Publication: National Review
Publication Date: 04-JUL-05
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Luskin, Donald

Article Excerpt
STARTING on May 13, the Wall Street Journal ran a series of four front-page stories--totaling almost 10,000 words--about what it manifestly considered a major threat to the Republic. Two days later, the New York Times launched a series of a dozen stories about the same threat, most of the articles splashed on page one, above the fold: a total of nearly 50,000 words. BusinessWeek, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times have taken up the story, too; Michael Kinsley, writing in the L.A. Times, even suggested that the Washington Post get into the act.

Was the furor about al-Qaeda? Iran? North Korean nukes? Nope. The sword of Damocles hanging over our national future--and discovered, coincidentally, by all of these mainstream liberal media outlets at once--is ... income inequality. But a concerned citizen who wades through these tens of thousands of words, and pores over the studies they solemnly cite as authoritative, will find a simple, but highly reassuring, truth: There's no story here.

The Journal and the Times are exercised by reports that, over the last three decades, a new class of what the Times calls the "hyper-rich" has arisen in the United States, resulting in a disparity in incomes between rich and poor not seen since the 1920s: the most severe income inequality in the developed world today. How did this happen? As the Times explains it, "The hyper-rich have emerged ... as the biggest winners in a remarkable transformation of the American economy characterized by, among other things, the creation of a more global marketplace, new technology and investment spurred partly by tax cuts."

Fair enough. We have indeed seen a transformative era of economic growth. That era has indeed produced a whole new class of extremely wealthy individuals--or, more accurately, a whole new class of individuals became extremely wealthy as their reward for taking the risks that made that growth happen. And indeed tax cuts were...



NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from National Review
Doubletake, 17-DEC-07
Smooth operator, 17-DEC-07
Talleyrand, the archetypal diplomat, was said to be able to keep an expressionless face while being kicked in the backside, 17-DEC-07

Looking for additional articles?
Click here to search our database of over 3 million articles.

Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Click here to search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication name or publication date.

About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company analysis or best practices in managing your organization, Goliath can help you meet your business needs.

Our extensive business information databases empower business professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible, authoritative information they need to support their business goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting, company research or defining management best practices - Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.