The Tide of Economic Inequality Is No Longer Just Rising, It's Choking US

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A THOUGHT. Life as we have known it, or revered and aspired to. A dreamed about life of richness, abundance, and more specific products of humanity's cleverness and vanity such wine, women, song (but also the products of human stupidity such as class, caste, race and gender hierarchy), ...this dream of the 'good' life appears to have faded away or be available to an ever-diminishing fraction of humanity so that we now have a world of grossly asymmetric 'mis-sharing' of life's promises. We are now come to a dire need to deal with the reality has near irreversibly come to be a finite, zero-sum game, and perhaps life ever was a zero-sum proposition despite the dreams of the Ages of exploration and colonialization (global scale resource rape and pillage). This awakening to a post-surfeit reality appears to have occurred over the past 15 to 20 years and now shapes up as a bad, bad human-made nightmare in the wakened state. We face a crisis that is ripping apart our previous fantasy world of perpetual bonbons, colorful gumdrops, unending natural resources, clean air, good water...all provided by Mother Earth without requiring much effort, concern or husbandry from humanity, and delivered on a perpetual conveyor belt feeding directly into our mouths and bank accounts.

But we now sense this was all a dream and we must face the consequences from greed and willy-nilly over-exploiting earth's resources - a situation supported and made worse by our cleverness in inventing the 'corporate blind' whereby a paper (fictitious) concept is equal, or more, to a living being but with fewer and fewer controls over corporate behavior. Our 'esteemed' legal minds have even by writ given these false corporate entities the leeway to use their immense money reserves to influence politics with even less monitoring than for human citizens.

The result of this overall trend to ignore the nonsensicalness and excesses from our misled priorities has resulted in 'badness' on many fronts - extreme inequality (of human sharing of earth's resources and financial profits) on almost all categories, especially financially, and dangerous over-exploiting of our planet's resources and blindness to global pollution. Especially disheartening if not grossly puzzling, has been the loosening of industrial regulations to increase the leger's bottom line...as the major if not the sole priority of corporate behavior. All of these 'actions' and consequences threaten to end our existence! (Or at least substantially lessen a standard of living that we've giddily assumed would last forever.)

'We', the globe's 'haves', the rulers of humanity (and their subjects in tow), all are wakening it seems with a really bad hangover from having believed we live in a world of infinite resources - a belief set too often and too conveniently supported by made-to-order 'religious' permissiveness or our self-serving interpretations of such. We have come to see that humanity has been carelessly play-acting at life in Eden when in actuality we've squandered away a beautiful world of 'enough-for-all'... a world that was bountiful but needed careful attention to the consequences of humanity's actions ... a set of 'husbandry' rules (like the 'good shepherd'). We've woven the 'good shepherd' into our culture but not taken that meme seriously - it's often served to keep populations under control.

We've wakened to a living nightmare, a frighteningly bad video game become real where life is a finite sum matter that is now seen to be obscenely asymmetric where alien rules apply and it's near too late to learn them.

The 'rules' of good planet husbandry have been replaced in favor of the interests of fictitious entities (corporations) and false priorities of profit propped up by legal rationalizing. We've willfully turned away from humanity's role in climate change, giddily squandered Nature's resources, blindly erected 'laws' that protect non-human, fictitious instruments that wander the planet exploiting natural resources (and murdering whole populations as collateral damage in the sacred pursuit of such profits), and all too often supported by convenient religious praise of profitable effort as the ticket to Valhalla.

Umar Haque's views on the nightmare that we wakened to, in September 11, 2019, 'Medium'webzine ((How) Capitalism Turned Life, the Planet, and Civilization into Money — and Our Challenge is Turning it Back - Why the 21st Century Needs a Revolution (If We Don’t Want Civilization to Keep on Collapsing)), is that global economic inequality is the root of our nightmare because the degree of inequality is extreme and encompasses just about everything around us that can be purchased, exploited and monetized.

(Pericles21, blogged this view several years ago in wondering if 'real-product' economies were at the end because 'demand' has shifted from economically depleted customers (with no more money to purchase) to owners of capital (paper fiat) whose 'demands' continue and have multiplied...even if capital owners' actual needs in the Maslovian sense are satisfied...to sinful excess. Also, Pericles21 pointed out few if any economic theory includes, or even attempts to include, 'greed' as perhaps the major underlying shaper of cultural economics throughout history.

