the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.

From Mark Perry. Quotation of the day

"…. is from p. 211 of Thomas Sowell’s book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy:

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned. People paying each other for goods and services generate income. While many people’s entire income comes from a salary paid to them by a given employer, many others collect individual fees for everything from shoe shines to surgery, and it is the sum total of these innumerable fees which constitutes their income. . . .

To say that “wealth is so unfairly distributed in America” is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it."