The Right’s Brand Of Populism, Ctd

Chait dismisses the idea of Republican populism:

[Y]ou could eliminate every business subsidy in Washington, and you’d still have in place a massive income gulf and a wealthy elite able to pass its advantages on to the next generation (through proximity to jobs, social connections, acculturation, spending money on education) that have nothing to do with government. The egalitarian laissez-faire economy is a fantasy.

Wilkinson pushes back:

I agree that egalitarian laissez-faire is a fantasy, but I deny that rooting out all corporate welfare would do so little and that progressive transfers would do so much.

Mr Chait has set up a false alternative. To say that the “main driver of inequality today is the marketplace” is a fairly empty observation. The marketplace is a complex system of institutions itself created by legal rules, and these rules are mostly established by government. The law constitutes and codifies the corporate…