The Rich Get Richer

CalPundit takes apart Irwin Stelzer's article in the Weekly Standard on economic growth:

You wonder how people have the gall to write stuff like this. Surely Stelzer has noticed that while the incomes of the American rich have indeed skyrocketed over the past 20 years, "rapid increases" have been a noticeably absent feature of the incomes of the poor and middle class?

Take a few moments to stare at the chart he's included alongside.

Far from "doing nothing," Republican economic policy for — well, forever, really, but certainly for the past 20 years, has been explicitly aimed at what Selzer unwisely acknowledges: "encouraging" rapid increases at the top end of the income scale. One of the enduring mysteries of American politics has been the ability of the Republican party to get away with this while still retaining the loyalty — and votes — of the middle class that they rather obviously don't care a whit about. Middle class enthusiasm (or, at least, tolerance) for the dividend tax cut is merely the most recent example of this.

This isn't even paternalism, as my rightist friends will cry. It's not that I want to tell the middle class what is good for them. That's their own choice. But once they've made that choice (to be concerned about their own economic well-being), it is mind-boggling to watch them ignore the real effect these economic plans are having on them.