Inequality: Fad or Fundamental

At Hoover's 2014 Fall Retreat, John Cochrane, a senior fellow at Hoover, discussed inequality in the US in a talk entitled “Inequality: Fad or Fundamental?” based on his remarks from the recent “Conference on Inequality in Memory of Gary Becker.”  Cochrane argues that inequality itself is not a problem but rather a symptom of other problems, such as poor-quality public schools or restrictive immigrations legislation. Moreover, as Cochrane systematically explained, inequality is also not a cause of other problems.  He ended with a discussion about why the sudden concern with inequality in the policy world during the past year.