Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Economic inequality'

January 29, 2014

What Every Christian Should Know About Income Inequality

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama has signaled that income inequality will be his domestic focus during the remainder of his term in office. The fact that the president considers income inequality, rather than employment or economic growth, to be the most important economic issue is peculiar, though not really surprising. Continue Reading...
December 18, 2013

Reduce Inequality By Redistributing Innovation

Inequality in consumption used to be a matter of acreage. Throughout most of history, economic value was chiefly found in land or personal property. The divide between the rich and the poor was therefore between those who owned property and those who did not. Continue Reading...
November 13, 2013

When Did College Education Reduce To Making Money?

Someone should tell university administrators and educators that their primary purpose is to guarantee that graduates will have better incomes than those who are not fortunate enough to attend college. In addition, colleges and universities are now, it seems, supposed to be places where everyone equally becomes one of the “Joneses.” Continue Reading...
July 25, 2013

6 Bad Arguments About Income Inequality

Earlier this week I claimed you rarely hear progressives argue that income inequality is a problem since for them it just is an injustice. But there’s another reason you rarely hear them make arguments about why income inequality is morally wrong: their actual arguments are terrible. Continue Reading...
July 23, 2013

Why social mobility matters—and income inequality does not

When it comes to household income, progressives tend to start with their intuitive understanding of fairness (i.e., some people have a lot more income than others), move to the solution (redistribution of income and wealth from those who have more to those who have less), and only then to develop a metric that justifies implementing their solution: income inequality. Continue Reading...
June 25, 2013

Perfect Equality and Extreme Despotism

From Main Currents of Marxism by Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009): Marx took over the romantic ideal of social unity, and Communism realized it in the only way feasible in an industrial society, namely, by a despotic system of government. Continue Reading...