Gallup poll shows that the people polled would rather have economic
growth than more equal distribution.
Lesson: If you want redistribution, you'd better first produce
growth. Which the Obama Democrats' policies have failed to do.
"A 2008 election widely regarded as heralding a shift toward the
more government-friendly public sentiment of the New Deal and Great
Society eras seems to have yielded just the reverse."
So if this rhetoric about "income inequality" is more campaigning
then what chances are there that it will work?
Class warfare politics, as I have noted, hasn't produced a
Democratic presidential victory in a long, long time.
Is there also any inherently bad thing about the gap
between the rich and the poor?
Links:
Forces Catalog: driving forces
on income distribution.
Voters Want Growth, Not Income Redistribution A
Commentary By Michael Barone Friday, December 30, 2011
"A 2008 election widely regarded as heralding a shift toward the
more government-friendly public sentiment of the New Deal and Great
Society eras seems to have yielded just the reverse."
So writes William Galston, Brookings Institution scholar and deputy
domestic adviser in the Clinton White House, in the New Republic.
Galston, one of the smartest political and policy analysts around, has
strong evidence for this conclusion.
He cites a recent Gallup poll showing that while 82 percent of
Americans think it's extremely or very important to "grow and expand the
economy" and 70 percent say it's similarly important to "increase
equality of opportunity for people to get ahead," only 46 percent say
it's important to "reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and
the poor," and 54 percent say this is only somewhat or not important.
In addition, by a 52 to 45 percent margin, Americans see the gap
between the rich and the poor as an acceptable part of the economic
system rather than a problem that needs to be fixed. In 1998, during
the high-tech economic boom, Americans took the opposite view by the
same margin.
As Galston notes, these findings suggest that Obama's much-praised
speech at Osawatomie, Kan., decrying inequality, "may well reduce his
chances of prevailing in a close race." Class warfare politics, as I
have noted, hasn't produced a Democratic presidential victory in a long,
long time.
Where Galston misses a step, I think, is that he seems to regard the
move away from redistributionist politics in this time of economic
stagnation as an anomaly in need of explanation. He seems to share the
Obama Democrats' assumption that economic distress would make Americans
more supportive of, or amenable to, big government policies.
That, after all, is what we have all been taught by the great and
widely read New Deal historians, and that lesson has been absorbed by
generations of politicians and political pundits.
I believe that historians have taught the wrong lessons about the
1930s. And I believe there is a plausible and probably correct reason
why economic distress has apparently moved Americans to be less rather
than more supportive of big government.
To understand the lessons of the 1930s, you need to read the
election returns. Franklin Roosevelt's big victory in 1932 was a massive
rejection of Republicans across the board. Republicans lost huge ground
in urban and rural areas, in the West and Midwest and most of the East,
even in their few redoubts in the South.
In 1936, FDR won re-election by a slightly larger margin, but with a
different coalition. The rural and small town North returned to its
long Republican allegiance, while Democrats made further big gains among
immigrants and blue-collar workers in big cities and factory towns.
The New Deal historians attributed these gains to Roosevelt's
economic redistribution measures: high tax rates on high earners, the
pro-union Wagner Act, Social Security. These laws -- the so-called
Second New Deal -- were passed in 1935. They replaced the different,
non-redistributionist policies of the First New Deal that stopped the
deflationary downward spiral underway when Roosevelt took office.
The problem with the historians' claims is that the shifts in the
electorate apparent in 1936 also are apparent in the 1934 off-year
elections. Democrats won big that year, but compared to 1932, they lost
ground in rural areas and small towns and gained much ground in big
cities and factory towns.
The 1936 realignment happened in 1934. It could not have been caused
by redistributionist Second New Deal legislation because it hadn't been
passed before November 1934.
So why should voters be leery of economic redistribution in times of
economic distress?
Perhaps because they realize that they stand to gain much more from
a vibrantly growing economy than from redistribution of a stagnant
economic pie. A growing economy produces many unanticipated
opportunities. Redistribution edges toward a zero-sum game.
They miss growth when it is absent. They don't appreciate it so much
when it is happening.
Roosevelt's 1934 and 1936 victories were won in periods of growth.
After the economy shifted into recession in 1937, New Deal Democrats
fared much worse, and Roosevelt won his third and fourth terms as a
seasoned wartime leader, not an economic redistributor.
Lesson: If you want redistribution, you'd better first produce
growth. Which the Obama Democrats' policies have failed to do.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner
(www.washingtonexaminer.com),
is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News
Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate
Web page at www.creators.com.
Lesson: If you want redistribution, you'd better first produce growth.
Which the Obama Democrats' policies have failed to do.