The income inequality President

John Hayward:

As expected, one of the big themes for President Obama’s State of the Union speech will be “income inequality.” Those of you who were expecting the big “ObamaCare: What Was I Thinking?” speech will have to contain your disappointment. You’ll have plenty to discuss with Linus when you’re camped out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear next fall.

Of course Barack Obama wasn’t going to take responsibility for his cataclysmic failure, or offer a frank discussion of why he didn’t use the pen and phone he keeps bragging about to get in touch with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and ask her how Healthcare.gov was coming along, or explain why five years of double-digit unemployment persists despite his several dozen dramatic “pivots” to combat it. No, he just can’t wait to tell us all about income inequality, and the exciting plans he has for dealing with it, as soon as we surrender more control over our lives.

Naturally an endless quest to battle an entirely subjective “crisis” appeals to the Left. There has always been, and always will be, “income inequality.” It’s exactly as much of a problem at any given moment as the Left says it is. It might seem odd for Obama to make a big deal about it when the studies he loves to cite show it’s been getting worse under his Administration, but he’ll have a thousand excuses for that. No liberal is ever going to be held accountable for making income inequality worse, or even criticized for his or her own personal indulgence in highly unequal income.
...

That second paragraph is a classic response to the abject failures of the Obama administration.  All this talk about income inequality is defensive anyway.  It has increase dramatically under Obama because of the failure of his top down economic policies.  He has helped the investor class with cheap money from the fed, but his heavy regulations have hurt job creation for working families.  He still is pushing the Democrat agenda of artificial scarcity of energy by blocking drilling on most federal sites and by blocking the Keystone XL pipeline.  These policies are nonsensical and are meant to make alternative energy look more competitive despite their inefficiencies.

There is much more to Hayward's piece where he looks into the downside of the politics of envy.  Also see this piece by Walter Williams on the subject.