Income Inequality Is Irrelevant

Scott Winship, an economist at the liberal Brookings Institution, has a very interesting column for Reuters about income inequality. His conclusion: U.S. income inequality has not happened at the expense of our poor. My favorite quote:

Cross-national comparisons are tricky, but the evidence we have (from the Luxembourg Income Study) suggests that if you could line people up from richest to poorest in the United States, in Europe and in other English-speaking nations, Americans at every point in the richest 80 percent of households are better off than their counterparts occupying the same place in line in nearly every peer nation. Among the poorest fifth of households, this pattern breaks down, but it is hardly obvious that our inequality levels are to blame.

Most of our poor live better than the middle class of other countries. Why else would the poor of other nations want to emigrate here?