Economist's like Joe Stiglitz, and many others have argued that America is no longer the land of opportunity that it once was. David Brooks cites some evidence that suggests that there is a growing opportunity gap. As one might expect, Brooks and Stiglitz have a different perspective on the causes and the solutions to the opportunity gap. Stiglitz argues that the schism in society is between those at the very top of the income pyramid and the rest of society. Some refer to this as the gap between the top 1% and everyone else. Some even go further. The real gap is between the top .01% and everyone else. Brooks is more worried about the bottom third of the income pyramid. They are not doing very well, but the top two thirds is doing very well. Brooks describes the opportunity gap as the top 66% versus the bottom 33%. He doesn't like all the attention that is given to the shift in income and opportunity to the top 1% or to the top .01%. Brooks does not see any economic or opportunity problems in the broad middle class. There certainly is no opportunity gap between the middle class and the top of the pyramid.
Given the definition that David Brooks has given to the opportunity gap, he suggests solutions that might address the gap between the bottom 33% and the top 66%. Government should devote more resources to social welfare programs for the young than it does today for the elderly. This means cuts to Medicare and Social Security in order to potentially spend more on the young. Instead of class warfare between the rich and the poor, conservatives prefer to stimulate warfare between the young and the elderly. They have encouraged the young to believe that social security will not be there when they are ready for retirement so that they might be less willing to support our current system.
David Brooks defined the opportunity gap in terms of income, but his solutions to the problem do not address the income gap. He prefers to talk about the morality gap. Liberals are responsible for the morality gap. One of his solutions to the morality gap is that liberals must be more concerned about family values. If they believed that it was better to get married before having children, the opportunity gap would be reduced by some magic means.
He has a message for conservatives as well. They should either be more willing to raise taxes, or they should cut spending on entitlements, so that they could devote more resources to the bottom 33%. He knows that conservatives are not going to raise taxes. They will, however, eagerly cut entitlements.
As usual Brooks concludes his op-ed with a message for politicians. They should spend less time exploiting social divisions and engaging in class warfare. He would rather not have Democrats focusing on the gap between the top of the pyramid and the bottom 99%. They should all work together improving social morality and making cuts in entitlements so that the bottom 33% will have better opportunities. The only kind of warfare that he favors is a war between the young and the elderly, and a war between the middle class and the bottom 33%
I posted an op-ed by another conservative opinion leader, George Will, who was so concerned about the bad things that the Environmental Protection Agency was doing to Native Americans, that we should shut down the EPA and deregulate the economy. George Will's concern about Native Americans is very similar to David Brooks' concern for the bottom 33%. Their phony concerns for the less privileged is used to propose a way of thinking that benefits the top .01%. They are expert propagandists, who have collected a premium for their expertise that has entitled them to be in the top .01%
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