Income Gap

There was a story in this morning's paper about Obama's and McCain's plans to reduce the income gap in this country. In particular, it referred to the income gap as a "problem." That word choice struck me as the problem.

In particular: is the income gap a "problem?" And if so, is it something that is a proper goal of government to fix?

I would assert that the income gap is decidedly not a problem per se. After all, if it is a problem, then eliminating it would be a good thing. But if we think about a world where there is no income gap, it is a world where everyone - by definition - earns the same amount; anything else means that there is some sort of gap. Even ignoring the socialist/communist overtones of that "utopia," it clearly flies in the face of the obvious fact that different people with different skills bring different values to the table. There is a reason that some people are paid more in some jobs than others are paid, and that's simply not a problem. And there is certainly something very disturbing about the notion that upside for innovation, entrepreneurship, or investment should be capped.

No, I think the right way to look at the income gap is that it is a symptom, an indicator of something else, which may or may not itself be a problem.

For example, I'd argue that the greater concentration of wealth in society over the past 10 years or so is indicative of a failure to invest in opportunities for broad-based wealth generation at the lower levels. When the wealthiest Americans are seeing 10% growth in earnings while the average earnings for the rest are small or stagnant, the problem is not that the wealthy are making money; it's that the rest aren't.

Is this something for government to fix? To some degree, yes: government is responsible for education, for ensuring a proper regulatory environment for jobs and growth, etc. If this leads to increased economic growth and opportunities, that's terrific. But here's the thing: that may or may not narrow the income gap, and that's OK. The most important things are total growth and that the opportunities for growth are fairly distributed; it is NOT a goal that the growth itself be evenly distributed. If the richest Americans are grow (say) 10% over some period of time while the rest of America is grows 8%, then we should be thrilled at the overall growth rather than worrying about the fact that the rich outperformed the poor.

I should also note that the financial crisis is undoubtedly affecting the richest Americans more than average Americans if only because the richest Americans have the highest percentage of their wealth in stocks and real-estate. So I predict that in the current 1-3 year period, the income gap will actually decrease. Nobody is feeling sorry for the rich because of this (nor should they), but if one is going to complain about the rich getting ahead of the rest during good times, one should in fairness acknowledge the hit when bad times arrive.