Virtually every federal, state, and local statute in the United States affects the distribution of wealth among U.S. citizens – some much more than others. Since this is an issue that affects the well being of almost everyone, it is an explosive political issue which is bound to sway the results of any national election in our country.
The idea for this post came to me as I was listening to the comments of C-SPAN callers earlier this week. The comment that focused my interest was from a Republican caller who complained about taxing the rich. To paraphrase his comments, he said: Income redistribution is Socialism and Communism. It is ridiculous to penalize those who work hard and are productive in order to benefit those who do not work hard and are not productive. He also noted that he himself had only a moderate income, so his comments were based on principle rather than on self-interest.
That is a standard right wing argument, but it is a powerful argument, and liberals need to be prepared to address it forcefully in order to prevent it from being used destroy their electoral prospects. The reason it is a powerful argument is that, in the abstract, the argument is compelling to the great majority of people. I am a liberal, and yet the conclusion of the caller is compelling to me – in the abstract. I believe strongly that people should be rewarded for their hard work because that is the fair thing to do. I also believe that people should be rewarded for their productivity even if they don’t have to work hard in order to be productive (so long as their “productivity” provides benefits to people), because that encourages people to be more productive, which benefits everyone. I believe that the great majority of liberals (as well as moderates and conservatives) agree with those statements.
But the problem with the caller’s statement is that, compelling as it appears to be in the abstract, it is based on highly questionable and false premises. Yet the issue is very complicated, so it is difficult to concisely explain the invalidity of the premises, and almost impossible to do so in 30 second sound bites. That is what I would like to address in this post. But first I need to talk about the importance of how the issue is framed.
The framing of the so-called “wealth re-distribution” issue in U.S. politicsDouglas Schoen is a self styled “moderate” Democrat and pollster who wrote a book called “
The Power of the Vote”, which is mainly about his experiences as a pollster and Democratic strategist. Though the book contains some interesting and perhaps insightful information, it is one of the most self-serving and bombastic books I’ve ever read. Throughout the book Schoen strives to convince his readers of the importance of polling, and at the same time set himself up as our country’s most insightful pollster.
Since he believes that everything in politics revolves around polling, he disparages George Lakoff’s ideas on the importance of framing as “laughable”. In a similar vein he disparages liberals and their ideas on so-called “wealth re-distribution”. He says:
In a display of truly marvelous historical myopia, some Democrats argue that the party is losing elections because it has lost touch with its populist roots. Rather than seeing Al Gore’s populist, “the-people-versus-the-powerful” stance in 2000 as a mistake, this camp seems to believe that if only the Democratic Party was even more populist, then lower- and middle-class voters would return to the Democratic fold…
The re-distribution of wealth is precisely what many Democrats seem eager to do. Whatever its merits as policy, as a political strategy, this is seriously misguided. Only 26% of voters believe that government should pursue policies that redistribute wealth from the richest to the middle class and poorest.
Well, duh! Doesn’t he realize that when the question is framed as “re-distributing wealth”, of course most people are going to be against it? The use of the word “re-distribute” implies that money is taken from rich people and given to other people.
Talk about myopia. Here we have a political pollster who
seems blissfully unaware that the manner in which poll questions are framed helps to determine the responses to them. Yet he couldn’t possibly be unaware of this. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he frames the issue in accordance with Republican talking points, undoubtedly with the intention of casting so-called “wealth distribution” in a negative light. Thus he gives credence to George Bush’s rationale for decreasing taxes on the rich, which is: “
It’s your money”.
One of our country’s most obnoxious and dangerous
right wing presstitute, Tim Russert, works in a similar manner. Whenever he has anyone on his show who advocates some social program which would benefit the poor, the working class, or the middle class, his line of questioning goes something like this: But where are you going to get the money for that? … You’re not going to raise taxes, are you?!!
His purpose is to put his guest in a bind. If s/he says that s/he’s not going to raise taxes, then the implication is that s/he’s fiscally irresponsible. If s/he says that s/he is going to raise taxes to pay for the program, that scares people over the possibility of having their taxes raised. And if s/he says that s/he is just going to raise taxes on the wealthy (i.e. reverse the Bush tax cuts), then Russert will accuse them of “class warfare”. It’s a lose-lose-lose proposition.
