And Restore Prosperity for Many More

There are many issues at stake in the Presidential election coming up next year, but none is as compelling as the gigantic income and wealth gaps between the ultra-wealthy and all the rest of us.  These huge prosperity gaps are the fundamental reason for a host of negative socio-economic issues including across-the-board wage freezes of the past 30 years; the growing health care and education costs; the rising federal budget debt; the loss of opportunities for everyone in the bottom 90 percent; and the lack of money to fix all the needed repairs in infrastructure, health care, education, transportation, climate change, new fuel sources, plus all the issues related to poverty including drugs, crime, suicide rates, human trafficking, and mounting murder rates.  All these issues are inter-related by a common cause: Systemic rigging of our laws that take from the poor and the middle class, while giving to the rich and to their heirs.    

Here is a quick summary:  The top 10 percent hold 90 percent of all our wealth, while the rest of us (the 90 percent) hold only 10 percent.  That is not a 10 to 1 ratio.  It is a 90 to 1 ratio.  It is fixed, in-place, and set into concrete by a deliberate set of greed-motivated laws enacted by right-wing conservative majorities in state legislatures and in our Congress.  They are part of the master plan financed by the ultra-rich.  This plan cannot be changed or overcome by speeches, by crying, by praying, or by hit-and-miss patches no matter how well-intentioned the motivations of those who try.

The structure of the rigged system in the United States masquerades as “free enterprise” at  work.  It is exactly the opposite.  It is tyranny at work.  The rich have rigged our elections in a sufficient number of states to assure that their legislative puppets are elected who will Gerrymander voting districts, and who  pass voting laws designed to keep the poor and minorities away from the voting booths.  Then they enact other laws that strip away worker’s rights, lower taxes on the wealthy, take away life-support programs for the poor, the aged, and the disabled; abolish many legitimate forms of regulation in the workplace; let enormous inheritances pass on to their offspring unearned and tax-free; while they systematically chip away at health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, women’s rights over their bodies; and other programs that give a tiny bit of support to all those who have been blocked from the opportunity to find upward mobility in their plight for their place in the sun. 

The coup de gras to this evil scheme is the mechanism that assures that 90 percent of all new wealth also flows from us to them.  Here’s how it works:  The super-rich own 90 percent of all current wealth (stocks, bonds, and real estate), all income, interest, and capital gains generated from those securities also flow to them. The two sources account for 81 percent of all wealth ( .90 X .90 = .81).  But the wealthy are also competitors for the other 19 percent of new wealth.  They are able to siphon away another 9 percent, thus maintaining their wealth total at 90 percent.  Today they hold $112.5 trillion dollars of wealth.  This sum is the highest of all nations in the world, but the same people who produce it do not get a chance to their fair share of the total. 

Opportunity Costs.  Consider this:  Infrastructures and bad decisions degrade and compound over time.  They need to be repaired and upgraded.  We need about $35 trillion to modernize America.  With that amount we could 1) pay off the national debt; 2)  fix our health care delivery system; 3) pay off and forgive all outstanding student loans; 4) fix our entire infrastructure including highways, bridges, rail, air and sea ports, modernize our entire electrical grid; and 5) put into place a workforce improvement plan to help all those in poverty to work their way out.  It would likely take about 35 years to do all that, but it would be do-able with the changes noted herein.  

Our currently rigged set of laws, however, allow for nearly all our wealth to be diverted to the wealthy.  Instead of fixing our urgent national issues, that wealth supports and maintains a small number of family dynasties who have become so powerful we now have a plutocracy--rule of, by, and for the rich. The Walton family (heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune), for example, are reported to be worth $170 billion--all tax free.  Similarly Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, is worth more than $100 billion, while Amazon pays no taxes.  The legal network that allows this to happen is locked into place so rigidly that it likely can only be taken apart by the most concentrated effort ever launched in the history of our country, perhaps in all of human history.  

Before we discuss how to unravel the largest heist in human history, we need to briefly look at how this framework holds a death grip on all those who must live in poverty.

The bottom 50 percent of Americans have no net worth.  They have a few assets, but those assets are offset by debts.  As a consequence, those caught up in poverty have virtually zero upward mobility, mainly because it takes wealth and opportunities to rise up.  Both, however, have been shut down to them.   Poverty is synonymous with and better defined by squalor, that becomes a barrier to upward mobility.  The elements of squalor are hunger, illiteracy, crime, incarcerations, teen pregnancies, mental health issues, suicides, drug usage, and a heavy reliance on government assistance that the ultra-wealthy are continuously trying very hard to reduce and/or to  eliminate—thus disenfranchising the poor while they also proclaim that the poor are both the cause and the consequence of their own conditions.

