Inequality as Usual

By ROSS DOUTHAT
NYT

Not long ago, liberals were insisting that income inequality was America’s most serious economic problem.

Now there are more immediate crises: A 9.8 percent unemployment rate, a yawning budget deficit. But the inequality issue hasn’t gone away.

The latest census figures show the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everybody else widening — rather than shrinking, as some economists expected — during the crash of 2008. An August report from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch suggested that middle-income Americans, buried in real-estate debt, will have to wait much longer than the rich to see their finances rebound.

This landscape will put liberalism to the test. Since Ronald Reagan was elected nearly 30 years ago, Democratic politicians have promised that their program could reverse the steady post-1970s growth of income inequality without sacrificing America’s economic dynamism.

(More here.)