Category Archives: Redistribution

Francis, Papal Perónista, Courts Redistributional Mirage

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Markets, Marxism, Redistribution, statism, Welfare State

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Is world poverty really increasing? Actually, no, quite the opposite, and you can blame economic liberalism, capitalism, and free markets for that. Yet we hear exactly the contrary from Pope Francis who, despite his evident compassion, has an amazingly poor understanding of economics. He misstates basic facts, offers dimly reasoned analyses of human rights, and promotes ill-considered policies. Now that the Vatican is set to release the Pope’s first feature film, no doubt a stirring piece of social justice propaganda, it seems as good a time as any to review the confounded state of Francis’ economic reasoning. This is not the first time I’ve discussed the Pope’s policy views: this link contains three previous posts from SacredCowChips on which Francis was tagged.

The False Narrative

My inspiration for this post comes from Robert P. Murphy, whose recent commentary on Francis’ pronouncements is trenchant. Murphy covers this speech written by Francis for the World Economic Forum, but delivered by a Vatican proxy, in which the Pope asserts the following:

“… governments must confront … the growth of unemployment, the increase in various forms of poverty, the widening of the socio-economic gap and new forms of slavery, often rooted in situations of conflict, migration and various social problems.“

Francis refers to increasing unemployment and poverty, and I could let that phrase pass if he was referring to certain nations or locales that have experienced chronically depressed economic growth. But Francis’ description is rather general, as evidenced by his diagnosis of causes. More on that below. Regarding his statement about trends in poverty, he is flatly incorrect. Here is Murphy:

“As the World Bank reports, the global “extreme poverty” rate in 1990 was cut in half by 2010. Back in 1990, 1.85 billion people lived on less than $1.90 per day, but by 2013, the figure had dropped to 767 million such people—meaning that more than a billion people had been lifted out of crushing poverty.“

After the Great Recession, world unemployment decreased from 2009-2015, according to the World Bank, though it is estimated to have crept up slightly in 2016-17. Again, the Pope’s woeful tale of growing unemployment and increasing poverty is nonsense.

But the world is a difficult place. In the underdeveloped world, the range and quality of goods available is extremely limited, and $1.90 represents bare subsistence, yet it’s a condition that exceeds the historical norm in many places. Movement above that threshold can represent a meaningful improvement in economic well-being.

Francis may lack an appreciation for the general enrichment in material conditions that has been taking place over the last two centuries, which is ongoing, or perhaps he believes that even greater achievements are easily within reach but for certain injustices, though he offers no qualifications. Perhaps he is mistakenly generalizing specific instances of exploitation in the underdeveloped world, which often occur with the explicit blessing of the state apparatus in exchange for kickbacks.

Rights and Markets

Even more egregious is the Pope’s presumption that private markets are at fault for any stagnation that he has identified. A notable difference between countries with successful, growing economies and those mired in stagnation is the degree to which their citizens enjoy freedoms, especially economic freedom. That is a well-established empirical fact, as Murphy explains. But the Pontiff goes further with preposterous dogma on the meaning of human rights. Again, from Murphy:

“Although inspired by concern for the poor and the marginalized, the Vatican’s message is seriously flawed…. On a conceptual level, Pope Francis posits a false dichotomy between economic freedom and human rights. … ‘Economic freedom must not prevail over the practical freedom of man and over his rights, and the market must not be absolute, but honour the exigencies of justice.’ 

What does the concept of “economic freedom” entail? It means freedom to work in any occupation of one’s choice, without permission from the government, and certainly without being conscripted into service against one’s will. It means the freedom to start a business. It means the freedom to keep what you have produced, without having your assets seized by a rapacious regime. It means the freedom to trade with people who live in another country. It means the rule of law, where contracts are interpreted fairly and government officials can’t exercise arbitrary power.“

Economic freedom, more than anything else, means that individuals are endowed with property rights. To deny such rights is to banish any reward for work and differential rewards for work well done. If free individuals are rewarded, it is a matter of their own discretion as to whether they immediately consume the reward or save it in order to accumulate wealth. Yet Francis takes the misanthropic and childish view that economic freedom, private property and markets imply exploitation. He lacks a basic understanding of the revolutionary power of markets as a form of social organization.

