Calpundit has a great post up on the issues of income inequality and the root of his (and my) concern about it.
So even if you don’t think that economic equality is any concern of the government, you should still be concerned about our ever more squeezed middle class. They are the engine of economic growth, and if we continue to pursue policies that ignore them the entire economy will pay the price. We need to start paying attention before it’s too late.
A concern that should be (and is) shared across the liberal-conservastive ideological spectrum, albeit for different reasons based on different views of who and what the middle class really are.
Which is fine, because Aristotle was right. A middle class is the real strength of any Polis, and its weakening portends trends that conservatives should certainly find deeply distateful.
The trillion-dollar question, of course, is what we can do to address the problem without worsening it or creating bigger ones.
If that discussion is going on in a serious fashion across the mainstream political spectrum any time within the next 2 years, I’ll be very happy.
Excellent topic and good discussion.
Missing, I think, is an examination of the equality AND the mobility of our economic society. By mobility I mean movement amoung the five or seven or whatever number of economic classes we are examining.
It is fine to be concerned about the squeezing of the middle class, and the effects that flow therefrom, but in order to accurately estimate and judge these effects it is important to know if the growing lack of equality is burdened on enough of the same people as to reach the tipping point of revolt, or whatever negative consequence we fear.
The data in this and Calpundit’s post refer only to the “middle class” which, if it refers to a static group of people is a greater concern than if there is fluidity between the economic classes.
My reaction, as a member of the middle class, will be different if I see and experience an opportunity to improve my economic position versus feeling stuck at this level or, worse, moving downward.
There are a number of unproven and in fact false assumptions in the Calpundit quote.
First, that the middle class is getting squeezed. That’s simply not true, except to the extent that they (I) make spending choices.
Secondly, the false assertion that the middle class is “being ignored”. The vast majority of Federal & State largess is directed not at the poor, but at the middle class (’cause that’s where the *votes* are, and the squeeky wheel gets greased). Last year’s Prescription Drug Benefit is, arguably, narrowcast to mainly benefit the middle class.
Also, the rhetorical bait-and-switch involved in the quote: mentioning equality and inequality and whether government has a role in redistribution and then swerving to a rather different subject.
*If* the middle class were being squeezed, and this was creating problems for the economy, then one would adress it on *that* *basis*. To imply that this somehow supports an equality-of-outcomes/equal-distribution-of-goods model is to false and not supported by the argument therein. For more I recommend a Thomas Sowell piece I linked to earlier today, and on the general topic of equalities & redistributionism and the arguments for it based on civil society I recommend another post I made earlier today.
If one looks at people’s material condition, however, the assertion that the “middle class” is “getting squeezed” is simply not supported by the facts.
I, like Porphy, and flabbergasted by the “policies that ignore them” assertion. Excuse me but who’s “ignoring” the middle class? Isn’t it possible that different people simply have different ideas of “What To Do About” the middle class?
Even apart from Porphy’s examples (prescription drugs, etc), failure to implement (D) style policies across the board is not de facto evidence of “ignoring the middle class”. Nice try though.