Governor Romney’s decision to select Paul Ryan as his running mate has condemned the country to 90 days of ridiculous news stories and columns about a choice on the size and role of government. The debate is silly because its explicit assumption is that Paul Ryan wants a small role for government. It is flatly wrong to describe Mr. Ryan as a supporter of small government. He is more accurately described as an opponent of government interventions that redistribute income downward and a supporter of government policies that redistribute income upward.

Thomas Edsall devoted his blogpost today to several economists who claim that the upward redistribution we have seen over the last three decades is a result of revolutions in technology and that it will be difficult to reverse this development. In fact much of this economic analysis is quite sloppy, and it is easy to show that many of the factors leading to upward redistribution had nothing to do with technology.