…and the Left:
Just like the apparatchiks of the socialist regimes, the wealthy — including those who most yell about the injustices of income inequality — take very expensive vacations. They don’t opt for a day trip close to home or stay at a Holiday Inn a few days near a crowded public beach. Nor do they decide to give what they planned to spend on a luxury trip to the poor, so they could all have a vacation instead of staying at home the week or two they are off from work.
We know that these folks are hypocritical, and hope that no one will call them on their personal behavior. When they say that all their goals could be covered by higher taxes on the rich, they probably also realize that even if they raised the tax rate phenomenally for the truly wealthy, the amount they would raise would not cover any of the expenses for all the programs they support. Eventually, the category of “rich” will be lowered to those who earn, let’s say, $150,000 yearly in a big city, in which living expenses are so high and mortgages and rents also outrageously so. Such an income for a family of four puts one squarely in the mid ranges of the middle class.
They still believe that if inequality exists, redistributing the wealth is the only way to address the question. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw decades ago in The New Yorker, in which a king announces to the crowd that he wants an educated populace, so he’s awarding every subject a Ph.D. What the socialists who seek to make policy want is the equivalent: create equality by essentially making everyone more poor, so no one will have enough to go around.
Like equating “health care” with health insurance, leftists like to equate fighting poverty with erasing income inequality, because no one would argue that we shouldn’t fight poverty, while worrying about income inequality allows them to indulge in one of their favorite sins: envy.
But the two things are not the same. One can eliminate poverty (which in many ways we in fact have in America, as measured by the traditional definition (no or poor shelter, limited access to food and clothing and basic necessities) and still have income inequality. In fact, in America the “poor” have cell phones and fancy sneakers, and as others have noted, we are the first society in human history to have poor people who are obese. So curing poverty does not, in itself, end income inequality.
Similarly, one can eliminate income inequality by the very simple measure of impoverishing all. Which is what socialism and income redistribution tends to do, historically, for very good reasons. Well, except for the apparatchiks, who will always have theirs.