This note is motivated by recent arguments made by Martin Feldstein in which the relevance of inequality is dismissed (if everybody's income goes up, who cares if inequality is up too?), and the argument is made that only poverty alleviation should matter. This note shows that we all do care about inequality, and to hold that we should be concerned with poverty solely and not with inequality is internally inconsistent.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series HEW with number
0404001.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
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