Clive Crook points out a core disconnect in Obama’s voice-finding, moment-seizing, self-discovering, Most Important Speech:
It is good to hear Obama talk about economic mobility. (Rising out of poverty in America is not only harder than it used to be, but harder than in many other rich countries, which might be even more shaming.) It was depressing, though, to hear him link that question to incomes at the top. The connection is specious. It isn’t “gaping inequality” that “gives the lie to the promise [of opportunity] that’s at the very heart of America”. You aren’t going to loosen the bonds of poverty by taxing the 1% more heavily, even if that makes sense for other reasons.
I tend to think the MSM’s Money Liberals focus on the inequality at the top–the increasing relative wealth of the top 1%–in part to distract from the growing income inequality throughout the distribution (e.g., the increasing relative wealth of the top 20%, plus the growing inequality within professions and skill categories). And then they focus on mobility and equal opportunity to distract from their inability to propose anything that stands a chance of reversing either kind of money inequality. Remember when “equal opportunity” was mocked on the Left–by the revered R.H. Tawney, among others–as “equal opportunity to be unequal”?
P.S.: More here.