Within just a few hundred years, a small fraction of the many millennia during which mankind was mired in poverty and pestilence, markets have dramatically transformed the existence of most human populations. Peaceful, arms length transactions made in mutual self-interest exploit only one thing: gains from trade that would otherwise be wasted. And only a form of social organization that enables those gains can dovetail with the human rights and justice that Francis so strongly desires. The denial of economic freedom, property rights, and self-interest prohibits those gains, however, denying humanity of the wealth necessary to achieve anything like justice.

Pope Francis is a redistributionist, and that goes well beyond the charitable giving, good works and service performed voluntarily by individuals. In fact, he is a statist, advocating an economic system in which property rights are abrogated, wholly or in part, and wages above a politically determined threshold are confiscated.

The Pope and Perón

Francis is often described as a “Perónist”, after Juan Perón of Argentina, the so-called “right-wing socialist” (and sometime associate of the murderous Che Guevara). Anyone familiar with the economic history of Argentina should know that’s not praise. Here is Maureen Mullarkey from the last link:

“Both Juan and Eva understood the enchantments of populism. A charismatic pair, they ruled more by dint of personality—personalismo—than democratic procedure. Ushers of an ‘option for the poor,’ they glorified the lower classes and denigrated the wealthy. (This, while they amassed a huge personal fortune from the Eva Perón Welfare Foundation.) …

When Francis speaks of ‘the people’ as a revolutionary vanguard that ‘overflows the logical procedures of formal democracy,’ he is lapsing toward that ecstatic Peronist vision of a Third Way—justicialismo. That the disposition and design of it ended in economic collapse and misery is nothing against the splendor of the mystique.

In his youth, Francis absorbed the myth but not its lessons. Chief among them is how much Argentina’s fiscal catastrophe owed to an extravagant welfare system that favored enforced wealth redistribution over development. Among the many factors of Argentina’s historic economic crisis, one cries for attention: Perón’s increasing reliance on redistributing income, not only between industries and occupations but between skilled and unskilled workers.“

For further perspective on Francis, Perónism, and the disastrous Argentine “experiment”, see this piece by Daniel J. Mitchell.

For many years, naive Marxists have accepted the myth that central economic planners could and would direct productive and distributional activities with foresight, efficiency, and integrity. None of those is possible. The only form of social organization capable of registering and processing the myriad and dynamic signals on preferences and scarcity is free market capitalism. It is the only system capable of spontaneously harnessing appropriate responses based on the complex incentives faced by consumers and producers, and all at a minimal administrative cost for society, free of the government intervention that typifies the Peronist welfare state and corporatism.

Conclusion

Pope Francis should know better than to make claims having no empirical support. He should also have the wisdom to understand and advocate for the empowering nature of private property rights and markets. Elevating the human condition is possible only by allowing people to be free — economically free — and endowed with opportunities to earn private rewards and build wealth. Francis should realize that the massive private gains afforded by the market mechanism enable rewards which spill over, inuring to the benefit of parties external to a given exchange. On the other hand, state domination and control of economic activity gives over decision-making to selfish and ill-informed public commandants, who are all too pleased to grant special advantages to those in a position to return private favors. Such graft and mismanagement of resources comes at the expense of others. That way lies decay and a return to the much more brutal conditions of the past, unlike the mutually beneficial promise of market exchange.

Paris Climate Dance: a Concon

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Global Warming, Redistribution, Uncategorized

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Ah, Paris, we bid you adieu. For both scientific and economic reasons, the Paris Climate Accord is pure numbskullery. We should all be grateful that President Trump has decided to revoke the expensive promises made by Barack Obama under the agreement in a willful effort to appease the world’s rent seekers.

