Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality

by Don Watkins, Yaron Brook

Overview

We’ve all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we’re told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage.

But what if that narrative is wrong? What if the real threat to the American Dream isn’t rising income inequality—but an all-out war on success?

In Equal is Unfair, a timely and thought-provoking work, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook reveal that almost everything we’ve been taught about inequality is wrong. You’ll discover:

• why successful CEOs make so much money—and deserve to
• how the minimum wage hurts the very people it claims to help
• why middle-class stagnation is a myth
• how the little-known history of Sweden reveals the dangers of forced equality
• the disturbing philosophy behind Obama’s economic agenda.

The critics of inequality are right about one thing: the American Dream is under attack. But instead of fighting to make America a place where anyone can achieve success, they are fighting to tear down those who already have. The real key to making America a freer, fairer, more prosperous nation is to protect and celebrate the pursuit of success—not pull down the high fliers in the name of equality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250890009
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/29/2016
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Don Watkins is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute and the co-writer with Yaron Brook of Free Market Revolution as well as a column on business and capitalism at Forbes.com. He appears regularly on radio and TV, and his op-eds have appeared in such venues as Investor's Business Daily, USA Today, FoxNews.com, and Forbes.

Yaron Brook is Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute. He is the co-author of Free Market Revolution. An internationally sought-after speaker, he has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, The Glenn Beck Show, On the Money, and Closing Bell, among others. His writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor's Business Daily, and CNN.com, and he is co-author with Don Watkins of a popular column on business and capitalism at Forbes.com.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Making Sense of the Inequality Debate

1 Who Cares about Inequality? 3

2 Examining the Inequality Narrative 19

Part 2 Discovering the American Dream

3 The Land of Opportunity 51

4 The Conditions of Progress 83

Part 3 The Betrayal Of Opportunity

5 The War on Opportunity 117

6 The Money-Makers and the Money-Appropriators 145

7 Understanding the Campaign against Inequality 177

Conclusion: How to Save the American Dream 219

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 233

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

*#1 Conservative Book Club Bestseller*

“This is an extraordinary book that will open your eyes and increase your awareness about this politically charged subject. You learn how and why “inequality” is largely a myth and that the key to higher incomes lies in making yourself more productive throughout your life.”—Brian Tracy, author of No Excuses!

"Incisive, well-written, much-needed and powerful antidote to the pernicious "wisdom" about income inequality. The real problem is not free markets but arbitrary government power. An impressive achievement".—Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media

“There are all sorts of very good books and articles exposing the economic fallacies underlying recent calls for more aggressive government-sponsored wealth-redistribution. But none exposes the misguided ethics underlying such calls as effectively as Don Watkins' and Yaron Brook's Equal is Unfair. Defenders of free markets need to recapture the high moral ground from their redistributionist opponents, and this book supplies just the ammunition needed for the job."—George Selgin, Director, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute

“Watkins and Brook have written the best summary of Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged I could imagine in Equal is Unfair. This is a must read for every individual who wonders about America’s direction these past few years. The American Dream is under attack and this book clearly and succinctly explains the motives of the attackers and the defense which we all must provide. A brilliant piece of work!”—David L Sokol, Chairman of Teton Capital, LLC.

This book is like an oasis in the desert. At LAST the voice of reason breaks through the prejudices and presumptions and outright misrepresentations that are at the heart of the hysterical cries of the inequality fighters.”–Mark Pellegrino, star of Lost, Dexter, Supernatural and Quantico

“More bad ideas are promoted under the beguiling banner of ‘equality’ than anything else these days. If you’ve been seduced into thinking that it’s the key to personal or material progress, this book is your antidote. Read it cover to cover and you’ll never see humanity, the economy or public policy the same again.”—Lawrence W. Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education

“Equal Is Unfair demolishes the Left’s myths and demonstrates that the campaign against income inequality is actually an attack on the concept of the ‘land of opportunity’—America’s unique sense of life. As Watkins and Brook show, reason and freedom, not handouts and high taxes, are the foundations of human progress. And production, not redistribution, is the source of human flourishing.”—John A. Allison, retired President and CEO of the, Cato Institute, and retired Chairman and CEO of BB&T

“There are basically two ways of thinking about policy responses to inequality—raising or leveling. Leveling tends to promote the idea that there is a fixed pie of wealth in society and distribution is a function of luck, while raising tends to promote the idea that wealth must be created by individuals who realize the gains from trade and the gains from innovation, and as such distribution is a function of rewards for superior talent and insight into how to satisfy the demands of others in the market. Human excellence must be acknowledged before it can be rewarded, and talents are to be celebrated rather than explained away as a consequence of luck. In Equal is Unfair, Watkins and Brook provide a persuasive defense of human excellence, and of true capitalism which brings out the best in humanity and unleashes the creative genius in man in the arts, science and commerce. Highly recommended.”—Peter Boettke, University Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University; the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, Vice President for Research, and Director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at GMU

“Arguing the unarguable, Watkins and Brook blow the top off established wisdom on the evil of income inequality and the culpability of the 1%. Today’s one-sided debate on income inequality amounts to envy politics, not logic or fact, as these authors demonstrate in their explosive and entertaining book, Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality. This book shows why the profit motive is noble and shows that government intervention in all areas of our lives—not income inequality—is what’s really threatening the American Dream. A must read for those who desire prosperity for more of the world’s people.”—Mallory Factor, NYT Bestselling Author of Shadowbosses and Big Tent, FoxNews Contributor and Professor, Oxford University and Buckingham University

Don Watkins’ and Yaron Brook’s latest book, Equal is Unfair is a much needed and well crafted take down of the attempt to force a political consensus that the State must focus on ending “inequality.” Government does not like concrete tasks—like building a bridge on time on budget. Government prospers when it convinces voters to demand that it pursue the impossible. Why? Because every failure becomes an argument for more centralized power.—Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform

From the Publisher