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54% of Republicans Say We’ve Got Too Much Inequality
We’ve noted for years that it’s a myth that conservatives accept runaway inequality.
Conservatives are very concerned about the stunning collapse of upward mobility.
A poll from Gallup shows that a majority of Republicans think we’ve got too much inequality:
Two out of three Americans are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are currently distributed in the U.S. This includes three-fourths of Democrats and 54% of Republicans.
And the conservative website Townhall.com ran a story last month entitled, “Inequality is a Conservative Issue“.
In fact, there are at least 6 solid conservative reasons – based upon conservative values – for reducing runaway inequality:
(1) It has now finally become widely accepted by economists that inequality drags down the economy. Conservatives like prosperity and economic growth, not things which pull down the economy;
(2) Inequality increases the nation’s debt. Conservatives don’t like debt;
(3) Runaway inequality leads to social unrest and violence. Conservatives like stability and order;
(4) Much of the cause of our soaring inequality is bailouts for the big banks and socialism for the buddies of the high-and-mighty at the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and White House. The government has consistently picked Wall Street over Main Street, and virtually all of the the big banks’ profits come from taxpayer bailouts. The Fed is still throwing many tens of billions a month at the big banks in “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time”, which sucks the wealth away from the rest of the economy. Conservatives don’t like bailouts (a 2012 Harris poll showed that 87% of Republicans are against bank bailouts) or socialism; and
(5) One of the biggest causes of runaway inequality is that the big banks are manipulating every market, and committing massive crimes. Fraud disproportionally benefits the big banks, makes boom-bust cycles more severe, and otherwise harms the economy … all of which increase inequality and warp the market. These actions artificially redistribute wealth from honest, hard-working people to a handful of crooks. Conservatives hate redistribution … as well as crooks.
(6) Religious leaders have slammed the criminality of the heads of the big banks; and the Bible teaches - and top economists agree – that their crimes must be punished, or else things will get worse. A 2011 Gallup poll showed that 91% of U.S. conservatives believe that the Bible is either literally true or is the inspired word of God. If the crimes of the bankers are punished, inequality will start to decline, because a more lawful, orderly and even playing field will be reestablished.
We’re not calling for redistributing wealth from the rich. But we do support clawing back ill-gotten gains from criminals under well-established fraud principles:
The government could use existing laws to force ill-gotten gains to be disgorged (see this and this) [and] fraudulent transfers to be voided …
We’re mainly talking about stopping further redistribution from Main Street to Wall Street. As Robert Shiller said in 2009:
And it’s not like we want to level income. I’m not saying spread the wealth around, which got Obama in trouble. But I think, I would hope that this would be a time for a national consideration about policies that would focus on restraining any possible further increases in inequality.
For example, if we stop bailing out the Wall Street welfare queens, the big banks would focus more on traditional lending and less on speculative casino gambling. Indeed, if we break up the big banks, it will increase the ability of smaller banks to make loans to Main Street, which will level the playing field.
We don’t even have to use government power to break up the banks … if the government just stops propping them up, they’ll collapse on their own. Indeed, many Republicans have pointed out that the big banks would fail on their own if the government stopped bailing them out.
And using current fraud laws would do the trick in prosecuting Wall Street criminality.
Postscript: If you want to know the stunning truth of how bad inequality has gotten, read this.
If you want to hear what top economists say inequality does to our economy, click here.
And if you want to find out whether government policy is making things better or worse, here’s your answer.
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I'm for calling my prosecutors a fraud
Hmm - whenever I hear 'Republican', 'Democrat', 'liberal', 'conservative - I have a gag/vomit reflex. George, I know you know better - why reinforce the language used by the controllers to try and create divisions that dont exist.
Im not sure how you go about convincing people of stuff that should be obvious on inspection, but talking from inside the sandbox of political thought that has been created to constrain actual debate seems counter productive.
As for what needs to be done, claw back is by no means far enough - we need to over throw, or side step the entire legal system and use common law. Then go after the most egregious villians who drained wealth through financial fraud - and take everything from them - a bullet in their head would also seem a satisfying result.
In other news; 54% of Republicans are turning more Socialist by the day!
What this headline, should have said was , 54% of Republicans want to "End the Federal Reserve!" Now that's a Headline!
It's the FED that causes Inequality....
Government creates income inequality.
Goverment responds to inequality. Inequality is built into the capitalist system. It will always be there. The only question is if government will soften the inequality, or harden it into place (like it is doing now).
If you believe that, you need to get off the choom wagon. Gov't creates inequality to get people to vote for them under the guise that they will fix it. In reality, they perpetuate the dependency state to maintain their campaign platform.
In the end government cannot create anything except equal misery for mostly everyone.
midtowng is correct:
Capitalism inherently creates inequality as it allows the more intelligent/ingenious to deploy their abilities. And within a basic, enforced set of rules those can benefit many people.
As you cannot bring up everyone to same intelligence/inventiveness, to reap the fruits of those better-abled you need to accept inequality.
Gov't only disguises statism (to protect the previously successful from upcomers) as -among others- fighting inequality.
You first need to discern between wrongly identified symptoms and solutions: enforcing simple rules, and no statism by making sure competition is not unfairly hindered.
Exactly,
The people in charge of changing inequality are the ones benefitting from it.
What are the chances they'll cut their own pay or revenue to those that put them in power?