In this debate with welfare researcher Matthew Bruenig, ARI’s Don Watkins elaborates on the connection between the right to property and freedom, the productive role of capitalists, why economic inequality does not lead to political instability and how capitalism has virtually eradicated extreme absolute poverty.
On April 5, the Lewis & Clark Federalist Society hosted a public debate between Yaron Brook and Milo Petranovich on income inequality at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.
In this discussion with economics and law professor Alan Auerbach, ARI’s executive director Yaron Brook argues that the hardship facing some Americans has nothing to do with economic inequality, and that the government’s misguided fight against income inequality only destroys opportunity and upward mobility.
In this talk, Ryan Krause, assistant professor of Strategy at the Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, explains that non-coercive monopolies can and do exist on a free market, why non-coercive monopolies are benevolent, how business strategy is essentially a plan for achieving a monopoly and how antitrust law criminalizes the essence of business strategy.
We constantly hear warnings that economic inequality is rising, but the question almost no one asks is: Who cares? In this video, Equal Is Unfair co-author Don Watkins breaks down the fallacies behind inequality alarmism and shows that we should stop worrying about income gaps.
If you leave people free, you’re going to get enormous economic inequality because different people produce different amounts of wealth. So how can the government make people equal? Only one way: use physical force to prop some people up and to pull other people down. But how is that fair?
On February 26, 2016, Yaron Brook participated in a Federalist Society panel on the relationship between capitalism and inequality. The panel was the first in the Federalist Society’s 2016 National Student Symposium, which was titled “Poverty, Inequality, and the Law.”
Economic inequality is often equated with “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.” But inequality doesn’t refer to poverty — it refers to the gap between what different people earn. Why should we care about the gap? Inequality critics like Bernie Sanders have an answer. But is it a good one?
The critics of income inequality say that CEO pay is too high, and that the government should fight inequality by limiting executive compensation. Don Watkins, co-author with Yaron Brook of the book Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality, argues that successful CEOs deserve their pay — and that the attempts to limit their pay are unjust.
