Income Inequality

Introduction

Income inequality refers to the disparity in income (and wealth) between individuals in society. For example, the top 1% of income earners make significantly more than those in the bottom 10%. This gap has grown in many countries over recent decades. For many, such disparities are the sign of a broken system and a sin. For conservatives, this is not the case.

Conservative Perspective

For many conservatives, income inequality is seen as a natural outcome of a free-market capitalist system, where individual effort and merit drive varying income levels. Some people are smarter than others, some people work harder than others, and some people are just lucky. However, just because there are vast differences in income/wealth does not mean that some moral harm has occurred. Conservatives recognize that hierarchies exist in all areas of life. Hierarchies aren’t necessarily good or bad, but rather just realities of the world.  

Conservatives generally accept income inequality as the result of the free-market system that dominates most Western countries. As income/quality of life/wealth continues to rise amongst these same countries, the fact that some people are making more than others is irrelevant. What really matters, to the conservative, is that people have roughly equal opportunity to earn money. Capitalism has proven to be the most successful economic system in the history of the world. The fact that absolute poverty has plummeted across the world since the industrial revolution supports that fact. If everyone is going up, then the system is working as intended. That some people make more than others doesn’t mean that wealth is being stolen from the poor. Rather, it means that those who are making more are providing more value to society and so are voluntarily paid more. The poor, it turns out, benefit from this system.