There needs to be a left-wing response to the growing income inequality (The Great Bifurcation, as Jon Evans puts it) or the outcome will be a right-wing response. And the right, worldwide and throughout history, only knows one way to deal with hordes of pissed off poor and formerly middle-class people. They give them weapons and turn them against each other.
Happy Holidays.
Tell the Democratic Congressional Caucus and every Democratic Legislative Caucus. Most of here at the frogpond already are aware of that possibility.
Certainly! Just look at Spain and Greece. Their “Socialist” parties were elected and refused to solve the problems ailing their countries. As a result, both were thrown out by the voters and replaced by the very Conservatives that started the economic mess in both places. It’ll be the same problem with Labour in the UK. The party elites, especially in economic matters, of the supposed leftist parties aren’t very left at all. We know what needs to be done to fix things. The elites would rather not do it.
Yes, and we’re seeing that almost everywhere but Iceland. The ostensibly mainstream leftist party basically supports the creation of the second gilded age and austerity theory.
This didn’t happen by accident. And Calvin and Boo are right – if the left won’t solve the problems the public will start buying into fascist talk.
Great title for the post, btw.
this is the fatal flaw of voting for the lesser of two evils. We need a left wing response but there is no left wing in US politics, there is only the Democratic party, which though slightly less evil than the Repubs is equally sold out to the 1%.
Then the appropriate analysis is to figure out why there is not populist left wing in American politics. Vision: Active and powerful enough left-wing in American politics.
Analysis: What are the 20 things blocking this from happening? Hint: the state of the Democratic Party becomes something of an excuse for not looking deeper.
Thanks for pointing this out, TarheelDem. There’s this idea often espoused that if the top dozen or so Democratic Party leaders would just do as the people want, we’d be fine. The problems are much more complicated than that.
Beyond eating the rich and increased taxes, with robots taking the jobs we can just print money:
Robots and Economic Luddites: They Aren’t Taking Our Jobs Quickly Enough
People are constantly lamenting over “jobs jobs jobs”. The fact is the jobs aren’t coming back. There will be “jobs” in the future, but not how we currently imagine employment. With all of the increased productivity, there is no need for all people to be working. First step is to tax the rich to the point that their eyes bleed; 95% or so. Next is to send everyone checks to do as they please. Currently for example we pay authors to write books on the basis that they’re published and sell a lot. But that doesn’t have to be a future. If someone wants to write for their “job” then pay them to e writers! They don’t have to be any good, it’s just a point of giving people fulfillment and self-worth.
I don’t expect this to come about, at least not before some severe hardship. In fact if I were a bettin man id put money on some sort of neo-Fascism or feudalism.
Tax the robots.
I rather like the part where their eyes bleed.
I haven’t yet bought into the idea that “inequality” is anything but another bumper sticker sound bite we plan to use against the evil Republicans. I don’t find the solutions compelling enough to justify my support for the argument.
One cannot “fix” such a thing with a government policy. One can certainly create it, but one cannot eliminate it once it has established itself.
We’ve given the super-rich their license to print money and the poor and “former middle class” are not all that worked up about it at the moment. They seem to like it, actually.
It takes a lot of suffering to start a revolution. We are no where near that point in America. Life is way too good for most to countenance such a thing.
Life is good for you, maybe, but go talk to anyone between 18 and 25 and ask them how great things are.
No doubt we can easily find those for whom life is not good. And they would be right to be angry. I eagerly await that development, but for the time being it is, in my opinion, no where in sight.
Is that you SiDC?
On a related note, I was given a baseball bat for Christmas.
When you’re getting the trendy gifts of pitchforks and molotov cocktail kits under the tree, the class warfare tide will have definitely turned.
The worst economic downturn in 3-4 generations didn’t warrant any more than a sternly worded letter that led to self-pitying angst among the 1%.
In the 8 years before that a presidential election was stolen and a disastrous war was started through incompetent fraudulence.
When the majority of people are indifferent to their own suffering it’s hard to envision an event greater than these that will spur any action.
Your point is completely wrong. Not only is it possible for government to solve the problem of income inequality, it’s already happened once.
From the Wikipedia entry “Income Inequality in America”:
The first era of inequality lasted roughly from the post-civil war era (“the Gilded Age”) to sometime around 1937. But from about 1937 to 1947 – a period that has been dubbed the “Great Compression” – income inequality in America fell dramatically. Highly progressive New Deal taxation, the strengthening of unions, and regulation of the National War Labor Board during World War II raised the income of the poor and working class and lowered that of top earners. This “middle class society” of relatively low level of inequality remained fairly steady for about three decades ending in early 1970s, the product of relatively high wages for the US working class and political support for income leveling government policies.
Those old Reaganite ideas that government can’t solve any problems and that “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem!” are and always have been complete bullshit. This particular problem is quite amenable to government solutions; we’re simply waiting, as we had to in the early 20th century, for the public to build up enough political will to force those solutions into action. People are getting there on their own quite easily these days. Would be quite helpful if we had a political party willing to help.
Thanks to you and all who replied. We’ve spent 30-40 years tearing apart the middle class. So the idea that we can improve safety net programs for the young, reform the tax code, raise taxes on the super rich, re-regulate Wall St and corporate America, change the relationship between labor and management, and reverse the effects of free trade, globalization, and technology strikes me as a tall order. And even if we did all those things, it still might not change “income inequality.”
Our modest attempts to improve access to health care have consumed the debate for 4 years now and cost us control of the House and many states.
So yeah, it makes sense to change the subject and the “income inequality” label has the added benefit of having little in the way of realistic solutions. So we’ll talk incessantly about it while doing exactly what we’ve done for the last 20+ years to reduce it… nothing. Even in the midst of war and financial crisis, the government did nothing. Even when we had a budget in balance and a plan to pay down the national debt… the government did nothing to help.
I am no doubt a cynical and skeptical guy, but I’m just not seeing the elites running the show or the voters electing Congress giving much care to the issue beyond lip service.
Right. But right now we are locked in a kind of death-grip of gridlock. This won’t last forever because a whole generation is being ruined by it. It’s like two tectonic plates that are moving past each other at an incredibly slow pace, and the pressure is building up to a massive political earthquake that will either shift things catastrophically towards fascism or dramatically towards socialism.
I’m a witness of the ruin, and I can tell you, there are a whole lot of people who would have no problem watching the guillotines roll out.
Over reach long enough, and you’re going to get your fucking arm cut.
They decide how bad.
There isn’t a revolution in North Korea, and those people are suffering more than most. Lack of a violent uprising does not equal “everything’s peachy”.
Furthermore, one can be concerned about income inequality without people dying in prison camps or on the street (although, actually, people are dying on the street in this country, more than you think).
Govt policy is in fact the primary driver of income inequality – levels of taxation and social safety nets, investment in education, etc, create the framework in which our society exists, even in more “free-market” countries. So yes, the government CAN do something about it, if we choose to make them. And in fact changes to govt policy are likely the only reliable way to do it, unless you think the Donald Trumps of the world are going to voluntarily do this on their own.
Agreed… I do believe that in order to address income inequality in America the changes required will be revolutionary. Even in this post, the author argued that “And the right, worldwide and throughout history, only knows one way to deal with hordes of pissed off poor and formerly middle-class people. They give them weapons and turn them against each other.”
So I took that to mean that the poor might someday get pissed off… I find that prospect pretty remote here in the USA. Our creeping police state is getting pretty good at squelching dissent of any kind. We must be kept safe at all costs.