Hayek wrote:

” Redistribution…is the crucial issue on which the whole character of future society will depend…and “it would be disingenuous to avoid discussing” it.

Also, Kenworthy dodges the main issue of Will's paper, so it's a bit of a contentless reply.

You have me a bit stymied, at the moment. For, while I think what you were saying was right, and more so than what I was saying, I'm still struggling to find some reason to keep saying it. Why? Maybe just because it feels good to call the bastards communists, but I really think, at bottom, that 's what they are, knowingly and deliberately so or not.

But I still think this all misses the most important point about inequality, that the market, always tending toward equilibrium, always tends toward the inequalities that would bring it about, and that taking from the rich to give to the poor cannot reduce but only increase inequality.

You're one smart fella, so I hope you'll follow through on this with me.

to that end, i find all the obsession with income inequality to be a costly diversion that mostly serves to justify any number of inadequate and specious interventions; mostly involving the transfer of wealth from individuals into an ever-growing government leviathan. i take will's piece as an attempt to move the convsersation away from the latter and towards the former. now, this definitely places the honus on will, but i can't help but think that kentworhty completely punts. he grants that there any number of ways in which income inequality fails to capture important dimensions in the goods and services availabe to the average person, but then just defaults back to some strange “unicorns and fairies” comment about how it would be great if the government could level the playing field and make all our dreams come true.

income vs. consumption is an interesting academic conversation, but it would suggest that you keep focus on what is really at stake. and that is just what sorts of interventions and corrective methods best serve the interests of justice. we've been aggressively transferring income and funding government programs for how many years? and many people are still trapped in shitty and unsafe neighborhoods, living in shoddy housing, and sending their kids to sub-standard housing.

Does this not propel job growth and add to what is then consumed? Just because the “rich” are deferring consumption of their income it doesn't gather dust in non-productive uses.

Will's thrust is that measurement of income inequality is not at all straightforward, and so the picture of what is happening beneath the numbers is murky. However, even if real standards of living are wildly diverging, this is a morally dubious criteria for redistributionist policies because this divergence would be a mere symptom of the real underlying injustice (such as poor access to healthcare, education, or whatever).

I understand that Kenworthy is a social scientist and not a philosopher, but he is making definite moral claims about the desirability of equality. Most of Will's effort was to question the foundation of these claims, and Kenworthy offered absolutely no response.

Will, I would love to see you ask him about this ommission in your response.

Right, so what's the ploblem?

If the richer save more and live longer (and spend these extra years retired) the average lifetime consumption “rate” of the rich and poor might be more similar than their average lifetime income suggests. I'm sure someone has tought of this already.

At any given moment the rich will be able to do more with their disposable income, but over time downward pressure on prices spreads that wealth to the poor. I wonder how Kenworthy feels about Wal-Mart.

Kenworthy: Suppose that the rich consume relatively little of their additional income. Should we then conclude that the economic inequality we care about hasn't risen much? No.

This just seems absurd to me. “Relatively little of their additional income?” Kenworthy is piling on fantasy variable after fantasy variable. Whose to say what portion of someone's income is “additional” or marginal? His point that the portion of rich people's income that isn't spent still adds value is fine…but he's saying that that portion accounts for the income gap. I'm saying, no, if you're going to consider unspent wealth as “value adding” then it should count as consumption, not income.

To quibble: Kenworthy adds that “It matters that huge income increases at the top helped propel a housing bubble that raised the price of expensive homes, especially in and around the cities where a disproportionate share of the top 1% live.” This is crazy. Cities have a large share of all income strata. And the housing bubble wasn't merely a bunch of latte-sipping, boat-shoe wearing nouveau riche dudes named Sterling foreclosing on their McMansions!