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Uprooting Inequality and Its Ideological Underpinnings
In the past few months, we’ve heard more than ever about economic inequality. This increased awareness is a breath of fresh air, but it’s not enough by itself. We can’t just point out the existence of inequality. We must uproot the ideological underpinnings that support it. No matter how unequal wealth and income are, if people can rationalize it in their minds as the result of some working harder or being more virtuous than others, then our efforts to rein in inequality will fall flat
Yes, CEO salaries continue to soar while the rest of America futilely spins its tires in an economic ditch. Yes, our nation is facing a new Gilded Age where the top one percent holds as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. But for those hard-liners on the other side – and a significant chunk of swing voters in the middle – the retort is, “So what!? If they earned it, they should be able to keep it!”
But did they, as individuals, really earn it? That’s a key question we explore in our forthcoming book, The Self-Made Myth, which offers a more honest story of financial success in the US. We explore how those who have achieved such success did so not just because of hard work, but also with the help of luck, privilege, and the shared investments we all paid for in our nation’s transportation systems, schools and universities, publicly-funded research, courts, and more.
Elizabeth Warren brought this theme closer to the spotlight last year when she said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own… You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for… You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” President Obama gave credence to this very idea in numerous instances throughout his recent State of the Union address.
In writing The Self-Made Myth, we interviewed a refreshing breed of business leaders who readily acknowledge the role that government plays in making their business success possible. Kim Jordan, CEO of New Belgium Brewing, speaks of the roads that carry their Fat Tire beer around the nation. Glenn Lloyd of City Fresh Foods and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream speak of the confidence provided by food safety regulations. Thelma Kid, co-founder of David-Kidd Booksellers in Tennessee, speaks of the SBA loan she got as a woman entrepreneur breaking through the glass ceiling.
They worked hard, no doubt, and were often lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time. But their success was magnified many times over through the work of their employees, and by leveraging the vast infrastructure created through our tax dollars. In acknowledging the role that government plays in making their business success possible, these entrepreneurs make a strong case for why they should pay more in taxes. It’s not about “punishing success.” It’s about a responsibility to pay it forward.
If we are to translate the newfound awareness of extreme inequality into lasting social change, we have to go after the rationalizing arguments that have permeated our public dialogues. President Obama had it right when he closed the State of the Union with the words, “No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other's backs.” As many have said, and as Obama echoed in his speech, “we are all in this together.” That has to include those at the very top.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllImportant topic. One group that faces discrimination is the -unpapered- those who do not have the advantage of degrees. The discrimination is institutionalized and often without merit. We need to get over the idea that the only path to education is some institution somewhere - often administered by an over-paid university president. Eligibility for employment should be based on knowledge and merit - not race, creed, social class, or 'paper' certificates that sometimes don't reflect reality.
A good example of this is GW Bush.If he wasn't born with a silver spoon, I think he would be flipping burgers somewhere. Ditto for many journalists. I remember seeing a story, right after the airport searches became more draconian. This "reporter" went to the local airport, to see if the flying public were dissuaded by the increased security. No mention that the people he should have been interviewing WERE NOT AT THE AIRPORT. They were home, refusing to put up with the intrusions.
The problem is not the credentialing. The problem is that, in a depersonalized society in which no one knows their townfolk anymore and no one stays in one place very long, there is no way to qualify a potential worker except some kind of "objective" credential.
What is needed is a return to real place-based community so that we won't need papers to measure the merit of a person, and we recognize a wider spectrum of skills and values.
Excellent idea! Hope the book does well. I'd drop the whole Obama line though. Time and time again he's unfortunately proven the nutjob righties like Palin to be correct: he's nothing but a pretty speech.
Yes, he's nothing more then a pretty speech and an empty suit.
