My intuition is that the sheer availability of public goods, relative to their absence, is the prime redistributive factor, not in any quantitative gradient that favors poorer over richer. I’d say that’s the main reason to be left-of-center, as far as economics is concerned.

People do not drive on roads for free. A large part of gas taxes pay into a transportation fund for const. and maint. Without treadjacking by diversion, might I suggest an excellent site: “The Anti-Planner: @http://ti.org/antiplanner where many academics and professionals specializing in this area debate things such as mass transit, housing, etc.

America’s love affair with the car is as much about convenience, Democracy and freedom to go and come anywhere at all at any time without a rigid schedule and limited , fixed destinations set by some govt. bureaucrat as much as anything.

I would dispute that. Trams, for example, used to be affordable as well as profitable. It was only when driving cars became very cheap that all the privately-run mass transit had to be subsidised. One of the reasons for that is that the government in general owns the roads and lets you drive on (most of) them for free, instead of charging a market rate.

If the strategy includes support for low-end wages and unions as well as increased provision of public services, it isn’t so bad. Was LeGrand’s criticism of public services as a remedy for inequality based on consideration of public services alone, or as part of a package?

My problem with all this is that we in Australia have been here before, and quite recently, too. But even if Prof. Kenworthy is rediscovering the wheel I have to admit that the wheel is still a good invention. Our problem in Australia is why we threw ours away and went back to packhorses and wooden rollers.

I am trying to wrap my mind around the phrase high quality public services. It isn’t working. If you could ever pull that off it would be quite the trick.

To play the devil’s advosate to make a point – yes.
Provided (!) that you were hired to do that and you are doing it well.
The point here being that you don’t choose what to do – the job description does that. Therefore if you do your job well, you should be paid well. It’s easy to say that because you do cr*p, you shouldn’t be earning much, but in reality I do believe that pay should correspond to how well you do what you are hired to do!

The US is already 3 in the world in k-12 per student spending after adjusting for PPP.

We already spend significant amounts of money provisioning most of the public goods and services you mention for the lower decile. Medicaid – Head Start. In general we already spend non trivial amounts of money provisioning the goods and services you mention.

Rasing the minimum wage and expanding the EITC sounds like a pretty good idea.

Requiring those in the bottom decile who for the most part are already working well less than 40 hours a week to trade income for even more time off isn’t a good idea.

Throwing even more money into the money pit called public education isn’t a good idea.

A tax cut is good way to boost the income of those in the lower half of the distribution. Another library isn’t.

Perhaps a more productive response is to ask what you mean by “actually work”—are you suggesting that, in an ideal system, a person’s pay ought to correspond directly to how hard they work? As measured by number of hours worked? Or, do you view this ideal as limited to those who attain a professional degree?

In other words, what’s the philosophy that’s underlying your statements about what’s fair or unfair? The idea that people deserve what they earn just because they happen to be earning it isn’t very coherent.

I was talking about the beginning of colonisation period.
Prior to that and in many places nowadays the economy is disjointed – even in ancient China or India you would be hard pressed to make an argument that there was a country-wide economy. Locally – yes, but that means it was based on local resources and needs which are never large to “employ” a lot of people. One off major construction projects by the local king do not count. As for major ancient civilizations, sure, but they are not here anymore. One of the reasons why Europe colonized half the known world is because there were no major powers to oppose it. Only major power can consolidate a country or a people to the extent that a unified economy will develop. Even today, in China, most of it is rural and only supports itself by sending people to work “in the city”.

Given the current state of affairs those 100 hr/wk folks were overpaid based on the value of the goods produced; or are you saying if I work hard and put in 80 hrs/wk folding paper in to cute geometric animals I deserve 80K, just because?

I would like to see Lane’s chart above also include ownership/wealth values that income doesn’t adequately reflect.