From themes adapted from his much-discussed new book THE DARWIN ECONOMY: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, Robert H. Frank is discussing inequality in a three-part series for the online daily magazine Slate. The first piece, “Does Inequality Matter?” ran yesterday, and today’s terrific report “Why Has Inequality Been Growing?” has been receiving many comments. What do you think?
From “Does Inequality Matter?”
Republicans have never watned to talk about inequality, and many Democrats now seem afraid to. As a congressional Democratic adviser quoted by the New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes recently put it, the party is having difficulty articulating its position “in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”
The remarkable achievement of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been to make continuing silence about inequality politically unacceptable. Some have criticized the movement for not pressing specific demands. Yet most protesters wouldn’t pretend to have a sophisticated understanding of the forces that have been causing growing income disparities, or the policy experience to prescribe what might be done about them. But now that the movement has forced inequality onto the agenda, the time is ripe to focus on these issues….
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