Income distribution

December 07, 2015

The Federal ‘Anti-Poverty’ Program that Taxes the Poor

Imagine you’re at the checkout line at the supermarket and the clerk asks how much income your family earns each year. Offended, you ask why that is any of her business. Continue Reading...

April 06, 2015

How Minimum Wage Laws Are Like Geocentrism

Geocentrism was the belief that the sun, the planets, and all the stars revolve around the Earth. The alternative view—heliocentricism—had been around since the 3 BC but was not taken seriously until the 16th century AD. Continue Reading...

February 23, 2015

What Patricia Arquette Should Have Said About the Wage Gap and Women’s Rights

During last night’s Oscar ceremony, Best Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette used her acceptance speech to rail against unfair pay for women: To every women who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. Continue Reading...

February 10, 2015

How Christianity Gave Us the Modern World

“Christianity undergirded the development of Western liberalism (in the old, good sense of the word),” says Rich Lowry. In fact, without Christianity there would probably not be anything like what we conceive as true liberty: The indispensable role of Christianity in the creation of individual rights and ultimately of secularism itself is the subject of the revelatory new intellectual history Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop. Continue Reading...

February 06, 2015

Is Your Child “Richer” Than the “Poorest” 2 Billion People in the World Combined?

“The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world.” The stat was quoted last month in a report by the development organization Oxfam, but similar claims have become common. Continue Reading...

January 21, 2015

Redistribution and the State of the Union

Today at Think Christian I reflect on President Obama’s State of the Union message last night. I think it was perhaps the best speech I have heard him give in terms of delivery and general tone. Continue Reading...

January 05, 2015

Increase Minimum Wage Or Increase Employment?

One holdover from 2014 into the new year is the cry for an increase in the minimum wage. President Obama pledged (in a December 2014 speech) to bump the minimum wage up to $9/hour nationally. Continue Reading...

December 02, 2014

I’m a Giant in Japan. Or, Why Income Inequality is Irrelevant

For most of my life I was, at 5-foot-10, of exactly average height. But in the span of one day in 1989 I became freakishly tall. While I hadn’t grown an inch upward, I had moved 6,000 miles eastward to Okinawa, Japan. Continue Reading...

August 28, 2014

Explaining Social Mobility Using Legos

“Can you explain that important economic concept using Legos?” Apparently, someone must have said that to Richard Reeves, an economist at the Brookings Institution economist, because he’s made a brief video using Legos to visualize social mobility. Continue Reading...

August 27, 2014

Which Inequality? Trends Toward Equality in Lifespans and Education

Earlier this month, I wrote a two part article for the Library of Law & Liberty, critiquing the uncritical condemnation of income inequality by world religious leaders. In part 1, I pointed out that “while the Pope, the Patriarch, the Dalai Lama, and others are right about the increase in [global income] inequality, they are wrong to conclude that this causes global poverty—the latter is demonstrably on the decline. Continue Reading...

< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next >