A Jumble That's for Sure

Douthat tries to make sense of something in his GOP screed today. I would say this editorial is a fairly good description of the bankrupcty of ideas that comprise the Republican way of thinking. Not once in the entire piece is there any allusion to anything that would remotely appear to be a GOP suggestion on how to fix the problems associated with the income gap.

Douthat offers us typical GOP gripes: taxes ("soaking the wealthy with higher tax rates and cutting taxes for everybody else "), big government ("one way that a Democrat majority can plausibly bring down inequality: Just let government keep growing.") and competition (" Democrats, the heroic efforts of some liberals notwithstanding, remain the party of the education bureaucracy, resistant to all but the most incremental efforts to bring choice and competition to our public schools.")

Same old, stuff right? Yup.

Douthat does touch on an interesting point:

this is because the Democrats have become as much the party of the rich as the
Republicans,

This is where it takes skill for a humble reader to read between the lines. There is no two-party system. It's one big party that just yells about different things but always does the same thing. See lobbyists for example.

Douthat also touches on immigration, taxation reform, education policy and it's all good. But aruging about these symptoms is like being trapped in an avalanche and arguing if the snow is runny or fluffy. You're already in waaaaay to deep and it won't be a clean way of solving how to get out. Not when one party won't even talk about a solution. This whole system is busted, top to bottom. It needs to be completely thrown out and rebuilt.

Douthat reaches his conclusion on the following note:

That combination could eventually create the more egalitarian America that Democrats have long promised to deliver. The question is whether Americans will thank them for it.

Will they? As the income gap increases to widen and more people fall into the crappier half of that equation with the every continuing rece-depression, more people are going to need a helping hand. How else will their kids eat? It's like when you walk into a nice government facility or get a tax break and you say to yourself "ah, this is nice". I think people will like it just fine.