What's Wrong in America (at least in my opinion)

 

I haven't posted to this blog in a long times, so I thought it might be nice to start the new year with a blog posting.

So, here goes: What's wrong with the world (or perhaps mainly America), according to me.

1. The prevalence of guns. When everybody is carrying a gun, an argument or just one person getting very angry can result in a gun being pulled and then someone being shot. I think this is pretty obvious but the gun proponents (or anti–gun control types) doubtless would dispute it.

When I was younger, the term road rage was not in anyone's vocabulary (nor was school shooting). Nowadays an argument we call road rage my well result in someone being shot.

2. Social media companies fostering polarization of their users and the spread of disinformation--not to mention their near-destruction of any such thing as privacy because they exist to collect--and sell--information about you and me.

3. Growing social and economic inequality. The rich are getting richer, according to all statistics. You may say, "more power to 'em," but when wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals that has to mean that some others are getting poorer It’s a zero-sum game. And, if nothing else, it is simply cruel and unjust that many people live in poverty.

4. More and more, minority groups such as Native Americans, Blacks, Asian-Americans and others are refusing--to put it in terms we used when we were kids--to be pushed around anymore. That's fine, I for one want to see them winning their rights and a fairer shake in our society. The problem arises when there are those--and these groups are growing, at least in number--who oppose all this, who want some real or imagined past order to remain or return. Groups like white supremacist groups. When people with 180-degree opposite opinions and goals get more and more vocal, it's not going to be just words hurled by one group at the other; and of course this has already occurred and there is no way this can be a good thing.

All this is not even to mention the problems which imperil our planet in perhaps a more physical way: global warming and climate change, destruction of the environment, extinction of plant and animal species, runaway world population--it's saddening and wearying even to get into this list.

Some of these problems certainly are not unique to America but are found in many other western countries, if not in the whole world. I've been hearing a number of voices who are pontificating on the direction we (often "mankind") are going. So many of them seem optimistic, and hold out hope of some sort or to some degree. I can't feel so optimistic because it seems to me that there is inertia which keeps us locked in the status quo--not to mention greed, corruption, and many other human failings which mitigate against change, or at least not change soon enough or fast enough. My crystal ball shows me that--for example, regarding action on global warming--it's going to be "too little, too late."

Copyright © 2020

Social Inequality, Then and Now, There and Here

The British-produced television series Downton Abbey has proved very popular with American public television audiences. Somewhat in the tradition of an earlier series also shown on PBS, Upstairs Downstairs, it's about an English family of high social class and depicts the dramas in the lives of both the family (the "upstairs" part) and their servants ("downstairs").

Since Downton Abbey begins in 1912, when Lord Robert and his family receive the news of the sinking of the Titanic (and thus the loss of the heir to the family's title and property), we can say it shows life as it was 100 years ago. The lives of the family members who live in the grand house, Downton Abbey, are contrasted with the lives of those downstairs—the family's many servants who include a butler, a housekeeper, a cook, many subordinate kitchen servants, a valet, a lady's maid, a chauffeur, footmen, and more.

The family (and their guests) eat sumptuous food; whereas the servants eat simpler food.

The family eat their food off splendid china, silverware, crystal, and so forth. It's not too clearly shown but we can be sure the servants eat off more rustic china, and so forth.

The family have better clothes, and they don't dress themselves—don't button their buttons nor tie their ties--because that's what the servants are for.

Where does the hereditary wealth and power of this and other, similar familes originally come from? Sometimes it stems from the grant of land by the king to an ancestor, 400 or 500 years ago. Or the family may be descended from the conquering Normans who seized all of England in 1066 and thus had the power to take the land from the Saxon nobles who had previously possessed it.

There are other cultures with similar and perhaps even greater social inequality, for example India, with its caste system (now officially and/or in principle abolished) or Ecuador, where the people of native blood, the Indios, are discriminated against and have a very lowly status.

People in England, at least before the system began to change after the First World War, took all this inequality and the class system for granted. People who live under such a system usually accept, with little or no questioning, that there are one's "betters," who are worthy of their superior wealth and power. The idea has even been promulgated that all this is divinely ordained, that God decreed or created a hierarchical system.

