Morning Must-Read: Max Speak: Who Cares About Inequality?

Max Speak: Who cares about inequality?: “A lot of people are enjoying cheap dates with expressions of concern….

…Take President Barack Obama…. He pairs up inequality with upward mobility, notwithstanding their utterly different meanings…. The alternative to mobility-meritocracy is… economic security for those with no assets but their own labor… [and] the non-proliferation of extreme levels of wealth, levels having no conceivable relationship to contribution, levels that render democratic institutions impotent. Levels like we have now…. My jaundiced interpretation of [Obama’s] ‘that bargain’ is that inequality is fine as long as the rising tide is lifting all boats. You may think it’s fine, so you’re a liberal and God love you. I love you. But I suggest that the search for that rising, beneficent tide, constrained by meritocratic, market-loving rhetoric, is doomed…. If you follow the president’s closing paragraphs–his proposals for action–you will find they are focused on economic growth (how well is a different question), with a generous serving of opportunity, and scant regard for compression of the income and wealth distribution, or the expansion of social insurance. (Beware vague calls to “strengthen Social Security.”) So who really cares about inequality?