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Is it "self-evident" that "all men are created equal"?

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Now back to the question: how is economic inequality compatible with our equality of worth as proclaimed in the Declaration? At the very least, economic inequality should be good for everyone (or all classes), since everyone is equally important. Inequality that doesn't make everyone better off is unjustified.

President Kennedy famously said that "A rising tide [growing economy] will lift all boats." As Alan B. Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explained in a recent speech : during the postwar period through 1979 all income groups grew along with the economy. Since then, however, JFK's metaphor no longer applies. As Krueger's two charts below make clear, economic growth has come with soaring economic inequality that has left most people worse off:

  
1947-1979 by Alan B. Krueger

    
1979-2011 by Alan B. Krueger

     

 

Markets are artificial systems. Their outcomes are determined not just by competition, but also by the rules and laws governing them.   The market systems of different countries produce different degrees of economic inequality. If the outcomes of our system create unjustifiable inequality, then we, as citizens of a democracy, are morally responsible for it.

Large tax cuts for the wealthy, a very low minimum wage eroded by inflation, underfunded social and educational programs, and--above all--laws and policies that undermine workers' right to unionize combine to create an economy that trashes the Declaration's ideal of equality.

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Brian Cooney Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

I'm a retired philosophy professor at Centre College. My last book was Posthumanity-Thinking Philosophically about the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). I am an anti-capitalist.

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