Outside View: What Obama doesn't get about inequality

By PETER MORICI, UPI Outside View Commentator   |   Jan. 21, 2014 at 8:09 AM
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COLLEGE PARK, Md., Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Inequality is U.S. President Barack Obama's highest priority but his solutions are wholly naive.

Disparities between rich and poor are as ancient as civilization but in modern democracies this condition is exacerbated by globalization and technologies that drive it.


Before the radio, phonograph and moving pictures virtually every city, small and large, had an opera house or music hall that offered live entertainment. The top stars sang in New York, London and Milan, earned considerable wealth, but many local performers and traveling journeymen could earn a decent living, too.

Enrico Caruso made 260 recordings for RCA Victor from 1904-20 and radio sent his voice around the world. His income soared to levels unheard in previous generations but less renowned performers were displaced as regional opera companies folded.


For ordinary workers, cheaper ocean and rail transportation for goods and the Internet for services have magnified global competition. More workers in the United States must compete with those in China, but also in northern Europe with those in southern Europe and in large Chinese cities with those elsewhere in Asia.

Governments have made extremes of income worse. Big cities, often with governmental support, subsidize concert halls and sports stadiums and further raise the salaries paid top performers and big league ball players.

The United States and European Union have gone along with trade and environmental agreements that permit China to charge high tariffs on imports and avoid pollution abatement, making made-in-China even cheaper. That pushes down wages for U.S. and European workers and wrecks havoc on the global environment.

In China, migration laws permit rural workers to move to factories in big cities but most may not take their children. One-in-five Chinese children live without their parents. Often children in those situations drop out of school, become unemployable and will create enormous social problems.

Income disparities are making education more unattainable for the children of poor and working classes. This is a social time bomb but government policies to address the problem often make things worse.

In the United States, government subsidized loans drive up tuition costs. Community and less-prestigious four-year colleges have lots of children from low- and middle-income families but many graduates are saddled with huge debt and haven't found jobs that pay much better than high school graduates.


Obamacare is making health insurance more expensive for many middle-class families and driving up the cost of healthcare. That makes income disparities worse, not better.



High talk about social justice, widening economic opportunities and income redistribution makes liberal politicians media darlings and wins elections but such demagoguery does little to fill the belly of the poor.





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