Readers React: Where is the moral line on income inequality?

To the editor: In professor Harry G. Frankfurt’s Op-Ed article asserting that it is mistaken — even detrimental — to see income equality as a moral ideal, he seems to even question the morality of fairness. (“Morals and the income gap,” Opinion, Oct. 11) For “people to care about how much money other people have ... distracts them from calculating their monetary requirements in light of their personal circumstances,” he writes.

Does this mean he is against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act?

And how is someone to decide “the kind of life a person would sensibly and appropriately seek for himself” without some comparison?

Even monkeys have evolved to have a sense of fairness. It is unlikely such a trait would have evolved across species without some benefit to the greater good.

Norma Arbisser, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Frankfurt argues that “economic inequality is not … of any particular moral importance [and not] morally objectionable.”

That’s debatable. But conceding the point for the sake of argument, he also makes the mistake of arguing against the principle of inequality, as opposed to the reality.

I would argue that the extreme inequality we’re seeing now is a different thing than inequality in the abstract. When people working full time can’t afford food and housing, something is wrong. When a handful of families control much of the nation’s wealth and, by extension, much of the nation’s political process, something is wrong. When those at the bottom don’t have the same equality of opportunity, something is wrong.

David Salahi, Laguna Niguel

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To the editor: Thank you so much for printing an article affirming that economic inequality is not a moral issue, objectionable or a compelling ideal.

It would serve humanity to address the issues that cause inequality rather than to try to ignore that individual capacities, individual choices and individual lifestyles often determine whether wealth will develop or be thwarted.

I often wonder why those who address this issue never address the idea that lack of education, personal lifestyle choices, individual capacities and values contribute more to inequality than anything else.

The current trend to socialize our country is immoral, and to transfer wealth on the basis of equality is clearly a political view to justify penalizing those who have chosen a lifestyle and work ethic that has earned them the right to achieve economic success.

Maureen Huiskes, Pacific Palisades

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To the editor: I totally disagree with Frankfurt’s position. No amount of philosophical jargon can justify the outrageous income gap between the wealthiest 1% and the suffering masses.

It doesn’t really bother me if my neighbor gets an annual income two to three times my take-home pay. What is really immoral is the greed of those at the top of the economic ladder, hoarding a huge share of the economic pie at the expense of the poor, who in most cases live from paycheck to paycheck and have no hope of climbing the ladder.

I suggest Frankfurt spend a day with a poor family with six children before positing his distorted view that there is nothing immoral about the income gap.

Rey Tuazon, South Pasadena

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To the editor: This article is an example of picking narrow rationalizations to support the argument that poverty is the only negative consequence of economic inequality.

If this were true, then having an oligarchy would be moral as long as there was no poverty. Also, members of the middle class have determined on their own, without comparing their wealth to the rich, that their lives are steadily becoming less fulfilled as the income gap increases.

We have also determined, without comparing our incomes to the rich, that the income gap has produced political corruption through the influence of money, which ensures the growing income gap.

Bruce Halpern, Torrance

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To the editor: The piece might better have been titled “Immorality and the income gap.” Frankfurt hypothesizes that our greatest challenge is poverty, not income inequality.

This might be true; nevertheless, he doesn’t address, nor does he enumerate, the prodigious disparity that exists between rank-and-file-workers and chief executive officers, for that is where the transparency is blatantly immoral.

Giuseppe Mirelli, Los Angeles

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