Peter Wehner on Income Inequality

I’m still digesting this lengthy article from National Affairs by Peter Wehner on income inequality but I wanted to bring it to your attention. Rather than excerpting it at this point I’ll just say that my impression is that the author wants to return to the traditional American concern—addressing persistent poverty—as an alternative to the “the very rich present an inherent problem” view that is dominating so much of today’s discussion.

I may have more on this later. My general view is that I think that income inequality presents a serious problem for a liberal democratic society but that most plans for improving it end up redistributing among the top 1% of income earners rather than from the top 1% of income earners to those in the lower 99% of income earners or, worse still, redistributing from the top 90-99% to the top 1% of income earners. I don’t recall who said it but I think it applies: when Party A wants to take money from Party B and give it to Party C, smell a rat.

There’s one remark of Mr. Wehner’s I want to respond to immediately:

This unusual emphasis on inequality is partly the doing of President Obama, who seems to believe that stoking class resentments is his best ticket to re-election. In a much-discussed speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in December 2011, Obama argued that income inequality “distorts our democracy.” He said that “breathtaking greed” had contributed to America’s economic troubles and that this was a “make-or-break moment for the middle class.” The president insisted that the kind of “gaping inequality” we are experiencing “gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try.”

I disagree emphatically with Mr. Wehner’s assertion that the president believes “that stoking class resentments is his best ticket to re-election”, from which I infer that he believes that the president is only feigning an interest in the issue from self-interest. In my experience every president (with the possible exception of Bill Clinton) has one keen, core interest other than being re-elected. For example, for Reagan it was anti-communism. I believe that for President Obama that interest is equality. I think he’s sincere. That his interest may contribute to his election and re-election is, from his point of view, a happy accident.