Moneybox

America Embraces Class Warfare

Most people agree with this guy; they just don’t like the hat.

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Some interesting new polling from USA Today and Pew on income inequality finds that the American public broadly endorses class warfare:

The danger for liberals to keep in mind is that voters are less persuaded that the government can do something useful to reduce inequality than they are that the government should do something useful. People are accustomed to the idea of a mass public that’s “ideologically conservative and operationally liberal”; in other words one that hates “big government” but loves programs such as Medicare and Social Security. On inequality you could see the reverse happen, where people favor bold action to tackle inequality but are skeptical that specific programmatic ideas are workable or will be implemented correctly.

But on a broad thematic level, people definitely seem ready to spread the wealth around and I agree.