ABSTRACT
All manner of remedies for poverty and inequality have been tried repeatedly since 1964. The cycle of optimistic promises and zero results will repeat itself, because once again the politicians are ignoring causes that don't fit the way they want the world to be. In the case of poverty, they ignore the causal role of the failure to marry. In the case of increasing income inequality, they ignore the causal role of the rising market value of brains. The extended-family argument had overlooked a brutal reality: If there is no marriage in generation I, grandfathers and uncles become scarce in generation II and are gone by generation III. Controlling rising income inequality in the face of some dynamics is impossible with anything short of 90 percent marginal tax rates, and perhaps not even then. The education of the right kind is useful for almost everyone as a way of raising personal earning potential.
