Mr Rodricks' unabashed glee at the reduction of the net worth of higher income folks is disturbing. How can he wish others such ill? Is his motivation resentment or a sincere view that creating a society where everyone earns about the same and has about the same assets will be utopia? I will give Mr Rodricks enough credit to assume his motivation is the former; even he knows that the latter has been disproven in the great social and economic experiments of history.

DR: Unabashed glee? Please, read the column I wrote on this. If you look at the trends, it's quite simple -- massive disparity leads to bust. Why the extreme leap to the idea of a utopian society where everyone earns the same? I never have even suggested that. What I have suggested is only what history shows -- extreme disparity leads to bust, and the recovery is long and hard. Look at the charts. When the wealthy paid more in taxes, when there was a sound middle class, there was less economic anxiety and crisis. Why, long after trickle-down economics was proven a fraud, people at the bare middle or bottom want to keep touting massive wealth for the wealthy -- and crying "class warfare" whenever someone like me brings this up -- remains one of great mysteries of modern American life.

Mr Rodricks interprets some economic data of boom and bust phenomena so as to single out the wealthy as scapegoats for the failure of markets or of government policies. By so doing, he implicitly classifies the wealthy as enemies and promotes punishment for the crime of achievement. Those who disagree with Mr Rodricks are accused of defending the rich against the poor. In reality, the efforts of all are essential to the prosperity of this country. The opportunity offered by America includes the right to be unequal and different (reworking a M Thatcher quote.) Pundits such as Mr Rodricks should recognize that the old Soviet style utopia is a failed concept where a governing class of third raters ran a country into the ground as they followed their philosophy of removing differences. I wonder if Mr Rodricks and others will achieve the same outcome in the US?