Mr. Haque employs Marx and Keynes in using their insights to describe our current emergency of gross resource-sharing asymmetry as a “crisis of overaccumulation.” Haque's insight is that if pressures on the globe's inequality-burdened populations (the 'have-nots' of 50 years ago) remain unanswered, this will lead to a perhaps terminally harmful social explosion..for all humanity.

A social explosion seems perhaps likely because there are few or no alternative (peaceful) options left to the 'unequal' (the 99% or more of humanity) whose interests are becoming increasingly marginal in importance relative to the big picture of replacement of real markets with financial manipulations, e.g., hedge funds and third-and-higher-order derivatives. The 'un-equals' receive little regard for education to maintain labor competitiveness, even less regard for their health with healthcare having been rationalized away as some kind of luxury to be juggled against a cable tv subscription or smartphone.

In this blogger's view, there is a basic observation that seems undeniable - humanity has about reached the end of the 'saving rope' and the rope's end looks to be little more than frayed threads.

Mr. Haque, on solid ground, suggests the resolution is to somehow convince the owners of over-accumulated resources into re-investing in restoring the planet's health.

But Pericles21 sees that just the recognition of economic inequality should also incorporate reconceptualizing of the meaning of 'living'. We've defined life, at least bio-life, satisfactorily but, typically, in techno terms - DNA, etc. But now, in this age of extreme economic inequality, it appears something of major importance has been missing from our self-congratulatory metrics of life... there is a missing cultural pillar, a moral gap whose ignorance of has impacted us like a meteor.

We sense that this gap is something so far intangible that we are grasping for can quite 'get'. We are in dire need of a new metric guiding us 'how' we might best live this precious 'life'.

But, just arriving at this realization seems, hopefully, just in time. To many, Capitalism seems to be at the heart of the problem of the missing gap.

Capitalism has been described as a working market system...sometimes, maybe increasingly, requiring too much effort to prop up and too much rationalizing to continue to be useful or beneficial to sustaining social stability and progress.

The 'Capitalism Game" relies on two major factors - first, our human species' left-over monkey trait of competing 'for it all' (even wanting 'yours' when our bellies and hands are full of our AND your stuff we can never use); and second, an open-end supply of resources that require minimal effort (cost) to bring to market.

Although dwindling resources have required more and more 'effort' to bring to them to market, Our never-satisfied 'wanting' has continued as capitalism's driving force... and this 'drive' to over-satisfying has been given 'modern' clothing as 'objectivist self-interest' (selfishness, Rand-ism), objective 'reality', so-called natural economic competitiveness (nothing personal, mind you, it's just business), etc.

This has led to our present state of extremum...our monkey acquisitiveness has gone berserk and is about to wreck global stability through absurd economic inequality.

Somehow, without global revolution of the bloody historical kind, Humanity must reconceptualize our priorities and redefine what 'life' is. 'Life is much more than just technological-scientific definitions. 'Life' must be seen as a process and system for living in full value, i.e., seeing 'life' in its whole as a symbiosis of peoples, needs and wants. This is the 'game of living' and we should see the game as a finite sum balance that requires careful attention.

One's impression is that we are finally coming to understand that our right to exist (yes, it's that dire) must be earned and depends on how smart we are to preserve our sanity, our physical being, and the planet…all three together.

This means to realize that 'life' results from HOW we live it and 'living life' should be a priority. Radically speaking, this ends up with the concept that life and living is not a race to satisfy primordial monkey urges to accumulate but a new 'game' (since we monkeys seem drawn to like games) based on realizing that humanity is precious, more so than gold, and that we live on a 'symbiotic plane' with each other, the planet and its resources. 'Sane and sensible' should be the mantra of the new concept of living, a game where every human has value and though not 'free' in a sybaritic way (!!!), deserves to have at least basic needs met - the 'needs' of surviving as a human.

A corollary has to be a recognition that above a certain threshold of accumulation, any one individual and class endangers the greater 'game' of sane living for all. Yes, here is proposed that 'Life' is living in and through the greater good (a concept Pericles21 pointed out 10 years ago was a conceptual pillar proposed by the founders of the American nation who inherited it from the line of Western and Asian thinkers the past 4000 years.

A Basic Income for All Americans: Is It Possible? What Prevents Americans from Addressing Its Great Economic Inequality?

Lynn Parramore recently wrote a timely article in ’Nation of Change' on America’s awakening to the damage to our society by our increasingly unregulated capitalism: ‘5 Reasons to Consider a Basic Income for all Americans’. Hope Lynn survives the weekend.

