9 July 2004

On The Fight Against Inequality

I have in front of me a transcript of the keynote speech given at the Inequality Matters forum at New York University on 3 June 2004. It’s an interesting speech, rather long-winded because of the sheer volume of examples given to support the speaker’s premise. It was originally sent to me as an example of why it would be a bad idea to allow Stephen Harper to run the country. While I will agree with the idea that Mr. Harper certainly has a hidden agenda and likely did all the way through the election, what I took away from my reading of the speech was entirely different.

The speech was given by Bill Moyers, who states that, “The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand.' This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favouring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us.”

In other words the root cause behind inequality, behind the ever widening gap between the middle class and the working poor and poverty stricken, is the direct result of government corruption. Political figures have given their loyalty to the activists and special interest groups that have paid for their campaign funds and ignored the rest of the taxpaying public. I’m not all that certain that I buy into this argument completely, but I will admit that there is some logic behind it. In the United States the House of Representatives recently approved new tax credits for children. The problem with this is that the children who will benefit from these credits belong to families whose household income can be as high as US$309,000/Year, the same class of families who enjoy significant benefits from previous tax cuts put forward by the current administration.

This really isn’t anything new. Democracy is supposed to be rule by the Middle Class, but the fact of the matter is that the Republican Party is firmly allied with the more financially affluent of America’s citizens. Agreements are made in the back rooms of country clubs all over the United States on the strength of little more than a handshake, and these agreements are honoured because of the unspoken but very real threat that failure to honour the agreement will result in a complete and total loss of campaign funding. Like most other businessmen, politicians themselves are in business, the business of getting reelected. If they piss off the people who pay for their campaigns, then there’s no campaign and they don’t get reelected.

The end result of this kind of manoeuvring is easy to predict. The real concentration of political power sits with the upper classes while the middle and lower classes are essentially left to rot. The working mans vote suddenly has less emphasis than the business owners vote, when in a perfect society they should carry the same weight.

So, we have the contention that government corruption and special interest lobbying are at the heart of the inequality problem, and we also have an environment in which the people who pay for the campaigns are the ones who gain the loyalty of the political class. Now consider the following:

More children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other nation.

Millions of workers are actually making less money today, in terms of real dollars, than they did twenty years ago.

The working classes are putting in longer and longer hours, and yet they are still falling behind.

Despite the fact that America has the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans - eight out of ten of them in working families - are uninsured and cannot get the basic care that they need.

The gap between rich and poor in America is greater now than it has been in fifty years.

For years it was said that the people down at the bottom of the poverty ladder were single, jobless mothers. For years they have been told that work, education, and marriage are the keys to moving up the social and economic ladder. I’m not sure that can be said to be true any longer, not with the poverty line becoming as blurred as it is.

Some years ago a fellow I went to school with commented to me that the American system of Socio-Economic government was superior to the Canadian system because the American system promoted wealth where the Canadian system did not. That may be so, but is this really a good thing, or are people sacrificing some part of themselves in their single minded pursuit of the capitalist ideal?

How much of the widening of the gap between the middle and lower classes is the fault of corrupt business politicians courting the special interest groups that pay for their political campaigns and how much is because of our stubborn insistence as a people of buying into the modern mythos that the road to prosperity and social acceptance lies in the single minded acquisition of material goods and financial wealth, that he who dies with the most toys wins? Why does the socially acceptable definition of success and prosperity have to include a house, a car, a fat bank account, a mortgage, and seven credit cards?

And while we’re asking questions, I have to ask how much money a person really needs. At what point does the pursuit of material and financial wealth become less about bettering oneself and more about lining ones pockets? At what point do we stop looking out for our own best interests and start succumbing to greed? Does the pursuit of material and financial wealth make you a better and happier person, or does that even matter to people anymore? Have we as a people really sunk so low that we are simply acquiring for the sake of acquiring?

Now, before people start taking things the wrong way, I’m not saying that in order to be truly happy and fulfilled we as a people should give up our material and financial wealth and live under vows of poverty like good little monks. That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that maybe its time that we took a good long look at the kinds of messages that we as taxpayers and educators and parents are sending the younger generation, the people who look up to us for their standards on how to behave in the big bad world. It may have started with us, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t end with us.

We as Canadians are lucky, because the political mechanisms here make the kind of corruption and old boy networking that pervades the political system in the States a lot more difficult. We pay so much more in taxes so that we can have social programs that allow for us to minimize the gap between classes and assist those who have fallen on hard times. We should be proud of the way we look after our fellow citizens, but we also need to be watchful. We need to make sure that the younger generation understands that just because the mass media is encouraging us to spend to our limits and acquire endlessly doesn’t actually mean that we have to do it. We are thinking people, and we have a responsibility to use our brains to make intelligent decisions that will benefit us in the long run instead of hurting us.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the United States of America for the things that they do right, but the sheer volume of things that they do wrong, both socially and economically, can be staggering to consider. They have a lot of work ahead of them to close the gap between classes. We are fortunate to be able to watch them at work because it gives us the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, so that maybe we can change the minds of our younger generation before its too late. This is the fight of our lives, and for the sake of those who are to come it is one that we dare not lose.