An entire generation was subjected to steady "re-education" concerning poverty and our poor. As stunning as it seems to me, many believe that poverty is a mere "lifestyle choice," and/or that poverty in America really isn't so bad. Inexplicably, many still insist that welfare is what causes poverty (note: Our actual welfare programs, AFDC and general assistance, were ended in the 1990s). Reality: Americans can and do die as a direct result of poverty today. Hunger, homelessness and illness does cause a slow, hellish death. Yet even our otherwise-progressive media is unwilling to state the obvious: Poverty is an economic issue, not an issue of "character" or "bad personal choices." Those in deep American poverty need aid as surely as the foreign poor need aid. We just won't admit that our uber-capitalist system has some mighty big flaws, so we won't help those who fall. Think: At its highest, back in the 1970s, AFDC used a mere 6% of the fed budget. Yet, even after the first massive cuts, it was a matter of "common knowledge" that i/t was welfare that was "leading the country to bankruptcy." And who didn't believe that welfare benefits were high, even though except for a very brief time, benefits remained well below the poverty line? Since the great American middle is surprisingly ignorant about US poverty, there is no chance that this generation will legitimately address poverty. Without that, the middle class will continue to crumble as more and more people are pushed into permanent poverty. One would think this issue would be vigorously addressed via our more progressive media, but then, much of the media today is created by those who have been subjected to years of relentless anti-poor propaganda.
The problem in the US is income and wealth inequality, not poverty. Half the people of the world live on less than $2 a day ($700 a year), while "poverty" in America for a family of four is an annual income of $22,350. The problem in America is not that we make too little but that we want too much.
The most recent government data show more than half of the families defined as poor by the Census Bureau have a computer in the home, more than three-fourths have air conditioning, 92 percent have microwaves, almost two-thirds have cable or satellite television, at least two color TVs, a VCR and a DVD player, a third have a widescreen, plasma or LCD TV, the typical poor family with children has a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation, almost 75% have a car or truck and nearly a third have two. Forty percent live in apartments, less than 10% in mobile homes or trailers and about 50% live in standard one-family homes. In fact, 42% own their own home with more living space per person than the average non-poor person in Britain, France or Sweden.
I wish you could meet my Somalian friend Margaret. No prouder to be an American than she is, still she says poverty in America is WORSE than it is in her former country. Here is why: Because there is no way for the American poor to provide for themselves the necessities other than pay for everything. And the "necessities" are: keeping warm, dry, have a place to cook, and have the means to provide for yourself and your family without paying for the "privilege" of working for a wage.
Worse there is zero support by our society for doing "unpaid" work, which millions of American women do at the expense of losing over $275,000 in a lifetime of paid work, according to labor statistics. They are performing "free" care giving that would cost $Billions should we build institutions to replace this work. We are not just speaking of children here, we are also talking about care of our elders, and then spouses for which women face the choice between working for a wage or caring for loved ones.
Margaret told me here are some "necessities" Somalian poor could enjoy that Americans have to pay for: Need to cook a meal or keep warm? In America to build a fire anywhere but in a "paid" home a crime. In Somalia it is not. Need shelter? In Somalia you can go into the forest where indigenous people have lived for eons and will teach you how to make your own home. In America that would be a crime and we have driven our indigenous people away who knew how to survive in those places. Need to eat? Growing your own food and/or foraging is still something the Somalians can do, even in public places. In America that would be a crime and the only way to get food is to pay for it. Need a job? In America you have to have a car or pay for transportation to and from your jobs. In Somalia most people can live where they can walk to work or ride an animal or animal powered cart. Your child is sick and you cannot work for wages? In order to care for them, Somalian women are supported by a whole community who sees the need for care and supports you wherever they can, you are not shamed and considered you are "doing nothing" unless you are performing paid work and caring for your loved one is "doing nothing" when in fact it is contributing far more than that corporation you work for who does little, pays no taxes for the infrastructure they use and does not bank, or buy supplies from businesses in your community.
Margaret is not just some middle class person who came to America to have it even better. Her whole family was murdered, she spent years in a refugee camps where she was beaten, raped and starved. When she came to America, as one of the working poor, Margaret spent more than 2 years on the streets of Seattle while working for a wage because it was not enough to pay for her survival. If there is anyone who knows about poverty from both sides, it is she.
So this desire to have the "stuff" you speak about it's because our whole society is geared that way. Now in order to get necessities in America, you have to pay for everything in fees that keep going higher and higher or you are relegated to the streets and made into a criminal for having to live there.
You know if the average American actually listened to the "lucky ducky" American poor, they might learn a few things. Especially if they have things to say that would improve things if only America was not so stubborn about how wonderful we think our society is doing. But then the poor who live these things every day are the LAST people to consult. Let's have some "expert" talk about it who never lived a day that way, instead.
My 2 cents
Cat in Seattle
Oh and Pee Ess: One major reason a poor kid would have a computer or an Xbox in most cases is because some upper income person thinks this is a wonderful thing to give them rather than decent shoes, clothing, or a warm coat that they are not ashamed to go to school wearing so they won't get bullied by kids whose ignorant parents teach them the crap this writer is writing about.