Two years ago, Lynn’s suggestion or even discussion of a ‘basic income’ would have been shouted down as sacrilegious and un-American, a double edged clue to the complexity of the 'American problem'. But Lynn’s thoughts are now appropriate for these mal-wealth-distributed, mega-rich, noir times.

But, despite the truths and suggestions in this article, there is still a gap, a fog-bank of our own making, and which we Americans seem to want to continue to drift around us and shield us from ‘what’s there’. This shield hides from us what is at the heart of this article but is left unsaid even by Ms Parramore.

It is the great 'family secret’ about America’s road to power: that America became ‘king of the hill’ by not only militarily dominating its aggressors but also by cannibalizing ourselves, our poor, and our children by willingly depriving them of access and mobility which their parents have thought they were defending by going off to war and enduring economic exploitation out of a disrupted sense of, at best, loyalty-to-the-flag and ‘suffering with honor’, or just being too naive to understand what has been perpetrated upon ‘us’.

But at worst, there seems to have been, and even now, the attitude of ‘them’s our betters’, right out of the feudalist past of the, still, majority of Americans of European or colonial descent...and which has resulted in a tip-toeing’ around issues like wealth-inequality and the increasing numbers of the poor, and has led to an era marked by rabid attacks on any kind of broad-base health care and in general a shying away like a whipped horse from dealing with a sick, exploiting economy that has no respect for Americans that feed their last penny into a till that funnels riches to a ‘1%’ of super-rich. This unbalanced national illness is like a ghost that does great damage but is kept locked up as if being out of sight will make things better.

The closeted ghost is ‘greed’ that dominates our culture and places a price tag on just about everything and everyone in America. As an example, America’s food industry is converting from selling actual food that serves a biological need, to a twisted ‘food concept’, a food experience where food serves not a biological purpose but is a spear to hit a psychological target, a mental need that doesn’t exist without media stimulation.

My point: until America faces and resolves its great sin of greed, will even a basic income solve anything? Until ‘greed capitalism’ is brought out from behind the curtain, a basic income will just rapidly disappear into the pockets of the 1% just as it is doing now. The picture will look like the nether-world of Dante in the heartland - rail-thin, ill-clothed, unhealthy and mentally deficient Americans offering up their last pennies the the ‘uber’ who blindly take it all in to the last 'sou’. And then? At best, bloodlessly, it will all collapse as dividends dwindle and more and more of the ‘uber’ become the ‘unter'.

America’s great unspoken-of secret in the closet is we haven’t openly faced, much less admitted, is that our version of capitalism is like the bull-in-the-china-closet.

American capitalism has been let go to run virtually unrestrained to wherever it smells new markets and new profits even at the disadvantage of the American working class...who are contradictably still expected to purchase more and more of what they can’t afford and can’t pay for without increasingly heavy credit debt.

American capitalism is characterized by a set of deeply destructive sins, both to its market(targeted consumers) and to itself. American capitalism is awash with the sin of greed that consumes ‘all’ for the ’now’. This greed has led to a version of capitalism that is: (1) almost 100% motivated and driven by greed, (2) this ‘greed’ has no limits, is ungovernable by our naive choice to defend it as a sacred cow and is like an amoeba that eats until there is nothing left, (3) this greed-driven capitalism will consume our resources until there are none left or none remaining that are safe for us, (4) that our choosing to defend greed is largely the result of manipulation of the greater majority of unsophisticated Americans by immensely wealthy interests who by their wealth are able to dominate and control public propaganda venues (newspapers and television, internet) that by command distort and lie to prevent the truth from ever reaching the 99%, (5) that we regard these greed-driven, destructive actions as largely forgivable acts, the ‘nature of the beast’ and the cost of national success, and for which we the exploited seem to have a high tolerance for these excesses of the ‘anointed few’, (6) that the same vested and greedy interests that distort the truth and cleverly hide behind religion and faux-historicist-chauvenism, most evilly convince America’s most economically exploitable (malleable) population to vilify and deny their own need for access to higher education for them or their children, hence preventing them, the ‘great unwashed’, from becoming less vulnerable, (7) and that the ‘1%’ have managed to convince our weakest and most vulnerable majority they must vote for politicians and shibboleths that work against their interests.

This is a clever if not evil agenda put into practice. Unfortunately, it will lead to not long-lived super-wealth and riches for the few but to a near-horizon collapse of our society and the very economy that enriches the few. Talk about killing your ‘Golden Goose’. But killing the goose and eating the last fertile golden egg is what greed is all about. Listen to Mother Goose, children.

