Free Markets

Steven Pearlstein asks, "Is Capitalism Moral?"  He expands on the liberty vs. equality debate and suggests that our political stalemate results from the failure to hash out these arguments. He concludes

If our moral obligation is to provide everyone with a reasonable shot at economic success within a market system that, by its nature, thrives on unequal outcomes, then we ought to ask not just whether government is doing too much or too little, but whether it is doing the right things.

However, Dean Baker points out that markets don't just "naturally" redistribute income to the wealthy.  Government policies have been deliberately implemented over the past thirty years to promote that redistribution.   In other words, the rich have been able to use the government to do the wrong things.

Update (October 24, 2015):  The Washington Post investigated the claim that the bottom 90 percent of wage earners have not seen any real income growth over thirty years. The claim overlooks the impact of government policy according to research by lead author Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University.

[D]uring the Great Recession, government tax and transfer programs dramatically cushioned the decline in market income of the middle and bottom part of the income distribution. “When you measure properly the role of government, you get the fullest measure of income distribution,” [Burkhauser] said. “Government is doing its job. That’s the story. I don’t understand why the liberals don’t celebrate this.”