Income inequality has been steadily rising in the United States, yet our legal frameworks and policy tools remain largely anchored in a peculiar vision of the mainstream economics professor, which recommends the income tax as the preferred, even exclusive, tool for redistributing income. This book critically examines that vision. In Ending Income Inequality, I explore why redistributive legal rules—in areas like minimum wage, collective bargaining, antitrust law, housing, and intellectual property—can redistribute income just as efficiently as the tax system. A stronger case for redistributive legal rules will complement and strengthen income tax systems to help confront the new Gilded Age’s extreme maldistribution of income and wealth.
Ending Income Inequality is intended for economic and legal policymakers, and those engaged in shaping discourse around income distribution, law and public policy, and law and political economy. I very much hope that you’ll find this approach both stimulating and valuable in your work.
Review:
“A longstanding view in legal circles is that laws should be used to advance efficiency rather than promote income equality, which is best done through the tax-and-transfer system. Through an impressively panoptic survey of the legal system, Dimick shows that this view is valid only under restrictive conditions that rarely prevail in the real world. Readers will benefit from the lucid and sophisticated account of an important debate and Dimick’s relentless, devastating critique.”
—Eric Posner - Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago