So far, we’ve talked mostly about business entities and how they can successfully exploit a small imbalance to grow their advantage bigger and bigger in support of their self-interests. But the same also happens for individuals, and we as voters are letting it continue. This is evidenced by the several billionaires in the US. Some are even talking (optimistically) about the first trillionaire in the US within a few years. As a note, to use the same arithmetic we used before, that one person would own the equivalent of over $3,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. That might not seem like that much, until we remember that there are about 330,000,000 of us. The imbalance is not limited to billionaires. In fact, the richest 1% of Americans (only 1 out of every 100) have more wealth than the bottom 80% (80 out of every 100 people) combined. Why do we let the rich have so much of our country’s wealth?
The affluent would probably claim that they deserve it. But do they? To consider this, let’s say that the normal, run-of-the-mill person in the US has a net worth of $500,000, and the most affluent has a net worth of $500,000,000. This is generous on the lower end (the median (middle of everybody) net worth is about $100,000) and stingy on the higher end (as we’ve already said, there are several billionaires). But, because it gives us a nice even multiplier, let’s use it. It means that the most affluent have a net worth 1,000 times that of the normal person. So, what justifies that factor of 1,000? Maybe the most affluent regularly work 40,000-hour weeks, as opposed to us mere mortals who work closer to 40-hour weeks. Or maybe they’re 1,000 times smarter, maybe with IQs of 100,000. Or maybe they’re 1,000 times more tenacious, willing to make 3,000 or 4,000 attempts at something when most of us would give up at 3 or 4. Or maybe they’re more educated, having gone to college for 4,000+ years. Or maybe God just loves them 1,000 times more than most of us.
All of this is, of course, ridiculous, not to mention impossible (as everyone knows, there are not 40,000 hours in a week). The point is that no one is inherently worth 1,000 times more than anyone else – no one! The real reason some people have well over 1,000 times more than most of us is generally some combination of:
- a skewed advantage to begin with (wealthy and/or well-connected parents, access to the best schools, etc.);
- benefits favoring those approaching great wealth and those already there (low capital gains taxes, for example);
- legal and political maneuvering;
- simply being in the right place at the right time;
- possibly a hair more willingness to sacrifice compassion and moral integrity for money (“Sorry, folks, it’s just business,” right?); and, finally,
- yes, you guessed it – because we let them.
Besides the inherent unfairness of such vast wealth disparities, there are at least two practical problems with it. The first is that, while some people live their opulent, gilded lives, other people are forced to live in cardboard boxes (if they’re lucky enough to find one on the streets). In between, there are large numbers of people who live at subsistence levels or below. If everyone were able to live reasonably comfortable lives (with adequate education, adequate jobs including reasonable job security and benefits, affordable healthcare, a roof over everyone’s head, enough food on every table, clothes on everyone’s back, and some reasonable amount of rest and relaxation), opulent living might be okay. But everyone is emphatically not able to live reasonably comfortable lives in our current system. There’s also the issue of resources. Our sense is that there simply are not enough available resources to both sustain reasonably comfortable lives for all and preserve a huge disparity between the merely comfortable and the ultra-comfortable.
The other practical problem with outsized wealth is outsized influence. Not only can the wealthy use their money to tilt things in their direction economically, they can use it to tilt things politically and socially in ways the rest of us simply can’t. They can do this with the purchase of political access and influence through large donations to super PACs, threats to bankroll alternative candidates if a politician doesn’t bend to their will, lobbyists, lawyers, advertisements, etc. When the framers of the Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech, they did not guarantee the right to use multimillion-dollar megaphones.
Bowing to public pressure, many of the wealthy share some of their money for the public good. But they’re the ones who get to decide on what and with whom they share that money. Why should they be able to decide that? Why should they be able to decide where and to what causes large quantities of resources get directed? Why should they decide which social issues are important and which aren’t? Maybe they make good choices and maybe they don’t; that’s not the point. The point is that we as voters, through our elected officials and using our wallets (to make donations), are the ones who should decide that kind of thing, not a small number of individuals. The definition of a plutocracy (a form of oligarchy) is “a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income.” Sound familiar? But aren’t we supposed to be in a democracy, not a plutocracy?
So, we come back to the overall question of why we as US voters should continue to support an economic system that permits such lopsidedness. And, again, we come back to the answer that we as US voters should not support such an economic system in its current form. So, what do we support instead?
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