McCain's near-spastic surge of emotional hotbutton issues is hard to follow, but among the spread spectrum of ideas he's been frequently hopping between is his allegation that Obama is a “socialist” seeking to “redistribute wealth.”
Oops, the clip of Stephen Colbert (interviewing Brian Moore, 2008 Socialist candidate for President) that I'd linked has been removed.
The interview can now be seen here.
A number of people are already doing a pretty good job of shedding sunlight on McCain's confused use, or cynical abuse, of the term “socialist.” For example, Stephen Colbert recently interviewed Brian Moore, socialist candidate for US President in the 2008 election. In the interview, he asks Brian Moore whether Obama could pass for a socialist.
I wanted to make a different point, though... that is, if you're done watching the video. Hello? Is this microphone still on? Ah, there you are. I thought for a moment I'd lost you. I should know not to put myself in deliberate competition with the likes of Colbert, especially to illustrate what I don't want to talk about!
What I really wanted to talk about is the notion of redistributing wealth. I want to suggest that's a bad paradigm for viewing the question, and suggest a way to reframe the discussion. I want to discuss “redistributing burden” instead.
To start, let's look for a moment at the process of summarization. There are a lot of ways to summarize an issue, even something that seems so simple you can just count it up. Depending on what you count or how you count it, the answer can be different. For example, we have a Senate and a House of Representatives in part because one of them counts up what states think, and one counts up what people think. It was believed by our founders, and I think they were right, that sometimes one of these is the right way to count, and sometimes the other. But the point is that they're different, even though they're at some level both counting up the same thing, that is, “how much will the nation has on an issue” or “how much need the nation has.”
So it is with wealth and burden. For some things where money is involved, wealth may seem an inverse measure of burden. That is, if you have a lot of wealth, you have less burden. But the problem with that is that it sounds like it's all proportional. Wealth uses words like “more” and “less.” People who claim they have no wealth at all are rarely sympathized with, even though the use of the word is probably correct, but rather they are quibbled with. “What are you talking about? You have a family. Isn't that a form of wealth? You live in the richest country in the world. Isn't that a form of wealth?” (Given our debt burden, I'm not sure I'd call this the richest country in the world, by the way, but you still hear people say it.)
Sometimes the word wealth is a relative measure. We cannot all be wealthy because we don't all live in Lake Wobegon (“all the children are above average”). It's a necessary fact of relative wealth that for some people to have it, others don't. Now, it's certainly true that there is another kind of wealth, an absolute kind, that says that if you have more than you need to survive, you're also wealthy. And that kind of wealth we could theoretically all have at the same time. We just don't. We have many people who have enough to survive, and more, while we have many others who don't have enough to survive, to care for their families, to address medical issues, etc.
So when it comes time to pay the nation's taxes, the question is what the burden is on them to give up a little of their money to help with that cause. The answer is pretty plainly right now that there are people who are barely getting by, if at all, who are being asked to pay money they don't have in order to help with that. For example, for Sally making $30,000 to pay $3000 in taxes while Bill making $1,000,000 pays $100,000 might seem a simple issue of scale. Both pay 10%. But the $3000 that the Sally is giving up might have been just enough to afford some critical expense, perhaps a health care plan. While at his income level, Bill is at no serious risk of not being covered by a health care plan. So it's not that there is a proportional burden. Sally's basic needs are not met and Bill's are. It might not even be the case that Sally's needs were met with no taxes at all. $30,000 is not much to scrape by on, especially if she has a family. But I'd argue Bill could still manage to raise a family even if he paid $103,000 dollars in taxes, so that Sally had to pay none. Or even if he paid $130,000 dollars in taxes, so that ten Sally's had to pay none.
I hear murmurs of “he's redistributing wealth” but that's my point. I'm not necessarily redistributing burden. At least, I'm not creating a burden on anyone that didn't have it; I'm just removing it from someone who did. If Sally pays no tax, so keeps all $30,000, she's not made rich, she just fails to be quite so impoverished. And if Bill pays only 3% more in taxes, which is $30,000, he's not impoverished by that. He's just slightly less rich. Before the change, 10 people might have been struggling and 1 surviving (well). After the change, 11 people might be surviving. That's a big benefit. The mathematics of burden redistribution are very different than the mathematics of wealth redistibution. Speaking in terms of wealth rather than burden can muddy things a lot by focusing on things that don't matter at the expense of things that do.
