Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on the Occupy Wall Street Protests and Income Inequality

Protests might be a ton of fun (at least until the police starts cracking skulls). Still, it might be time for Occupy Wall Street protesters to go home. That's because income inequality, their grand cause, might be closing instead of growing, thanks to natural market forces, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in her latest column at The Daily. She notes:

There is no doubt that the cupidity of Wall Street fat cats combined with the perverse incentives established by federal policy created a financial bubble from which the uber-wealthy reaped rich rewards….

But…new data from the University of Chicago's Steven Kaplan shows that, despite government bailouts, in 2008 and 2009 the adjusted gross income of the top 1 percent — a disproportionate number of whom work in the financial industry — fell to 1997 levels…

But if the wealthy are not as well off as they once were, the middle classes were never as poorly off as liberal pundits claim.

Read the whole thing here.