Let's Have a Little Class Warfare
This time for the poor, not the rich

We went to a funeral this morning, so I have just gotten around to doing my online reading. The first thing I read in the WP had me shouting, "All right!" Here are some extensive excerpts from Sebastion Mallaby's editorial Class Matters :

Two months ago, in his prime-time address from New Orleans, President Bush called upon the nation to "rise above the legacy of inequality." He was joking, obviously. The president's congressional allies now propose to cut Medicaid, food stamps, free school lunches and child-care subsides. They do not propose to save money by undoing the tax cuts that have handed an average of $103,000 a year to people making over $1 million.

This is a scandal, and not because every liberal spending program deserves protection. It's a scandal because, whether you support this program or that, inequality is growing poisonous. The meritocratic premise of this country, essential to both its political consensus and its economic success, is starting to ring hollow.

He then proceeds to discuss why poverty matters:

Inequality in the United States is now more pronounced than in any other advanced country. Comparing the top 10 percent of households with the bottom 10 percent, the United States during the 1990s was nearly twice as unequal as Sweden and about a third more unequal than France.

Why does this matter? Inequality is socially acceptable and even economically desirable to the extent that it reflects differences in talent, risk-taking and hard work. But if it reflects the circumstances of birth, it is immoral and wasteful. The problem with the 50 percent jump in the inequality ratio is that it gives the offspring of the rich such fundamentally different education, health care and social horizons that it's hard for the rest to catch up. Sharper class differences mean more rigid class differences as well. Talent is squandered.

The growth of inequality underlines the absurdity of the Bush tax cuts. Last time America threatened to become a class-bound society, in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, Teddy Roosevelt advocated an estate tax to reduce concentrations of wealth. In the new gilded age, Bush has repealed the estate tax. Go figure.

It's funny how rich white men get so defensive about affirmative action giving people unfair advantages. However, liberals are maybe even a little more responsible, because it is our job to be the voice of the weak and fight for equality:

But liberals also deserve blame, albeit of a more subtle kind. They muddle their attacks on inequality by defending all government programs -- irrespective of whether these programs are focused on the poor or on the middle classes. Thus they proudly said no to Social Security reform, even though Republicans such as Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah were offering fixes that allowed benefits for the poor to keep growing. Thus they stand equally ready to fight cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, even though Medicaid is a genuinely essential program for the poor whereas Medicare funnels money to seniors, including a lot of rich ones.

[ . . . .]

So here's a plea to Democrats. I know you're better on inequality than the other guys. I know you don't like to be accused of class warfare, so you shy away from attacking inequality head-on and prefer to dream up trendy policies that address middle-class concerns in an era of globalization. But this trendy stuff is a mistake. Let individuals navigate the shift from sunset industries to sunrise ones, which they can do mainly on their own. The core problem is class, which increasingly is destiny.

We should be fighting for expansion of the programs that have proven effective, such as Head Start, Medicaid, student subsidies, and a minimum wage that means that anyone who works forty hours a week will not have the dual burdens of living below the poverty level and still paying taxes. Then we should creatively explore ways of actually allowing people to be rewarded for their talents and hard work, instead of the circumstances of their birth.