Poverty, Wealth, Power
Having granted corporations legal personhood, thereby fuzzing up our notions of accountability, we seem to have trouble talking sensibly about rich people's influence on politics. It's "money in politics," a generic notion, that everybody agrees needs to be controlled. Nobody, or almost nobody, talks about controlling the rich. But money doesn't have a mind of its own. If you think about it carefully, it's rich people who need to be controlled and — if you're willing to suspend certain of the most common assumptions of our culture — the problem in its simplest form is whether it makes sense for society to permit an effectively unlimited acquisition of wealth or instead to impose boundaries.
Sam Pizzigati writes prolifically about the problem of wealth at his excellent website Too Much. Never mind Sam's mild mannered prose, what he's saying is radical, almost revolutionary. And it's a very well taken point: Unless society does control (prohibit) extremes of great wealth then incentives everywhere else, up and down the line, get horribly, horribly distorted. So much so that things stop working, as we're seeing everywhere these days.
There aren't any contemporary Huey Longs out there to drive this point home, but Sam argues that public attitudes towards wealth can change very rapidly, as they have in the American past. Possibly, but in any case I think controlling wealth belongs on every progressive's policy short list. And I hasten to add that this is a view well within America's own intellectual traditions and not a Marxist import!
I interviewed Sam a month or so ago but unfortunately it was an awfully bad connection so the recording wasn't usable. To make up for that we plan to get together in person in early August for another conversation, which I hope will make a great podcast shortly thereafter.
Posted by George Kenney on July 18, 2008 9:11 AM 
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Comments
Any damn fool knows that we have the best democracy money can buy. What I wonder about is the frequently heard claim that a large fraction of Americans admire the rich and aspire to be like them, thus putting a damper on all 'radical' initiatives. A key point to remember is that by 'rich', we mean the few giant fish at the top who control everything. Any 'radicals' who go after medium or small businessmen are shooting themselves in the foot.
Posted by: benjamin777
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July 18, 2008 12:07 PM
Rather than impose boundaries upon the acquisition of wealth, something that would be staunchly resisted even by the poor who play the lottery, it would be better for minimum wage laws to be updated regularly; for social spending on education and health care and unemployment insurance to be increased drastically with the money made available by reduction of the Pentagon; and for tax rates to be progressive.
Any attempts to redistribute wealth will not only be resisted, but will be highly problematic, engaging a wide variety of invidious criteria. Better that the government insure the equilibration of wealth throughout society by the measures mentioned in the first paragraph. Equilibration does not mean equal distribution. It means instead sharing the wealth through social programs and increased wage rates for the worker.
Posted by: Gregorio | July 20, 2008 12:33 AM
Gregorio,
Your comment sounds like an interesting mixture of progressivism and libertarianism. My feeling is that there should at least be a progressive tax, which gets fairly steep with extreme wealth. However, I don't know if that's enough. This Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth
says that
"In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth."
This seems like an extreme imbalance to me that perhaps requires something more than mere progressive taxation on the very rich. On the other hand, to be fair, this same Wikipedia article goes on to say that the rich pay most of the taxes. Still, the huge imbalance in actual wealth is disturbing, at least to me.
I'm not a Commie. I just want a healthy distribution of wealth without extremes. It used to be better in this country, so we can do it. Reagan and Clinton both sold America to Big Business like never before (at least since the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century). We need a third party, that is progressive without having too many hippie and loudmouth types that turn average people off.
Posted by: benjamin777
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July 20, 2008 12:15 PM