Brian Wesbury review Joseph Stigletz’s new book in the Wall Street Journal in One Man Against the 1%
For the past 50 years, liberals have gotten almost exactly the policies they’ve wanted. So why are they still complaining?

excerpts:

The reality, however, is that the financial crisis was not caused by inequality or by banks. It was caused when the government used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under the banner of equality, to encourage subprime lending to promote homeownership. Then the government allowed a very strict mark-to-market accounting rule to be enforced, turning a fire into an inferno. The crisis would have never spun out of control if government had avoided overly strict mark-to-market accounting rules.

Mr. Stiglitz constantly refers to income inequality without adjusting for taxes and transfers. But this is misleading. A 2014 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study showed that the lowest quintile of income earners saw their market income grow just 16% between 1979 and 2011, while the highest quintile experienced a 77% increase. But after adjusting for taxes and transfers, the CBO found that the lowest quintile, which receives about a third of its income from transfers, saw an increase in income of 72%, while the top quintile had a gain of 87%. In other words, liberal policies of tax and redistribute have created a much more level playing field than liberals will admit.

Liberals are the like the dog that finally caught the car. Now what will they do? If Mr. Stiglitz is indicative, they will gripe about the wealthy, argue that their ideas of redistribution weren’t tried hard enough and blame self-interest for hampering real progress. Conservatives said that our current fiscal path would be bad for the economy; liberals insisted that it would be good. The fact that Mr. Stiglitz is still complaining would seem to be proof that liberals were wrong.

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