Fox Doesn't Believe In Income Inequality But Still Blames Obama For It

President Obama/White House PhotoFox News personalities have repeatedly attempted to downplay income inequality, claiming that it doesn't exist, that it is unfixable, or that it's a distraction from other issues. Nevertheless, the network still blamed the widening income gap on President Obama and what one Fox reporter called “Obamanomics.” 

In December 2013, President Obama declared that reversing the widening gap in income inequality -- the distribution of economic gains to a small percentage of the population, which, in this case, favors the very wealthy -- is “the defining challenge of our time,” and began unveiling a legislative agenda aimed at addressing that trend.

Fox pundits have repeatedly dismissed concerns over growing income inequality in the United States. Fox correspondent Doug McKelway once claimed it was merely “class resentment,” that exists because “some people are better, smarter, harder-working, or luckier than others.” Bill O'Reilly called it “bull.” When the network has acknowledged income inequality, its contributors have claimed that there is "no way" growing inequality is “going to be stopped,” that attempting to reverse it will result in “chronic unemployment,” and that the Obama administration's focus on closing the income gap is merely a "distraction."

But that didn't stop Fox Business senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino from blaming Obama's economic policies. On the January 16 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Gasparino called the president a “big class warfare guy,” and claimed “there is more income inequality under Obamanomics.” Previously, Fox misconstrued a report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) to claim that the president's policies were responsible for declining wages. The NELP later told Media Matters that Fox's misrepresentation of their report was “shamelessly partisan and completely inaccurate spin on economic facts.” 

In reality, income inequality has been growing for decades, long before the president took office. From Mother Jones:

Income Inequality

The situation is so serious that one Nobel Prize winning economist, Robert Shiller, told the Associated Press, “The most important problem that we are facing now today, I think, is rising inequality in the United States and elsewhere in the world.” The administration has attempted to address the issue throughout Obama's presidency, only to be blocked by Republican obstructionism. From New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman:

And now, having prevented Mr. Obama from implementing any of his policies, those same Republicans are pointing to disappointing job numbers and declaring that the president's policies have failed.

Think of it as a two-part strategy. First, obstruct any and all efforts to strengthen the economy, then exploit the economy's weakness for political gain. If this strategy sounds cynical, that's because it is.

[...]

[T]he reality [is] that for most of Mr. Obama's time in office U.S. fiscal policy has been defined not by the president's plans but by Republican stonewalling.

It's not surprising that Fox is attempting to shift blame to Obama. The network's war on labor as well as its repeated lobbying for cuts to government assistance programs for low income Americans may itself be exacerbating income inequality.