Inequality, Part II: The Pitchforks are Coming
I have been on a mission for the past 10 or 20 years. That mission has been to make others aware of a growing economic issue: inequality of both incomes and wealth. These dual skews are far worse than are perceived by the great majority of people everywhere. The rich are richer than we perceive, while the poor are poorer in contrast. Those words, unfortunately, tend to make eyes glaze over. That’s because there are no words to describe the immense difference between the haves and the have nots. Even worse, the same compound rate of unequal growth that has occurred over the past 50 years shows us that inequality will be 32 times worse in 50 years than it is today. (Don’t fall asleep. I won’t write those numbers again).
I have fun writing short stories, or when I write silly poems. I can’t do the same with this subject. I am also a social scientist, and that fact alone constrains me to be clear and objective in my more serious compositions. Still, none of my articles would ever be considered for inclusion into any of the “scholarly” journals. The stewards of these journals insist that authors obfuscate their narratives with at least 8 or 10 pages of equations and proofs, and with endnotes or bibliographies that are 6 or 8 pages long. They also want very short conclusions and very lengthy limitations. Such requirements guarantee that the best article will never see the light of day. I don’t have a huge ego, but the thought of one of my articles ending up on the dusty shelves of a snobbish library somewhere in the groves of academe satisfies my concept of having my thoughts sent to hell on earth.
In my last posting, I suggested we could be heading for a bloody resolution to the inequality issues. I also promised to deliver a solution to these dual issues. I wrote it, and then I threw it away. It was destined to oblivion. Then I stumbled upon a speaker who agrees with me. He has slightly different credentials. The main one is that he is ultra-rich. He’s a billionaire who admits that he is not a scholar, not super smart, and not God’s gift to humanity. But those in his audience were locked in on his message like attendees at a televangelist’s fundraiser.
His TED posting on the internet has currently been viewed by 536,000 viewers. That’s slightly more than all my readers during the past 8 years. But his total needs to be bumped up to at least 50 million. Check him out, and be sure to pass his message on to two or more others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8
Carl Sagan was a serious astronomer with the right credentials. He wrote scholarly articles and posted them in scholarly quarterly journals as well as in Science, the Journal of the oldest scholarly organization United States, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Carl caught the eye of Johnny Carson and spent many evenings with him on the Tonight Show. As a result, Carl was able to reach the masses with scientific information in a way that had never been available before. One time he said something that resonated with me. Carl said that he loved the journal, Science, because it pulled together all the disciplines of science and presented the most cutting-edge research. By reading those articles and pulling the essence from them, Carl was able to come up with multidisciplinary scenarios that he could describe to his audiences and then, write in his books and articles. He was the first advocate for STEM, the idea of education combining scientific disciplines to come up with amazing solutions about problems through science-based, multidisciplinary study.
You, like Carl Sagan and Nick Hanauer, are one of those people who can take dull, scientific information and present it in a way that most people can easily understand. Keep up the good work!
Ron