Admit it; the computer is now a necessary tool for kids who have to send in their homework by email and become computer literate in order to survive school and as adults as these are now a necessary skill for both. Yes the kid is delighted, but their parents still need to buy those shoes and shoes can cost almost as much as a damn XBox. Just sayin' ...
Thank you! It's almost impossible to even get a glimpse of what people are thinking with this RW meme that USian poor are soooooo wealthy, compared to those in other countries. I have given up with that mentality.... it comes from having NO CLUE whatsoever, and not being willing to even LISTEN to someone who is struggling just to get from one minute to the next, let alone to the next day.
This is the result of the generation of propaganda the other poster talked about. These lies have killed what little empathy was left in this country, and will result in a REAL class war if these people stubbornly refuse to HEAR.
People with this mentality need to be exposed to a PLUNGE lengthy enough to affect their minds.... and hearts!
The big problem of inequality that I see facing us today is that those who are already rich and powerful are able to use their wealth to eliminate opportunity for others. The idea of free enterprise is supposed to be, ideally, that anyone can have a great idea and become successful with it. That's not the way it is today.
There are monopolies every where you turn, in credit, in retail, in banking, in media/communication, in chemicals----. When did we loose anti trust laws that would limit the extent to which one company or one person could control a market??? A difference in income between $90,000 a year and $45,000 a year is not our national and international problem. It's the ownership by less than one percent of the population, mostly members of a very few families, of about 90% of the wealth and wealth-producing business arenas that is our bigger problem. We need to get money out of politics and we need to have anti trust laws that allow more players in every field. This should not be impossible, but it will not be easy.
I recall reading about a multi-millionaire giving a talk at a business school who said that he made his money the old fashioned way: he inherited it. An honest man.
The Way It Is
If I live in a big house
the last of the swans will belong to me
and I can eat them with quail and rare shellfish
from the bottom of the shrinking seas.
If I live in a small house
I will pay for the way it is with my children, or
with the illnesses from the bad dirt
or the corrosion in the sweet air.
Is that the way it is meant to be?
What says it is so? The holy book of the forgotten
angels we killed the moment we set foot
on this indescribably lovely delta
where the turtles rose up with the world
on their backs and the children of the red knot
devoured the horseshoe crab
until we found something to do with them too
and the great tamarack wetlands and river flats
that empty into the James and Hudson
went suddenly silent of those winged wonders?
Because of this we must know one day
we will be gone too. There may be a way around it,
given half the treasures stolen from us and if the water
under our feet is kept clean from profits and oil
and we learn to depend on the holy nature
of our equal need, the naked truth
of our naked weaknesses, standing alone
along the big river where the last Whooping Cranes float
down and none of us are worth more than any other.
The difficult truth. How do I know this?
I was born between the lakes, in a miracle
of what the ice left behind, still spouting from hillocks
in the middle of the cathedral woods
and nothing is more equal than that.
LET’S REVIVE the Reagan-Tip O'Neal Era Bi-Partisan Strategy for the Ownership Society, as a Concrete Program towards the Non-Violent Economic Justice aimed for by the 99% Occupy Movement .
An Ownership Society where nearly everyone, at least partly, owns their own job, via Tri-Partite Boards of Directors of enterprises having 100 or more workers; and worker-votes of no-confidence in upper management. (Revelation 16:19). (ART IV Section 4 of the US Constitution)
And nearly everyone owns their own home “under their own vine and their own fig-tree, with none to disturb them.” (Micah 4:4). (ART IV Section 4 of the US Constitution)
Tom Kuna-Jacob, BSFS, MA . Formerly running for US Congress as a Republican from the new 13th Congressional District for Illinois, or for US Senate. Currently running for Greene County Board, Illinois.
The USA needs to lead the world to:
1) TRI-PARTITE BOARDS OF DIRECTORS of all For-Profit Enterprises having 100 or more employees (Revelation 16:19) (ART. IV § 4 of the US Constitution)
1/3 Workers elected by workers in Secret Ballots;
1/3 Stockholders, elected by them in Secret Ballots;
1/3 Members of the General Public, Publicly appointed by Economic Councils
of 9-99, elected by secret ballots cast by all residents aged 12 or above, for every township, city, county, State, Province, Nation and Multi-National Trading Zone where a given business have a facility.