From a scientific perspective, the accord’s prescriptions are premised on a partial effect: absent any feedbacks, carbon emissions would raise the atmospheric temperature slightly. But feedback effects are massively important, as anyone familiar with the climate models’ terrible track record of predictive performance might guess. Water vapor, cloud formation, wind currents, and the response of the Earth’s biomass are just some of the effects that impinge on the relationship between atmospheric carbon and temperatures. In addition, carbon forcings are relatively minor compared to the energy impulses delivered by natural sources, including solar activity and the Earth’s varying axial tilt. Paleoclimate data shows that the world has been this warm before, and warmer.

The economic case against the Paris Accord is even stronger. The very idea that authorities would impose huge material sacrifices on mankind in an effort to prevent a threat for which the evidence is so weak should give pause to any rational individual. Beyond that, however, the real function of the accord was not so much carbon mitigation as it was a shift in the distribution of wealth. This quote of Steven Allen, in a scathing assessment of the agreement, is instructive (forgive his mid-sentence switch to sarcasm):

“Mainly, it’s about taking money from taxpayers and consumers and businesspeople and electricity ratepayers and giving it to crony capitalists, and taking money from people in relatively successful countries and giving that money to rich people in poor countries, to the benefit of members of governing elites who support the Paris deal for the good of humanity and not at all because they expect to line their pockets with it.“

World carbon emissions were expected to keep rising at least through 2030 under the agreement. The subsidies it promised to crony capitalists in the renewable energy industry were to generously fund technologies that are not economically viable without government support, to the detriment of relatively clean-burning fossil fuels, not to mention nuclear power. The U.S. promised to reduce absolute carbon emissions, but the world’s greatest emitter of carbon dioxide, China, promised only to seek to limit emissions per unit of GDP, but not until sometime down the road. That means China’s level of emissions might not reverse, given the rapid growth of the Chinese economy. India’s commitment is similar. And Russia promised a reduction relative to a depressed 1990 level of emissions, which means they have plenty of room for growth.

As for the U.S., where absolute carbon emissions have been decreasing since 2007, the Paris Accord relied on so-called “voluntary” limits to be imposed by federal mandates. Financial demands were made by developing countries under the deal: $100 billion per year. And who would pay for that? Taxpayers in the developed countries, of course. One can only imagine the lust of unaccountable third-world officialdom for those funds. Thus far, the U.S. has paid only $1 billion into the so-called Green Climate Fund, and at least half of that was taken from a State Department account from which disbursal did not require Congressional approval.

Jeffrey Tucker, who is anything but a fan of Donald Trump, minced no words in his assessment of the Paris “treaty”. Here are a few selected quotes:

“The Paris Agreement is a ‘voluntary’ agreement because its architects knew it would never pass the US Senate as a treaty. Why? Because the idea of the agreement is that the US government’s regulatory agencies would impose extreme mandates on its energy sector: how it should work, what kinds of emissions it should produce, the best ways to power our lives (read: not fossil fuels), and hand over to developing world regimes billions and even trillions of dollars in aid, a direct and ongoing forcible transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to regimes all over the world, at the expense of American freedom and prosperity. …

The exuberant spokespeople talked about how ‘the United States’ had ‘agreed’ to ‘curb its emissions’ and ‘fund’ the building of fossil-free sectors all over the world. It was strange because the ‘United States’ had not in fact agreed to anything: not a single voter, worker, owner, or citizen. Not even the House or Senate were involved. This was entirely an elite undertaking to manage property they did not own and lives that were not theirs to control. …

The Paris Agreement is no different in its epistemological conceit than Obamacare, the war on drugs, nation-building, universal schooling, or socialism itself. They are all attempts to subvert the capacity of society to manage itself on behalf of the deluded dreams of a few people with power and their lust for controlling social and economic outcomes.“

The popular fascination with climate scare stories has provided a useful channel of influence for would-be central planners and redistributionists. These social dementors reject the proposition that science is a process of continuing challenge and testing, thereby subverting the very notion of scientific inquiry. They make the laughable claim that 170 years of temperature data, much of which is quite sketchy, is sufficient to draw strong conclusions about the trends and dynamics of the climate on a four billion year-old planet.

