One Weird Trick For Winning The Income Inequality Debate

President Obama has talked quite a lot about inequality lately, most recently in his State of the Union address. Progressives have gone after him for it, with some arguing that he’s distracting from jobs and others suggesting he isn’t talking about inequality enough. But they’re wrong on both counts: inequality really is a winning issue, and Obama’s couching of it in terms of “equal opportunity” makes the argument stronger, not weaker.
While the conservative backlash has been predictable, Obama’s emphasis on inequality has prompted some backlash from those arguing that the main problem today is jobs rather than inequality. Is this a fair criticism? It’s certainly true that in the short run jobs does look like the most serious problem. To boot, as Jared Bernstein and Mike Konczal have pointed out, there are few programs that would have more of a positive effect on inequality than achieving full employment.
So should we be talking mostly about jobs and stimulus and turning down the volume on inequality? Paul Krugman dissents, rightly arguing that progressives must “face up to an awkward political reality: moderate populism has a broad popular constituency, Keynesian macroeconomics doesn’t.”
A recent Pew poll bears out Krugman’s point. Sixty-five percent of Americans said the gap between the rich and everyone else in the US has been increasing the last 10 years, and by a 60-36 margin, respondents said the economic system in the country unfairly favors the wealthy, as opposed to being fair to most Americans. Americans think inequality is both unfair and getting worse.

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