Warning: Egalitarians are At It Again

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. It’s the center
of the left’s argument. In Marx, it surfaced as the “immiseration” theory, that
the workers would get poorer and poorer over time—because of capitalism.

Now Bruce Bartlett detects a new line from the left
as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (news division) report, in the same week, on
class mobility stalling out. Yes, everyone is
getting richer, yes there is social mobility. But look, the social mobility
is not as great as it used to be. Oh no!

It’s a glorious thing to be a liberal and to know that all the evils in the
world are the other guy’s fault. But liberals, have you never stopped to
think that it is your favorite cultural change and government policies that hinder social mobility,
from the sexual revolution to
monopoly government education, to occupational licensing, to widespread
tenure in the public sector? Social mobility is a two-way street, and for over
a century, liberals have done everything they can to jam the up escalator with their
attack on middle-class values, and jam the down escalator with their income support programs and
market interventions.

Don’t push this one too far, old chum. You won’t like where it leads.