Income Disparities? Something’s Inherently Wrong
There is something inherently wrong with a political process and system that requires a person to spend more money to get elected than he/she could possibly earn as compensation for holding the position to which he /she is elected.
There is something inherently wrong with a process or system of government that permits an elected official to leave office with more wealth than the accumulated/compounded value his/her official gross salary is worth over the period of tenure in office.
There is something inherently wrong with a democracy that demands nothing of its citizens beyond the timely payment of taxes.
There’s something inherently wrong with a ‘democracy’ that doesn’t provide citizens with education sufficient to maintain the system of self government and self determination.
There’s something inherently wrong with a ‘democracy’ that would allow an office holder to stay in office for a period which is greater than a term in prison for a convicted murderer….
Why income disparities are difficult to address and resolve:
Average congressional salary:
$174,000.00
Average salary of US wage earners:
$40,000.00
“It is difficult to get a man (or woman) to understand something, when his or her) salary depends on his (or her) not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country”
FDR
koshersalaami
12/19/2020 @ 6:45 pm
I like the FDR quote best. It explains why we shouldn’t have WalMart.
I don’t agree with term limits outside of the White House, for two reasons:
1. Elected officials accumulate expertise in a lot of areas. When looking at arms issues, for example, I don’t want to have to start fresh every six years. There’s no point in throwing that experience out.
2. It is the voters’ choice how long their representative stays in office.
The White House is different because it is dangerous to become too dependent on one person to run the country. That could make transitions dangerous. It could also lead to the accumulation of too much power.
12/20/2020 @ 10:45 am
I am presently about halfway through Obama’s book–rather, the audiobook version. He’s been reading to me while I work in the studio and we’re nearly halfway in to the 29 hours. I’m an Obama fangirl, but listening to him has reminded me why. He loves people, and has faith in humanity. That yes we can and hope and change stuff is really what he’s about. These days I’m so starved for this kind of talk that I cry over something he says at least once a day.
Yesterday, there was an anecdote about someone he met who was doing rolled up sleeve elbows out volunteer work. It made Obama think about JFK’s ask not speech, and that since JFK, he could not remember a president who had called on citizens to do anything for the sake of the country. My initial response was wait, we should need to be asked? But he’s right, asking helps. Maybe Biden will ask.
I also bought the hard copy so I can re-read parts that went by a bit too fast. Have you read it yet? I think you’d love it if you haven’t. It’s a pure 100% sanity after such a long terrible four years.
P.S. like me, he thinks the kids are going to right the ship 🙂
koshersalaami
12/20/2020 @ 6:45 pm
There’s another reason the kids will right the ship. Are you familiar with Strauss and Howe’s book Generations? If you are, we’re at the right time in the cycle for us to be optimized for a crisis. If not, it would take a little bit to explain.
koshersalaami
12/20/2020 @ 7:09 pm
Ron,
It might be time for me to dig up one of my old posts about income disparity. There were two that talked about the scale of it, which I don’t think most people get because the numbers don’t translate well. A million and a billion don’t sound all that different. One compared money to time, one to distance, and I chose those two because people understand vastly different scales in both. Everyone can relate to a minute and a decade. Everyone can relate to an inch and a hundred miles.
Right now I’ll make another point. It has to do with the Koch brothers’ wealth. I don’t remember which one died – one has two kids, one has three. So here’s a wild hypothetical: If the brother with three kids died, the state was evenly divided between his three kids and his wife (four equal portions), and the country had the unfeasible and draconian inheritance tax rate of 99%, and they actually paid the 99%, they would be left with a bit more than a paltry hundred million dollars.
Each.
My audience I think preferred using distance. I liked using time. So, for comparative purposes, a dollar equals a second. A minute = $60. An entry level luxury car costs about half a day. A house in most markets costs a few days, and most are heavily mortgaged. A million dollars happens at 11 1/2 days. Got that?
A billion dollars happens at between 31 and 32 years. Now you get the difference between a million and a billion.
The last figures I saw, and they could be different by now, the Walton family (Wal-Mart) was worth between three and four millenia. Jeff Bezos is worth more like five. I could be wrong about Bezos; it might be more like six.
While most of us have mortgaged houses (if we have houses) that are worth a few days.
This is what concentration of wealth looks like. It is so far beyond need that I can’t wrap my head around it. While we have concentration like that, the bottom 40% (meaning poorest 40%) of the population collectively owns less than a third of a percent of America’s wealth – less than the Waltons or Bezos.
We as a country can’t afford that.
One reason a lot of billionaires (like Bezo’s ex) have committed to giving away at least half their fortunes on or before their death is that their heirs can live great on what’s left. See what 1% of the Koch brothers’ wealth looks like. Normal Americans have a tiny portion of a scrap. This has been my main electoral issue since at least 2008. Now you know why.
Ron Powell
12/20/2020 @ 9:43 pm
The founding fathers understood that the generational transfer of wealth was/is antithetical to the notion of egalitarian democracy.
However, they failed to adequately address this flaw in the Constitution.
“If there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at Tea Party conventions most definitely do not — it was the incompatibility of democracy and inherited wealth.
With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), “A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.” Smith said: “There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death.”
The states left no doubt that in taking this step they were giving expression to a basic and widely shared philosophical belief that equality of citizenship was impossible in a nation where inequality of wealth remained the rule….”
https://www.economist.com/lexingtons-notebook/2010/10/14/you-cant-take-it-with-you
jpHart
12/21/2020 @ 8:32 am
Curious however if compulsory heavy-handed tithing would usurp creative/competitive function.
So often one cowers to the hue and cry of SOCIALISM lookout below!
Always, this essay neglects Uncle Sam’s budget and sundry “OH YEAH!?” when the loud voice angrily locks the gate and privately whiteboards any’which’one corporation’s balance sheet. There is a vast compassion that finds its way to our registered charities due to the ‘spoils’ of free enterprise. Please note the current UNICEF cyber solicitations. And the poignant chime
of that the Salvation Army Red Kettle is down 1/2 this year.
On the other hand, the high-spirited Andrew Yang candidacy minimally ‘tabled’ the arithmetic of guaranteed income. However, such security-surety, to my recollection, conveniently omits the probability of retail inflation. I’m no macroeconomist but proffered clear argument vs. Yangism as well as arbitrary absconding green numbered ‘assets on a screen’ for settlement and ‘payback’ for having had been too fortunate. This penchant for psychoanalysis of our founding fathers toward ‘thoughts’ or ‘true intent’ rather wavers the delivery of groceries.
My goodness LBJ kicked off the War on Poverty 8JAN1964…