Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research and professor of economics at Harvard University, said in his speech upon acceptance of a 2007 Bradley Prize:

There are always those who want to turn back the intellectual clock and return to counterproductive policies. They are willing to sacrifice economic efficiency and growth in order to redistribute income more equally. In the extreme, some dislike inequality so much that they favour policies that will hurt those with higher incomes even when such policies would not help those who are poorer. Fortunately, such spiteful egalitarianism is rare in the United States.

He clarifies what he meant by that in a later podcast:

Well, you listen to the political debate about the income distribution, and it’s not about poverty, it’s not about helping people who are seriously poor or badly off. It’s about cutting down those who have, through hard work, through good luck, though more education, whatever it may be, who have earned higher incomes, and it’s a, therefore I would say it is an egalitarianism. It’s an attempt to even the distribution of income rather than an attempt to help the poor. And I think it’s fair to call it “spiteful” because it’s not about helping the poor. It may be about helping the middle class because they’re the big voting group. But in my judgment, it often comes across as a spiteful attitude on the part of those who are pushing an egalitarian line.

I have always wondered why anybody would care about income inequality. Why is it important? Unless you have some deep hatred of the rich, why care about how much the rich make so long as the poor and middle class are also doing well? In other words, what is important should not be income inequality per se, but income mobility, poverty, and the real growth in wages should be what matters - yet in many cases, solving income inequality harms those very things.

Feldstein’s Bradley speech can be found here. His recent podcast can be found here. Comments on his discussion can be found here and here.