Money Misinformation

http://www.good.is/post/americans-are-horribly-misinformed-about-who-has-money


This article illustrates the entrenched wealth gap in USA, and how wrong my hero, Ronald Reagan was about economic policy in light of the human condition. He was an elitist who believed in that the rich would be motivated to maintain a standard of moral capitalism which insured the stability of the American society and family, to insure the future of their businesses, etc.


But the problem is that businesses don't think beyond the next quarter now. We've got no long-term business plans which require as much. People want to earn as much money as they can before they die, period. They care little for the future of their own company or society.


What I know I want is for "trickle down" to actually work.


I didn't buy it when Reagan said it, and have lived a life which has reinforced that it doesn't. What is ridiculous is that the majority message of the right is essentially in support of an even more brutal "trickle down" world view.


But that doesn't match with human nature. Some people have to be forced to share. 


The philosophical bedrock for why this is true is that they earned their wealth within the society that they currently reside in. It's enabled by the society, and was built on the backs of the people of the society and within the structures which the citizens pay taxes to create. They could not move away, create their own country and have the same success.


Even more important is that they cannot sustain their own success unless they insure that they don't take more than a reasonable share of the resources of the economy (i.e. the resources needed to make money). The fact is that greedy capitalists have become more and more able to take a larger and larger share.


Wealth is not evil. Wealth without responsibility and perspective is.


The philosophical conundrum is even deeper than this. Take, for example a race. Who should win the race? The fastest runner, right? And should that fastest runner get the reward? Simple, right? 


It seems so if one assumes that all runners start at the same point in the race, with all the same resources to win the race.


But you wouldn't pit racers who were malnourished, aged, disabled, or lacking the training to race versus professional athletes in tip-top condition. The race would be a sham and a spectacle.


Even if by all appearances the folks all look healthy, fit, and well-trained in the starting blocks there may be unseen obstacles which will hold back certain runners. One may not have a ligament in one knee. One may have had a poor trainer who didn't teach him what it took to win. 


Hell, even birth-order, something as arbitrary as there is, has a massive impact on who wins. The first born of the group have been proven to excel in the race (at least they do in school and in society). The vast majority of Ivy Leaguers are firstborn, for example. So if all else is equal the firstborn in the starting blocks will be most likely to win.


We talk about the American Dream like it's some equitable "unicorn ranch in fantasy land" (thanks Sarah). We preach personal responsibility and education as the justification for the current inequity. We fight to protect the liberties of the rich as if it represented some glorious proof that hope exists for all in this nation.


But the reality is that we've stopped adequately funding the majority of schools in this nation, we've ignored the needs of the poor and minorities. We've allowed the rich to squash efforts to make up for the inequity of birth, class, race, and disability.


We've created generational poverty and legacy wealth by doing so. We've also become so myopic and self-deluded as a nation to think that the poor deserve to be so. We've dismissed the responsibility to the marginalized.


It's something we want the liberty to help with if we "want to". But my Sociology education has taught me that there is a nation-wide "Bystander Syndrome" whereby folks thing someone else will serve the poor, or heal the problems they see locally.


I used to believe that the local government and non-profits were best equipped to serve these needs. In some ways they are. But the needs far outweigh the reach of these little rays of hope. Societal structures need to change. 


Plus, people want the police to stop crime. People want the sewers to work (a Milwaukee Socialist innovation). People expect the mail to be delivered. They demand their trash be picked up. And this isn't because they feel entitled that these things should happen.


It's that the structures of the city are set up, along with laws, so that these things must function in this way. Folks cannot just unhook their sewer, build their own electric grid, bury their own fiber optic cable, and create their own trash dump (as much as solar panels, composting, and unhooking rain gutters might lead them to think they can).


We should not tear down a bridge until we know why it was built. In this same way, for example, Scott Walker, has been selling off our Parks and public structures to privatization. But that's an ignorant approach.

It ignores why the parks exist. It ignores the amount of money spent, time sacrificed, taxes paid, and other factors which make them legacy assets to those who live near them. For example, in my neighborhood the lots are impossibly small. They were built that way BECAUSE of the park nearby for the working class families who lived here. It was part of the social contract with the citizens by the county as the development happened.

Now, since the "entropy by neglect" policy has been employed by Walker, the private citizens have risen up and done the work of maintaining them. We've put nearly 2 million dollars into rehabbing a bandshell in our urban park, and done much to maintain what the county won't. If it becomes privatized we'll be monetizing something which we already own!

What we have as working class people is always being taken away for "the common good". But it's not for our good. We don't know who is common, apart from that top group on the chart, whose interests are being protected.

But back to whether these services are entitlement... No, they are minimum serviced required to function in our society. As citizens, they have forfeited some autonomy by being born into this society. They've got to work within the structures which have been established by the local, state, and government authorities for long-developed sound reasons. They should hope to benefit from the perpetual improvement of the wisdom of time in regard to the same. They are active participants and recipients of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.


Why should the poor and middle class be denied the basic things which are required to succeed in this nation?  They're told that they ought to work harder, study harder, and take responsibility for their futures. But they're met with obstacles which those born into privilege do not.


We all love rags to riches stories, or movies which highlight the folks who make it out of poverty to make "something of themselves." Why? I think it justifies the inactivity of the rest of us. Yeah, we feel better about the sinking realization that suffering could be eradicated if we did more about it.


But these folks were "something" valuable even before they found success. We're not willing to acknowledge it until they clean themselves up and get beyond the obstacles though. Otherwise, we'd feel a responsibility of helping them to overcome them.


Our humanity is at stake here, guys. 


It IS morally superior to help the unfortunate. It's not a self-righteousness delusion. Those who do the hard work of advocacy and social justice aren't buoyed by pride. They're devastated by the identification with the suffering, stretched by the vantage point of the oppressed, and humbled by their own sin--and the lack of resources to help them.


So often the poor impart more to the advocate than the advocate gives to them. That doesn't mean that we should keep them around... 


The race isn't equitable. The wealth gap isn't morally or ethically justifiable in it's current state. I don't believe that it should be eliminated. But if we're a nation, we're like a team. If our weakest members suffer, so do we. 


And we all ought to realize how arbitrary our station in life is. We haven't earned a single thing. Anything we possess is on loan, and we're always on the precipice of complete disaster. That's why some of the wealthy hold so tightly to their wealth. They know that no one is their to catch them.


Why don't they help to insure that all those who do fall from any height won't be smashed to pieces? Then they would have so much less to fear, and there would be less propensity for victimizing the less fortunate as a measure of personal insurance.