Presidential frontrunners Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are both trying to build their campaigns on a fight to boost the beleaguered middle class.
But they're going about it the wrong way, says John Tamny, political economy editor at Forbes. "While they’re not terribly similar in terms of policies, each has chosen to pander to an apparently easy to gull middle class,"
he writes on Forbes.com.
So what should the two candidates do?
"Were both Clinton and Bush more economically attuned, and perhaps a bit more honest, they would correctly say that the best and only way to achieve their goals would be to substantially reduce the tax burden foisted on the rich and big corporations alike," Tamny maintains.
"Nothing could be simpler, yet each candidate seems rather eager to not be seen as too cozy with the successful. That’s odd, and not just when we consider the net worth of Clinton and Bush, along with those donating to Clinton and Bush."
Meanwhile, though Americans are concerned about the growing inequality of income, they don't see the government as a solution for the most part, according to a new study by four esteemed professors for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
"The survey shows that while respondents who view information about inequality are more likely to believe that inequality is a serious problem, they show no more appetite for many government interventions to reduce inequality — with the notable exceptions of increasing the estate tax and the minimum wage,"
the professors write.
They are Ilyana Kuziemko of Princeton University, Michael Norton of Harvard, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley and Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard.
Bottom line: "The survey reveals a deep mistrust of the federal government’s ability to administer programs effectively and efficiently even after confronted with the importance of these programs in alleviating poverty among those Americans at the bottom of the ladder," the professors concluded.