Benjamin Domenech — The Right Needs a New Message on Income Inequality

...when it comes to measuring the health of America’s economy, the truth is that income inequality is simply not a significant problem.

Several recent studies have shown that U.S. economic mobility is very good: Most Americans will move up and down the income ladder over the course of their lives, reflecting little to none of the class stratification and inheritance concerns warned about by inequality mavens.

But as a political matter, it’s certainly possible that Republicans could be flat-footed in responding to these charges....

There is an enormous opportunity here for a message of free-market fairness — if the right has the wherewithal to seize it.

The right simply doesn't get that a so-called free market is not necessarily a fair market. For example, it assumes that honest firms will be preferred over dishonest ones, driving the dishonest ones out of the market. However, this ignores the Gresham's law of economics that Bill Black has emphasized, where the bad drive out the good, which cannot compete with those that deal underhandedly.

Nor does the right get that the concept of free market is an oxymoron. For example, there is always asymmetrical power in modern markets, and contemporary capitalism is based on increasing market power. The so-called free market leads to monopoly and oligopoly. For example, economies of scale drive out smaller competitors, just as Walmart ended the mom and pop stores in America and agribusiness finished off the family farm.

WSJ — Washington Wire
The Right Needs a New Message on Income Inequality
Benjamin Domenech | publisher of The Federalist and writes The Transom, a daily subscription newsletter for political insiders. Domenech also serves as a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute, specializing in health care and entitlement policy.
(h/t Brad DeLong)