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Income disparities may be a hot-button issue for 2012 but the 99 percent is more concerned with fairness rather than a revolutionary move toward greater equality. The true complaint is about the interconnectedness of “crony capitalism” with Congress and the federal government.
People don’t necessarily want to take money from the wealthy; they just want a better chance to get rich themselves, according to Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. They care about policies that give everyone a fair shot — a distinction that candidates in both parties should understand as they head into the 2012 campaigns, Kohut adds.
A recent Pew Research Center poll attracted an extraordinary amount of attention when it found that 66 percent of Americans believed there were “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor — an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.
But while Americans are hearing more and more about class conflict, there is little indication that they are increasingly divided along class warfare lines.
Here’s how Kohut, writing on the New York Times blog, describes the political dynamics of 2012:
“An awareness of economic inequality is not new. Pew surveys going back to 1987 have found an average of 75 percent of the American public thinking that the ‘rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.’ As far back as 1941, 60 percent of respondents told the Gallup poll that there was too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations in the United States.
“Despite that longstanding sense of inequality, there is no more sentiment today for populist revolt than there was then. A Gallup poll last month found 54 percent believing that income inequality was an “acceptable part of our economic system” — a slight increase, in fact, over the 45 percent that held that view back in 1998.
“What’s different these days is that a despondent public, struggling with difficult times and an uncertain future, is upset over a perceived lack of fairness in public policy. For example, 61 percent of Americans now say the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy.”
This is an important column that draws fine distinctions in our politics. You can read the entire piece here.
