What “The Organization Man” Can Tell Us About Inequality Today

Eduardo Porter, a columnist for the Times, recently wrote a pessimistic piece on income inequality. Citing a soon-to-be-published book by Walter Scheidel, a Stanford history professor, Porter summed up what the headline called a “dilemma for humanity: stark inequality or total war.” While Porter didn’t fully endorse Scheidel’s thesis that violence, in history, is the only real “cure” to income inequality, he did leave his readers without much hope for narrowing America’s current income distributions by less destructive means. Coming out of the November election, we can see his point. For an election marked by resentment of the rich from seemingly all corners—of Wall Street fat cats, by Bernie Sanders supporters; of the global élite, by Donald Trump supporters; of Trump himself, by Hillary Clinton supporters—it’s hard to name a policy offered by any of those candidates that would really reduce income inequality. Higher taxes and lower out-of-pocket college costs would level disposable income, but it wouldn’t change why a hedge-fund manager makes billions while a schoolteacher makes thousands. President-elect Trump’s answers to income inequality—recut trade deals, deport criminal immigrants, make America’s economy bloom again—suffer from an even larger gap between cause and effect.

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