Why the poor are NOT getting poorer in America.
Thanks to the suddenly resurgent populism of the Democratic Party presidential candidates, we have heard a lot of class-warfare rhetoric the last few months. John Edwards talked endlessly about Two Americas until voters finally put him out of his misery in January. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both insist that the gap between haves and have-nots has grossly widened during the last twenty-five years of economic expansion, and hope to ride a wave of classist discontent into the White House.
They have one big problem: it’s simply not true. As economist Brad Schiller points out in today’s Wall Street Journal, that impression comes from only the most superficial and uneducated reading of Census Bureau statistics, failing to take into account significant changes in demographics — as well as an inability to do simple math:
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey helps explode the empty rhetoric of the left.
My take is that it will be a blessed day when large segments of America stop WANTING to believe they have it worse than they actually do.