Does Hillary Clinton agree with RGF on income inequality?
Hillary Clinton recently did an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel in which the topic of “income inequality” was raised (the media focus has been on her “poverty” upon leaving the White House). After the usual platitudes about inequality being a “threat to democracy,” Clinton gave a more specific answer in which she largely agreed with conservatives’ views on inequality and the economy:
SPIEGEL: The average annual income of an American household is $43,810 (€32,191.77). You earn up to $200,000 an hour for a speech. Can you understand if people are bothered by that?
Clinton: Well, certainly, I can understand that, but that’s never been the crux of the concern in our country, because we’ve always had people who did better than other people. That’s just accepted. The problem is that people on the bottom and people in the middle class no longer feel like they have the opportunity to do better. The question is, how do we get back to having an economy that works for everybody and that once again gives people the optimism that they too will be successful.
This is exactly the point I made in my debate last year with liberal Nick Estes. Inequality is not the issue so much as the sputtering economy which has made living standards worse for working class Americans. Of course there are things that can be done to reduce inequality while also improving the economy including: school choice/education reform, end the Federal Reserve’s printing money, and work to shore up the American family.