In response to my article on inequality reduction, Matt Bruenig claims that I am “simply the latest victim” of “the most deceptive paper ever written” on the subject. It is an admittedly odd task to address a critique of one’s argument that solely takes aim at a study used for its hook. For what it’s worth, there are multiple other studies that come to similar conclusions, including one published last month showing that the equality of the Nordic countries’ economies is explained to a greater extent by their two-tier wage bargaining systems than by the breadth and generosity of their taxes and transfers.

Nonetheless, it is worthwhile to challenge Bruenig’s characterizations of the paper in question by Thomas Blanchet, Lucas Chancel, and Amory Gethin. For one, I do not consider it to be “deceptive,” as Bruenig insists. But more importantly, doing so allows me to restate more clearly the central point of my article that Bruenig seems to have missed, which is that welfare provision (redistribution) and market-income compression (predistribution) serve different purposes — a view that is in fact complementary to his.

Like Bruenig, I would caution against discounting the importance and efficacy of redistribution in serving the neediest in society. However, in line with other developed countries, the United States does redistribute a significant portion of its market income. Despite this, it is an extreme outlier in most customary indicators of economic inequality. Most of that enduring inequality is explained by its comparatively meager efforts at predistribution.