One Way to Reduce Inequality Is to Work More: Tyler Cowen

The various bestselling books on income inequality cite a variety of driving factors. Robert Kuttner blames global capitalism. Paul Krugman pins it on bad domestic economic policies. Thomas Piketty writes of capitalists as if they are rentiers, extracting royalties from the system.

There is another factor that tends to go unrecognized: the time-honored virtue of hard work. If you work harder — and smarter — you will earn more money. This would not have surprised my grandmother, but in today’s intellectual world, old truths sometimes need to be repeated. And studied.

Economists from Princeton, Vanderbilt and the ...