Even worse, the climate alarmists insist that they have a monopoly on scientific knowledge, despite a significant share of skeptics in the climate science community. But in pursuit of that monopoly, the alarmists have gone so far as to undermine the integrity of the peer review process in the climate literature and to manipulate temperature data to exaggerate recent records. They have promoted the false claims that cyclonic storm energy has increased with carbon concentration and that sea levels are rising at an increasing rate. (Coastal property values don’t seem to reflect those concerns.) They would have us confuse actual climate data with model predictions, and they continue to offer prescriptions based on carbon-forcing models after many years of terrible forecast performance. They claim that a small increment (one part per 10,000) to the concentration of a trace atmospheric gas will dominate other forces exerting far greater variations in energy. They ignore the benefits that an increase in nourishing carbon dioxide and warming can provide. And they make the anthropocentric claim that a costly sacrifice by mankind, in an attempt to reduce that trace gas slightly if at all, will pay off reliably by reducing global temperatures, despite the very modest claims on those grounds by the Paris Accord itself.

Here is a link to 17 earlier posts on Sacred Cow Chips having to do with the hypothesis of anthropomorphic global warming, including this one written in late 2015, at the time of the Paris Climate Summit.

Charitable Intent

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Charity, Redistribution, Socialism

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I’m not accustomed to writing about religious matters, but I must say that I’ve never been persuaded that Jesus himself approved or advocated for socialism and state-enforced redistribution of wealth. Instead, I believe that Jesus would have endorsed the message above: charity inheres to individuals, and it lives in their hearts. It is not a concern that individuals can ever satisfy by promoting public tax and transfer policies, pressing claims on the resources of others.

This week, an essay on this topic caught my eye. It appeared in Lawrence Reed’s “Cliches of Progressivism“, at the Foundation for Economic Education: “#42 – ‘Jesus Was a Progressive Because He Advocated Income Redistribution  to Help the Poor’“. It covers a number of Biblical scriptures sometimes quoted in support of this notion, and Reed’s considered refutation of each. I provide just a few of Reed’s examples below, but read the whole thing, as they say:

“Make my brother share the wealth“:

“In Luke 12: 13-15, Christ is confronted with a redistribution request. A man with a grievance approaches him and demands, ‘Master, speak to my brother and make him divide the inheritance with me.’ The Son of God, the same man who wrought miraculous healings and calmed the waves, replies thusly: ‘Man, who made me a judge or divider over you? Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s wealth does not consist of the material abundance he possesses.’ Wow! He could have equalized the wealth between two men with a wave of His hand but he chose to denounce envy instead.”

“Sell all your goods and share“:

“What about the reference, in the Book of Acts, to the early Christians selling their worldly goods and sharing communally in the proceeds? … In his contributing chapter to the 2014 book, ‘For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty,’ Art Lindsley of the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics writes,

‘Again, in this passage from Acts, there is no mention of the state at all. These early believers contributed their goods freely, without coercion, voluntarily. Elsewhere in Scripture we see that Christians are even instructed to give in just this manner, freely, for “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). There is plenty of indication that private property rights were still in effect….’“

“Render Unto Caesar…“:

“‘Wait a minute,’ you say. ‘Didn’t He answer, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’ when the Pharisees tried to trick Him into denouncing a Roman-imposed tax?” … It’s found first in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verses 15-22 and later in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 12, verses 13-17. But notice that everything depends on just what did truly belong to Caesar and what didn’t, which is actually a rather powerful endorsement of property rights. Christ said nothing like ‘It belongs to Caesar if Caesar simply says it does, no matter how much he wants, how he gets it, or how he chooses to spend it.’

The fact is, one can scour the Scriptures with a fine-tooth comb and find nary a word from Christ that endorses the forcible redistribution of wealth by political authorities. None, period.“

While I generally agree with Reed’s analysis of this last point, I believe he missed the real message regarding any legitimate claims Caesar might have possessed. It is a statement about the value of material goods relative to faith and acts in the name of God. Obviously, as Reed says, it is not an endorsement of a power to tax and transfer.

