Timothy P. Carney asks some questions and gives some answers in his latest Washington Examiner column.

Voters in Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota all replaced their Democratic senators with Republicans on Tuesday. Those same voters raised the minimum wage in their states. In Nebraska, 65 percent of voters supported the conservative Republican Senate candidate, while nearly 60 percent voted to increase the minimum wage.
Here’s a related puzzle: How did economic inequality begin 2014 as “the defining challenge of our time” and “a fundamental threat to the American dream,” in the words of President Obama, but finish Election Day as an afterthought, at best a segue, for Democrats?
Finally, a third question: Why did Democrats spend so much time bashing millionaires and billionaires like Charles and David Koch, but spend almost zero time pushing redistributive policies such as a wealth tax, or higher capital gains rates?

You can read his column here.

Mr. Carney (a colleague at AEI) concludes his column by challenging conservatives to look “for ways to make hard work pay off” that also correspond to their principles.

My response — at least, part of my response — appeared in an NRO essay about a year ago. The editors captured its essence in their headline: “More than the Minimum Wage: Conservatives should help the poor with wage subsidies, not price floors.”

But just as society should not erect barriers in the paths of young and low-skill workers, so too should it be helping to support the working poor — the stated goal of minimum-wage advocates — and to bring more people into the workforce. Households headed by a full-time worker should not live in poverty. Conservatives, who champion work and earned success, should be the first to agree that more can be done to encourage these goals.
They have a very simple option: Expand the Earned-Income Tax Credit.

You can read that essay here.

— Michael R. Strain is a resident scholar and economist at the American Enterprise Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/MichaelRStrain.