Archive for April, 2014

296. Is Democracy Doomed?

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Former president John Adams

According to an analysis by The New York Times, the income of middle class Canadians is now greater than that of middle class Americans. In fact, since the days of President Reagan lower and middle class incomes have gone up more in Europe and Canada than they have in the United States. Only the wealthiest Americans have enjoyed substantial income gains in the past 35 years.

Researchers attribute this in large part to the fact that top executives make considerably more, the minimum wage is lower, and the rich pay much lower taxes in America than in other Western nations.

Why are things so different here? America is, after all, a democracy, so our policies are a reflection of the will of the people. Whatever our situation is, it’s presumably of our own making.

But do our nation’s policies reflect the will of the majority? In some ways, yes, they do. The increasing recognition of gay marriage and nascent marijuana legalization are two current instances of popular opinion shaping government policy. And while there are other examples as well, research conducted by Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University indicates that much of our nation’s policy is disproportionately influenced by – and disproportionately beneficial to – special interests.

“America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened,” these researchers claim, adding that “the general public has little or no independent influence” on the way this nation’s policies are made.

These two political scientists examined where both the middle class and various special interest groups stood on 1,779 policy issues since 1981. Gilens and Page then compared this to how these issues were settled.   They conclude that “economic elites” – on both the left and the right — have the greatest influence on our government (and the Supreme Court recently struck down restrictions on what these elites can donate to politicians). The next most powerful groups are those who represent business interests.

Alarmingly, Gilens and Page found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” They say this disparity of influence has given rise to the growing inequality between the rich and everyone else (and between average Americans and average Canadians). It’s also fueling growing dissatisfaction with and distrust of both government and large corporations.

In his 2009 documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, politically polarizing film maker Michael Moore tried to raise awareness of this point. Moore revealed that the super-rich already consider America a “plutocracy” – government by the wealthy – and suggests that in at least some quarters, an effective democracy is seen as the biggest threat to the interests of the rich. If the American people were to actually vote in favor of their own financial interests — rather than for politicians who favor the interests of the rich – the rich would lose their oversized influence.

It should come as no surprise that the super-rich wield far more influence on our government than anyone else. But what is surprising is that so many Americans – Americans who still have great potential democratic power – either don’t know, don’t care or are in denial of what’s actually going on. Unless or until our electorate starts to worry as much about economic policy as it does about who we can marry and how to get high, John Adams’ concern would seem valid — our democracy is in danger of dying.

295. Doomed To Repeat The Past?

“All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.”  William Graham Sumner

It’s easy to assume that William Graham Sumner is speaking of today’s growing economic disparity between the super-rich and everyone else.  His comment, however, was made in 1883.  And he was not condemning the rich for exploiting the poor; quite the contrary, he was condemning the poor for seeking “civil liberties” which would have reduced the economic disparity between the robber barons of that age and everyone else.

Sumner argued that resources used to help the poor, the aged or the infirm took resources away from those who were contributing to society.  Sumner spoke against the same “takers” that Mitt Romney so famously condemned during the last election cycle.  Both Sumner and Romney subscribed to the view that helping the less-fortunate enables the poor to “win the joys of the earth” at the expense of the rich.

Yet the fact that these same words, spoken by a long-ago Social Darwinist (one who believes that only the economically strong deserve to survive) also perfectly encapsulate the views of Progressives dating from before the time of Sumner.  The difference in interpreting who is exercising “power over their fellow men” is at the philosophical crux of today’s hyper-partisan political landscape.

Conservatives see the wealthy as “job creators” who, by paying wages to workers, pump money into the economy.  Thus conservatives see taxing the rich to fund programs like Social Security, unemployment and universal healthcare as threatening the economic well-being of the nation.

Progressives, on the other hand, see the most affluent 1% of Americans as disproportionately benefiting from the labor of the remaining 99%.  Progressives cite statistics showing that for decades now the wealthy have prospered much more than everyone else.  Progressives say that the super-rich have won “the joys of the earth” at the expense of working men and women.

This is a dramatic example of how people can view the same situation in completely opposite ways and we are a highly divided nation as a result.

One of the first casualties of America’s long struggle to come to terms with economic disparity has been reason.  Yet this hasn’t stopped either side from trying to support its position through research.  The latest attempt comes from researchers at the Universities of Maryland and Minnesota, Safa Motesharre, Jorge Rivas and Eugenia Kalnay, who have extensively analyzed human societies to find what causes them to collapse.

These researchers observe that societal collapse is much more the rule than the exception in human history.  They conclude that it has primarily been the depletion of natural resources – with the use of those resources disproportionately benefiting a small, elite class – that has led to disaster.  They say that is what’s happening today.

This research supports what Progressives have long feared, that the wealthy who have gained “power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others,” and shifted “the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others,” threaten the future of society itself.

These researchers note, however, that “collapse can be avoided…if the depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.”  Let’s hope we can rise above our differences and heed this lesson from the past.  For those who forget the past, after all, are doomed to repeat it…