The teachings of charity in the Bible have to do with the goodness of voluntary, self-motivated generosity. There are no lessons advocating compulsory taxes and transfer payments. If you say that Jesus would have supported such programs as deeds of a caring society, I would question your logic on several grounds. First, there are always political motives at play in crafting such policies, which usually include vote-buying and scapegoating. In that respect, those policies fall short of the standard for “good works”. Second, as already noted, the power to tax is backed by the police power of government, not quite the sort of “giving” about which Jesus preached. And, by extracting resources from those in a position to give unto others, tax and transfer policies reduce the capacity for private generosity. Granted, a charitable tax deduction might establish an incentive strong enough to encourage a level of continued giving. But then, the “noble” social deed becomes the hostage of tax policy, administrative definitions, rulings relative to recipient organizations, and the whims of self-interested politicians. A presumption is that individuals will not perform good works in sufficient amounts. Therefore, the state must step in, along with an army of bureaucrats and lobbyists who can be counted upon to feed off the taxpayers’ largess. The individual acts of charity encouraged in Jesus’s teachings could hardly be subject to greater convolution.

Equality of Economic Freedom and the End of Poverty

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in Capitalism, Liberty, Redistribution

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Should any form of equality be a central goal of society? Most certainly, but answers to this question often presume that government can set ground rules, ex ante, to ensure some form of ex post equality. Equality is a thing that can exist ex ante, as when rules are applied equally, and ex post, as when there are no differences in outcomes. The latter, however, always requires coercion and force of one form or another.

The great economist Deirdre McCloskey writes in the New York Times that forced equality will not save the poor; only growth can do it. Those who put their faith in the state to eliminate poverty lack an understanding of the underlying conditions and causes of the drastic improvements in the standard of living for even the world’s most impoverished inhabitants. It is all about economic freedom and capitalism. McCloskey explains:

“Eliminating poverty is obviously good. And, happily, it is already happening on a global scale. The World Bank reports that the basics of a dignified life are more available to the poorest among us than at any time in history, by a big margin. … Even in the rich countries, the poor are better off than they were in 1970, with better food and health care and, often, amenities like air-conditioning. …

… Free adults get what they need by working to make goods and services for other people, and then exchanging them voluntarily. They don’t get them by slicing up manna from Mother Nature in a zero-sum world. …

… We had better focus directly on the equality that we actually want and can achieve, which is equality of social dignity and equality before the law.“

Achievable equality has to do with ground rules, in the first instance. The rules must establish freedoms to which all participants are entitled. Many of these freedoms are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, for example. With regard to strictly economic rules, we have: the right to private property, including the fruits of one’s own labor; the freedom to engage in exchange on terms of our choosing, and enter into contracts in pursuit of self-interest; and the freedom to take risks with real consequences.

Around the world, ex ante freedoms like these have been instrumental in lifting masses from the grips of poverty, not temporarily and artificially, but by encouraging self-sufficiency. That is the very ex post outcome that’s been so elusive for socialized economies and state-sponsored anti-poverty transfer schemes. By encouraging economic growth and an enhanced standard of living for those at the lowest end of the socioeconomic spectrum, ex ante freedoms achieve a crucial type of ex post equality: a life above penury.

McCloskey contrasts these kinds of equality with the utter failure of redistributive schemes to accomplish anything comparable:

“An all-wise central plan could force the right people into the right jobs. But such a solution, like much of the case for a compelled equality, is violent and magical. The magic has been tried, in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. So has the violence.”

Not to mention the social and economic failures in Cuba, Venezuela, East Germany, Cambodia, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Romania, North Vietnam, North Korea, and too many others. And the sluggish growth to which many “social democracies” consign themselves by ceding dominance to the state. McCloskey continues:

As a matter of arithmetic, expropriating the rich to give to the poor does not uplift the poor very much. If we took every dime from the top 20 percent of the income distribution and gave it to the bottom 80 percent, the bottom folk would be only 25 percent better off. If we took only from the superrich, the bottom would get less than that. And redistribution works only once. You can’t expect the expropriated rich to show up for a second cutting. In a free society, they can move to Ireland or the Cayman Islands. And the wretched millionaires can hardly re-earn their millions next year if the state has taken most of the money.“

