BrianGarst.com

The Founders understand this, but apparently the editorial staff at the Boston Globe do not.

. . .The work-hard promise of social mobility used to be a fact. From 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, to 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were killed, income inequality decreased, according to the Census Bureau. And families could expect to see their incomes rise.

But from 1968 to 1998, income inequality increased. The dream was deflated by well-known culprits: lost manufacturing jobs, expensive housing, single-parent households, the declining worth of the minimum wage, and pay lavished on highly skilled workers while the income of regular folks stagnated.

. . . The resulting blueprint for change could be a simple idea — such as put children first. The goal is to pull the American Dream back within reach in seven areas: housing, employment, diversity, justice, access to technology, education, and healthcare.

Hat tip: Newsbusters

The Globe shows off its ignorance in highlighting inequality to prove a supposed decline in the American Dream. Income inequality is by itself irrelevant. The American Dream is about everyone having an opportunity to advance by working hard. It’s not about everyone being paid the same regardless of their abilities or work ethic. Quality of living would be a far better standard to measure the success of the American Dream. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that the article made no mention of such measurements whatsoever.

The people who focus solely upon income inequality are those who wish to instigate class envy that they can then exploit to gain power. These populists get elected by cultivating envy and then promising government handouts. But to pay for those handouts requires raising taxes, which serve to block advancement and deny the American Dream. Policies advanced under the guise of alleviating income inequality, such as raising the minimum wage, similarly accomplish the opposite of their stated purpose by denying work opportunities to low skilled labor.

The welfare state is antithetical to the American Dream because it is founded on the belief that government is necessary to ensure the social mobility and advancement of workers. In reality, government is the single biggest obstacle to those who wish to improve their station. The best way to ensure the American Dream is to eliminate big government and remove from office its proponents.