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.
Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality, by bestselling authors Don Watkins and Yaron Brook, is the first book to make the comprehensive case against inequality critics like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Paul Krugman.
Today’s leading critics of economic inequality tell us that, unless we’re “privileged,” success is impossible, that the “have-nots” cannot rise through their own productive efforts, and that the desire for extraordinary success is greedy and immoral. In this talk, Don Watkins argues that these ideas are false and pernicious.