The concept of so-called “wealth re-distribution”As I said in the opening sentence in this post, virtually every statute affects the distribution of wealth. Taxes are the most obvious example. Other examples include any social program which requires government money for its operation, or any statute which either facilitates or hinders the ability of a corporation to make profits. A law which provides health insurance to poor children means that for every dollar used to pay for health care for a poor child, some of that money is going to have to come out of the pocket of a billionaire. And a law that allows corporations to pollute our environment without having to pay any consequences means that some Americans will have to suffer the consequences while others acquire more wealth.
Should all of these laws be referred to as “wealth re-distribution”? To answer that question, consider the alternative. If a government were to attempt to function without any statutes that affected the distribution of wealth, there would hardly be any statutes on the books at all. We would virtually be in a state of anarchy.
Therefore, the question we should ask ourselves is not whether or not a society should have laws that affect the distribution of wealth in society. There is no alternative but anarchy to that. The question should be rather how the laws should be constructed as to be fair and to benefit the most numbers of people. After all, a government should represent the interests of its people. So in a democracy the people should have a large say in the laws that its government enacts. None of that should be controversial in a democracy.
Whose money is it?When George Bush uses the “Its your money” talking point to rationalize his cutting taxes on the rich, the implication is that rich people have the advantages they enjoy because they have
earned it. End of discussion. It’s
their money.
This line of reasoning ignores the fact that wealthy people (and other people as well) are able to accumulate the money that they do largely, or almost totally, because of the legal structures that underlie our government. Corporations acquire their charters from the government, and those charters give them a whole host of legal rights; they use laws enacted by government to conduct all their business affairs; they use government funded infrastructure, such as roads, airports, airwaves, electricity, fire and police protection, the courts, etc. to conduct virtually all of their business; sometimes they receive direct funding from the government as well. And some, such as Halliburton and Blackwater, rely on war for much of their wealth.
Thus, they have their money and all that it represents only because of government statutes that facilitate their accumulation of money. Yet, if our government, which is elected by the citizens of our country, decides to change the laws in a manner which proves less favorable to them and more favorable to some other people, the right wingers will cry “class warfare” and whine that the government is “taking there money” from them. The implication of this line of reasoning is that the laws currently on the books that enabled these people to accumulate their money are the only laws that are consistent with a “free” and fair society. Nothing could me more disingenuous in reality, though many of those who do the complaining may be blissfully unaware of how disingenuous it is.
So yes, it’s
their money. But we should all recognize that it’s their money only because our current laws have facilitated and allowed it to be that way.
What is fair?Once we recognize these facts it should be obvious that if our government changes our current laws in a manner which affects the distribution of wealth in our society, the knee jerk complaint of the right wing that this is tantamount to “stealing their money” or “Communism” or “class warfare” is highly disingenuous. The much more appropriate way to look at the situation is to ask whether or not the revised laws are fair, and how beneficial are they to most people. The mere fact that they change the status quo does not mean that they represent “class warfare” or “stealing money from the rich”.
So what is a
fair when it comes to laws that help to determine the distribution of wealth in a society? I would suggest the following principles. These are just my opinions, but I doubt that they differ much from most liberals or from most people in general. I suggest that laws be constructed so as to facilitate:
People earning wealth in proportion to how long and hard they work
People earning wealth in proportion to the societal benefits that they produce
People who are
incapable of productive work receive at least enough money to provide the necessities of a fulfilling life
What about the balance between how hard one works and how much one produces? Some people are capable of producing a lot more in a short period of time than are other people. What if someone invents something that substantially improves the quality of life for millions of people, and in return receives enough money to live well for the rest of her life without doing any more work? Is that fair? I’m willing to say that it is because I believe that in the long run all of society will benefit by providing strong incentives for people to create things that benefit society.
There are many different categories of people who are incapable of productive work. These include children, people who are significantly disabled and people for whom society offers no work.
Children should not have to suffer because they have parents who can’t provide for them, whatever the reason. Society should provide all children enough opportunities that they can make a good life for themselves.
