This morning I testified at a House Budget Committee hearing on economic inequality. The committee’s Democrats (all of whom were gracious when interacting with me) and the witnesses they had called said that inequality has been rising, that the Republican tax law of 2017 had been heavily tilted toward the rich, that wages have been stagnant for decades and no longer track with productivity, and that income inequality has been shown to reduce economic growth and wages. I argued that while policymakers should certainly consider ways of expanding opportunity and combating poverty, none of these factual assumptions is actually true.
The Democratic congressmen and witnesses did not dispute any points I made, instead choosing to reiterate their own as though I had not said anything. But maybe some CSPAN viewers got something out of it.