“But,” I hear you protest, “she doesn't have to pay taxes and he does.” Not so, I claim. She pays a tax. She is poor. Being poor is a tax. (On another day, I can perhaps even explain that might be quantifiable. But today you can just assume I mean that being poor is no fun, and that Bill won't trade places with her if he has the chance. So saying Bill is enduring an inequity in this arrangement is disingenuous.)
And yes, we can argue where the line is between rich and poor, but we should not argue that there is no such line. Surely there must be some amount of money beyond which if you have it, you're set. Just as surely is some amount of money below which if you don't have it, you're in bad shape. The precise amount may differ with time and geography and other factors, but we shouldn't let that uninteresting fact distract us from admitting that are real effects worthy of discussion.
And please note well—I'm not saying that the wealthy need to just give all their money to the poor. The capitalist system is about the hope that the opportunity to get rich will cause people to work hard for that goal so that others will benefit. But we need to watch that in fact the others do benefit. If we allow the one person (or a small number of people) to get rich at the expense of the others, then capitalism hasn't done what it set out to do. Those who have succeeded under our system need to remember that this is a society in which the populace, by majority vote, chooses how we run things. And if that group gets things to the place where a majority of voters think they're not doing well, they should expect that such an unhappy majority has good reason to start pulling plugs on the process. That's what I think is in play right now, and what will continue to be in play until a basic fairness to the original premise that we should all benefit to a reasonable degree from the success of the few.
A bit of enlightened self-interest on the part of the rich would go a long way just now. Holding firm to the “it's mine and you can't have it” line is not going to serve the rich well at the ballot box.
If you got value from this post, please "rate" it.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
RomanticPoetess
Sandra Stephens
old new lefty
marytkelly
oaxacangringa
CoyoteOldStyle
Salon.com
Comments
This resonates really well with me. It is a much better way to frame the discussion that you have come up with here. Redistribute the BURDEN.
And your point about comparing being poor to a form of taxation fits well with the idea that monetary criteria are not the only way to gauge societal benefits. Well done...
rated
We do have the Warren Buffetts, the Bill and Melinda Gates, the Oprah Winfrey's, who give millions to charitable organizations but they are the exception to the rule. Take the venerable Mr. Paulson who has done such a piss poor job of guiding this economic collapse. He received 150,000,000 dollar Golden Parachute when he stepped away from Goldman Sachs. If you tax that at 50%, man still has 75,000,000 dollars to walk away with and live happily ever after. He could live off the interest alone on that kind of money.
There are tons of Hank Paulson's out there. I do believe in Capitalism at its best. But there is a reason we've had a progressive tax system. It's to keep the middle-class from sinking down to the lower class, thus leaving us with two classes, which is where we're headed right now. Why? Because the Hank Paulson's of the world had control of Wall Street. The Phil Gramm's who have their hands in politics and the Financial Markets a la my former employer UBS Financial. Total DE-regulation is not good. It's proven. Total REGULATION is not good, the USSR fell. A happy medium does not make Barack Obama a "Capitalist". There's a scale. Left, Center, Right. It's not just black/white, there's plenty of gray. I'll take the guy who will explore the gray to NOT "re-distribute" wealth, but make it possible for everyone to have a little bit of financial wealth. I'm not financially wealthy, but I'm VERY wealthy in other aspects, and in that point I wholeheartedly agree that Americans should take stock. But cry no tears for the Phil Gramm's and Hank Paulson's of the world.
VERY insightful post.
RATED
So many of us recognize that socialism and communism have lots to learn from capitalism—information and adjustments that could significantly improve both those systems. Too bad we, for the most part, cannot see that there are adjustments we can derive from socialism and communism that might significantly improve the much-needing-improvement capitalism under which we live.
I’ve written several op ed essays with a theme of “There is no reason, moral or economic, why some of us cannot have more than others—in fact, much, much, much, much, much more than others. But there are absolutely no moral or economic reasons, in a country with the resources we Americans have at our disposal, why anyone should not have sufficient for a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. (I also argue that requiring people to “earn” that “sufficient” probably does our economy more harm than good, but that is for a future essay here on OS!)
