© Charles D. Hayes
One
can hardly read a newspaper or watch a television news cycle these days without
hearing about rising income inequality. The attention is beginning to make the
very rich fearful. So much so that a venture capitalist recently wrote a letter
to the Wall Street Journal warning
that a progressive Kristallnacht is coming. Comparing the threat of taxing the
rich to the anti-Semitic hostilities
that led to the Holocaust is both despicable and pathetic. It is, however, very
instructive, because it makes clear that, for some, the reification of
capitalism trumps religion when it comes to the internalization of
scruples.
Every
society that treats its citizens poorly pays a price. Disrespect comes as a
moral tax, and we Americans pay it over time with compound interest that
manifests as contempt. Such contempt can easily escalate and pay dividends of
divisiveness, animosity, and outright hatred.
Our
economic system is supposed to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. In
other words, our means of making a living should not be considered more
important than life itself. Money is not supposed to be more important than people.
The metaphorical lesson here is this: If your ladder is missing some rungs at
the bottom and you still need to climb, you have to reverse it. Let me clarify.
Pretend
for a moment that we have to abandon this planet. We are beamed up via Star
Trek magic to another world very much like ours but without any memory of our
current economic system or how we managed to make a living. We have to start
over and reinvent our economics, so to speak.
If
we don’t remember what our roles were in the old world, what do you think the
chances are that we would intentionally set out to create a new world standard
that required a significant number of citizens to work really hard at jobs
which serve the populace in many different ways but which pay wage rates that
will keep those workers in poverty? I don’t think we would go for it. I
wouldn’t. Would you?
I
doubt we would ever set out to do purposely what we have become accustomed to
accepting as economic reality. Thomas Jefferson argued that every generation should
reinvent and rewrite the laws to live by. He would be appalled that our system
has not been periodically rethought by citizens, but has instead been rigged
endlessly by special interests.
You’ve
probably heard the allegory of a frog dropped into a pot of cold water set to
slowly reach a boil on a hot stove. The implication is that the frog will wait
until it is too late to jump out. The same analogy can be applied to an
economic system that has been legislatively cooked to reward the few at the expense
of the many.
So,
on our new planet, would we be likely to approve of anyone buying a fast-food
fiefdom that employs serfs and pays them poverty wages, while everyone else
subsidizes their low earnings with food stamps paid for by our taxes? Do you
think those of us who subsidize such a system could do so without feeling like
frogs?
How
likely would it be that we would bestow on a corporation the rights of a human
being without also insisting on accountability? Would we be okay with the
notion that the people at the top echelons of publically held companies could
pay themselves 500 or 1,000 times what the workers at the bottom were paid and
then allow these organizations big tax breaks that amount to taxpayer
subsidies? Would we consider money to be equivalent to speech so that the rich
could buy elections?
Years
ago, Martin Buber helped us to better understand society’s moral relating
convention when he described human relations as a continuum from a posture of
I–Thou to one of I–It. In the first one, we treat people as equal human beings;
in the other, as things. When a large percentage of the population are treated
as if they’re nonentities, the result is a festering of anxiety, distrust,
contempt, and disdain by both rich and poor as each escalates their derision
for the other. When that happens, being cooperative is considered unpatriotic
to one’s respective group or tribe, and thus, alienation and inequality is
accepted by those who are more fortunate simply as a just comeuppance for those
who aren’t. Keeping this in mind may help explain the way the richest one
percent must view the rest of us. We are nobodies, and any effort to make us
equal in terms of opportunity or status, if not in actual wealth, is comparable
in their view to an act of violence.
If
our species is to survive long into the future, it will be because today’s
insane mania for growth has given way to an ethos of environmental sustainability. The median step on the
economic ladder contains all of the resources one person needs or could
possibly consume. If our knowledge is what grows, instead of our footprint on
the earth, then we have a chance for a maintainable future.
It’s
time to pay our bills, refurbish our crumbling infrastructure, and return to
tax rates that will allow a person to easily manage and maintain a middle rung
on the economic ladder. In that kind of economy, successive rungs near the top
of the ladder would be attainable
only by furthering one’s investment in the system that makes such successes
possible. So, Mr. Venture Capitalist, your fears are warranted, but your
pathetic attempt at self-victimization is not.
When
85 people can attain the wealth of the bottom half of humanity, it’s time to
flip the ladder and time for us frogs to jump.
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