George Rebane
IWD was launched in 1917 by the American Socialist Party to oppose the war and support nascent communist movements across Europe. Their message of ‘bread and peace' was later attributed by Leon Trotsky as the real start of the communist and socialist revolutions. The underlying message to attract ideologically vanilla people was social justice for women, it’s upshot being that under socialism women would do better and be more equal than under capitalism.
Well, it hasn’t turned out to be that way despite that the IWD celebrations to this day continue spreading the lies that launched the movement. A. Davies and J. Harrigan write (‘For Gender Equality, You Can’t Beat Capitalism’) that “socialist leaders used International Women’s Day ostensibly to highlight their commitment to gender equity. Yet contrary to its socialist origins, more than 100 years of evidence since the first International Women’s Day suggests that free markets are the single best solution to inequity, gender or otherwise.”
Combining data from the UN and Canada’s Fraser Institute demonstrates that women have been doing enormously better along all dimensions of equality – especially income equality – in countries espousing free market principles than in countries under the thrall of collectivist central planners. From these data Davies and Harrigan conclude –
Since the advent of International Women’ Day, many, from the common people to presidents and popes, have looked to government control of markets as the solution to the problems of poverty and inequality. A landslide of evidence over the past century shows that, regardless of our good intentions, the more we allow governments to control markets, the more poverty and inequality we experience. … There is no better time to note these facts than on International Women’s Day. A celebration that was once simple Communist propaganda can, and should, be repurposed to celebrate the forces that actually lift people out of poverty and inequality. The evidence suggests that equality doesn’t come at the end of the government’s gun, but at the end of the free market’s handshake.
Another progressive shibboleth for light thinkers bites the dust.
[Addendum, more inequality developments] Paul Krugman, call your office! Thomas Picketty, last year’s darling of progressives worldwide, has recanted the message in his 2014 best seller, Capital in the 21st Century. In that celebrated tome he introduced us to r > g stating that “return on capital (r) outpaces the growth rate of the economy (g) over time, leading inexorably to the dominance of inherited wealth. Progressives such as Princeton economist Paul Krugman seized on Mr. Piketty’s thesis to justify policies they have long wanted—namely, very high taxes on the wealthy.”
Well, it turns out that a lot of economists took a look at that proposition last year, and gave it a thorough debunking which was, you guessed it, assiduously ignored by the lamestream. Progressives, from Team Obama on down, kept citing Piketty as God’s truth explaining all the horrors of inequality they have been preaching from the nation’s classrooms to Congress. That these arguments were bovine scat became so overwhelming among the knowledgeable and well read, they convinced Picketty to walk back his arguments in a new paper – ‘About Capital in the 21st Century’ (preview copy Download AboutCapitalInThe21stCentury_preview).
Economist Robert Rosenkranz reviews (here) some of the more egregious errors in Picketty’s 2014 blockbuster that apparently eluded agenda-driven progressives like nobelist Paul Krugman, eager to have some semblance of rigorous support for their stream of pro-socialist rants (Krugman writes for the NYT). In his rapture Krugman’s review of Capital included phrases such as a “magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality.”
Revising his sweeping meditation as he “consigns his famous formula to irrelevance”, the bottom line from Picketty is the admission –
“In addition, I certainly do not believe that r>g is a useful tool for the discussion of rising inequality of labor income: other mechanisms and policies are much more relevant here, e.g. supply and demand of skills and education.” He correctly distinguishes between income and wealth, and he takes a long historic perspective: “Wealth inequality is currently much less extreme than a century ago.”
So we can summarize Picketty’s blinding revelations of 2014 (in his own words) as, “I do not view r>g as the only or even the primary tool for considering changes in income and wealth in the 20th century, or for forecasting the path of inequality in the 21st century.” Given all that, do you think this will change any of the Left’s narrative on income and wealth inequality as they seek ever higher taxes on those who build businesses and create jobs? Nah!
rebanesruminations.com 
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