Seattle Press on Line - A Professor Explains the Income Gap

Jim Hightower

Jim Hightower

A Professor Explains the Income Gap

By Jim Hightower

Jun 20, 2002 -- Time for another Gooberhead Award [Beanie-cap Breakdown], presented periodically to someone in the news who has their tongue running 100-miles-per-hour...but forgot to put their brain in gear.

Today's Goober is a hot-shot, Harvard economist, named Martin Feldstein, whose claim-to-fame is that he once was head of Ronald Reagan's council of economic advisors. You might remember that Reagan was big on the trickle-down economic theory, asserting that if government helps the rich get richer, these privileged ones then will trickle on the rest of us, showering us with the refuse of their wealth. Feldstein was one of the engineers of this policy of elitist economic effluence.

Well they certainly did make the rich richer. Indeed, half of the economic gains from the Reagan period to today has ended up in the pockets of the wealthiest one percent of Americans. Another 40 percent of the gains went to the next 19 percent of well-off Americans. That left very little to trickle down to the underlying 80 percent majority.

The result is that the gap between the top 20 percent and the rest of us has now grown wider in our country than in any other industrialized nation. Professor Feldstein tells the New York Times that this imbalance puzzles him...but doesn't bother him. Asked if America should worry that Wall Street barons make a killing while workaday folks get killed, Feldstein is smug in his ideology, telling the Times: "I say no."

In this goober's mind, income inequality is simply a "natural" consequence of the new, high-tech, whiz-bang economy that he says rewards "talent, skills education, and entrepreneurial risk." So you're not rich, it's because you're an untalented slug. He adds that the income gap also exists because some people "may choose not to work as hard as investment bankers."

This is Jim Hightower saying...I wish Feldstein had to spend a year in the shoes of a single mom working three jobs to hold her family together. That would give the professor a real lesson in talent, skills, risk-taking, hard work...and real-life economics. What a goober.

Jim Hightower's column appears courtesy of Alternet.

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!


Chris Barker	Jul 10, 2002	Auburn WA	System Engineer
Jim’s description of Mr Feldstein’s achievements is interesting. He makes it sound like being a Harvard professor is a minor and foolish post. He as much as says that being selected by the president of the world’s most powerful nation, to the nation’s top economic position, is not fame, but only a claim to fame. This denigration of Mr Feldstein’s life achievements doesn’t even advance Jim’s argument in any way. That, along with the out-and-out namecalling, leads me to believe that Jim can’t think of much in the way of substantive reasons to grant him his Gooberhead Award. * * * * In paragraph 5, Jim writes, “So you’re not rich, it’s because you’re an untalented slug.” I’m pretty sure Jim means to say that there is something wrong with some basic concept here. I’m sorry, but it looks perfectly ok to me. Even allowing for Jim’s drastic alteration of Feldstein’s statement, omitting 2 of the 4 criteria and changing the “entrepreneurial risk” factor to “slug,” face it, nobody wants to hire untalented slugs. Techically, this is a Straw Man argument, changing the opposition’s argument to something easily disproved. But he changed the argument to something equally valid, and then didn’t disprove either. Very puzzling. * * * * Jim finishes up with the hard work argument. Excuse me if I sound trite and pedantic, but this is way too simple to have to touch on at all. Different types of hard work bring different types of long- and short-term rewards. Who doesn’t know this? A computer programming genius is worth more money than the person who comes in at 3:00 a.m. and dusts off his keyboard. Why? Because the genius is rare and the duster is plentiful. Who worked harder and spent more money to attain his skill level? Who has the better shot at producing a product that will make his company money? Who works harder on a daily basis? It is not unlikely that the programmer dusted keyboards while advancing his skills and talents. Even if he hadn't, what would either learn by switching jobs?