To the Editor:
Those of us who write occasional editorials are delighted to see responses. Our purpose is to make people think. Kenji Hosokawa's response to my piece on April 1 [The Dartmouth, "My Message to Liberals," April 13], however, makes me wonder whether he is distorting my views to make a point. Perhaps he didn't read the column carefully. Hosokawa claims I argue that pro-growth policy causes economic inequality. In fact, I say nothing about pro-growth policies in general. I even support the notion that income disparity as one mechanism for motivating growth is valuable "to a point."
As I noted in the column, however, the utility of ever-increasing disparity as a means for promoting growth must, at some point, diminish and become counterproductive. Hosokawa goes on to suggest that my column "supports" government intervention to "distort the relationship between wages and productivity." In fact, my column never mentions, or even alludes to, government policy. I don't think this is a government problem. This is a societal problem. As Hosokawa points out, "the principal motivator of fanatic entrepreneurs' pursuits of money is their desire for recognition." The problem is not that our government allows entrepreneurs to make money. The problem is that our society deifies the rich rather than the good (and they are not mutually exclusive).
Finally, Hosokawa aims a few mean-spirited kicks after he thinks he has his opponent down, claiming that social activists such as myself need to become "better students" and lack "intellectual rigor." I'm glad he thinks I'm a social activist rather than a social passivist, but demeaning others as a method of argument is a poor choice that far too many writers make. I'm a thick-skinned administrator, so I'm glad he aimed at me rather than others, but no one should let such methods of argument pass without pointing them out. Although I always welcome reading Hosokawa's point of view, and will continue to do so, his editorial reflects the kind of distortion and argument that writers should try to avoid.