Nor should people suffer because society has no work for them. I’m not saying that the unemployed should be paid the same money as people who work. That would provide incentives not to work. But what’s wrong with the government providing work for people, so as to keep unemployment to a minimum. Certainly there is plenty of work to be done, including repair of our deteriorating infrastructure and the provision of health care. The creation of more government jobs would kill two birds with one stone, reducing unemployment and creating much needed services at the same time. There are some very influential people who believe that it’s good policy to prevent the unemployment rate from getting too low.
Such policies provide a good source of cheap labor, thereby widening the wealth gap in our country. But I don’t see how anyone could consider that to be
fair policy.
Are current economic policies in the United States fair?The income gap in the United States
has been widening under the presidency of George W. Bush, such that as of 2004, the average ratio of annual income of CEOs to their workers was
431 to 1. Certainly the average CEO doesn’t work 431 times as much as their average workers. Do they produce 431 times as much benefit to society? Ok, I’ll admit that I can’t prove that they don’t. But it seems to me that anyone who believes that they do is mighty naïve. Did Ken Lay, for example, produce 431 times as much benefit to society as his average worker? Consider the fact that many if not most CEOs determine their own salary. Why? Because our legal structure enables them to do that. Does anyone really believe that they determine their own salary based on how much benefit they produce for society?
What about laws that
enable corporations to pollute our air and water, leaving society to pay the price? What about laws like the
Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provided for subsidies and relaxed regulations for the energy industry, and which many people consider to be corporate welfare for the energy industry? What about the so-called
Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which allows the credit card industry to take on the role of loan sharks? What about the Social Security payroll tax, for which people of moderate and low incomes pay a much greater portion of their salary than do the wealthy? What about laws which
allow corporate interests to displace people from their homes by acquiring their land? And what about laws that facilitate corporate monopolies; or put up barriers to the functioning of labor unions? One can argue (and they do) that all of these laws provide overall benefits to society which makes all the negative effects worth while. They argue, for example, that an energy industry that is lavishly subsidized by government and unregulated will produce immense benefits for our society. The rationale is similar to the rationale for “trick down economics”.
I don’t claim to know with certainty that none of the laws that I mention above provide societal benefits that outweigh their costs, or that they are all unfair. What I am claiming is that we as a people shouldn’t just assume that laws that enable gross disparities in income are fair simply because they’re legal. Nor should we assume that people are poor because they
deserve to be poor.
And I also suggest that in trying to assess the fairness of our laws we consider how they came to be laws.
The role of money in politicsThe fact that in our country
it is legal for powerful corporations to donate huge sums of money to candidates for high elective office; that this is widely practiced; and that the money provided to our politicians by these corporations gives them a tremendous advantage over their political opponents, means that our elected representatives don’t really represent most of their constituents. Rather, it should be obvious that the wealthy have a very disproportionate say in what laws are enacted in our country. And that of course is a gross perversion of the central tenet of democracy, which is “one person, one vote”. For all practical purposes, the wealthy have much more than one vote because they provide the money that translates into votes for the politicians who do their bidding.
Given that, how can we as a people have any confidence that our elected representatives, especially those who receive huge amounts of money from corporate interests, strive to pass laws that are fair and that benefit society as a whole? Do we really believe that powerful corporations donate to these politicians out of charitable impulses?
How can liberals fight back?In my opinion, liberals should not take this lying down. They should not shy away from this fight. Specifically they should not allow right wingers to frame the debate by calling their policies such things as “class warfare”, Communism, “re-distribution of wealth”, “soaking the rich”, or whatever.
None of those things are part of the liberal agenda. Rather, the liberal agenda is to get laws enacted that are fair and that benefit society as a whole. It’s that simple. That is largely what liberalism is about. And that’s how liberals should frame arguments about laws that have economic consequences for our society.
A government in a democracy is supposed to represent the people and serve the people. If that means enacting laws that give
all people an opportunity for a decent and fulfilling life, while decreasing the opportunity for corporate profits by providing some governmental oversight of their activities, then we the people have the right to demand that our elected representatives do that. If we feel that it is fair that the wealthy pay higher taxes, commensurate with the disproportionate benefits they receive from government, then we have the right to demand that our elected representatives enact laws to accomplish that. That is NOT “class warfare”. It’s using democracy to create a fairer and better society.