Washington Post editorial writer: "Obama's simplistic view of Income Inequality"

Of course, this is true. Just a surprise seeing it from someone on the WaPo editorial staff.

contrary to the impression created by the Occupy protests, and media coverage thereof, statistics also show that Americans worry less about inequality than they used to.

In a Dec. 16 Gallup poll, 52 percent of Americans called the rich-poor gap “an acceptable part of our economic system.” Only 45 percent said it “needs to be fixed.” This is the precise opposite of what Gallup found in 1998, the last time it asked the question, when 52 percent wanted to “fix” inequality.

******

Consider the responses to another question in the Gallup poll. Asked to rate the importance of alternative federal policies, the public saw both economic growth and redistribution as worthy objectives — but put the former well ahead of the latter. Some 82 percent said growth was either “extremely” or “very” important; only 46 percent said “reduc[ing] the income and wealth gap between rich and poor” was “extremely” or “very” important.

In short, the public wants fairness but retains a healthy skepticism about the federal government’s ability to achieve it.

As such, Gallup’s numbers do not bode well for President Obama’s effort, launched in a Dec. 6 speech at Osawatomie, Kan., to win reelection as a soak-the-rich populist.

The president, like Okun, acknowledged that the free market created “prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.” But he explained the recent rise in inequality too simplistically, as the result of financial deregulation and the “breathtaking greed” it enabled.

And rather than tackle the big trade-off directly, Obama tried to sidestep it. Rising inequality “hurts us all,” he argued, implying that more widely distributed income would essentially pay for itself through higher growth. He alluded to a recent study showing “that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.”

It’s true that International Monetary Fund researchers Andrew Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry reported in September that egalitarian developing countries grow faster than less egalitarian ones. But the lesson for mature industrial economies is unclear. Western Europe’s recent history suggests that flat income distribution accompanies flat economic growth. Which European country recorded the biggest decrease in inequality between 1985 and 2008? That would be Greece.