Debate: Is There Too Much Inequality?

Speakers
Brandon Turner, Jeffrey Reiman, Steven Horwitz,

Release Date
March 8, 2013

Topic

Poverty & Inequality
Description

Wealth inequality may be real, but is it fair? And what does it mean for a society to be fair? Learn Liberty asked these questions to two professors — a libertarian (Professor Steve Horwitz), and an opposing philosopher (Professor Jeffrey Reiman) — in a debate on inequality in America.
The distribution of wealth in America is dramatically lopsided towards the 1% – a point vividly demonstrated in “Wealth Inequality in America,” and agreed upon by both professors. For many, there is something intuitively and philosophically unfair about this inequality. “We are the 99%!” is a mantra of Occupy Wall Street’s dissatisfaction, and a protest against America’s status quo. Professor Horwitz says that this argument misses a central point: do the poor in our society regularly lift themselves out of poverty? “How easy is it, or how difficult is it, for folks who start off poor, to no longer be poor?”