a lack of agreement or precision in defining the question. Our political system isn’t big on clear definitions.
At the outset there are two big challenges. The first is how we define the goal. It is somewhere between the Gini coefficient extremes of 0 (total equality) and 1 (Scrooge McDuck gets it all) embraced by the radical socialists and Ayn Rand supporters, respectively. To say that there’s too much disparity now -- a conclusion I support -- doesn’t tell us how much is too much.
The second challenge is whether focus should be income or wealth. Equalizing income is easier under our existing tax system. But a failure to focus on wealth guarantees continuation of the income misdistribution.
And the debate, particularly here in the US, is clouded by a disagreement on whether the goal is equality of opportunity or result. Defining equality of opportunity is especially difficult.
Clearly any solution will involve taking from the rich and giving it to the poor, but even that raises definitional issues. Does it require a six- or seven-digit income to be classed as rich?
What is to be done with the resources taken from the rich?
There are several obvious possibilities, including:
-- one is to provide a broader menu of services free to residents or citizens. We could expand free elementary and secondary education to the college level, substantially increase subsidies for mass transit and make access to needed medical care no more expensive than borrowing from the public library. This obviously requires more tax revenue.
-- an extreme solution with modest but apparent growing support, is a guaranteed income where everyone annually receives a check that provides an adequate income to live on. For rich people, the amount received is immediately eclipsed by the taxes collected. This would reverse the current norm where most people must work to live, a change some social visionaries argue will ultimately be mandated by growing automation.
-- making work more rewarding by mandating more comfortable working conditions (higher wages, better benefits) or providing more generous tax subsidies like the existing Earned Income Tax Credit.
Ultimately, though, any acceptable solutions will require more than expert technical analyses because the real question is a political one about fairness. My guess is that the problem will become more acute over time. I suspect also that it is somehow related to our reliance on ever-bigger institutions.
It isn’t clear how ripe for solutions the issue at the moment and timing is always important. Recent experience suggests patience merely rises the volume of the ultimate debate and the cost of the solution.