The following quote about poverty in the U.S. seems appropriate in this context. It is from Robert Sowell’s final column (having just announced his retirement from regular syndication):

“Most people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia continue to call the ‘have-nots’ today have things that the ‘haves’ did not have, just a generation ago.“

A sound argument can be made for the public provision of a safety net to cushion the blow of job losses in a market economy, or from the effects of catastrophic events on individuals or families. However, permanent status as a state-dependent must be discouraged for those capable of readjustment and self-reliance. Some such losses can and should be self-insured, not least by a willingness to pursue new opportunities, even those offering lower immediate rewards or requiring new training. Voluntary saving is another obvious form of self-insurance, of course. Nevertheless, few would deny the need for some form of social insurance to enable more comfortable transitions for those in need following certain kinds of losses.

McCloskey’s most powerful message involves the matter of value. Individuals trade with one another voluntarily only when it is of mutual benefit, which is dependent on the ex ante freedoms discussed above. There are mistakes in which parties are left unsatisfied by certain exchanges, but no one is compelled to repeat those mistakes. And they have every reason to innovate and seek alternatives. Participants may be happy to adjust the terms on which they are willing to trade, and they have every reason to imitate and repeat successes. These are the ways in which economic growth occurs:

“It is growth from exchange-tested betterment, not compelled or voluntary charity, that solves the problem of poverty.“

Capitalism and the market system have, by far, the best record of eliminating poverty in the sense of self-reliance. The only success against poverty that can be claimed by redistributionists is the substitution of lasting dependence on the state. Capitalism and the market hold the only real promise for eliminating poverty entirely.

Pawning Growth For Redistribution

15 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Equality, Redistribution

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govt here to help

The following is no mystery: if you want prosperity, steer clear of policies that inhibit production and physical investment. This too: if you want to lift people out of poverty and dependency, don’t promote policies that discourage hiring and work incentives. Yet those are exactly the implications of policies repeatedly advocated by so-called redistributionists. The ignorance flows, in large part, from a distraction, a mere byproduct of economic life that has no direct relation to economic welfare, but upon which followers of Bernie Sanders are absolutely transfixed: income and wealth inequality. Attempts to manipulate the degree of inequality via steeply progressive taxes, transfers and market intervention is a suckers game of short-termism. It ultimately reduces the value of the economy’s capital stock, chases away productive activity, destroys jobs, and leaves us all poorer.

Absolute income growth is a better goal, and encouraging production is the best way to raise incomes in the long-run. Unless envy is your thing, income inequality is largely irrelevant as a policy goal. In “Why and How We Care About Inequality“, John Cochrane emphasizes that inequality may be a symptom of other problems, or perhaps no problem at all. His point is that treating a symptom won’t fix the underlying problem:

“A segment of America is stuck in widespread single motherhood … terrible early-child experiences, awful education, substance abuse, and criminality. 70% of male black high school dropouts will end up in prison, hence essentially unemployable and poor marriage prospects. Less than half are even looking for legal work.

This is a social and economic disaster. And it has nothing to do with whether hedge fund managers fly private or commercial. It is immune to floods of Government cash, and, as Casey Mulligan reminded us, Government programs are arguably as much of the problem as the solution. So are drug laws….“

The writers of the center-left Third Way blog give some details on income growth that might disappoint some progressives. They agree that the emphasis on redistribution is misplaced. Solving economic problems requires a different approach:

“From 1980 to 2010, income gains (after taxes and government transfers are included) favored the wealthy but were still spread across all income brackets: a 53% increase for the bottom quintile; a 41% increase for the next two; a 49% increase for the 4th; and a 90% increase for the richest fifth. Thus, while income inequality may offend our sense of justice, its actual impact on the middle class may be small.

