Nevertheless, Phillips was mainly right. The rich had gotten richer. And there was a backlash of sorts, with George Bush the victim. Now Phillips has produced a new book that, he says, “picks up where ‘The Politics of Rich and Poor’ left off.” Unfortunately, it also ends in about the same place. Boiling Point (307 pages. Random House. $23) adds little to the basic argument of the earlier book. It’s a long I-Told-You-So.
What’s supposed to be new is the book’s assertion that not only have the rich gotten richer, but the middle class has been “undercut” by “deliberate” conservative philosophies. This “quiet devastation,” Phillips argues, explains both Clinton’s victory and Perot’s populist appeal.
In fact, Phillips had made his point about middle-class decline quite forcefully in his earlier book. “Boiling Point” extends the analysis mainly by claiming that even “upper-middle-class” Americans making as much as $150,000 a year are facing a “gathering threat.” Phillips points out that much of the statistical income growth among even this affluent group might have been deceptive: local tax increases ate up a lot of it, for example. But Phillips’s use of statistics is disconcertingly tendentious. He says houses were “becoming unaffordable.” Then he warns about the “unnerving erosion of assets, especially home values.” Home prices go up, they go down; it’s all bad news to Phillips.
Phillips fits concern about the deficit into his new middle-class populism. Hence, Perot. But if the middle class was smarting under an unnecessary burden of greater taxes and fewer benefits, why would it support a candidate who called for ending the deficit by … well, by imposing greater taxes and cutting benefits? Perhaps because it’s worried about America’s long-term economic decline. The middle class may need to be soaked some more-something Phillips realizes only on the book’s final page.
The great question left at the end of “Rich and Poor” was: “If inequality is growing, what can elected officials do about it?” That question is still hanging at the end of “Boiling Point.” Phillips admits that “willful government actions” probably account for only “30 to 50 percent” of the income-inequality trend. The rest is the result of worldwide economic forces that are increasing the income of people with skills and decreasing the income of the unskilled. But is there really any prospect of turning back those tides?
Phillips’s cross-dressing act may be wearing thin. It’s hard to see how he can continue to masquerade as a Republican conservative when he redefines his “populism” to include “health care … the environment, abortion …. day care, parental leave, equal pay” and “women’s political empowerment.” But then, if Phillips were just another Democrat talking about those things, who’d pay attention?
