Income Inequality versus Income Inequity ...

[1StrongBlackMan]

the "AL" makes a big difference to successfully framing the message. (and it is driving me nuts)

Income Inequality, literally, means everyone doesn't have/get the same (in terms of income); whereas, Income Inequity, means there is an unfairness in the way income is distributed.

Here's an experiment that you can try to discover this point:

Find the most illiterate, stupid person you can know and ask them: should the founder, or a high powered Executive, of {Insert Company Name here} be paid the same amount as the {Insert their job title}? You know the answer you will receive ... very few will answer in the affirmative. Then, ask them should the employee that spends their day looking for any and every way to avoid doing the work they were hired to do, when they even bother to show up for work, be paid the same as the hardest worker in the company?

Now ... ask that same person should the founder, or a high powered Executive, of {Insert Company Name here} be paid 1,000 time (or, 500 times, or even 100 times) what the {Insert their job title} is paid?

Everyone/most people understand there will/should be differences in pay/income, based on one's efforts, contributions, education, etc.; but, even in those difference, everyone/most recognizes that there should be some balance/relationship in pay.

[daredtowork]

1. That used to bother me, too

When people started throwing around the term "inequality" a few years ago - what, around the time of the Occupy movement? - it did bother me because I thought this would be swiftly dismissed as socialism - or worse - communism. What could be more utopian communist than the image of giving everyone an "equal" share.

However, no one seems to have raised a big "socialist" fuss about "inequality". In fact people seem to be a lot more comfortable with the term "inequality" than "socialism". Perhaps because "equality" evokes the natural rights of man in Declaration of Independence and our Constitutional equalities. Anyway - pundits have been using "Income Inequality" for a number of years now and the term has stuck. You had better get used to it.

You have about as much chance of making "Income Inequity" happen as Gretchen making "fetch" happen in Mean Girls.

[Wounded Bear]

2. The rubes who vote Repub don't know...

the difference between empathy and sympathy. You think they'll get this?

[Agony]

3. using income maldistribution would unobfuscate the issue.

surely?

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Unfair pay rates?

I well take your point, & am looking for simpler or more visualizable ways of saying "inequity."