Yes, it would be Paul Krugman
Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators!
Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.
So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.
Isn’t that wonderful? A guy who was educated at Yale and MIT, teaches at Princeton, and makes a boatload of money (good for him, BTW), lectures everyone else about income inequality. Well, at least he lives an austere lifestyle
Oh, then there’s the $1.7 million apartment Paul bought in NYC in 2009. Perhaps the Occupiers should take time out from stinking Zuccotti Park up and visit Paul.
(Hoping the photo isn’t too big. Doing this with Android)
Has this guy been paying attention to the Imperial Presidency we have and the orders it has been issuing? We’re already a ‘Democracy in name only’ with Obama in office.
Then again, he is the FORMER Enron advisor, so I would expect nothing less.
I see this posited all of the time: Income disparity bad. Income equality good. That didn’t work out very well in the USSR.
I’ve never read an explanation of WHY this is bad. As long as people aren’t stealing or otherwise breaking the law to become wealthy, how is it bad that some people are REALLY wealthy and some aren’t?
One of the Fox news people was discussing income inequality with one of the socialist. When confronted with the issue, she said, “who cares”. Now that was one of the best statements on the issue that I have heard. My own would be that what other people make and what their worth is, is no ones business. It certainly is not the business of our government.
As a physician, I am looking at a 30 to 50% cut in income in the next few weeks due to Obama. At that point, I will fire the yard guy, fire the lady who takes care of my house, stop using the car cleaning establishment, cut back on groceries, stop taking Medicare and Medicaid patients, not buy a new car, not take a vacation and spend money on hotels and travel, reduce my trips to resturants and movies, stop supporting charity events and causes, in short it will have a ripple effect through the economy. The same happens when the government tries to adjust peoples income.