Mc Cain/Palin’s diatribe about wealth redistribution is an indictment of their position—not Obama/Biden—even if it is not politic for Obama and Biden to mention that fact.
Share the burden. It's a winner!
rated
Rated!
Spot on, Kent. The choice of the words "redistribution of wealth" is causing the Dems more trouble than they thought, if they had only THOUGHT they would have used your phrase "redistribution of burden". That in effect is what it really is. I can tell you from personal experience that those that are getting by won't be getting by anymore come next year if something isn't done. More than half the country is only one paycheck away from being homeless. And that's more than just sad, it's a friggin' outrage.
Rated/appreciated.
Glad to know this way of presenting it seems to be resonating. I was extremely pleased to come up with the Senate/House analogy just because it makes it clear that having two different ways to add up the same information is as American as apple pie. I'm not totally pleased with the precise choice of words, but I think it's "close enough for government work" as they say... the real value seems to be in mixing up the terminology at all and forcing people to reconsider basic assumptions. But if I hear politicians starting to use this terminology, that'll be fun.
Only 6% of those surveyed earned their money from inheritance alone. 69% earned their wealth mostly by trading time and effort for money, or by “working.”
Of course, a lot depends on just how you define "rich", and of course even people that "made" their money did so by employing vast armies of skilled workers, etc.
Still, a flat statement like the wealth [of the rich] is often inherited (like 80%) is so misleading as to be basically false. That was basically true throughout human history -- until the last century or two. The vast majority of modern personal wealth is created, not inherited (in the US, anyway).
Regarding o'steph's claim—the percentage might be wrong (even substantially wrong) and yet the non-parenethical remark (which I was replying to and agreeing with) might still be true. Neither of you cited sources, but you're both intelligent and well-meaning people, so I'll encourage you to split the difference.
I do think there's a use of the word "often" that doesn't mean "majority case". For example, I often go to a certain restaurant for dinner doesn't have to be that I either go there all the time, the majority of the time, or even more than other restaurants. It can just mean it's high enough to be noteworthy. And while 6% may seem small, the dollar vlaue it's associated with may be large enough to be worth discussing.
Also, I won't press it here but there's also the philosophical question of what is ever really created new and what's built on the back of what's already there. We all inherit the environment in which we make things, and even if we "create it new", we do so because of the good grace of the people who inhabit our society with us. The only reason we have a nation at all, and not just angry hordes living in the jungle carrying clubs to beat each other up with, is that we have agreed to cooperate in certain ways. And while property is a result of that system, the system itself is maleable if it goes out of balance, as it has recently done. So the word "create" in this context is quite complicated and prone to mislead one into thinking they did it on their own, which is a subjective assessment itself, Ayn Rand's very intriguing writings on this notwithstanding.
The reason I deferred it to another blog post is that it's a complicated issue and I'm hoping to do it in detail another time. Then you can really beat me up if I err...
Anyway, stick around and thanks for joining in.
First of all, I think Kent has a great insight about sharing the "burden" rather than sharing the "wealth". Like his House/Senate analogy, that's an interesting new perspective on the issue. Oh, and the Colbert clip was priceless.
That said, there are still thoughts in the essay that go too far, and show a lack of appreciate for concerns on the other side. Let me highlight a few.
It's a necessary fact of relative wealth that for some people to have it, others don't. Now, it's certainly true that there is another kind of wealth, an absolute kind, that says that if you have more than you need to survive, you're also wealthy.
Yes. This is a critical, critical distinction, which you don't seem to pay enough attention to.
Relative to the vast hordes of humanity that has ever lived -- or even to most people alive in the world today -- most "poor" people in the US are fabulously wealthy. You talk about offering a rich person a chance to switch places with a poor person; you should examine that same game with a poor US person switching places with someone random in the world (a rural Chinese peasant, for example) or someone random from the distant past. Life is not, actually, so bad.
We have many people who have enough to survive, and more, while we have many others who don't have enough to survive, to care for their families, to address medical issues, etc.
