In the post-Occupy age, the Right has had two kinds of response to the unwelcome intrusion of class inequality into the public sphere. The first, seemingly preferred response is to simply deny that the ever-widening gap between those at the top of society and everyone else is a matter of any real concern. The economist Greg Mankiw became briefly infamous a decade ago for writing a response to Occupy arguing as much, and there has been no shortage of people presenting the same case more recently in regard to Bernie Sanders.

The plausibility of this argument, however, has only declined over the past ten years. As the gulf between rich and poor grows ever larger, ignoring the problem becomes less and less credible. Even the American Enterprise Institute, a high temple for worshiping the market, sounded the warning recently, suggesting that “Republicans need to consider how to position themselves in a universe in which more and more Americans believe the state must play a far greater role in mitigating both poverty and wealth disparity than in the past.”