Saturday, October 29, 2011

Why Inequality is Not Necessarily Bad

In this video Law Professor Richard Epstein explains why inequality is good. While his argument is solid, I wouldn't have stated it that way. I would have said liberty is good and you can't have liberty without allowing for economic inequality as a possible outcome. However, when those with economic power extract economic rent from government through bailouts and other special rights then it is bad. But the solution is not to give government more power as many of the OWS crowd want but to limit the scope of government so it is not economically beneficial to lobby for corporate and union handouts. We need to end privatized profits and socialized loses. If a company or a union (GM, Chrysler, UAW, NEA, Bank of America, and so forth) makes bad decisions then they need to pay the price, not taxpayers. Corporatism, not capitalism, is what people should be upset against.