AEI gets the causal arrow wrong again

[dano]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/opinion/sunday/the-downside-of-inciting-envy.html

The right wing think tanks are all over this artificially contrived concept
of "envy" -- gotta push back at this nonsense, fast and hard.

This one is from an op-ed in the NY Times, from the president of American
Enterprise Institute (Arthur C. Brooks). He points to a correlation
between income inequality and "economic envy" and puts out a claim that "My
own data analysis confirms a strong link between economic envy and
unhappiness."

In his phrasing he implies that envy is the cause of the unhappiness.
Bollocks. The unhappiness (born of systematic economic struggle beyond the
capability of individuals to change the collective system) is the cause of
this judgment of economic injustice (not "envy").

Brooks does say that "we must increase mobility for more Americans" but the
typical solutions proposed by the right do not in fact achieve that goal,
which is a disconnect born of either ideological skew or misunderstanding
of empirical facts. Mistaken or misleading, take your pick. When I want
to be polite, I'll call them mistaken. But my gut tells me they are
misleading. And being evil is worse than being stupid.

He says that "fomenting bitterness over income differences may be powerful
politics, but it injures our nation." But again this is misdirection. It
is income inequality itself that injures our nation. Whatever bitterness
arises from that is a byproduct that injury, not a driver of it.

Heal the economic injury, and the bitterness will fade.

This focus on "envy" as the frame paints the underclass as petty, and feeds
into the story that they are responsible for their own failures.

But the underclass is, first and foremost, fundamentally injured by
policies that extract value from their disempowered status and send that
value disproportionately up to the hyper-empowered plutocrats.

Fix that injury first, and you won't have to worry about anything like
"envy" -- people are hurting, and through no fault of their own. It is
entirely appropriate to call-out and point the finger at the real policy
culprits: the plutocrats.

Don't let them get away with pointing fingers at anyone other than themselves.

The underclass does not "envy" first -- it is *injured* first. Let's talk
about the injury to the underclass and push back against this cynical and
self-serving "envy" frame.