Rick Santorum gave a very good speech on Thursday in Detroit making the case for his brand of economic conservatism. The full speech is here, but the segment that is getting all the play is this one about income inequality.
[youtube http://youtu.be/QzoDLO2Jekw]
“I’m not about equality of result when it comes to income inequality. There is income inequality in America. There always has been and, hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be.”
It’s a common refrain from Rick Santorum. He made the case to Wolf Blitzer in late December:
[youtube http://youtu.be/AkmDOeCo0-A]
But predictably it has at least one New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, hyperventilating in his column today.
Its title, “Santorum’s Gospel of Inequality,” nearly reminds Blow’s readers that Santorum is a religious, as well as an economic, conservative and predictably enough there is this line: “..for Santorum to champion income inequality in Detroit, of all places, is still incredibly tone-deaf.” (Ah yes, we, Republicans are always tone deaf at the same time we blow dog whistles, the topic of Blow’s January 20th op-ed, which I debunked here.)
Blow writes of Detroit, the city with what he says is “the highest poverty rate of any big city in America.”
This is a city that last year announced plans to close half its public schools and send layoff notices to every teacher in the system.
This is a city where the mayor’s pledge to demolish 10,000 abandoned structures was seen as only shaving the tip of the iceberg because, as The Wall Street Journal reported in 2010, “the city has roughly 90,000 abandoned or vacant homes and residential lots, according to Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit that tracks demographic data for the city.”
And this is a city that hasn’t seen a Republican mayor since 1963. Might there be a causation here?
With a sleight of hand, Blow seeks to change the subject from one of income inequality to one of poverty because his own column later notes that Detroit has one of the lowest income inequality rates in the country. Why? Because nearly everyone is poor and Detroit’s wealthy have up and left, thanks to the higher taxes levied upon them, the very high taxes that Blow supports.
If Blow and his friends in the media were serious about income inequality, he would be championing closing the border. It’s no coincidence that some of the places that have the highest income inequality–California, Texas, and New York–are also the states that have some of the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. This fact is because low skilled illegal immigrants drive down wages.
But income inequality is actually a good problem to have! No one complains about the income inequality of Beverly Hills, New York City, or Silicon Valley because the inequality in those areas are a symptom of the diversity of human talent and interests.
Contrariwise, some of the most economic equally places in the country are those that are poorest because while not everyone can be equally rich, everyone can be equally poor. Similarly, some of the states that have the highest income inequality are also the states that are the most racially diverse. This is because the diverse areas tend to have more immigrants, who have not yet built the skills necessary to thrive in America.
Income inequality isn’t a problem anymore than having a Google or a Facebook is a problem for Silicon Valley. Indeed, it may not even be a problem, except where it is created off of a culture favoritism. Naturally, the most income unequal city in America is the District of Columbia, where K Street lobbyists live but blocks from failing schools, failing schools that have failed for much the same reason Detroit did: unions that care more about their own narrow interest than the common good.
We would, of course, much rather have income equality in the District of Columbia, a lot fewer economically equal Detroits, and a lot more economic unequal Silicon Valleys.
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