Obama and Income Inequality

Another Obama economic "achievement" that I deferred writing about Labor Day weekend was increasing income inequality. We held back, but The Huffington Post did not. 

Despite President Obama’s view that growing income inequality is hurting the nation, it’s actually gotten worse during his tenure, at least according to one measure.

The difference between America’s median and average wages grew at a rate of 0.28 percent under President Bush, while it’s grown at a rate of 1.14 percent -- or about four times that -- under Obama, according to The New York Times. The median wage is the midpoint of all workers’ wages, so it only ticks up when everyone is earning more. While a small group of people earning higher pay can push the average wage up.

So, as the difference between the two rises, it means that those at the bottom of the income scale are making fewer gains compared to those at the top.

This data point is one of many that illustrates that in Obama’s America the rich are gaining while the rest of us are struggling to get by. The wealthy took home a greater share of the nation’s income during the years following the recession, under Obama, than between 2002 and 2007, under Bush, according to a 2012 analysis from Emmanuel Saez, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

That's right -- worse than Bush.

We blogged in April,

... that Obama’s print (money), borrow (money) and spend (money) policy triad favors people with money -- the uppercrust. Obama is a money lever guy, not an economic leader. The money changer in chief doesn't understand or promote a value driven economy. Real exchanges of actual goods and genuine services drive value and build a strong, broad based and resilient economy and sustainable economic growth. The demand and production led economy that we should be building has attributes that reach into every household.  

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that what money leveraging does is help people with money! Let me repeat, Obama’s policies help people with money! It’s a rich guy’s game playing paradise. You don’t have to believe me. Look at the data.

There is no free pass for the President. What is happening is a natural consequence of his policies and personnel appointments.

Despite this record, Obama's answer is simply to increase the dose of the very same treatments — more government spending, more taxes, more intrusions into the marketplace in the name of "shared prosperity" — that hobbled the recovery and produced the very misery he now claims he can fix.

In other words, Obama is selling snake oil.

Enough said.