What's Opportunity?
27 April 2006
Editor, The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Your report of Tom Hertz's study on income mobility is disappointingly uncritical ("Rags-to-Riches Dream an Illusion: Study," April 26). Perhaps it's true that the "likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent [of income earners] is just one percent." But since when does a person's failure to rank among the top five percent of income earners mean that he or she has been denied economic opportunity?
Focusing on relative income, Hertz mistakenly implies that Americans who earn incomes just high enough to rank in, say, the top 50 percent are deprived. Average incomes in an extraordinarily wealthy country such as the United States are far higher than are top-five percent incomes in a destitute country such as Niger. No American need be among the top five percent of U.S. income earners in order to be the happy beneficiary of vast economic opportunity and prosperity.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Your report of Tom Hertz's study on income mobility is disappointingly uncritical ("Rags-to-Riches Dream an Illusion: Study," April 26). Perhaps it's true that the "likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent [of income earners] is just one percent." But since when does a person's failure to rank among the top five percent of income earners mean that he or she has been denied economic opportunity?
Focusing on relative income, Hertz mistakenly implies that Americans who earn incomes just high enough to rank in, say, the top 50 percent are deprived. Average incomes in an extraordinarily wealthy country such as the United States are far higher than are top-five percent incomes in a destitute country such as Niger. No American need be among the top five percent of U.S. income earners in order to be the happy beneficiary of vast economic opportunity and prosperity.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Friday February 9, 2007 at 4:09pm