One of the reasons I am a fan of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is the quality of his interviews with serious people. Recently J. K. Rowling the British novelist and creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series was a guest. Before she became wealthy and famous, she acknowledges she struggled financially and for a short period of time received benefits from the government. Now she has the ability to live anywhere in the world but has decided to stay in England and pay her taxes because she feels grateful for the support she received earlier in her life.
What a refreshing attitude. Gratitude.
Contrast that with what we too often hear in this country. Some members of the upper one percent of the income earners and wealth holders are feeling besieged. They criticize the president because his antiwealth “rhetoric is so poisonous.” We are told the real problem is not inequality but that “40 or 50 percent of the of the country are on the dole and support him [Obama].” A hedge fund executive was offended by the president’s proposal to reform a provision of the tax code and treat carried interest as ordinary income instead of a capital gain. He likened it to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” How to understand their plight when, for example, they received ninety-three per cent of the gains during the 2009-10 recovery?
In her recent book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else Chrystia Freeland explores the issue of growing income and wealth inequality in our nation and the world. Freeland acknowledges the sensitivity of the subject. Any serious discussion triggers defensiveness and is squelched by labeling it “class warfare.” However, we should not ignore the evidence. One can be concerned about the future of our economy and political system, not out of envy of the affluent, but of concern about economic and political stability. We celebrate success in our nation, but when a small number of people are accruing increasing power while opportunities for upward mobility are shrinking the future is troubling.
We can look back to the thirty years following World War II and long for days of shared prosperity during which time “the gap between the one percent and everyone else shrank; the income share of the top one percent fell from nearly 16 percent... to under 7 percent...” During this period average annual economic growth was 3.7 percent. This was during a time of a growing middle class and relatively high taxes. Average CEO pay in the eighties was forty-two times that of the average worker a ratio that increased to 380 in 2012.
Freeland intelligently examines this very complex and controversial issue recognizing that the economic forces unleashed by globalization and technological innovation are driving the growing inequality. She helps us understand the world of the elite without demonizing or explicitly identifying good guys and bad guys. Her goal is to inform and educate.
The slogan “a rising tide lifts all boats” has not been true for decades.
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