Top Paid Management or Staff or Stock or Bond-Holder Profits or Dividends cannot net for residual personal-consumption income (after–taxes, investments, donations and business-costs) more than 10 times the gross pay of the lowest paid worker in the enterprise, or in Government. Minimum wage in the USA at full time is about $15,000; hence maximum residual personal consumption per adult would $150,000 per year.
The Chairman of the Board, President, CEO, COO, CFO and all Vice-Presidents subject to a vote of no-confidence by a simple majority of the workers of an enterprise, which would require that executive to be replaced by another, more acceptable to the workers. This is called Mitbestimmung in Germany, which, I think has greater labor peace than any other country, and a successful and stable economy greater than any country (save Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries).
These principles from the Catholic social teaching called Distributism and Subsidiarity, and ART. IV § 4 of the US Constitution.
2) Full-time Work-Week at 20-Hrs Work for 40-Hrs Pay, with the difference paid not by the employer, but by Earned-Income Credits(EICs), funded by a graduated surtax on personal incomes, and corporate profits (after all other taxes, costs of doing business, investments, depreciation, and donations) above $52,000 per adult or employee of the given business in real 2011 dollars (Exodus. 16:16) (See also: ART. IV § 4 of the US Constitution.
3) Constitutional Amendments:
a) mandating the “Our Father...”, the Full Pledge of allegiance; and the Singing of the Full National Anthem, the Full “God Bless America”, and the Full ”Battle Hymn of the Republic” at every public-school day. The Community and the Republic have rights and duties, too, not just individuals.
b) guaranteeing due process to every human from fertilization/conception to natural death
c) national, State and Local county pre-censorship boards to prevent the publication and/or distribution or broadcasting, by any type of media, of material which glorifies meaningless displays of violence (except where allowed by a licit religion) and of illicit sex, especially of sexuality associated with violence;
d) lowering the voting age to 12, 14, or 16, as each county may permit; raising the eligibility for Congress to 30; Senate to 40, and President to 40. Misdemeanor for failing to register or for failing to vote in general elections.
e) 2/3 majority of both US Houses to increase the debt limit; Presidential line-item veto; requiring the current accounts budget to be balanced, or automatic tax increases on PAGIAOT (Personal Adjusted gross income after all other taxes), that is greater than the GNAPCI (Gross National Adult Per Capita income. $51, 650.18 per adult in 2010.
f) allowing the term “marriage” only for a promissory life-long union of one man and one
woman; but “domestic-unions” for up to 4 bi-sexuals or heterosexuals, provided at least one is of naturally occurring opposite gender; and “civil unions” for up to 3 of same-gender (Ezekiel 16:48-58).
Isaiah 4:1: refers to a coming marriage of one man (not many men; nor many women) with 7 women, one of each race, who shall take hold of him and say “we will wear our own clothes and eat our own food, only and let us be called by thy name, and take away our disgrace.” The identity of that man is known to God). Outlawing transgender surgery. (Isaiah 56:3);
g) and planks 1 and 2, in the event a Supreme Court rules against legislation for 1 and 2, even when based on ART. IV § 4.
And: I’m for a Federal Union of Israel, Philastina and Jordan, under the name: Federal Government of Israel-Alleluia of the Land of Jesus. See my book: “Peace Process in the Holy Land...” Pen-Name: James T. Jacob, at www.powells.com The e-book is currently more up to date than the Perfect (Paper) Bound edition.
ILLINOIS PRIMARY ELECTIONS TUESDAY MARCH 20TH 2012. Voting is your right and your privilege – and your power.
"Ownership of society" is not the solution its the problem. The solution is the commons, the non-ownership of society. Ownership and private property is the negation of the commons - sharing and mutual aid. Its time to wake up, and just scream "NO" to Obama and his b.s. He doesn't "have our back" he is just another lackey of the 1% who truly "own society."
This is precisely what Thomas Paine believed. The land is held in common by all, so those who have exclusive use of land (and natural resources) owe a land rent to the rest of society. He thought the best way to collect that "rent" would be an estate (inheritance) tax which would be used to distribute a one-time dividend to every male upon reaching the age of 21 and an annual stipend to the elderly, the lame and the blind.
In fact, the Social Security Administration considers Thomas Paine to be the ideological father of our system of redistributive social welfare.
The University of Vermont has just hired a new president. His annual pay will be $447,000.