On February 9, 2015, Ramesh Ponnuru writes in The New York Times:
REPUBLICANS think they have found a new weapon to use against President Obama: the charge that income inequality has risen on his watch. In recent weeks that criticism has been lodged by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell; Speaker of the House John A. Boehner; Representative Paul D. Ryan; and the former governors Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. Three other potential presidential candidates, Senators Ted Cruz,Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, used inequality to indict the Democrats in a January forum.
“Under President Obama,” Mr. Romney said at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, “the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty in America than ever before.” We have come a long way since Mr. Romney said that discussions of inequality should be confined to “quiet rooms.”
But Republicans are likely to find that this weapon will be a dud. Inequality does not appear to be an issue that moves voters, and even if it did, Republicans would not be able to come up with an agenda that does much to reduce it.
Polls show that while voters do not like income inequality and think the government should try to reduce it, very few consider it a high-priority issue. In January, a CBS/New York Times poll asked Americans to identify the top issue facing the country. Only 3 percent cited the income gap between the rich and poor — well below the 18 percent who listed the economy and jobs. It’s a finding consistent with many other polls over the years. Last August, the Reason-Rupe poll asked whether Congress should concentrate more on increasing economic growth or reducing income inequality. Growth won, 74 percent to 20 percent.
It’s numbers like these that explain why Mr. Obama, who just over a year ago called inequality “the defining challenge of our time,” has lately stopped emphasizing it. Instead he talks about expanding opportunity and mobility. It appears that most voters care more about whether they, and Americans generally, can get ahead than they care about whether they can keep up with the top 1 percent. More evidence for this set of priorities came in the late 1990s, when inequality was rising but middle-class wages were rising, too. The public at the time expressed satisfaction with the direction of the country.
Before taking up a theme that Mr. Obama has largely abandoned, Republicans should consider whether public opinion gave him good reason to abandon it. They should consider, also, whether they can point to any policy proposals of theirs that would do much about inequality. It’s not an accident that economic equality has been a cause traditionally associated with the left. The Democratic drive to increase tax rates on very high earners and on investment income may or may not be wise, but it would probably reduce inequality. The same cannot be said of Republican proposals.
Republicans deride Mr. Obama’s policies for having yielded insufficient economic growth. But if they had policies more to their liking and those policies had generated higher growth, inequality might well be higher as a result. (It tends to rise during high-growth periods.)
Republicans have a few ideas for fighting poverty and taking on what they call “crony capitalism,” the tendency of government subsidies to enrich moneyed interests. Some are good ideas. Relaxing licensing rules that govern who can become a cosmetologist or start a moving company would expand opportunity, and ending corporate welfare would improve economic efficiency. Neither policy, though, is likely to make a dent in inequality. It would be best to argue for them on other grounds.
Republicans are taking up inequality as an issue now for three reasons. It provides a way of attacking Mr. Obama’s economic record even as unemployment rates drop. It gives them an opportunity to deploy rhetoric usually associated with liberals against him and his party. And Republicans have grown increasingly aware, since their defeat in the 2012 election, that their party has a damaging reputation for caring only about the economic interests of the rich.
But there are better ways for Republicans to signal that their goal is broad-based prosperity. They could, for example, make the case that their policies would combat poverty, expand opportunity and increase middle-class wages — and that Mr. Obama has done a poor job on all these fronts. It would be a debatable case, of course. But it would be more plausible than the case that Republican policies would reduce inequality.
My guess is that Republican politicians almost all care more about raising the middle-class standard of living than about reducing inequality. Since voters do, too, maybe that’s what those politicians should talk about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/lets-not-mention-inequality.html
What a lot of crap! What does Ramesh Ponnuru, a Senior Editor at the National Review, think economic inequality means? “Inequality does not appear to be an issue that moves voters, and even if it did, Republicans would not be able to come up with an agenda that does much to reduce it.”
But when couched in “growing the economy” and “middle-class wages,” suddenly this is understood. (So much for education.) It’s really about how do we achieve income growth for individuals and families and a secure financial future.
Ponnuru does get right the part that increasing economic growth is the ONLY effective way to achieve income growth that benefits ordinary Americans, who unlike the rich, OWN no wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets (the non-human means used to produce products and services such as productive land, structures, tools, machines, robotics, super-automated production, computerized operations, etc.). Correctly the solution is to expand equal OPPORTUNITY by reforming the system which is presently rigged to further concentrate capital ownership among a tiny wealthy ownership class, while ordinary American toil as wage slaves on the verge of becoming broke and are increasingly dependent on extracted-taxpayer supported and/or incurred national debt welfare.
If Ponnuru believes that there is no voter support for abating income and wealth inequality, concurrently there has been virtually no policy proposals advanced by either President Obama, the Democrats or the Republicans, or any politician or other political party other than proposals that involve redistributive measure involving tax extraction. Nor has there been ANY education of the principles of private property OWNERSHIP and why CAPITAL OWNERSHIP should never be allowed to concentrate.
On the contrary there persists policy measures that provide extracted taxpayer support for government subsidies, loan guarantees and developmental research grants that effectively enrich the wealth ownership of those who are already rich and getting richer through the system they have rigged for their benefit. The result is support for “crony capitalism.”
While the to-date-policy-dead-beat Republicans believe they will have a political advantage over policy-dead-beat Democrats to bolster their political power by proposing policies that “would combat poverty, expand opportunity and increase middle-class wages” [should be INCOME], neither political party or ANY politician has put forth the necessary system reforms to ensure that the vast majority of Americans, who are now capital propertyless participate as individual OWNERS simultaneously with the growth of the economy.
A job creation and wage boost focus is not the REAL solution. The reality is that private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work is constantly being eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role. Even, with strong economic growth that can benefit wage earners, the overwhelming means for that growth will be the application of productive capital assets that result from technological invention and innovation. And once a future economy is built that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man (perhaps a generation from now if we start now), there will be far, far less need for human toil as owning “capital assets” will free us to pursue what Aristotle termed “leisure work.”
If Ronnuru’s guess is right “that Republican politicians almost all care … about raising the middle-class standard of living,” then by commission he must believe that the Democrats and other political parties do not.
Well, such concern has not surfaced to the level of a galvanizing force nor have proposed policies by ANY politician, limited as they may be, signaled the necessary paradigm shift to reform the system to empower EVERY citizen to become a capital owner. Runneru nor ANY academic or politicoan offers an effective policy direction that would accomplish this objective, so that we can build a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man.
If Ronnuru and The New Times editorial board really wants us not to relive the late nineteenth century that we are presently headed for, they and ALL politicians should be advocating the call for “Every Citizen An Owner” and support the proposed Capital Homestead Act, the Just Third Way, and Monetary Justice.
If you agree, then step us and support the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/, http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jtw-graphicoverview-2013.pdf and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/. See http://cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ and http://cesj.org/…/uploads/Free/capitalhomesteading-s.pdf.
