Les Leopold - Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice

Runaway Inequality

An Activists Guide to Economic Justice

Les Leopold

Labor Institute Press

Copyright 2015 Les Leopold

All Rights Reserved

Labor Institute Press

817 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

TheLaborInstitute.org

ISBN 978-0-692-43630-1

Contents

Introduction

The United States is among the richest countries in all of history. But if youre not a corporate or political elite, youd never know it. In the world working people inhabit, our infrastructure is collapsing, our schools are laying off teachers, our drinking water is barely potable, our cities are facing bankruptcy, and our public and private pension funds are nearing collapse. We consumers, students, and homeowners are loaded with crushing debt, but our real wages havent risen since the 1970s.

How can we be so rich and still have such poor services, so much debt and such stagnant incomes?

The answer: runaway inequality the ever-increasing gap in income and wealth between the super-rich and the rest of us.

This isnt the first time that a tiny elite has gained extraordinary control over economic and political life. Ancient Egypt had the Pharaohs. Medieval Europe had feudal lords and kings. We Americans had industrial robber barons.

And today, weve got financial and corporate elites.

Runaway inequality is upending how we see ourselves and how we govern. It is upending the American Dream (the cherished idea that life gets better and better with each generation). And it is upending the practice of democracy and the very idea that each of us has roughly equal influence in governing our country.

Its time to face up to runaway economic inequality what causes it, what its doing to us, and what we can do about it.

This book has four aims:

1. Shine a light on economic inequality: Its worse than you think

For all the talk about economic inequality, most of us have no idea how bad it really is. Its as if our native sense of justice wont let us comprehend how outrageously unequal our economy has become and how much worse its getting day by day. Maybe were just too fair-minded to wrap our minds around the level of systematic greed that now permeates societys top echelons.

Well look at just how wide the gap is between the super-rich and the rest of us, and how rapidly it is accelerating. A very small group of economic elites is accumulating more and more of the countrys resources while the rest of us stand still or fall further behind.

But the problem goes beyond how many dollars we have (or dont): Runaway inequality is tearing apart the fabric of our society. The super-rich live in a world that no longer requires mutual reliance on common public services. Elites generally dont use our schools, our roads, our airports. They dont really care if our infrastructure collapses. We are cracking into two separate societies.

At the same time, the super-rich are able to park trillions of dollars far from the reach of the tax collector. By avoiding and evading taxes, with help from an army of lawyers and bankers, the rich are undermining the government services that the rest of us need. So our roads and bridges crumble, our environment becomes contaminated, our children crowd into our rundown schools. We pay a fortune out of pocket for higher education and poor quality health care. And some of us with darker pigmentation are targeted for arrest and fines in order to help fund local government, while also facing poverty and police violence.

Runaway inequality undermines the practice of democracy. As the rich get richer and richer, it gets easier and easier for them to buy political favors. They can twist the media, elected officials, and government agencies to do their bidding. They vote with their money, which makes a mockery of our democratic one vote, one person creed. Well see data showing that elected officials rarely act on the agenda most Americans support. Instead they represent the wishes of the affluent.

Using over 100 easy to read charts and graphs as well as text, we will demonstrate that as bad as you think it is, its worse.

2. Examine the Fading American Dream

Well take an honest look at how we compare to other developed nations.

Most of us still view our country through the lens of the American Dream and American exceptionalism. We see ourselves as leading the world in just about everything that is good and just. As virtually every politician likes to say, we are the shining light of freedom and prosperity, blessed by God.

Most Americans believe that the U.S. has the most upward mobility and highest standard of living in the world. We think that the U.S. is the fairest nation on Earth, offering the best prospects for everyday people. (And for anyone who isnt moving up, its their own fault.)

But the facts in this book will undermine that perspective. While America may have had the most prosperous working class from World War II to 1980, it doesnt anymore. In fact, today the U.S. is the most unequal country in the developed world. We have the most child poverty and homelessness. We have more people in prison than China and Russia. And Americans are less upwardly mobile than most Europeans.

Well see that our public services dont stack up either. Our health care costs more, covers fewer people and produces worse outcomes. And we are nearly last among developed nations in energy efficiency and overall infrastructure.

No question about it, the top 1 percent never had it so good. But the rest of us are losing sight of the American Dream as runaway inequality accelerates.

3. Empower ourselves with the big picture

From years of conducting economic workshops for adults, weve learned that having a clear overview of what is going on is remarkably empowering for people. When you can step back and see how it all fits together, the world makes more sense.

Well work hard at presenting that big, wide view, because most of us never have a chance to see it. You just cant get an accurate picture of the economy as a whole through the everyday media or the jumble of internet sources. We hear snippets about stock markets, government debt, trade, unemployment and inflation. What we dont hear about is the context, substantive explanation, or critical questioning about why any of this is happening and how it relates to our daily lives.

Most of all, the media turns a blind eye to the fact that we live in a capitalist system. Were never allowed to get outside that box so we can look at it and see how it ticks. So we never hear about the fundamental conflict that capitalism creates between the needs and wishes of privately owned corporations and our health and well-being or the well-being of the planet that sustains us. We dont hear about how the corporate owners and financiers insatiable drive for profits is eroding our standard of living. Yet these conflicts are key to understanding our new era of runaway inequality.

The picture of the economy that nearly all of us share turns out to be wrong. We are told in many different ways that the economy is like a complex machine that functions beyond the reach of human control. This machine metaphor frames our view of the economic world: It makes us think that everyone is just doing their thing in the machine, and that we each get what we deserve, more or less. It obscures the reality that there is, in fact, a fundamental conflict between employees and owners, between the rich and the rest of us.