In the old spiritual, Ezekiel reminded us that the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone's connected to the shin bone, etc.
That's worth remembering. Everything's connected, even the fact that we're increasingly disconnected.
Yesterday, a Pew Research Center survey showed that divisions between rich and poor are the greatest source of social conflict. That shouldn't be too surprising given that income inequality now is higher than it's ever been in U.S. history. Indeed, the U.S. is now on a par with Uganda.
Meanwhile, some politicians refuse to talk about it. Mitt Romney, for example, says it's simply a matter of "envy." His competitors for the GOP nomination seem to agree, decrying Democrats for trying to stimulate "class warfare" whenever they bring up the issue of rising inequality.
Indeed, some political scientists see a strong connection between income inequality and political polarization. In fact, it's the subtitle of one of the best books I've read on the topic -- Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches.
In it, the authors show how political polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and then rose together dramatically from 1977 on.
Part of the reason, they claim, is that Republicans increasingly moved away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. They suggest that rising immigration in the 1970s made this shift possible. Non-citizens, a larger share of the population and disproportionately poor, can't vote. So there was less political pressure from the bottom for redistribution than there was from the top against it.
In what they call "the choreography of American politics," inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.
Interestingly, Pew's last report showed that immigration was the greatest source of conflict and it's still a close second, pretty much within the margin or error.
So there you have it -- inequality, immigration, political polarization, they're all connected. Just like Ezeckiel said.
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