Inequality: The Democrats’ Defining Issue

Those of us who have been troubled by issues such as economic decline, unemployment, public debt, healthcare, foreign policy, and federal power should know that our worries have been misplaced. President Obama now tells us that income inequality is the principal concern — the "defining issue of our time," he says. It's a timely discovery, what with America's victims of inequality looking ahead to the November congressional elections.

The Democrat Party (protector and savior of all such victims) had to choose between inequality and the unfolding Obamacare debacle. That was a no-brainer. Naturally, Joe Biden made the call, counseling that "income inequality is our issue this year." After six years of rewarding the rich and punishing the poor and middle class, newly impassioned Democrats declared inequality as their battle cry for 2014. Why not? Six months of melodramatic hypocrisy spent on attacking plutocrats is wildly preferable to six months of cognitive dissonance spent on defending Obamacare.

In a speech last December, Mr. Obama launched his new crusade against patrimonial wealth, promising to devote the remainder of his presidency to this "dangerous and growing inequality." It is a phenomenon he has observed for many years — perhaps as early as his first reading of Das Kapital. His monologues on the subject (e.g., his notorious December 2011 Osawatomie, Kansas speech) voicethe deeply felt, though tacit, theme that capitalism is to blame for the widening income gap between the rich (the bourgeoisie) and the rest of us (the proletariat). He presents his observations as evidence both of capitalism's failure and of his fervid concern for correcting its excesses. And there is what he doesn't say, what he would like to exclaim with glee: that Karl Marx was right.

Because of capitalism, the president tells us, "the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed." To Obama, free market capitalism is a mysterious, chaotic game in which the winners prosper through deceit and theft, allowing but a meager share of their vast wealth to trickle down to the poor and middle class. It's a "theory," he says, that "fits well on a bumper sticker," but "it doesn’t work. It has never worked." Who — apart from Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Fidel Castro, and Paul Krugman — could have put it better?

In his economic homilies, Obama excoriates capitalists who tell us that "the market will take care of everything" and that "if we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger." He laments that "a family in the top 1% has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family," while"a child born into the bottom 20% has a less than 1-in-20 shot at making it to the top." He reminds average Americans of deep frustrations "rooted in the nagging sense that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them." Marx could not have taken a more sinister view.

But the capitalism Obama decries is not free market capitalism. The latter predated his selective observations, performing marvelously well for America's first two centuries. The capitalism that Obama rails against is the patriarchal, democratic crony capitalism that politicians of his ilk (including every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush) created. That system — which is precariously held together by the political influence of the rich and the "fatal conceit" of central planners — has failed, and failed chronically since the advent of the "Great Society." Today, after five years of eco-socialism, Obama outshines all his predecessors. The inequality gap has become so intolerably large under his stewardship that he himself declared it as a national issue. Well, somebody had to do it.

During his 2012 reelection campaign, Obama told audiences what the weak regulation of the Bush administration had accomplished: "Insurance companies that jacked up people's premiums with impunity and denied care to patients who were sick, mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn't afford, a financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy." As 2014 election campaigns begin, voters who were among Obama's cheering crowds in 2012 may ask what the strong regulation of the Obama administration has accomplished. They, and Democrat candidates, won't like the answer.

In 2007, the share of the nation’s income earned by the richest 1% was 18%. Today, that elite group's share has increased to 22%. Ninety-five percent of the income gains since Obama took office have gone to the top 1%. Yet, during that period (aka, the "recovery"), median annual household income dropped by 4.4%, the number of people in poverty increased by 6,667,000, and Democrats, with a new battle cry but still blaming George Bush, gained 100% of the nation's inequality bullshit.

The tax and regulate policies of Democrats (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA and DOE regulations, to name a few) are wreaking havoc on the very groups they are supposed to help. A March 2014 report ('The Irony of ObamaCare: Making Inequality Worse”) declared that Obamacare "threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours, and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage." It was published by a labor union — one of many angered by Obamacare. With the Dodd-Frank reforms, minorities, low-income people, and the young are being shut out of mainstream banking. The economic impact and regulatory compliance cost, estimated to be $1.9 trillion annually, will be passed on to people in the middle class, who haven't been shut out — yet.

For black Americans, the poverty rate has increased from 12% in 2008 to 16.1% today; their unemployment remains twice the rate for white Americans. According to radio talk-show host Tavis Smiley, "the data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category."

Meanwhile, the stock market is doing well, for the rich; the S&P 500 is up 52.8% since the passage of Obamacare in March 2010. How have health insurance companies fared — companies that were allegedly jacking up people's premiums with impunity and denying care to the sick? The top five are up 100.7%. And what about banks, which were allegedly tricking families into buying homes they couldn't afford? According to a February 2014 FDIC report, their profits are at an all-time high.

Democrats argue that the inequality gap would grow wider under Republican leadership. Not to defend Republicans, but it is difficult to imagine any set of policies that could punish our economy and darken our future as much as the Democrat policies have. When it comes to the advancement of inequality, Democrats are unrivalled. Clowns could do no worse.

Clowns would come up with better ideas than Obama's latest offerings: inequality busters such as “equal pay for equal work,” universal preschool, and raising the minimum wage. They would know that impoverished burger flippers making $7.25 an hour would remain in poverty at Obama's recommended pay of $10.10 an hour, as would the half million people who, according to the CBO, would lose their jobs as a result. Clowns would reject the assertion that women earn only 77% of what men earn for the same work. Male clowns would worry about the wholesale job losses and wage cuts that would ensue if employers acted on the idea that they are overpaying men by 23%.

Then there are Democrat anti-inequality panderisms such as the "Stop Subsidizing Multi-Million Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act," sponsored by Senators Blumenthal (CT) and Reed (RI). Can an Occupy Wall Street pleaser such as the "Use Congressional Authority and Oversight to Ensure that Appropriate Federal Agencies Fully Investigate and Prosecute the Wall Street Criminals Act" be far behind?

The policies of Democrats, however well-intentioned, have backfired. They have exacerbated inequality, a result that, after almost six years of economic stagnation, high unemployment, staggering debt, grinding income decline, etc., clowns would notice. If for no other reason than comic relief, they would reject Democrat ideas — all two of them: redistribution of wealth and regulation of everything.

The rich do very well under Republican or Democrat administrations. Has it ever been otherwise? But under the Obama administration, the rich have grown extraordinarily wealthier, and the inequality gap has grown extraordinarily wider, than under the Bush administration. The stimulus, Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA and DOE regulations, and other Democrat policies — all big (federal) government efforts, promising to humble the rich, uplift the poor, and strengthen the middle class — have nefariously combined to produce the opposite effect. As the mid-term elections near, "Redistribute and Regulate" bumper stickers won't make many voters think that Democrats will do any better than clowns to shrink the inequality gap. The real challenge for Democrats is not to stamp out inequality, but to escape from the dark shadow of Obama's anti-capitalism, anti-fossil fuel, eco-socialist ideology, where most candidates are discovering a "nagging sense" that "the deck is stacked against them."