The Overdue Makeover of the American Way, ‘Lagom': Income Inequality, the ’85’ & ‘Working for the Few’, The Third Metric

This is the third reblog of a 2009 piece i wrote about the need for a Swedish-style makeover , ‘Lagom’ (moderation and balance), of American cultural values in light of the 2008 recession...and especially the somewhat obscene map-redistribution (upwards) of wealth and income during the so-called ‘recovery’ since then. The last reblog was June 2012, '"LAGOM": A New Life Style for Post Recession Americans’. Arianna Huffington’s ‘The Third Metric’ way of redefining and measuring the value of one’s life, lifestyle, mode of living, life philosophy and self-evolution is much in tune with ‘Lagom’.

This time, I am motivated to reblog about Lagom, by Robert Kall’s January 25, 2014, piece in OpEdNews, 'Needed: A Science, Economics and Lifestyle of SMALL-- It's Time to Face Reality-- Too BIG is Too Dangerous--‘, where Kall notes:

'Too big is not just about too big to fail banks. Nature abhors just about anything that is too big. Giganitism is an abnormality that, in humans and most life forms, leads to pathology or death. The same is true about things humans create-- companies, government, political and economic systems, megastores, megachurches, the 85 billionaires. who own as much as half of the seven billion planetary inhabitants.'

Ah, the newly arisen mega-monster, ’The 85’. January 21, 2014, Huffingtonpost summarized a January 21, 2014, Oxfam analysis (“Working for the Few”)that the richest 85 individuals around the globe (1 % of global population) own, possess or control more than collectively owned by half (50%)the globe’s humans! With a global population currently around 7.14 Billion, this means each of the ’85’ owns as much as 84 million ‘lesser’ human beings. Question, ‘is this a palatable outcome of economic ‘freedom’?

Does this extreme wealth imbalance deserve to be preserved at all costs much like a sacred icon of the lesser god, money? Or, is such extreme imbalance a sign of gross disfunction, a pathology as Kall suggests?. As Kall notes (his writing is one of my fav reference points):

'The problem is, as Lord Acton observed, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I would argue that there are so many risks and dangers in giving people the ability to accumulate huge amounts of money and the power that comes with it, that we should put limits on wealth...'

‘Lagom’ is a Swedish philosophy of day-to-day living that emphasizes the quality of life over material accumulation - of living in moderation, sufficiency, balance and sustaining our world. More and more is being written, with increasing alarm and fretting, that America and indeed the global village need to find options to free-market capitalism, the presumed driving force behind the Industrial Revolution that now seems to be not only a barrier to progress but, unless we find a path away from it, we might end up self-destructing. In the absence of an active pursuit of safe, alternative energy - are we held back by technology (unlikely) or are we stymied by the petro-lobbyists (very likely)?. How many more Fukushima’s (March, 2011, nuclear reactor melt-down in Japan) can we, the globe and not only America, sustain?

The recession lingers. The ‘unemployed’ has lost meaning because so many have given up looking for a job thus skewing the BLS curves to where few know or can guess. This recession hasn't finished teaching us that the American idolizing of the Darwinian-capitalist pursuit of riches, where a neighbor in difficulty automatically becomes a "loser" to be put out of mind and forgotten, just doesn't cut it when "we" are coming close to becoming one of "them".

This recession is marked by a frightening prospect of overnight conversion from ‘plush-to-bust' that can reach all levels, just, post-recession, ask Bernie Madoff's “clients” (to refer to a now classic meme). We all feel the anxiety of material failure, of being second, of being the loser even when we are nicely comfortable...for the moment. When, in our daily pursuit to hang on, we have the rare moment to pause and think about things, we intuit that ‘it’ doesnt make sense. But, who has the time to contemplate when we are so driven to materially excel and garner more than our neighbor in the race to see who next will be the winner, or loser.

The essence of this recession is the repeat of a lesson that the wild-frontier, laissez faire (self-regulated, NOT!) capitalism ala Ayn Rand is just a dream; actually a dangerous nightmare because it creates a make-believe theater of false fronts and actors in false face where "dollars are the ultimate". Repeatedly, with each new generation of Americans who are not schooled about past economic collapses and who eagerly join the race to grab the brass ring and win the carnival doll, these falsities come tumbling down killing the fortunes and hopes of many many people, families, countries.

