Thursday, February 01, 2007

the president on income inequality

I nearly dropped my Cap'n Crunch reading that de facto President/oiligarch George W. "The Elite Is My Base" Bush addressed income inequality Wednesday in a speech at WALL STREET of all places. I doubt Bush's base will care for that much, although some wiser rich heads like Warren Buffet recognize that growing income inequality is unfair and poses a risk to our economic prosperity.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder notes that Bush's tax cuts have grossly favored the very top group of income earners, people who have seen their share of the pie grow much, much larger over the past 30 years, while wages for middle- and lower-level employees stagnate. But as Blinder notes, tax cuts for the rich are just gravy, not the source of the real disparities.

Bush is right* that income inequality is a problem. Now, whether he actually proposes any meaningful policies that might help reverse the trend to greater income inequality or not is another thing.

*Wow, not sure I've ever used that phrase before.

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