President Obama doesn’t talk about inequality the way he used to.
Obama declared inequality a top priority in a highly promoted speech in December, saying it poses a “fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the globe.” He set out a clear marker: Addressing it was the “defining challenge of our time.”
But not even a year later, the president has long since shifted his rhetoric away from reducing inequality, and more toward increasing opportunities for non-rich people. In recent speeches, such as one given to labor unions on Labor Day, the president hasn’t used the word “inequality.”
“We should be relentlessly focused on what I call an opportunity agenda,” the president said in his most recent major address on the economy on July 30 in Kansas City. He spelled out a program centered around clean energy, infrastructure, research and development.
Obama also called for passing legislation on the minimum wage, immigration reform, fair pay and student loans — but in terms of expanding opportunity, not decreasing inequality.
Poll analysts suggest that U.S. voters do not respond well to appeals based on an abstract concept like inequality, but rather are more focused on their personal situations. Even though public awareness of rising income and wealth inequality is growing, they say, Obama might not be able to attract voters by talking about it — a concern during an election year.
“I thought at the time, and I think now, that [Obama’s inequality speech] wasn’t the most popular kind of appeal,” said Karlyn Bowman, an analyst of public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute.
Even if Obama is right about the underlying dangers of inequality, Bowman said, “as long as you believe that opportunity is present and that people can rise, inequality doesn’t have as much of a political impact… Most people’s goals are pretty modest. They hope their children will be able to do better than they have done.”
Obama has refocused his economic messaging away from inequality even as events have raised awareness of rising income and wealth disparities, including the surprising success of French economist Thomas Piketty’s book on wealth inequality.
Newly released data has lent additional evidence that certain disparities are growing wider. Survey data about U.S. wealth trends released by the Federal Reserve Thursday shows that the share of total wealth controlled by the top few percentiles has increased throughout the economic recovery, to 54 percent in 2013. Since 2010, middle-class incomes have fallen while the earnings of the rich have grown, according to the Fed.
Asked by the Economist about inequality in August, Obama ruled out a class-warfare approach. “The reason I’m concerned about this is not in any way a punitive notion,” he said.
He clarified that “this to me is the big challenge: How do we preserve the incredible dynamism of the capitalist system while making sure that the distribution of wealth and incomes and goods and services in that system is broadly based, is widely spread?”
Poll data clearly suggests that Americans are increasingly concerned that opportunity is decreasing for future generations and that inequality is rising, said Theda Skocpol, a sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University who studies civic engagement. But that doesn’t mean that they also approve of measures, especially government measures, to address inequality.
“The message that they’re more open to is that opportunity is shrinking for average people, that it’s not as easy as it was,” and that’s why you hear politicians talking in those terms, said Skocpol. Accordingly, he added, voters are receptive to measures meant to boost lower-class families such as raising the minimum wage, rather than policies intended to reduce the fortunes of the rich.
The White House did not respond to a request for a comment about the president’s messaging.