With a singular focus on income inequality, the left’s main solutions are greater re-distribution and a re-writing of the rules to ‘un-rig’ the system. But, however well motivated, some of the biggest ideas into which they are directing their energy do not remotely address the underlying ‘Kodak’ conundrum—how do Americans find their place in a rapidly changing world? In fact, some would actually make the task of increasing shared prosperity significantly harder.“

The hubbub over inequality and redistribution is fueled by misconceptions. One is that the rich face low tax burdens, often lower than the middle class, a mistaken notion that Alan D. Viard debunks using 2013 data from a report from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO report accounts for double taxation of dividends and capital gains at the corporate level and at the personal level (though capital gains are taxed to individuals now, while the anticipated corporate income is taxed later). The CBO study also accounts for employers’ share of payroll taxes (because it reduces labor income) so as to avoid exaggerating the tax system’s progressivity. Before accounting for federal benefits, which offset the tax burden, the middle 20% of income earners paid an average tax rate of less than 15%, while “the 1%” paid more than 29%. However, after correcting for federal benefits, the middle quintile paid a negative average tax rate, while the top 1% still paid almost 29%. That is a steeply graduated impact.

Rising income inequality in the U.S. is more a matter of changes in household structure than in the distribution of rewards. This conclusion is based on the fact that income inequality has risen steadily over the past 50 years for households, but there has been no change in inequality across individuals. An increasing number of single-person households, primarily women over the age of 65, accounts for rising inequality at the household level. The greedy corporate CEOs of the “occupier” imagination are really not to blame for this trend, though I won’t defend corporate rent-seeking activities intended to insulate themselves from competition.

Measures of income inequality hide another important fact: one’s position in the income distribution is not static. Chelsea German notes that Americans have a high degree of economic mobility. According to a Cornell study, only 6% of individuals in the top 1% in a given year remain there in the following year. German adds that over half of income earners in the U.S. find themselves in the top 10% for at least one year of their working lives.

There are several reasons why redistributionist policies fail to meet objectives and instead reduce opportunities for the presumed beneficiaries to prosper. Dan Mitchell covers several of these issues, citing work on: the rational response of upper-income taxpayers to  punitive taxes; the insufficiency of funding an expanded welfare state by merely taxing “the rich”; the diversion of most anti-poverty funds to service providers (rather than directly to the poor); the meager valuation of benefits from recipients of Medicaid, and the fact that the program lacks any favorable impact on mortality and health measures. Mitchell features the “First Theorem of Government” in a sidebar:

“Above all else, the public sector is a racket for the enrichment of insiders, cronies, bureaucrats and interest groups.“

A few years back, the great Thomas Sowell explained “The Fallacy of Redistribution” thusly:

“You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.“

That future wealth can and should be enjoyed across the income spectrum, but punitive taxes destroy productive capital and jobs.

A great truth about poverty comes from Angela Ranchidi of the American Enterprise Institute: low wages are not at the root of poverty; it’s a lack of jobs. She quotes a Gallup report on this point, relative to the working-age poor in 2014:

“Census data show that, 61.7% did not work at all and another 26.6% worked less than full-time for the entire year. Only 11.7% of poor working-age adults worked full-time for the entire year in 2014. Low wages are not the primary cause of poverty; low work rates are. And if Gallup is correct, the full-time work rate may already be peaking.“

More than 88.3% of the working-age poor were either unemployed or underemployed! And here’s the kicker: redistributionists clamor for policies that would place an even higher floor on wage rates, yet the floor already in place has succeeded in compromising the ability of low-skilled workers to find full-time work.

Cochrane sums up the inequality debate by noting the obvious political motives of progressive redistributionists:

“Finally, why is “inequality” so strongly on the political agenda right now? Here I am not referring to academics. … All of economics has been studying various poverty traps for a generation…. 

[The] answer seems pretty clear. Because [the politicians and pundits] don’t want to talk about Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, bailouts, debt, the stimulus, the rotten cronyism of energy policy, denial of education to poor and minorities, the abject failure of their policies to help poor and middle class people, and especially sclerotic growth. Restarting a centuries-old fight about “inequality” and “tax the rich,” class envy resurrected from a Huey Long speech in the 1930s, is like throwing a puppy into a third grade math class that isn’t going well. You know you will make it to the bell.

That observation, together with the obvious incoherence of ideas the political inequality writers bring us leads me to a happy thought that this too will pass, and once a new set of talking points emerges we can go on to something else.“