Again, I think you're overselling the situation. It is rare that someone in the US doesn't have "enough to survive". You're not being fair to actual humans that do live in such circumstances: war-torn Darfur or Baghdad, or starvation in Bangladesh or the beggars in Calcutta.
The rest starts to be a moving target. "Medical issues", for example. If there are very expensive new treatments that the rich can afford, but that have never been available before throughout human history, does this automatically become a "right" of every US citizen? On that route lies bankruptcy and the collapse of US society...
Being poor is a tax.
That's a very dangerous perspective to take. Yes, being poor is a burden. But this isn't feudal times or a caste system. There is enormous income mobility in the US, especially as one gets older and has more job experience. It's a mistake to think that "the poor" describes an unchanging set of particular humans.
Surely there must be some amount of money beyond which if you have it, you're set. Just as surely is some amount of money below which if you don't have it, you're in bad shape.
No, I don't accept that. You've assumed that a count of money is what matters in life. It's a sign, and it's correlated -- but you really have to look at the details of the individual to understand what kind of suffering they have. A beach bum may be perfectly happy working part-time minimum wage jobs, and spending most of his life surfing in the California sun. Or a forest ranger, patrolling the redwoods every day. It matters a lot whether you're single, or have a family to support. It matters whether you're a single parent, or have a nuclear family. Whether you're young or old. Etc.
The capitalist system is about the hope that the opportunity to get rich will cause people to work hard for that goal so that others will benefit. But we need to watch that in fact the others do benefit. If we allow the one person (or a small number of people) to get rich at the expense of the others, then capitalism hasn't done what it set out to do.
At the "expense" of others? Where did that come from? That wasn't at all supported by your essay.
In any case, you seem to have missed the miracle of capitalism, that the very process of one person getting rich, is (or can be) a "tide that lifts all boats". Just to be concrete: Ray Kroc founds McDonalds, and gets rich from owning the stock. But at the same time, his corporation employed millions of people, who got jobs they might otherwise not have had. And also, he offered cheap tasty food to people who didn't have that option before.
So it's vastly unfair to judge capitalism based only on the final distribution of wealth. It's critical that you also account for the creation of jobs, and the production of products, that also benefit these same poor people you're trying to help.
That's what makes the issue so complex. You're imagining that you can just move money from the rich to the poor, and nothing else about society would change. But since you aren't accounting for the jobs and products that are the side effect of the rich creating wealth in the first place, you similarly have no idea if your suggested changes might negatively impact those capitalist benefits. And hence, negatively impact the very poor people you're trying to help.
Those who have succeeded under our system need to remember that this is a society in which the populace, by majority vote, chooses how we run things. And if that group gets things to the place where a majority of voters think they're not doing well, they should expect that such an unhappy majority has good reason to start pulling plugs on the process.
Of course. This is actually one of the downsides of democracy. The "tyranny of the majority". Or, as Alexander Tyler (18th century Scottish historian) wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.
Just because a majority of the people want something, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Even for those very same people, much less for the country as a whole.
Just FYI, I put a link on the "For example" phrase in my first post. Inline, the link is here:
http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/2008/04/18/most-wealthy-individuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth/
The quote I included is claimed, in that article, to come from a "recent" PNC Wealth Management survey.
A fine criticism, and too complex a question for me to argue here. I merely tried to make the point that you have have Kent's $1M rich person and $30K poor person, and you change taxes so that the poor person's tax moves to the rich person, you ought to be really careful that your shift in tax policy doesn't cause the poor person to lose their $30K job altogether. That's what I find missing from this analysis. Where is that $30K job coming from in the first place? It's not the natural state of the earth. It's a product of capitalism. Having that job in the first place is a big part of the "trickle down" you're asking about.
Also, is it fair to compare the plight of the US poor with the plight of others in war torn "third world" countries? It doesn't seem like a strong argument to say that because it could be worse, it isn't that bad.
I agree that it isn't really relevant in this context. I was mostly reacting to Kent's phrasing of "many others who don't have enough to survive" which I think is a bit overblown. There are people in this world who are in that situation; the poor in the US are (in general) vastly better off that than. US poor are worried about catastrophic health insurance, not about day-to-day starvation.
What really resonates with me is the notion of "sharing the burden." Lost in all this talk about money being redistributed is the allocation of resources. I agree with you that being poor in this country is a form of taxation.
