Bob Shiller thinks more inequality is better
Tom Keene: The conservative response to this [plutocracy argument] is let the elite and the people aspiring to be elite…let them make their money and they will lift the others up with their American spirit. Comment on that.
Robert Schiller. I am actually sympathetic to that view….The thing is, the United States is right now going through a philanthropic revolution. Notably we have Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, their giving pledge. But I think it goes beyond that. There are so many family foundations and philanthropic initiatives that people make.
This is an excellent argument for more inequality. After all, the greater the inequality, the greater the ability of the rich to patronise the rest of us, in the original sense of the word. Indeed, perhaps the only reason rich people did not save us before is because they were not rich enough.
It is yet again Davos week, so unsurprisingly the charitocratic class is raising its head. But isn’t it precisely this rampant inequality that makes such blessed philanthropy necessary? And where is this neo-Marxism that Leon Wieseltier thinks is about to engulf America?
