David Brooks Discovers Income Inequality

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page

05 May 16

ill wonders never cease? David Brooks, the noted conservative New York Times columnist, has finally realized something many of the rest of us have been saying for some time.

From Brooks’ latest column:

“This election — not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also — has reminded us how much pain there is in this country. According to a Pew Research poll, 75 percent of Trump voters say that life has gotten worse for people like them over the last half century. This declinism intertwines with other horrible social statistics. The suicide rate has surged to a 30-year high — a sure sign of rampant social isolation. A record number of Americans believe the American dream is out of reach. And for millennials, social trust is at historic lows. Trump’s success grew out of that pain, but he is not the right response to it. The job for the rest of us is to figure out the right response. That means first it’s necessary to go out into the pain. I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata — in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country.”

It's about time, David.

Does this mean the American establishment is finally starting to learn something? Is the anti-establishment fury – the authoritarian bigoted populism of Trump, and the progressive reformist populism of Bernie – beginning to pierce the armor of America's elite? And, if so, will the establishment (especially, but not exclusively, the Republican establishment) now be more open to progressive change?

What do you think?