Poor cities, poor counties, and poor states have worse schools, worse roads, and worse available services and worse community amenities. This is not a question solely of money distribution, as we can all point to spending per student in DC and other places being higher, but it is what it is. I don't have a good answer, but complete deregulation and strict competition is not it.
oh, & Don - thanks for coming and offering a reasoned, competing point of view to Kent's. It gives us alot to think about.
I should point out that, despite my long critical comment, I agree with Kent's main point. A 10% flat tax on all income isn't that "fair", because of the distribution of burden, not of income. Kent's exactly right. I believe that's a big part of the justification for the US having a progressive tax system (so that tax rates go up as you earn more income). It's a good thing.
It’s good to know you’re on our team. My first thought, in response to your “mutual admiration society” statement, was that you must not read many of the other discussions that take place here: mutual admiration, perhaps; blindly admiring, not at all. Be that as it may, let me just throw out my off-the-cuff responses to some of your comments…
You say, “But this isn't feudal times or a caste system. There is enormous income mobility in the US, especially as one gets older and has more job experience. It's a mistake to think that ‘the poor’ describes an unchanging set of particular humans.”
It seems that while you suggest errors in defining “the poor”, you engage in exactly that. The “poor” to whom you refer are at the top tier of poverty in this country, and everyone below them you choose to ignore, or perhaps simply do not know of. I can’t tell. For example, you say:
***** “A beach bum may be perfectly happy working part-time minimum wage jobs, and spending most of his life surfing in the California sun. Or a forest ranger, patrolling the redwoods every day.”
Do you recognize that example provides only a certain TYPE of poverty, even though there is variance between the two examples you provide? These types of examples are exclusive of other examples that you completely ignore: for instance, a homeless person who has no chance of acquiring a job, such as a person whose medical problems preclude him from employment and who cannot afford medical help. There are others whom you have completely eliminated from your discussion. And your apparent adherence to capitalist dogma sells you short, I think, as you seem smarter than that.
You go on to say, “Ray Kroc founds McDonalds, and gets rich from owning the stock. But at the same time, his corporation employed millions of people, who got jobs they might otherwise not have had.”
The problem here, and to which Kent alludes (in my view), is that these jobs end up actually exploiting those who work them, trapping them in what is in a certain sense even worse than the “feudal system” to which you referred. The level of poverty in those days was higher than today, but the system itself at least created a true reciprocity between land owner and worker, which is something that no longer really exists in our employment markets; thus the loss of jobs, not the gaining of them, which is something your argument clearly misses. These ridiculously rich modern lords no longer take care of their workers. They do not pay enough for these people to maintain a level of existence that the extreme wealth of this society can easily provide, which leads to your next comment:
***** “It's critical that you also account for the creation of jobs, and the production of products, that also benefit these same poor people you're trying to help.”
Yeah, I agree. Would you say that is being accomplished in today’s job markets? What’s happening with GM these days? I’m not an economist, but I can see what is happening in the real world around me. The jobs to which you refer are being shipped off to slave labor markets (Does feudal caste system ring any bells?), and the rest of us are having to lower our expectations, lower our actual level of living, lower our ability to meet our needs, all while these fat cats are getting so fat that they make more money than a whole slew of entire nations combined. I think your arguments simply miss the reality of the world in which you and I live.
So, you go on to say, “…since you aren't accounting for the jobs and products that are the side effect of the rich creating wealth in the first place, you similarly have no idea if your suggested changes might negatively impact those capitalist benefits.”
The idea that the rich “create wealth” is one of the oldest, most feeble myths in the history of capitalism. The rich get richer off of what others do, what others create, not off of their own creation of wealth. It is clear that these corporate fat cats horde their wealth and any of it that escapes into the system is primarily for one of two purposes: to avoid paying taxes or to create more cash from the cash they already have lying around. It is that very aspect that has led to the current financial situation in which they, and therefore we, are entangled. There is no job creation there, no trickle-down, no fairness on any level, and how many of the lower income bracket were exploited in creating this mess?
