The left’s favorite hammering point – income inequality – is getting ready to be a major issue again in American politics. According to a new report from Financial Times, the income gap between the country’s wealthiest and most poverty-stricken cities has reached the widest point in history. Because of this gap, the housing recovery now resembles an uneven scale, and analysts feel that it could be a sticking point when it comes to another economic boom.
Liberals often claim that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but the truth is that the income gap has widened and narrowed throughout the country’s history. Unfortunately, there has been a steady trend since the 2008 financial disaster that more closely resembles their usual rhetoric.
From Financial Times:
US Commerce and Labor Department data for the 100 largest metropolitan areas by population, analysed for the Financial Times by property website Trulia, found the income disparity between the 10th most expensive region and the 90th by home prices in 2013 hit its widest since records began in 1969.
It’s the terrible policies and philosophy of liberal politicians that has kept poor people from making significant gains in their lives. President Obama has made raising the minimum wage one of his primary goals, failing to realize that what people earn is a reflection of their value. Not their value as a human or their value as a loving husband. Not their value as a parent. But it is absolutely a reflection of their value to the marketplace.
Even the most hard-headed liberal can see the truth as it is. If you gave everyone in the country $100,000 a year, we would have the same problem as we do now. Prices would skyrocket, those who want to work for their bread would still do so, and we would again see a disparate gap in income. If you believe in capitalism at its heart, you believe that a person should be paid according to their worth. That worth is determined by education, work, and skills, all of which are obtainable by most Americans.
The left wants to solve the income inequality problem with more government programs. They want to solve it with taxes. They want to solve it with welfare and food stamps. But that, as we’ve seen, only exacerbates the problem.
The wiser move is for government to get the hell out of the way. As citizens, we should band together and find ways to fund educational opportunities for children who can’t afford college. We should look to corporations to reach out to lower-income neighborhoods and show kids who don’t see a bright future that they can have it if they work for it. And we should stop taxing businesses small and large to the point where they can’t pursue economic opportunity in the land of the free. We will never be able to erase the gaps – nor should we want to – but we can get to the point where everyone has a fair shot. Whether people take that shot is entirely up to them.
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