The Growing Worry

This tidbit from George Will’s superb column today on Mike Huckabee.

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 — because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled, from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. “So,” Rose says, “the entire ‘decline’ of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder.” Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.

As blogs are a place to vent, I will. Perception and reality are never quite the same. So I will concede there must be underlying factors driving a belief that the middle class is under assault. Yet, there is plenty of evidence that the supposed income disparity we hear so much about is not what it seems. So why are so many voters worried? Perhaps the economic climate has been too good for too long and now scores of Americans are anticipating horrible events on the horizon. (And who knows? It may come.) Perhaps the average American is terrified by the spontaneity and unpredictability of the market. They always have been to some extent. Perhaps the average American fears global trade and a changing world economy. Also understandable to some extent.

What’s difficult to understand, for me at least, is why Americans are falling for the dangerous, over-the-top, hypocritical and self-serving populist rhetoric employed by the likes of Lou Dobbs, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards — nearly every Democratic candidate to some extent — and the other populists class warriors, who haven’t the slightest clue how the economy works or what the future holds. There is a big difference between apprehension and the desire to completely abandon economic freedom.

Then again, maybe the candidates are simply saying what voters increasingly want to hear. Sadly, I can’t think of a single candidate that makes the free-market argument effectively anymore, despite the philosophy’s indisputable and complete success the past 30 years.