Imagine it’s 1621 in Plymouth and, instead of the Pilgrims and the Indians gathering for the First Thanksgiving, it’s conservatives and liberals. They are sitting down to share their harvests happily and express gratitude for survival.
Yeah, right.
In truth, they’d be fighting over who brought more and who ate more. Those who didn’t get a drumstick would shatter the idyllic scene with shrieking charges of “Turkey Inequality” and wails for “my fair share.”
I jest to make a point. The point being that, 390 years after the first symbol of gratitude created by Europeans on this continent, Americans are locked in a bitter conflict of ingratitude. The tug-of-war over the turkey wishbone is now a polarizing class struggle.
The dividing line is the loaded phrase “income inequality.” It’s all about who eats and who pays.
On one level, income inequality is real, and growing. Yet as a bedrock and urgent political issue, it’s pure hokum, cooked up in the socialist faculty lounges and the back rooms where the government unions pull the strings of puppet pols. The aim is to hijack emotions and grow the government pie so favored voters get a bigger slice.
It has surprisingly wide appeal. People from the vagabonds playing drums in Zuccotti Park to the billionaire mayor of New York who rousted them, Michael Bloomberg, say income inequality is a big problem.
Color me skeptical. I see the raging battle as little more than a ploy to get into other people’s wallets.
Even on paper, the movement won’t do anything to help the huge middle class, which is losing ground and deserves help.
Instead, the focus on income inequality serves only the ideological prejudices and political aims of proponents, while throwing more obstacles in front of growth and job creation.
Start with the assumptions behind “income inequality.” The pairing of words is a triumph of feelings over facts because any inequality, in the coded conversations of liberals, is always a bad thing. Inequality of incomes is then a very bad thing.
The words also reveal the goal: income equality. That would be utopia.
Ah, but how to get there from here, and what does it cost? In the literature and speeches, the only answers offered are massive tax hikes and more entitlements to spread the wealth around. That redistribution is also couched in code: stimulus, investment, compassion, fairness.
The fuzzy gambit is easily undressed in two ways. First, the only thing “equal” in America is the guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Opportunity is equal, outcomes are not.
Of course, we mitigate the differences in outcomes and provide for the common good through a limited redistribution. The hand of government takes from one to give to another, while, naturally, skimming for itself.
But that illustrates the real problem — redistribution doesn’t expand wealth, it only shuffles it. And it exacts a price on the future. Around the world and throughout history, higher levels of redistribution have led to lower levels of growth.
As economist David Malpass, writing on Forbes.com, put it, “The policy issue is whether our goal as a society should be higher incomes for all or less disparity between incomes — countries almost never achieve both.”
That’s the rub, and a warning against class warfare. Having given up on the meaning of America, which is about expanding opportunity and liberty for everyone, income equalizers are pitting Americans against each other in a fight certain to make losers of us all.
It’s good Newt & bad
Before Republicans took the stage for yet another debate last night, Newt Gingrich got classic good news-bad news poll results. He deserves both.
In a national match-up of GOP voters, a Quinnipiac University survey shows Gingrich beating Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 39.
Gingrich is rated a stronger leader, better on foreign policy and seen as having more relevant experience, Politico reports.
But the bad news is devastating. Only 9 percent believe Gingrich has a “strong moral character,” compared with 32 percent for Romney.
The bottom line: Gingrich is smart and fun, but doomed. It’s virtually impossible to persuade voters you are trustworthy when they have decided you aren’t.
Mayor wannabes put to terror test
The election for City Hall is two years away, but New Yorkers have new reason to worry about who will be their next mayor and police commissioner.
The NYPD’s arrest of a Manhattan man on terrorism charges came days after the leading Democrats who hope to succeed Mayor Bloomberg took turns blasting cops for how they cleared the occupiers from Zuccotti Park. Their chorus of anti-police bias suggests any of the Dems would be far less supportive of aggressive anti-terror investigations than Bloomberg. And that means we would have a top cop less determined and knowledgeable than Ray Kelly.
The case involves José Pimentel, a converted Muslim charged with plotting to blow up police cars and kill soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Cops watched him for two years and broke down his door, believing he was close to testing a homemade bomb.
The case is a double litmus test because federal officials refused to be part of it, reportedly saying that Pimentel was not capable of carrying out his plot and that a confidential informant played too big a role.
That decision raises questions about the feds’ judgment and whether, under the squeamish Attorney General Eric Holder, they have become obsessed with suspects’ rights at the expense of public safety.
All of which leads to the same conclusion: Bloomberg and Kelly have served New York extremely well by setting up a front line of defense. The intelligence unit and anti-terror teams they created have more than earned their keep by being involved in the busts of 14 plots against the city since 9/11.
Any successor wannabes must pledge to follow that lifesaving example. Those who refuse aren’t fit for the job.
Pols get away with Liu-lu$
Federal probes of Comptroller John Liu’s fund-raising make it seem likely an indictment is coming. Yet because pols write the campaign laws, they’re full of escape hatches.
The big one is that contributors who donate money illegally get busted, but pols accepting the money usually dance away scot-free. Most plead ignorance and donate the tainted money to charity, but pay no criminal penalty even when they should have known the money was dirty.
Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, for example, saw her top money man nabbed and sent to jail for running a Ponzi scheme, and all she did was plead ignorance and cough up his $850,000.
Liu’s best hope is that he can follow her ignoble lead.
Heroic mom won’t hug thug
Whatever her son is, José Pimentel’s mother is a model of courage and tough love. “I want to apologize to the City of New York,” Carmen Sosa said after his arrest. “I love the city. I thank the police. They did what they’re supposed to do.”
Wow.