Please don’t tell any of the other writers at Banker & Tradesman, but Cohen the Columnist is responsible for much of the income inequality in the newsroom. You’ve seen my prose; it makes the angels weep with joy. That don’t come cheap. Take the income data from Cohen and the editor and the publisher and you have enough ammunition for one of those left-wing sermons about how the wealthiest journalists earn 87 percent of the world’s news budgets, while the reporters and stuff live off bugs and berries.

Much of the mainstream policy analysis, especially in the Northeast, is focused on income inequality, to the exclusion of all else that might provide additional perspective on the state of the economy and the poor souls who labor in it. In truth, the history of New England provides significant evidence to suggest that “equality” is not necessarily a sign that a good time will be had by all.

Much of the earliest research on income inequality focused on the old New England mill towns, which registered some of the most “equal” data points of anywhere on Earth. Was this evidence that there was a God in Heaven and all was well? In hindsight, clearly not. The narrow employment opportunities and the constipated labor-union work rules in the mills generated income equality, to be sure, but in the end, the region was sapped of the entrepreneurial spirit and flexibility needed to sustain the theoretical good times.

The current economic unpleasantness may disrupt some longstanding research theories, but significant evidence has existed for decades to support the notion that the “American Dream” is alive and well; that men and women bounce around the various quartiles of income level; that children have a reasonable expectation of doing better than mom and dad.

Pay For Performance

Putting aside for the moment the rather adolescent tantrums about mediocre fat cats from AIG walking off with grotesque bonuses, there is much to be said for a scenario in which income inequality actually reflects the presumed productivity and value added and public good that comes from those who snare more of the economic pie.

The “progressive” instinct that suggests income inequality is a conspiracy of evil that unfairly dooms the poor forever is not without its charms, but there are other explanations for the gulf. Writing in the American Economic Review last summer, economists from Harvard and MIT theorized that some income inequality reflects the rather mundane reality that folks who don’t have domestic worries at home to distract them work better – and thus earn more – than those with crying babies, cranky cats, crazy boyfriends, and a leaky roof.

The mobility that allows units of labor to move up and down the income pecking order comes in two forms. To be sure, the American Dream promise in a relatively open economic system does encourage folks to move up the ladder – and it inspires rich folks to take risks that occasionally cause them to tumble down to the common folk. The other sense of “mobility” is, literally, to be mobile; to move to where opportunities are better.

Studies such as the one released last year by the University of Massachusetts, which reported that the gap between rich and poor in the state has widened; and that the middle-class income was stagnant, might suggest a conspiracy against the middle class and poor. But it might also suggest an open invitation for those who aren’t making it to look around at a state in which high taxes and constipated regulation make it difficult for scrappy folks in the middle or at the bottom to prosper. Mobility? Move somewhere warm and happy, where taxes are low and labor markets are friendly.

Back in 2006, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center trotted out data suggesting that the rich folks were getting even richer – at a rate five times that of low-income families in the state. Census data suggest that the young in Massachusetts have gotten the message. They’re leaving. The poor should also take the hint. Mobility that moves you to Florida or Texas or Arizona may move you up the income scale faster than sitting around the Commonwealth, whining for economic justice.