The news was just going on in the background, when the voice started citing some recent poll about what was most on people's minds. The context was in regard to the 2026 elections, the November midterms in eight months and the primaries, ongoing as this is written.
What got my attention was that some percentage -- maybe 10%, maybe 15%, I can't recall and was too lazy to rewind -- checked the box for "Income Inequality."
Seriously?
Think about what it is actually saying when you say that "income inequality" is a problem for you. Hint: it is not a good reflection on you.
If you want to say that your income is an issue, and that you wish it were higher, well, join the crowd. No one goes to their boss and asks for their pay to be lowered, except maybe Ted Williams in 1960*. We pretty much all wish we were making more.
But "inequality" doesn't have to do just with what you are making; it has to do with what someone else is making compared to you.
By checking that box, you are saying that you should make more because someone else is making too much and it makes you unhappy.
I will confess, I can not understand that mode of thinking. It's one thing to look inside your own company and say, "Hey, I've been working here longer than Charlie, and we do the same job, he shouldn't be making more than I do". But that's not what "income inequality" is and you know it.
Plus, you have to be careful if you have that situation. As I wrote in this cautionary tale a few years back, there is often an answer you don't want to hear.
No, the people who checked that box are mad because Elon Musk is worth a bazillion dollars and earns thousands of times more than they do.
The problem is that "income inequality" as a concept is a bit mythical. Yes, Elon makes more in a day than we will in our lives. But our income is not what it is because his, or any other high-income person's, is what it is.
Money is not a fixed thing. Wealth can be created, and people with the capacity to build in a free economy, actually create wealth -- they produce jobs where there were none; they produce products and services where none existed, and the new and better jobs that come out of their willingness to absorb that risk add wealth to the economy.
In other words, the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. They can be poor for a host of reasons, but it is not because someone hogged all the money. It is because they are not, for whatever reason, producing value.
If people are checking the box; if they are deluded into thinking that "income inequality" is somehow a problem in and of itself, they are telling us that they are more concerned about what someone else is making than what they themselves are.
They're telling us they really don't understand economics.
They're telling us that they are Democrats.
* OK, so Ted Williams. Back in 1959, the Hall of Fame outfielder for the Red Sox had a pinched nerve in his neck most of the year and had by far the worst season of his life. So when he sat down with the GM to do his contract for 1960, his last season, the GM pulled out a contract for $100,000, the same as the prior year. Ted told him that he didn't deserve it based on his poor 1959 season, and wanted his salary cut by about $20,000. The Sox obliged.
Copyright 2026 by Robert Sutton. Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.
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