Harvard Economist and former Romney adviser Greg Mankiw has an excellent new essay out defending the one percent. It is, to date, one of the best defenses I have seen of income inequality. That said, there are several places where it falls short.
Mankiw begins with a thought experiment. Imagine a society with equal incomes which is then disrupted by an entrepreneur. Everyone wants to buy the new invention that is being sold by the entrepreneur. If the original position is just, and all the transactions are voluntary, then we have no basis for claiming that the resulting income inequality is unjust or undesirable.
There are three big problems with this line of reasoning. First, as a practical matter, the original position is never just. There’s simply no doubt that there are massive historical inequalities that persist today. The reason blacks are poorer than whites, on average, is based on historical…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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