In my last post, I challenged a common assumption about equality and justice—that inequality per se is inherently unjust, and therefore that the gap between rich and poor is as well. In what follows I contest another popular notion touted by redistributionists—that unequal wealth as such causes hardship for the poor. As I argue in my recent National Affairs article, [T]he implicit assumption behind the case for the injustice of income inequality is that the wealthy are the reason why the poor are poor, or at least why they cannot … More
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If there’s one thing Saturday Night Live is good at in an election year, it’s lampooning politicians—whether it’s been Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, or Dan Akroyd as Bob Dole. But last weekend, SNL offered up an unusually insightful bit of non-presidential social commentary—this time taking a swipe at America’s coddled, self-esteem-driven, success-less culture. You’d be better off watching the clip from the show (it’s much funnier than this summary), but in the interest of keeping it simple, a skit last week featured two talk … More
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The greatest tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., is not to name a street in his honor or celebrate a national holiday. It is to recognize and support those who are working to carry out his vision, those who empower those facing the greatest obstacles through personal relationships that restore the fabric of civil society—without the need for federal government intervention. As former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp once said, “We need an anti-poverty agenda based on democratic capitalism, not socialism and on private ownership, … More
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Last week, the Associated Press reported that, based on the Census Bureau’s new poverty measure, half of America is now poor or low-income. Forget about Occupy Wall Street’s ballyhooed 99 percent of Americans who aren’t “rich.” Now we’re supposed to believe 50 percent of us are poor or close to it. Of course, that all depends how you define “poverty” or “near poverty.” And by the definition of this new measure, quietly ushered in by the Obama Administration, “low-income” in some areas of the country can now mean up to … More
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