Confronting Income Inequality: Economic Growth is the Answer

Income inequality is taking center stage as a high profile issue in both national and California politics this year. An op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch gained attention when he wrote there was one issue he agreed with Democratic Socialist and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. (Sanders) “believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness… I agree with him.” The reference to the agreed upon “two-tired society” caught my attention because of a speech the late congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Jack Kemp, gave to the Heritage Foundation over a quarter century ago. Kemp was addressing the argument put forth by former New York governor Mario Cuomo that America had created a society of two static classes– the rich and the poor. Kemp argued, rather, that America was divided into two economies.