Did you perhaps mean, "...massive wealth redistribution, " not "wealth distribution"... If "redistribution" is what you meant, then I am really baffled. Since we have had massive wealth redistribution going on since the 80's. (It really started in the late 70's but picked up a full head of steam in the 1980's, and has been going full bore ever since.) To be fair to Reagan, the "massive wealth redistribution" we are experiencing is not what he had envisioned, so if it's good it is not to his credit, and if bad we shouldn't blame him, but rather his economic advisors -- Wendy Gramm<sup>*</sup>, for example. As a former sports announcer and actor, and later governor, you wouldn't expect Reagan to be able to sort out complex economic issues. (He thought, for example, that lowering taxes on the wealthy would raise revenues and help everyone. And he thought massive military spending in spite of huge deficits would destroy what he saw as a communist menace. He did not know what we now know, i.e., there was no communist menace, and the Soviet Union would have collapsed had we done nothing.) <sup**</sup> Krugman, on the other hand, can be fairly blamed if we follow his recommendations and things don't go well. If we think that a shrinking middle class and a tiny but ever more wealthy upper class is good for the Country, then we should keep doing what we're doing. On the other hand, if we think it would be better to have a larger middle class and somewhat less wealthy, but still wealthy, upper class, we might consider a change. _______________________ <sup>*</sup>Wendy Gramm has had an interesting, and checkered, career: http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/1/ <sup>**</sup>I find it interesting that Ford fired Moynihan from his cabinet for insisting that the Soviet Union would collapse on its own, and was in the process of doing so! Moynihan was considered an embarrassment because his thinking was so far out of the mainstream. It wasn't announced as a firing of course, it was a gentlemanly "resignation." Because Moynihan paid attention to Soviet experts, whereas Ford paid attention to the Pentagon and the defense industry, Moynihan naturally had the correct information.
The question though is can the government keep justifying those salaries to the public? It would seem to me that if I was making $8 an hour as a security guard, some of these TSA salaries would make me really irritated.