When fighting inequality ends up creating more poor people: Majo Salinas
Redistributing is politically popular. Producing is far harder.
There is an idea that has become almost a religion in modern politics: that the great problem of the world is inequality. Not poverty. Not the lack of opportunity. Not corruption. Not violence. Not the destruction of productivity. Inequality.
And anyone who dares to question that narrative is automatically labeled “insensitive,” “privileged,” or “an enemy of the poor.” But here comes the uncomfortable question:
Does a society really improve simply because everyone has exactly the same? Because under that logic, Cuba would be paradise, Venezuela a powerhouse, and North Korea the pinnacle of social justice. Reality says otherwise.
The most miserable societies in history were not those where inequality existed, but those where the state tried to eliminate it — concentrating all economic power in the hands of a political elite.
And there lies the first great paradox of modern egalitarianism: they claim to fight privilege… while building a new privileged class. The contemporary left lives obsessed with “redistributing wealth”, but rarely speaks of how that wealth is created in the first place.
Because redistributing is politically popular. Producing is much harder. For prosperity to exist you need businesses, investment, productivity, innovation, risk, and work. You need people creating value.
But populist discourse works differently: first it demonizes the entrepreneur, then it punishes the investor, then it suffocates whoever produces… and finally it is surprised that there is no economic growth.
It is the eternal paradox of socialism:
“They attack the entrepreneur as a social enemy, then ask themselves why there is no investment, no employment, no growth.”
And the curious part is that many people who defend these ideas insist they are not socialists: “I don’t support Mexico’s ruling party (Morena),” they say. “I’m not a communist,” they clarify.
But they end up doing exactly the intellectual work of the authoritarian left: normalizing the idea that the state must intervene more and more to “correct” the natural outcomes of society.
The problem is not that the rich exist. The problem is that the poor exist without opportunity. Inequality is not an anomaly. It is a natural consequence of liberty.
Human beings are different: we have different talents, different ambitions, different levels of discipline, different capacities, and different priorities. And that is not a flaw of the system. It is precisely what makes a plural, dynamic, and creative society possible.
To try to eliminate all inequality is as absurd as expecting us all to be the same height, think the same way, or have exactly the same abilities.
The real question is not: “Why do some have more?”
The important question is: “Why can some not get ahead?”
Because a society can be unequal and still offer mobility, opportunity, and prosperity. But a society where everyone is equally poor will never be just.
The emotional trap of the minimum wage
This is where economic populism turns dangerously seductive. Because it sounds morally beautiful to say: “We have to raise wages.”
Of course we all want better wages. The problem is believing that wealth appears by decree. If prosperity depended solely on the government raising the minimum wage, setting it at 100,000 pesos a month would suffice — and Mexico would become Switzerland by tomorrow.
But the economy does not work that way. Wages are not born from political wish. They are born from productivity.When you raise wages artificially — without raising productivity, without economic growth, without the conditions to produce more wealth — the result is usually the same: inflation.
And inflation is the cruelest tax on the poor. Because while politicians celebrate wage hikes at press conferences, families end up paying:
more expensive food,
more expensive rent,
more expensive transportation,
more expensive services.
That is: they “raise” your salary while destroying your purchasing power. And then another paradox arrives:
“They promise to help the poor, then make it more expensive to be poor.”
Fighting inequality usually ends up punishing merit
There is something profoundly dangerous in turning economic success into moral suspicion. Because little by little you start to hear ideas like:
“No one needs to earn that much.”
“It is unfair that someone has more.”
“We have to redistribute.”
“The rich should pay for everything.”
And over time the discussion stops being how to lift people out of poverty… and becomes how to punish those who stand out. That destroys incentives.
Because no one risks capital, invests, builds a business, or creates jobs only to be treated afterward as public enemy number one. Economic history is brutally clear: countries that protected private property, economic liberty, and innovation generated massive prosperity.
Those that tried to impose economic equality from above ended up generating:
shortages,
corruption,
state dependence,
inflation,
brain drain,
and structural poverty.
There is not a single successful example of sustained socialism that has produced prosperity comparable to the freest economies. Not one.
The modern left turned inequality into a moral sin
And maybe there lies the root problem. Today it seems that economic success automatically makes you suspect. Meanwhile, eternal dependence on the state is romanticized as social sensitivity.
But a healthy society should not aspire to have everyone depend on the government to survive. It should aspire for more and more people to stand on their own.
Because there is something profoundly undignified in a political system that needs to keep citizens dependent in order to hold on to power. And that is the final paradox:
“Socialism promises to free man from need, but ends up subjecting him to dependence on the state.”
The real enemy is not inequality
The real enemy remains poverty. Misery. The lack of mobility. The destruction of opportunity. Chronic dependence. The absence of growth.
The most prosperous societies in history were not those where no one stood out. They were those where more people had the liberty to progress.
Because prosperity is not born from distributing poverty more evenly. It is born from creating the conditions for more people to generate wealth, start businesses, innovate, work, compete, and grow.
The modern left has spent years trying to convince us that the problem is that some have too much. But perhaps the real tragedy was never that the rich existed.
The real tragedy is that millions of people remain trapped in systems that punish exactly what could lift them up.
Because in a world bent on making us all uniform, remaining a free individual is already a form of resistance.