By Jonah Goldberg
Thursday, January 09, 2014
Democrats are revving up for a huge national
"conversation" on income inequality. This is in no small part because
the Obama administration and congressional Democrats would rather talk about
anything other than Obamacare.
But it would be unfair to say this is all a cynical
effort to gain partisan advantage. For instance, New York City Mayor Bill de
Blasio is certainly sincere in his desire to take "dead aim at the Tale of
Two Cities" in the Big Apple. He and his team want to fix the distribution
of income in New York by distributing it differently.
This in itself points to the different perspectives on
the left and right when it comes to income inequality, perspectives worth
keeping in mind if you're going to try to follow the conversation to come.
As a broad generalization, liberals see income as a
public good that is distributed, like crayons in a kindergarten class. If
so-and-so didn't get his or her fair share of income, it's because someone or
something -- government, the system -- didn't distribute income properly. To
the extent conservatives see income inequality as a problem, it is as an
indication of more concrete problems. If the poor and middle class are falling
behind the wealthy, it might be a sign of declining or stagnating wages or
lackluster job creation. In other words, liberals tend to see income inequality
as the disease, and conservatives tend to see it as a symptom.
Also, income inequality can be a benign symptom. For
instance, if everyone is getting richer, who cares if the rich are getting
richer faster? New York City's inequality, for instance, is partly a function
of the fact that it is so attractive to poor immigrants who start at the bottom
of the ladder but with the ambition to climb it rapidly.
This raises the most delicate aspect of income
inequality, the extent to which it can be driven by non-economic issues. New
York City's new public advocate, Letitia James, delivered her inaugural address
while holding hands with Dasani Coates, a 12-year-old girl who until recently
lived in a grimy homeless shelter with her parents. She was profiled in a
nearly 30,000-word New York Times series that aimed to highlight the Dickensian
nature of the city and succeeded in anointing Dasani as the living symbol of
income inequality in New York.
James held Dasani's hand aloft for emphasis when she
proclaimed, "If working people aren't getting their fair share ... you
better believe Dasani and I will stand up -- that all of us will stand up --
and call out anyone and anything that stands in the way of our progress!"
But she also said something interesting about herself.
James said her parents were smiling down from heaven as they watched her
swearing-in, adding that her mother and father were "without credentials,
humbled individuals more accustomed to backbreaking work than dinner
parties." Later, at a reception, she said of her parents, "I made
them proud. I just want to inspire others. That's why I had Dasani with
me."
One has to wonder whether James missed the irony.
According to liberals like James and The Times (to the extent that's a
distinction with a difference), Dasani is a victim of a system that tolerates
so much economic inequality.
Dasani is certainly a victim, but is the system really to
blame? Dasani's biological father is utterly absent. Her mother, Chanel, a drug
addict and daughter of a drug addict, has a long criminal record and has
children from three men. It doesn't appear that she has ever had a job, and
often ignores her parental chores because she's strung out on methadone. As Kay
Hymowitz notes in a brilliant (New York) City Journal examination of Dasani's
story, The Times can't distinguish between the plight of hard-working New
Yorkers like James' late parents and people like Dasani's parents. "The
reason for this confusion is clear: In the progressive mind, there is only one
kind of poverty. It is always an impersonal force wrought by capitalism, with
no way out that doesn't involve massive government help."
The data say something else. Family structure and the
values that go into successful child rearing have a stronger correlation with
economic mobility than income inequality. America's system is hardly flawless.
But if Dasani were born to the same parents in a socialist country, she'd still
be a victim -- of bad parents.
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