*******************************************
In another comment you say, “…you ought to be really careful that your shift in tax policy doesn't cause the poor person to lose their $30K job altogether. That's what I find missing from this analysis. Where is that $30K job coming from in the first place? It's not the natural state of the earth. It's a product of capitalism. Having that job in the first place is a big part of the "trickle down" you're asking about.”
It seems a curious argument to say that where that job is coming from is “not the natural state of the earth. It's a product of capitalism.” Capitalism, itself, is not a “natural state of the earth”. The wealth the employer owns is also not a natural state of the earth; it is a product of societal structure, which requires workers, at least if anything is going to get done. The idea that changing the tax structure would necessarily eliminate jobs seems a weak one considering that it apparently asks the workers to compromise their ability to meet needs so that wealthier individuals can continue to “create wealth” so that the workers will continue to have subsistent jobs to work, and that same subsistence is necessary to protect the societal investments of the wealthy. I don’t know, Don, this argument doesn’t work for me. In the end, in the direst of circumstances, society might survive without fat cats, but it won’t survive without “workers”, doers, people who actually move things, not money. I vote to protect workers over fat cats when forced to choose.
Within that same comment you then said, “I was mostly reacting to Kent's phrasing of "many others who don't have enough to survive" which I think is a bit overblown. There are people in this world who are in that situation; the poor in the US are (in general) vastly better off that than. US poor are worried about catastrophic health insurance, not about day-to-day starvation.”
Again, this demonstrates the narrow limits of your arguments. You include only the higher-end strata of poverty, excluding all others who, because of the failures of the system as it currently exists, don’t fit into that mold. This is, of course, one of the most common elements found within corporatist/capitalist dogma and defenses. But it is simply a diversion from the facts. Overall, the position you have put forward here, in the interests of “devil’s advocacy”, are largely based in "myths of free trade" and contain a number of logical fallacies, although I can't say they are entirely without merit, at least as far as they go. And there are, of course, certain limitations inherent in this particular forum for arguing such complexities.
But let me try a few quick replies...
other examples that you completely ignore: for instance, a homeless person who has no chance of acquiring a job, such as a person whose medical problems preclude him from employment and who cannot afford medical help.
I agree that our compassion demands that we offer assistance for such folks. But in reality, these are a tiny fraction of "the poor" in the US, and this certainly doesn't describe Kent's own example of a $30K worker. So while they shouldn't be ignored, neither should they be promoted as the typical case.
The idea that the rich “create wealth” is one of the oldest, most feeble myths in the history of capitalism. The rich get richer off of what others do, what others create, not off of their own creation of wealth.
This is really the key to our differing perspectives, and I really couldn't disagree with you more. There's probably no simple way for me to present my case, but let me at least link to a Paul Graham essay for a completely different perspective on how wealth gets created.
myths of free trade
And yet it's one of the few points agreed to by almost all economists, of every political stripe -- despite widespread distrust by the general public. Again, probably not something I can convince you of in a short amount of space.
(I can see that I have few supporters here, so I'll try not to bother you all by an unending series of unwelcome posts.)
Oh, hell, I wasn't wanting to chase you off, I was offering a different view of your points. And I did admit that I am not an economist. Sorry if I came on too strong. I was actually glad to see a hard-core capitalist saying some of the things you were saying.
I have been reading a few books lately, that have given me a totally different perspective of "free markets" (they only exist in the third world, I think), and of capitalism in general, and much of what you espouse just strikes me as rhetoric that is slowly being disproved by real-world events.
I will check out your links, and thanks for posting them.
much of what you espouse just strikes me as rhetoric that is slowly being disproved by real-world events.
This sounds like a fascinating topic to get in to, but presumably this comment thread on Kent's post isn't the place for it.
This isn't a right or wrong choice. It's one of those perpetually fluctuating "balance" issues wherein we debate how much government interference in private commerce is "enough" to serve the common good? As always, it depends on which side benefits.
An extreme view of free market economics could go so far as to promote "survival of the fittest." Let the poor and weak die, money will measure the winners, and the invisible hand of the market will distribute it. (Sounds pretty close to the last 8 years, huh?)
As we see, that system would be far short of a civilized society, where we measure societal freedom, health, culture, livability, etc. In a capitalist system, we quarrel over how much to interfere in the free market to overcome natural greed, to ensure accuracy and honesty in the basic accounting reports, to set limits on how much risk is acceptable and how much hard capital must back up paper constructs.
