Feb. 5, Robert Lawson, Jerome M. Fullinwider chair in Economic Freedom, SMU Cox School of Business, for an op-ed challenging the perrception that capitalism inevitably leads to inequality. Published in the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group under the heading Capitalism may have a public relations problem, but it doesn’t haves an inequality problem: http://tinyurl.com/yc2cmtsp
Capitalism has a public relations problem. While many will grudgingly admit that capitalism, the economic system based on private property and free trading, yields faster rates of economic growth, higher income levels, and even reduces poverty, they will complain capitalism’s big problem is inequality.
French economist Thomas Piketty has made his professional career by arguing precisely that capitalism engenders more economic inequality. His argument, in a nutshell, is that profits and rents will grow faster than wages and that over time there will be a growing gap between the owners of capital and wage earners. Piketty’s concerns have animated a growing academic debate about capitalism and inequality. Much of this conversation gets deep into the statistical weeds about how we measure inequality and will likely go on for a long time without a resolution.