The Core Value of Public Policy Should be Equality

Mark Glick, Gabriel Lozada () and Darren Bush
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Mark Glick: University of Utah
Gabriel Lozada: University of Utah
Darren Bush: University of Houston

No inetwp250, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: Research in biology and anthropology shows that humans evolved in largely egalitarian small groups; occasional selfishness was punished. Aversion to inequality is thus an inherited human characteristic. In unequal societies, humans experience stress, leading to many social pathologies, as shown by extensive literature in epidemiology. Well-being can be increased by reducing inequality, independent of increases in GDP. This is obscured by current economic theories, which use unrealistic assumptions and an empirically completely unsupported "equity-efficiency tradeoff" to justify ignoring distribution. Finally, we show that public policy can have an enormous impact on income inequality and has done so in the past.

Keywords: Distribution; Welfare Economics; Microeconomic Behavior; Macroeconomic Policy; antitrust. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D3 D6 E6 K21 L4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 77 pages
Date: 2026-04-24
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp250

DOI: 10.36687/inetwp250

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