Q & A with Jacob Hacker on Predistribution in Bloomberg News
June 6, 2016
Paula Dwyer from Bloomberg News interviews Jacob Hacker in “Clinton and the Politics of Predistribution.” In the piece, Hacker explains the basic premise of predistribution and how it differs from redistrbution:
“The basic idea is that we shouldn’t focus simply on redistributing income and wealth after the fact. It’s the opposite of redistribution, in which the government lets markets be markets, then mops up afterward by taxing the winners to help the losers. We need to fix markets so they are less likely to produce unequal outcomes in the first place.”
Hacker also suggests some ways government can alleviate inequality caused by labor shortages, ” We need to talk about a Works Progress Administration for the 21st century,” he says.