LETTER TO THE EDITOR: UMD's income inequality panel misses the mark

UMD Professor Dick Green reacts to last weeks panel in economic inequality sponsored by UMD's Center for Ethics and Public Policy: I am interested in inequality in America, particularly inequality in access to higher education. I looked forward to last Thursday’s panel on economic inequality sponsored by UMD’s Center for Ethics and Public Policy. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the panel, both because of its narrow treatment of the subject and because of a failure of the panelists to engage with the ideas and arguments of the others with whom they obviously disagreed.

The United States has large inequality in income but much larger and more important inequality in wealth. The emphasis of Thursday’s panel was on income inequality and on consumption. The libertarians on the panel tried to argue that poverty, not inequality, is the problem and that the free market, while it permits inequality, reduces the effect of poverty by making consumer goods cheaper and more accessible. The libertarians seemed to think that if only we had less government regulation, the free market would function better, the economy would grow faster and the material benefits that originally flow to the rich would trickle down faster to the poor. I think this is factually incorrect and it ignores more important forms and consequences of inequality. These possible objections were not raised by the panel.

Thursday’s panel discussion of economic inequality was sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies, whose board chairman is Charles Koch.  One of the functions of this Institute is to train young academics in the principles of libertarianism so that they can go out and promote these ideas in colleges and universities. The fact that Koch has the means to support such activities is a consequence of the vast inequality that the free market makes possible. UMD is already a Coke campus. I hope that it does not become a Koch campus as well.

Dick Green

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