Here is how you and I and about 200 million more residents of this country can break the stranglehold on us, and undo much of the damage to our economy and to our humanity.  These are enlightened changes that can put us back on a course and will let us keep more of the fruits of our labor.  Together, these steps can help us unrig the system.  They have almost nothing to do with “taking from the rich and giving to the poor.”  They have a lot to do with keeping more of what we produce and sending less of it unjustly and unearned to the ultra-wealthy.  That is called fairness, the American Dream, or life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for an entire population of wealth producers.

Vote your Interests (Stop voting for legislative puppets).  This is a fight for survival.  We must “drain the swamp” created by the wealthy ideologues and their legislative puppets.  This step will take a lot of hard work.  It begins with a massive shift in our voting patterns all across this nation.  We must vote in our interests, not in the interests of the ultra-wealthy.  That means we must vote for progressive candidates  to represent us at all levels—local, state, and national.  It makes no difference at all how you identify yourself politically.  If you are not a member of the ultra-wealthy, you are being scammed by the rigged system.  Vote for progressive, independent-minded candidates who are against everything that present-day conservatism stands for.  This step requires that we achieve a majority in both houses of Congress; that we win the White House; and that we win majorities in a large number of state legislatures and governorships. 

Support these legislative issues:  We must restore the Inheritance tax.  Our workforce of 155 million workers produce it, yet 90 percent of it flows to the top 10 percent.  We also need to raise the top income bracket tax to at least 40 percent; restore, sane, moderate rules of finance and capital flows; restore the capital gains tax; tax high volume security trading; replace trade wars with responsible negotiators who understand how to seek win/win trade objectives.  We also need to support union membership on corporate boards of directors; forgive and phase-out student loan debt; boost tax credits for low-income persons and families; support expanded health care coverage for all; and speed-up our R&D efforts for more environmentally friendly fuels. 

Revamp the Fed Charter.  We need to put the Federal Reserve in charge of how our new money supply flows into our economy by mandating that they determine and regulate the amount of M1 (money in circulation) heretofore left to the judgment of corporate bankers and their interests.  More new money needs to be made available to credit unions and to community banks, and  less to corporate banks.  Let us never forget that corporate bankers are the best of friends with the ultra-wealthy and most are part of that elite group.  They are like the fox guarding the hen house.  This is a critical link in redirecting new capital flows away from the ultra-wealthy and to individuals and to small businesses.  Study this simple identity and you will understand why:  Money in circulation times its turnover rate = GDP.   More money in circulation means more GDP, more wealth, more jobs, more taxes, and less debt. 

In contrast, money directed to the ultra-wealthy goes straight into their personal wealth accounts.  Period.  This flow does not increase GDP, or jobs, or taxes, while it pushes debt higher.

This is not a complete list of everything that needs to be changed.  But it can clear away the hurdles that prevent change.  There are other important issues in the gender pay gap, in protecting reproductive rights, and in making needed immigration and prison reforms.  A more complete list would be much too lengthy for a short essay such as this in order to retain its clarity.  Also, inequality is measured and monitored numerically by the Gini coefficient where 0 = perfect equality (everyone has the same amount of wealth), and 1.0 = perfect inequality (one person has it all, the rest have none).   The U.S. Gini is currently at about .90, or immensely skewed in favor of the top 10 percent.  If that coefficient were reduced to about 0.5, that would be a monumental achievement, and we would still have a lot of inequality. But we would be nearer the levels of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, and Japan.  These countries have several identifiable features in common:  Their poverty rates and all the elements of poverty are much lower than ours; while they all rank higher than us on most of the desired quality of life issues.  A simple test of the latter can be seen in the nearly total absence of immigration flows from those countries to the U.S.

There is also nothing in this list of needed changes that smacks of “socialism,” a term that is deliberately misused by conservative ideologues after they have demonized it.  Socialism exists when and where  the government owns the means of production.  It exists mainly in Cuba, partly in China, and in a few of the eastern European countries.  There is almost no socialism in the United States.

Finally, I am an analyst, not an organizer.  Facts, logic, and the enlightened methods of scientific inquiry are my guides.  My persuasive skills can only reach those who can read, understand, and accept thoughts that are devoid of ideological biases.  Politically, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat; rather I am an independent progressive in search of enlightened answers.  My hope is that many readers with the requisite skills, the motivation, and the means to keep this issue alive and moving toward solutions can and will accept this challenge and rescue our nation from the grip of greed, despair, and other selfish pursuits.

May enlightened minds and dispassionate eyes be our guides.