A Tale Of Two Toms

My friend Tom runs a great blog where he talks about his three passions--movies, amateur wrestling and Japanese toy robots.

A new post lists his top ten superhero movies. It includes Superman I and II, as well as The Incredibles, but the rest are unorthodox choices to say the least. Check it out.

Then there's my other friend Tom, a law professor, who contributes to the Mirror Of Justice religious law blog. In a recent post he discusses income inequality. As to what Catholics and Christians should think, that's none of my business, but some of his arguments are more generally applicable.

He feels wide income disparity (like we have in America, I guess) is bad. He says "people will find it harder" to have empathy for others "when income and life-condition disparities are really large."

Is this true? I'd argue, at the very least, it's hardly obvious. Seems to me America is more egalitarian where it really counts than most countries. We don't believe other people, rich or not, are "our betters." Everyone feels they're as good as anyone else. Other countries, where government policy weighs more heavily on social and economic issues, tend to have stronger class systems and more social distance between groups.

It seems to me what you want is not official intervention to tamp down financial inequality (which requires massive regulation that can only guarantee less wealth in general), but a bottom-up ethos that we're all humans with basic dignity and a right to be treated fairly by others--through free association.

But, those who concentrate on the gap between rich and poor say there are still so many things the rich can buy that others can't. This claim is not about how the poor are doing, but about how much better the rich are doing. In other words, if I had an economic plan that improves the lot of the poor by twice as much and the rich by three times as much, these people would reject it.

We need to deal with hatred and resentment of both the well off and the poor. And the people who concentrate on economic disparities, if anything, are helping to sow those seeds of unhappiness.

(Tom also says some stuff about social mobility that I disagree with, but this post is already long enough.)