Stossel Inequality Myths

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Politicians and reporters often rail about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. • But John Stossel explains it's not true. • --------- • Subscribe to our YouTube channel: / reasontv • Like us on Facebook: / reason.magaz. . • Follow us on Twitter: / reason • Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes: https://goo.gl/az3a7a • Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines. • --------- • In fact, the incomes of poor and middle-income Americans are up 32% since the government began keeping track several decades ago. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file... • Yes, that increase is adjusted for inflation. • Another misleading claim, says Stossel, is the idea that the U.S. no longer has economic mobility. • But a paper in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that most people born to the richest fifth of Americans fall out of that bracket within 20 years. (Table 2: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/...) Likewise, most born to the poorest fifth climb to a higher quintile. Some climb all the way to the top. • Another claim is that inequality itself is a huge problem. • New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio warns: There's inequality in this country right now that is threatening to tear us apart. • Stossel says that it might tear us apart -- but only if people come to believe that all inequality is evil. • But it isn't, he says. It's just part of life. Some people are better singers than others. The best athletes are just physically different. • Society doesn't try to equalize those things -- or many others -- for good reason. Former investment banker Carol Roth tell Stossel, I have two kidneys. There are people out there who need one, don't have one that functions. Should the government be able to take my kidney because somebody else needs it? • There's inequality in everything, she adds. There's inequality in free time. There's inequality in parents. I don't have any parents or grandparents. Life is unfair … unfair is a feature. It's not a bug. • The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

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