Inequality and social rule

Matthew Continetti writes,

It’s a funny thing about the inequality debate that has consumed the American intelligentsia for the past several years: The individuals who are most interested in identifying, describing, diagnosing, and addressing the phenomenon of income inequality are the individuals least affected by it.

The administration focusing all of its efforts on combating inequality is the same administration advocating: an amnesty that would incentivize illegal immigration and drive down low-skilled wages; trade deals with mercantilist nations that would reap profit for Democratic donors and job losses for the low-skilled; a minimum wage increase that makes it less likely an unskilled teen gets his first job; an unending delay on a pipeline that would create jobs and bolster energy independence; and an all-lifestyles-are-equal social policy that offers nothing but speeches in the face of the decomposition of the nuclear family.

What the income inequality debate is about is not social justice but social rule. It is about power, about who wields it and to what purposes, and the slogans and statistics that appear in the papers are the weapons by which a caste of liberals organizes its political coalition and vanquishes its opposites.