We know full well that we would not want a government-planned economy, having not seen one succeed yet. But if today's collapse and the evident causes of it don't convince our people (R's and D's and all other stripes) that no one can rely on human ingenuity and the market to be honest and successful, then we deserve to collapse even further.
One theme of the present collapse has been the progressive centralization of ownership, the ability to go off shore for cheap labor (with no environmental or labor constraints), and reliance on consumers to be satisfied with mass-produced goods brought back to our markets for sale in identical malls created wherever there are sufficient numbers to buy.
To me the most difficult obstacles to assuring society of a healthy culture as well as economy will have to address two difficulties: (1) creating methods that reinforce long-term thinking, rather than profits NOW, and (2) reinforcement of locally produced goods, promoting agriculture, small manufacture, services, etc. on local scale with reduced transportation costs, more diverse production methods, greater independence of regions within nations, -- i.e., overcome the trend toward centralization of ownership and production.
The result would, I believe, redistribute wealth on its own. Now how would you set policy to achieve that? Long-term thinking, decentralized production. Hope someone has the answers! I've only got the diagnosis and the questions.
I agree with your suggestion of refocus on long-term needs, and with the admission that this is tricky to do. I also agree with the second suggestion although I'm curious as to your motivation. In particular, you talk about manufacturing, which begs the question: should every region manufacture the same things (for total independence) or are you just saying to value the transport costs higher (since they use fuel, for example) or is this an issue of independence? You could be saying different things, and I'm curious to know more there.
Anyway, thanks for joining the community and I hope you'll feel comfortable here soon.
"For example, we have a Senate and a House of Representatives in part because one of them counts up what states think, and one counts up what people think. It was believed by our founders, and I think they were right, that sometimes one of these is the right way to count, and sometimes the other."
The truth is the Founders' motivation was hardly so wise or so noble. Representatives of Southern states insisted on the Senate because they feared the tyranny of the majority might eventually undo what kept the South in business -- the evil that Jefferson, himself guilty, called "the execrable commerce" of slavery.
Not that the evil of slavery was exclusive to the South -- Boston prospered handsomely from the slave trade. Washington, DC, was little more than a slave market, until legislators eventually were so embarrassed they outlawed trading slaves in the nation's capital -- but not slavery itself.
Our goverment was still immersed in the effects of that evil late into the 20th Century, as evidenced by the fact that the Pentagon has twice as many bathrooms as required. Care to guess why? Anyone who's been to DC can attest that the after-effects of slavery still poison our nation's capital.
But I digress .. back to the point at hand.
Not satisfied with that degree of unfair representation afforded by the Senate, representatives of Southern states conspired to obtain unfair advantage in the House as well, by proposing the infamous 3/5ths rule -- the singular most repulsive act in our history -- and that takes some doing. By agreeing to adopt that rule, the Founders capitulated to unmitigated gall and greed, and as a nation, we have paid for that capitulation long after the 3/5th rule slinked off into history and infamy.
It has been said that without that capitulation there would have been no United States. If so, then there should have been none. By establishing this nation on so shaky a foundation, the Founders planted the seeds not only for the Civil War, but for the Uncivil War we suffer from today. Look about you, and see where the intransigence, the racism, the putrid false-morality and religious hypocrisy most festers.
I say having made the mistake to begin with, we should have let the bastards secede. Instead, the Federal government sends far more dollars to the Secessionist states than it receives from them. And adding insult to injury, we must hear the constant bleating from those nether regions about the moral superiority and fiscal conservatism of its inhabitants.
"You’re the guy that’s leaning and grunting, but you ain’t pushing the car. You’re only pretending to push the car."
As for you comment:
"A bit of enlightened self-interest on the part of the rich would go a long way just now. Holding firm to the “it's mine and you can't have it” line is not going to serve the rich well at the ballot box."
Enlightened self-interest on the part of the rich? Well, that certainly qualifies as an audacious hope.
As for the ballot box, we seem to be more and more gravitating toward Stalin's observation that "having the vote means nothing, counting the vote means everything." To that I would add, thanks to corporate lobbyists and the SC, buying the vote means a lot, too.