The Rising Tide: Will All Boats Be Lifted?

We have lived for decades, even centuries, with the economic faith that a rising tide lifts all boats. But what if it doesn’t? What happens then, economically and politically?
Debate and commentary about the rising tide of income inequality in the United States is remindful of Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns in the 1980s when he kept preaching about boats stuck on the bottom. In the mud, as it were.That seems like irrelevant ancient history to some, but it is beginning to be talked about again by serious folk like Eduardo Porter, the economic columnist of The New York Times.Last Wednesday, Porter began a column with the line: “Is it time to stop obsessing about inequality?”His principal witness was Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, who testified:“The returns to growth are going to people in other countries, most notably China, and generally to people with high I.Q., no matter where they live. I don’t really know how you could undermine this dynamic, short of wrecking the world. Trying to deny that logic is going to fail, or worse, backfire.”Cowen makes an interesting — and ridiculous — personal argument about the political implications of equality and inequality. He remembers that there was more equality but more social unrest in New York City in the 1970s. Now there is more inequality but more harmony.Nice, but that was accomplished by driving poor and lower-middle-class people out of the city’s “better” parts. I was there in the 1970s, too, living on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, where my mother was born, in a church-owned building with 10 apartments on five floors. Today, that building is a single-family home, and I doubt the family living there is into social unrest. The rich ye shall always have with you, but they push their agendas in peace and quiet.© 2014 UNIVERSAL UCLICK
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