Most Americans are not only open to the idea of income equality, they like the idea a lot. As a people, we think that those who are successful should be well rewarded financially, and these rewards should grow over time.
You made a million last year and two million this year? Fine. You made $10 million last year and $100 million this year. Super. Your income jumped from $840 million last year to $1.2 billion this year? Go, man, go.
There’s a caveat to such approval, however. While the one percent or the one-tenth of one percent wax greatly, other Americans also want to get their own taste, their own trickle. They want to go from $40,000 to $60,000, from $65,000 to $85,000.
And of course that hasn’t been happening in recent years. All the very modest economic growth in this country during this period, ALL of it, has gravitated to the top and the very top. In the middle, and at the bottom, things have gotten worse, or at best, there’s been a struggle just to stay in place.
We’re not getting our taste, our trickle, while at the top they’re skimming all the cream. And the skimmers at the top seem more and more to be getting theirs not in ways distinct from us, but at our expense.
Which brings us to the Mitt Romney campaign for President. Will his proposed economic nostrums (to the extent he has even deigned to explain them) bring about more economic growth? Even if you think they will, look closer and you’ll see where all this extra growth would go. And it’s not to the middle and the bottom of the economic scale.
Hence, the newly coined Obama campaign phrase “Romney Hood,” which manages to encapsulate this in a single phrase. The idea that a Romney presidency will only benefit the rich at the expense of all others.
Could Democratic political phrase mongers have finally outdone their Republican counterparts, after trailing so badly for so many years? I believe they have.
A poll from Rasmussen I came across the other day found a new high among Americans who now don’t want the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) to be repealed — 45 percent. Not a majority, of course, but movement in a direction favorable to Democrats.
If this presidential race comes down to Obamacare versus Romney Hood, I’m thinking we might have a two-term Presdient in office next year.