By Jon Coupal
In case you were wondering about the extent to which full-scale Marxism has infected the University of California, wonder no more. G. Cristina Mora and Tianna S. Pachel are both professors at University of California Berkeley, and co-authors of “Normalizing Inequality; How Californians Make Sense of the Growing Divide.”
It reflects what you would expect from ground zero of higher education progressivism.
The basis for the book, according to the authors, were “in-depth interviews and survey data collected from middle- and working-class folks across the state.” Apparently, they were frustrated in that respondents “were clear-eyed about the difficulties besetting their towns and cities,” but were relatively blasé about wealth differences.
That may have compelled the authors to submit an opinion piece in Capitol Weekly entitled, “In California, we need more outrage about inequality.” The opening paragraph posits that, “Inequality in the United States is out of control. And this is particularly true in California, which, despite being the wealthiest state of the wealthiest nation in the world, many people are simply not making it.”
Whether one agrees that inequality is “out of control,” or is even a bad thing, the first observation is that the authors admit it is “worse” in California. That point can be conceded but one wonders why a progressive state that is obsessed with wealth disparity is a poster child for it. The answer is simple. Our political leaders have pursued policies that hurt the working poor and middle class, impeding those individuals from climbing up the economic ladder.
In fact, the California Policy Center makes a compelling case that “California has declared war on its middle class, and the special interests controlling the state are doing everything they can to impose this punitive economic model on the rest of America. It’s a quasi-feudal system, with the entire population divided into aristocrats and serfs. The means to destroy the middle class is to engineer an unaffordable cost of living for households, and a regulatory environment that only huge corporations can afford to navigate.” California’s middle class has shrunk from about 60% of the population in the 1980s to roughly half or less today, squeezed by high housing costs, high taxes, and surging living expenses.
As noted at the beginning, the authors of “Normalizing Inequality” express disappointment that Californians are accepting of wealth disparities. “And this was the central crux of our findings. Californians were skilled at naming and identifying inequality, and then, almost in the same breath, they also downplayed it.”
“When it came to economic inequality, for instance, Californians acknowledged the brutal housing market and were upset that single-family home prices had skyrocketed. And then they would quickly shift to tell us that they themselves could be an exception because they knew how to save, work hard, and seize the right opportunities.”
Perhaps the professors failed to consider that the people they were talking to were educating them, not the other way around. Most people know that nothing is free and attempts to “even the playing field” rarely work out as planned. This is not to suggest that California, and the United States generally, shouldn’t strive for equality of opportunity. But that is different from a mindless pursuit of equality of outcomes.
To provide more opportunities for those at the bottom of the ladder, California has one of the largest and most generous social safety nets in the United States. The state spends more per capita and covers a broader range of benefits for low-income residents, including expanded healthcare eligibility and higher cash grant maximums — than almost all other states. But in a society where welfare benefits and other government assistance programs often add up to more than the after-tax income from working, self-sufficiency is disincentivized, both for those receiving the benefits and for those who do not. Therein lies the fallacy of attempting to close the wealth gap via government fiat.
For those desiring a society where wealth disparities are virtually non-existent, a trip to North Korea would be educational.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