I write this from the perspective of an American of the 21st century. Not that there is not and never has been any social inequality in America, or any class system--there is in fact considerably inequality of wealth and it has been worsening--but Americans do not believe that one's station is part of one's fate in life and decreed at (and by) birth. There is no hereditary privilege similar to the right to serve in the British House of Lords, which was in fact recently abolished. This was put in our Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal." And Americans have always had faith that under our system it was possible to rise. In the Great Britain of Downton Abbey, a man could achieve wealth through business but he might still not be completely accepted by the aristocracy. He would still lack the "breeding."

Thus, inevitably, I think that an American watching Downton Abbey has to find the social-class system, as depicted there, quite a curiosity.

Copyright © 2014

Growing Social Inequality in America

A little survey of man-in-the-street–type individuals by a TV show showed them all saying that what America needs is to raise the taxes on the rich—and maybe also reduce taxes on the poor.

And that is a core message of the "Occupy Wall Street" and other "occupy" demonstrations.

So millions of Americans feel this way. But—you know what? It's not going to happen. At least not as long as some of the fundamental facts of the American political system do not change.

The fact is that wealthy interests control our government. They can effectively buy Congress through lobbying, and through campaign contributions. Wealthy individuals and corporate-organized and -funded lobbying organizations buy Congress. Whereas political contributions from individuals are limited to $2500, the so-called "Super PACs" (political action committees) have little or no limitations on them. This state of affairs was made possible by the disastrous Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United (discussed elsewhere in this blog).

A recent book by Hacker and Pierson, two social scientists, called Winner Take All Politics, shows how the concentration of wealth in America has worsened. That is, the top few as regards wealth have grown wealthier—in fact vastly, astronomically wealthier—in the last 25 or 30 years.

The concentration of wealth in America is worse than in other Western countries: in Europe, in Canada, in Australia. And of course money is power. It can even be concluded that we no longer have a democracy.

The situation is the result of money buying influence; of the tax code; and of lax or even lack of regulation of Wall Street. (The countries named above, for example Canada, did not have as severe an economic crisis as the US four years ago, because they have more effective regulation of their financial systems.)

In 1986 legislation was enacted that closed many of the loopholes in the tax code that enabled the super-rich to escape taxation. But in the years since, those tax reforms have been very largely undone.

It's a sad situation in America. People are speaking out and voicing their dissatisfaction. But have they got power to effect change? Are any of the political candidates even promising to do something about the situation? It does not seem to be one of the issues discussed in candidate debates. The Occupy people are aware of all this but otherwise it all seems to be a big secret.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

U.S. Government Fostering Increase in Economic Inequality

In a recent blog posting I mentioned the increasing economic inequality among Americans. As an article in the online Daily Finance (see http://srph.it/bfM9fH) says,

The top 20% of Americans own 93% of all financial wealth. . . .

This article also says that in fact the inequality is increasing:

From 2002 to 2006, the top 1% of Americans received two-thirds of the gain in national income.

A recent article in Smithsonian magazine says,

In recent decades certain high-end occupation incomes grew rapidly, while wages for lower-income and middle-class workers stagnated.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[T]he rate of upward mobility has stagnated overall, as wages have largely failed to keep up with the cost of living. It is no easier for poor and working-class people to move up the socio-economic ladder today than it was in the 1970s; in some ways, it's more difficult.*

The Daily Finance article blames policies of the Federal Reserve system, specifically its keeping interest rates close to zero—which helps banks, who can borrow at an interest rate of almost nothing and then re-lend that money at 5%--thus making huge amounts of money. And this is at the expense of retirees and others who depend on interest from savings accounts and so forth for part of their income.

I credit the government and its economic policies with saving the U.S. and much of the world from total or near-total financial collapse in 2008; so I am not quick to criticize present government policies. But I have to admit that the Daily Finance article makes sense and is both sad and troubling. Furthering economic inequality is the last thing one expects from a Democratic administration.
_____________

*"Ready Set Grow," Smithsonian, July-August 2010, p. 67.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein