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The redistributive reforms (or follies) of the 20th century were largely inspired by two leading economic thinkers: Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Notwithstanding their ideological differences, they had one point in common: for both of them, income equalization serves to promote economic growth.

For Marx and his progeny, class struggle would lead to the demise of capitalism and to its replacement by a superior, egalitarian system (socialism) that would usher the human kind into a world characterized by the abundance of goods and services to be distributed according to each one's needs.

A similar correspondence between income equalization and economic efficiency formed part of Keynes' ideological paraphernalia. To combat recession, he argued, income...