According to the Utne Reader, the 500 richest people in the world control more wealth than the 3 billion poorest. Think about that. We’re all born with nothing. We live on this big blue ball. We have to find some way of living our lives out with whatever resources we have available. This goes on for about 10 million years. We end up with 500 people owning half the planet. If you believe the ideological priests of capitalism, this is great. Those 500 people worked so hard and were so smart that they deserve half of all the wealth on the planet.
Capitalism isn’t a bad system. Communism sounds great in the abstract, but nobody’s succeeded in making it work in practice. There are two big things wrong with it. First of all, it requires a high degree of government control over everybody’s lives. Secondly, it reduces the incentives for people to work hard and produce things of value. It’s unfortunate, but human beings don’t have a great deal of self-discipline. Without a good reason to work hard, we won’t.
Now, all government control is not bad, and people shouldn’t live their lives just to work hard, but I like life in the wealthy west, and I wish more people in the world would have access to good health care, adequate food and shelter, and decent clothing like we do. But it is a myth to believe that capitalism provided these things. Capitalism provided an engine of economic growth, but the widespread distribution of wealth among large numbers of peoples was caused by political and social action, not by economic forces. Governments created minimum wages, social security, unemployment insurance, and pension plans. If it had been up to the fathers of capitalism, most of us would be making 50 cents a day, living in dirty hovels in dark, unlit streets, and working twelve hours a day. The funny thing is, the fathers of capitalism wouldn’t have been so rich either.
Why did governments interfere with the economy? Because socialists and communists convinced many people that workers were also entitled to some of the benefits of economic growth. Because workers joined unions to fight for a share of the pie. Because social activists created organizations and movements determined to make improvements in the lives of the working poor.
Ironically, these improvements in the living conditions of the average worker benefited the very rich as well: without a large market of affluent middle class citizens, where would corporations that sell expensive cars, gadgets, clothing, and furniture, get their customers?
For a short period of time—about the end of the Depression to the 1980’s—the life of the average worker improved steadily. He got better wages, better health care, better social benefits. Then, with the triumph of Reaganomics and the conservative backlash against the sixties, the rich started to take it all back. It started with tax cuts—which primarily benefit the rich—and with the deficits that seemed to justify massive cuts in social spending (but never, of course, in military spending). Since then, there has been a steady erosion of government programs that benefit the poor and the middle class, and a steady increase in the proportion of wealth in this country that is held by a small percentage of the very rich. Maybe you used to make $34 thousand a year. Now you make $36 and a half. A top executive at a large corporation used to make $250,000.00. Now he makes $100 million. I am not exaggerating. Lawyers win huge settlements and take in millions for themselves. Athletes have steadily increased their income by 10% or more every year since 1972. It seems very odd that the president of the United States still makes a paltry $250,000. Why? Because voters believe it would be outrageous to pay the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet more than Albert Belle?
It’s time for the pendulum to swing back towards the middle. Increase the minimum wage, strengthen the unions, cut military spending, put more money into the schools, reduce tuition costs for colleges and universities, and put some money into redevelopment of inner city cores, state and provincial high ways, and urban greenbelts.