You have to hand it to the really, really rich. No, I mean that. You have to hand it to them. As in when you hand your wallet to the guy holding the pistol to your head. And across the developed world (and elsewhere) that's what we're doing, handing it to them. When the average billionaire's wealth increased a whopping 17 per cent last year there was a lot of government support making that happen.
Read Joe Stiglitz' book, "The Price of Inequality," if you have difficulty believing that most inequality is neither market nor merit-based. It's legislated and by the same people you elect to represent the public interest.
The hyper-rich often act like professional sports teams that blackmail their home cities for new stadiums on the threat they'll leave if they don't get their way. The hyper-rich play the same game, threatening to take their money elsewhere. And our federal government has a history of knuckling under just as those weak kneed cities float new bond issues to raise the ransom needed for the new stadium.
So now the IMF says it's all gone much too far, to the point where today's Gilded Age inequality threatens capitalism itself.
Inequality has reached levels that can only be considered toxic. Back in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt, drawing heavily from the words of Abraham Lincoln, said this:
The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows.
...
We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.
...
We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.
...
Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.
...
One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. ...The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.
...
One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. ...The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.
...
7 comments:
And Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican! Today's GOP bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt, none at all.
Cap
And unfortunately, Cap, the Democrats don't bear much resemblance to Franklin D Roosevelt either. Do you think the US would even have Social Security if some of these politicians from back in the day hadn't implemented the few benefits that still survive?
Even old WAC Bennett would be considered a "lefty" by today's elected characters.
It's remarkable how Teddy's words seem to apply to today. We've seen this show before.
With more wealth the more money the rich have to affect elections and again increase their wealth.
The USA right wing media are Trumpeting Trumps! tax changes ( for the rich).
Sad thing is there are many on both sides of the 49th that prescribe to this line of thought.
The USA does have it much worse in that both political parties are run and financed by billionaires.
@ Lulymay.
I grew up in the post war UK.
Under Harold Wilson the UK had a truly Socialist Government.
North America has no idea whatsoever what a Socialist government really is!!
TB
Teddy was a Republican and his cousin, Franklin, played for the other team but both were instrumental in advancing progressivism. This carried on in the postwar era creating an unprecedented, broadbased and robust middle class until Thatcher/Reagan/Mulroney ushered in neoliberalism and dismantled that middle class.
What's also interesting is that Teddy Roosevelt was of the era that ended the last Gilded Age which has today returned.
http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.ca/2017/10/what-worries-billionaires-you-and-me-us.html
Anyong...."The hyper-rich often act like professional sports teams that blackmail their home cities for new stadiums on the threat they'll leave if they don't get their way. The hyper-rich play the same game, threatening to take their money elsewhere. And our federal government has a history of knuckling under just as those weak kneed cities float new bond issues to raise the ransom needed for the new stadium." Exactly what happened in Calgary. threatening to pull the Flames out of Calgary. They are still there after the Mayor was returned for the next four yeas. I'm presently reading "The Price of Inequality." I recently asked our local PC member of Parliament what he was going to do about "inequality". He didn't know what I was talking about or he was playing "dumb". And so, it goes on and on.
That's pretty disappointing, Anyong. It does, however, speak to the calibre of MPs these days on both sides of the House of Commons.
Post a Comment