Forget About Income Inequality

Reading David Grusky's essay is a strange experience: with the wrong diagnosis, he gets half of the right cure.

Grusky maintains that the central problem confronting America is income inequality. He argues that the root cause of this malady lies in how rich people acquire their pre-tax income"”by rigging the rules of the market to extract illicit "rents."? In other words, the economic system, not the tax system, is unfair. Therefore, he argues, redistributive taxation"”the remedy of choice for progressives"”targets the symptom not the cause.