Confusing Cause and Effect

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, citing his own work as "Reynolds' Law."

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

Subsidizing the markers of middle class status doesn't produce the traits which typify and maintain the middle class. But it does enable liberal virtue-signalers to (falsely) claim the possessors of those markers have become middle class. It's like slapping a ten gallon hat and boots on a city kid and claiming you've produced a cowboy.