Why isn’t the Republican Party paying a heavy price for its dependence on a shrinking white electorate, its rejection of immigration reform and its “just say no” legislative strategy? … Going largely unmentioned in most analyses is the inability of the Obama administration to markedly improve the economy, which could […] Read more »
Income inequality isn’t about the rich — it’s about the rest of us
… Polls show that Americans pretty much always want income to be distributed more equitably than it currently is, but they’re more willing to tolerate inequality if they are still plugging ahead. That is, they care less about Lloyd Blankfein’s gigantic bonus if they got even a tiny raise this […] Read more »
Americans Split on Obama as 69% Back Minimum Wage Hike
President Barack Obama is rebounding from record-low approval ratings as he remedies the botched rollout of his health-care website and moves past the budget standoffs of the last several years. Less than eight months before the November midterm elections, Americans are evenly split, with 48 percent approving of Obama’s job […] Read more »
Is a ‘national shift toward envy’ underway? Maybe not.
Jay Livingston is a one-man truth squad for Arthur Brooks. Livingston is a professor of sociology at Montclair State University in New Jersey, and Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and an occasional op-ed writer for the New York Times. … A new example came […] Read more »
Is the Democratic Party’s minimum wage push working?
Last December, Democratic politicians, organizers, labor groups and strategists began diagramming their plan for the midterms. Income inequality was going to be the theme, and a push to raise the minimum wage was going to be how they showed they were serious about addressing the issue. And given the data […] Read more »
The Downside of Inciting Envy
… My own data analysis confirms a strong link between economic envy and unhappiness. In 2008, Gallup asked a large sample of Americans whether they were “angry that others have more than they deserve.” People who strongly disagreed with that statement — who were not envious, in other words — […] Read more »