Richard Epstein on Wealth

Richard Epstein argues that transfer payments from rich to poor don't make the poor any richer and that income inequality gives rise to increased incentives and opportunity which increases wealth for everyone. Hat tips to Instapundit, who linked to Coalition Of The Willing (where Southern Man first saw the video), and original video source PBS (who provided the embed code)...

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Warning: if you're a liberal listening to this video might make your head explode. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Southern Man teaches (among other things) mobile application development - that is, programs for Apple and Android devices. The students put an astonishing amount of work into these projects. Many of them never make it to an app store, and the vast majority of those that do don't earn the students a dime. Why do they work so hard? Because of the compelling possibility that they might write the next must-have million-download app and the wealth that will flow from that work. If that opportunity wasn't there, they wouldn't bother to try.