Douthat: The GOP Needs Tackle Social Immobility
ConservativeHome USA reports:
RS: Imagine that you have just been named the czar of the middle class. What 3 policy changes would you implement to improve the prospects of middle class families in America?
Douthat: First, a reform of the health care reform that moves us in a more market-friendly direction than Obamacare, but also creates some kind of a tax credit/deduction for people who don't get insurance through their employer and can't afford it on the individual market. This is something the Republican leadership hasn't been willing to embrace, but it's a necessity to make the health care system fair and equitable. (Right now, the tax code effectively discriminates against families who don't get employer-provided health care, which is a large and growing share of the population.)
Second, a comprehensive tax reform along the lines that Ramesh Ponnuru and Robert Stein have proposed, which lowers rates and curbs deductions (something most conservatives favor) but also makes the tax code more family friendly, through a larger child tax credit (something some conservatives are still skeptical of). Our tax code creates children as a luxury good rather than a form of investment in the nation's future. If conservatives want to serve the interests of middle-income families -- their natural constituency -- then that needs to change.
Finally, a broad move toward greater competition in the public education system, both in the context of K-12 education, and in public colleges and universities as well. Here's there's increasingly a bipartisan consensus on the value of choice and competition: What's needed is the political will to fight a long war of attrition to reform the public-school bureaucracy.
RS: What is the biggest public policy issue that conservatives don’t seem to want to talk about?
Douthat: Wage stagnation and social immobility. The fact that it probably isn't as easy to rise in America as it used to be. The fact that the middle and working classes struggled to keep up during the Bush years, conservative victories on tax policy notwithstanding. The fact that this country is more stratified than it should be if America's going to remain globally competitive, and if the American dream is going to stay alive.
