Depriving the Well-Off Won't Help the Working Class

Many Americans are worried that the U.S. is becoming a class society. The country’s founding mythology holds that it began as an egalitarian alternative to the hidebound, class cultures of Europe -- a place where even the lowliest of birth rise through hard work and ingenuity. Of course, that rosy image was never quite accurate, but in the mid-20th century the U.S. did manage to build a middle-class society with a decent amount of social mobility.

Now that mobility is fading, and that middle class has bifurcated, and it’s causing much consternation. Many writers have bemoaned the plight of the working class, which has been losing ground. To this growing list we must now add Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, whose new book “Dream Hoarders” claims that the upper-middle class is hogging most of the country’s economic opportunities. Though Reeves’s book correctly identifies a major problem in American society, it ultimately falls short of offering a comprehensive solution.