Somewhere lurking in the shadows there are people setting agendas. These agendas are intended to move the masses in one direction or another. These days that direction is the progressive agenda; tax more and use the government to make everyone more equal, well not everyone, not the people in the know or the elite who already have their share of the pie.
This is accomplished by making some people feel guilty, others feel victims and by over generalization of problems. Scapegoats are identified and a sense of entitlement is created.
Looking on social media one may conclude that this agenda is well on its way to success. But based on the following perhaps the great majority of less vocal Americans are more focused on things important to them and maybe still more motivated by opportunity than government managed equality. Perhaps mediocrity is not the American way afterall. Let’s hope.
The topic de jure for the chattering class these days is inequality. In fact, it’s hard to pick up a copy of The New York Times or the Washington Post these days without encountering at least one article on the topic.
But there is one very large group of people who apparently could care less about the subject. They are called voters.
Brookings Institution scholar Bill Galston had a nice summary of the lay of the land in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. A CBS News poll finds that only 4% of Americans consider income disparities as the most important problem facing the country. Only 2% told Gallup that the income gap was at the top of their list.
If you find this surprising, remember: we are all immigrants. Or descendants of immigrants. Every time a penniless immigrant stepped off a boat and set foot on our shores, the distribution of income became more unequal. And the immigrant was the poorest of the lot. Yet historically, nobody saw this as a problem. Remember the inscription on the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …
Not yearning to be equal? No, yearning to breathe free.
via The Promise Of America: Opportunity, Not Equality – Forbes.
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