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Income Inequality Is Not Unfair and Does Not Need to Be Eliminated The Wealth Divide, 2015 From Opposing Viewpoints in Context

Arthur C. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future.

Most Americans believe in equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome. A minority pushing for equality of outcome has used the language of fairness to make income inequality seem like a problem to be remedied. In fact, people do not have the right to equal income and to impose such equality would actually result in a distinctly unfair society.

In America we stand for equality. But for the large majority of us, this means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

A Difference in Worldview

If you are like most Americans, you believe we all should start at more or less the same place with more or less the same opportunities to succeed in life. But you also believe that, within reason, it's perfectly all right if we end up in different places.

If you are in the 70 percent majority, you believe that everyone should get a chance to succeed. Or everyone should fail on his or her own merits. If this leads to income inequality—above some acceptable floor—so be it.

The intellectual and political leaders of the 30 percent coalition disagree. They prefer a world in which we all end up in roughly the same economic place regardless of our abilities and efforts.

This fundamental difference in worldview leads to a major disagreement about the role of government. The majority believes government should protect the returns for hard work and merit. The 30 percent coalition effectively wants the government to penalize success. This is America's culture war in a nutshell.

A Misleading Definition of Fairness

The definition of fairness for those in the 30 percent coalition, fundamentally at odds with the worldview of the 70 percent majority, is a huge liability for them. They have concealed the central pillar of their ideology— income inequality—under a misleading definition of fairness.

Legal equality, political equality, religious equality—almost all Americans would agree that these values are vital to our nation. But equality of income? That's a fundamentally different kind of equality.

They say one thing but mean another. The 70 percent majority needs to expose this fact and reclaim the language of fairness for the free enterprise system.

The 30 percent coalition is clever when it comes to redistribution. It would have you believe that income inequality is equivalent to equality in other areas, such as law or politics or religion. And because America, the world's first modern democracy, was founded on the principle of equality, its

rhetoric can seem highly compelling if you don't think too deeply about it.

We can all agree that everyone has an equal right to a fair trial, but we certainly don't all agree that everyone has a right to receive a verdict of "innocent." Only the innocent people deserve that.

Likewise, without our political system, we believe everyone has the right to vote, but we don't believe everyone has the right to see his or her chosen candidate elected to office.

The Unfairness of Equality of Outcome

This is what makes the 30 percent coalition's reliance on the rhetoric of "fairness" so duplicitous. It implies that equality of outcome is a core American principle, when in fact what Americans believe in is equality of opportunity and the potential to earn success.

It is easy to be intimidated by the rhetoric of "fairness." Nobody wants to sound anti-poor. It is no

surprise, therefore, that many in the 70 percent majority have chosen just to cede to the 30 percent coalition the fairness issue and content themselves with making the case for economic efficiency.

Proponents of free enterprise must not make this mistake. Fairness should not be a 30 percent trump card but rather its Achilles' heel. Equality of income is not fair. It is distinctly unfair.

If you work harder than a coworker but are paid the same, that is unfair. If you save your money but still retire with the same pension as your spendthrift neighbor, that is unfair. And if you stay in your house and make the mortgage payments even when its value drops but your neighbor walks away without recourse, that is unfair.