Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week appears on the Hoover Institution Web site under the headline "In Praise of Income Inequality." He writes:
The blunt truth remains that any government-mandated leveling in society will be a leveling down. There is no sustainable way to make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. But increased regulation and taxation will make both groups poorer. Negative growth hardly becomes equitable if a larger fraction of the decline is concentrated at the top earners.