The Income Inequality Bogeyman

Although modern social engineers have long bemoaned the evils of income inequality, it is not the source of those evils.With all due respect to the new Pope, income inequality is not a problem in and of itself. In fact, income inequality is absolutely essential to a healthy growing economy. If the economic structure does not reward productive behaviors with greater incomes, then there is no economic reason to engage in those more productive behaviors. Achieving complete income equality is a Marxian ideal and would completely wipe out incentives for the very productive behaviors that generate societal wealth. Maintaining income equality for a sufficient period of time would also eventually achieve another important Marxian ideal, which is equal distribution of wealth. This is Marxism. If we were to wipe out income inequality, it would inexorably lead to the redistribution of all wealth; but in the end, we would only manage to achieve equally distributed poverty. The greatest social experiment of twentieth Century, International Communism, has dramatically demonstrated the complete failure of the entire Marxian social ideal. It is utterly foolish to even start down that road again!