Equality is the explicit, if unachieved, goal of communism, the promise of socialism and the sly aspiration of liberalism. When some people have much more than others, it is a cause for alarm, and we have so many alarmed studies to exhibit this worry that one only has to go back to--guess when?--August 21 to find an example.
But, today comes news in The Wall Street Journal that the trend has turned and income inequality is eroding in the new economic era of government ownership of the means of auto production, government squeezes on unjust executive compensation, government bailouts, runaway deficits and presidential jaw-boning of greedy businessmen and investors. What has not been achieved in ending inequality will soon be targeted by repeal of the Bush tax cuts and added taxes on top of that. This is the age of redistribution, even if it is only redistribution of poverty, not wealth.
Unemployment may be nearly 10 percent, but the Recession already has slashed the share of the economy that is enjoyed by the country's top one percent of income earners.
Companies may be cutting back or failing, but at least chief executive pay is down 15 percent. Huzzah for the White House Pay Czar! ("Long live the Czars!")
Investors in new products may be spooked, but at least the rich are not buying so many new cars and homes.
"In the brutal second half of last year, the number of charitable gifts of $1 million or more...fell by more than a third" (according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, as reported by the Wall Street Journal), and that is surely a happy result of the fat cats having to tighten their belts. All the good liberals in America's foundations and non-profits must be doing high-fives.
Many rich, like the family head and immigrant Anthony Carmenate who is interviewed by the Journal'sBob Davis and Robert Frank, may have dropped a few economic notches, and are looking for work, but that is a small sacrifice to make for real change, don't you agree?
After all, even though people with money say they no longer can finance new job-creating enterprises, the Administration has a way to make them cough up. The higher tax rates that are coming will give the Federal Government the money to "invest" for them.
Once the Recession ends, and then as it swoons again in a year or so, we finally will achieve the new achievement of "Social Justice." The motto is, "Share the Poverty".
You can't see it, but I'm doing hand-springs.
