[tunesmith]

If his studies basically equated liberal ideology with communism (equal outcomes), I think I'm a lot less inclined to read his book.

You know, what I'd really like is for parties or candidates to identify what they think the appropriate GINI coefficient should be for the US.

[BeetleB]

You inspired me to update my post:

>However, as a lot of pop psychology has taught us: People are fundamentally lazy in applying analytical thought, and will look for simple proxies.

I would not recommend judging books based on a random Internet comment, even my one.

[tunesmith]

I wouldn't qualify myself as lazy for choosing not to read that book. :-) There are a lot of books out there!

[claudiawerner]

>If his studies basically equated liberal ideology with communism (equal outcomes)

It's an easy mistake to make, but Communism (at least as Marx and his contemporaries and Lenin envisaged it) does not have anything to do with the principle of equal outcomes except in a very narrow sense - this sense being equality of privileges to some portion of society.

[tunesmith]

I think the bigger issue is that I've never anyone other than conservatives characterize liberals as believing in "equal outcomes". That's a slanted frame from the getgo.

Among democrats and liberals, it's usually "equal opportunity" or "equal starting lines", language like that. That's very different than "equal outcomes" because it still believes in self-reliance, merit, diversity in outcomes, etc - it's just that it requires a level of fairness that applies to everyone.