However, America is not down and out for good. We can move on to a higher level of maturity by adopting a life style of moderation, suitability (LAGOM) from one of the most advanced cultures on the planet, and perhaps the culture with the highest standard of living and certainly the first or second highest in cultural well being, Sweden.

In Sweden, cultural happiness can be summarized in the following observation about purely economic success (which seems to be the current way America values itself):

For all its prominence, GDP is only one yardstick of economic performance and it is no guide to social progress. It simply indicates the market value of all goods and services produced in an economy. It takes no account of how income is shared out, or of how it is generated. Few would celebrate a boom in costly divorce cases – but it would be great for GDP.

America is ready for a new way of living life. It is in our best interest to try a new way of valuing living life rather than material accumulations.

It is time to try "Lagom".

"LAGOM" has no exact translation in English. But good translations of lagom are: "enough, sufficient, adequate, just right". Lagom is also widely translated as "in moderation", "in balance", "optimal", and "suitable", also "sustainable" as a way of life.

Lagom also carries the connotation of perfection through appropriateness.

The value of "just enough" can be contrasted to the value of "more is better". It is viewed favorably as a sustainable alternative to the hoarding extremes of consumerism

"Lagom" is said to describe the basis of the Swedish national psyche,..of consensus and equality. It is ... to be modest and avoid extremes.

Similar to Lagom" is the Middle Path in Eastern philosophy, and Aristotle's "golden mean" of moderation in Western philosophy.

So, America, let's have "Lagom" meals; "Lagomish" houses, cars, and visible material wealth in general.

Income & Wealth Inequality 2: Realistic Taxation Might Help

Re: 'It's Economic Inequality Stupid -- What to Do About the Biggest Crisis Facing America’
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/its-economic-inequality-s_b_4273787.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications ]

Robert CreamerPolitical Organizer, Strategist, Author; Partner Democracy Partners

Mr. Cremer mentions that economically the wellbeing of the middle and working poor classes have been on a downtrend or static for decades:

Today, to qualify for the top 1%, your family has to have an income of at least $394,000 -- and the average income of the top 1% of the population is $717,000. The average for the rest of the population is $51,000. The difference in net worth is even more stark. The top 1% have net assets that average $8.4 million. That would be 70 times the average net worth of the rest of the population.

And this inequality is growing. In 2012, the share of income flowing to the top 1% soared to almost 20% of the income generated by the entire economy. That is the highest level since 1927 - the height of the "Roaring 20's" that set the stage for the Great Depression.

This increase in income and wealth inequality has gone on for some time. According to a study by UC Berkeley economist Emmaunuel Saez, from 1993 to 2012 average real income for the bottom 99% of the population increased 6.6%. Average real income for the top 1% went up 86%. In other words, over the last two decades, the top 1 percent received two thirds of the overall economic growth in real income per family.

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...who did nothing to earn these fortunes except benefit by the accident of birth.

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This is often heard but despite being born iINTO wealth a child is never born guilty ‘a priori’ as implied. It also seems ‘whimsy’ to tax the rich too quickly and heavily just as it is unfair to tax lesser income strata more than their commensurate ABILITY TO PAY, so ‘less wealthy’ classes should have a lesser tax rate than the rich. The country needs to evaluate exactly what ‘fair’ means and what for what PURPOSE(s) do our taxes really serve!

What exactly is our national tax purpose? Is it simply to make the rich pay their ‘fair share’ whatever that might be and even-out the tax impact? Or, to accumulate government surpluses just because it sounds good? Or, as an optional purpose, one might propose a ‘TAX ENOUGH’ policy that focuses on meeting a few significant objectives but leaves a goodly amount of monies in circulation for jobs, investment, risk etc.

What is the real-life tax impact on our socio-economic classes? Can we even guess at taxation equivalencies?

Oversimplifying, a quick look at tax reform might start with a simple ‘equation': increase the ‘rich’ tax rate but not to de-motivate investment and risk; give the middle class relief by tax reductions and/or tax-reduction-equivalents (college credits, national health care, family tax credits, etc); and give the working poor emergency relief that prioritizes the concept that ‘WORKING POOR’ is not a permanent class but a temporary condition. And above all, avoid the conservative POV that a ‘good’ social policy is one that is punitive in spirit and result, i.e., one that ‘strikes the fear of God’ into the minds and spirits of the taxed...as if America is mired forever in the past battles between the Shires and Robin Hood - a too-easily referenced template left over from America’s core roots in feudal Europe.