[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Rising Inequality and Liberal Myopia
David Johnson via Peace-discuss
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Fri Nov 14 23:33:10 EST 2014
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/14/rising-inequality-and-liberal-myopia/
Forward to the Past: Next Stop, the 19th Century!
*Rising Inequality and Liberal Myopia*
by PETE DOLACK
If capitalism is taking us back to feudalism, we’ll have to pass through
the 19th century on our way. In terms of wealth inequality, we’re on
course to return to the century of robber barons. Back then, the
public-relations industry hadn’t developed, so at least they were called
by an honest name, instead of "captains of industry" or "entrepreneurs"
as they are today. Although "heir" would frequently be far more accurate
than "entrepreneur."
We’re not at the 19th century yet, but we have arrived at the 1920s on
our trip to the past. The level of inequality of wealth in the United
States today has not been seen since the decade that led to the Great
Depression.
The top 0.1 percent — that is, the uppermost tenth of the 1% — have
about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of United Statesians. To
put it another way, approximately 320,000 people possess as much as do
more than 280 million. It takes at least $20 million in assets to be
among the top 0.1 percent, a total that is steadily rising.
Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California,
and Gabriel Zucman, a professor at the London School of Economics,
examined income-tax data to reveal these numbers. They write that they
combined that data with other sources to reach what they believe is the
most accurate accounting of wealth distribution yet, one that shows
inequality to be wider than previously imagined. The authors define
wealth as "the current market value of all the assets owned by
households net of all their debts," including the values of retirement
plans with the exception of unfunded defined-benefit pensions and Social
Security. (The reason for that exclusion is that those moneys do not yet
exist but are promises to be kept sometime in the future.)
The authors’ paper, "Wealth Equality in the United States since 1913:
Evidence from Capitalized Income Data," reports that, for the bottom 90
percent, there was no change in wealth from 1986 to 2012, while the
wealth of the top 0.1 percent increased by more than five percent
annually — the latter reaped half of total wealth accumulation.
The 22 percent of total wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent is almost
equal to what that cohort owned at the peak of inequality in 1916 and
1929. Afterward, their total fell to as low as seven percent in 1978 but
has been rising ever since. At the same time, the combined wealth of the
bottom 90 percent rose from about 20 percent in the 1920s to a peak of
35 percent in the mid-1980s, but has been declining ever since. Although
pension wealth has increased since then, Professors Saez and Zucman
report, the increase in mortgage, consumer-credit and student debt has
been greater.
Nonetheless, this might still be an underestimation — the authors write
that they "still face limitations when measuring wealth inequality"
because of the ability of the wealthy to hide assets off shore or park
them in trusts and foundations.
Inequality on the rise
Although rising throughout the developing world, inequality is
particularly acute in the United States. Among the nearly three dozen
countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, only three (Chile, Mexico and Turkey) have worse inequality
than does the U.S., measured by the gini coefficient. The standard
measure of inequality, the more unequal a country the closer it is to
one on the gini scale of zero (everybody has the same) to one (one
person has everything).
Of course, were we to measure inequality on a global scale, the results
would be more revealing. Even the U.S. gini coefficient of 0.39 in 2012
pales in comparison to the global gini coefficient of 0.52 as calculated
by the Conference Board of Canada. To put it another way, global
inequality is comparable to the inequality within the world’s most
unequal countries, such as South Africa or Uganda.
How to reverse this? Professors Saez and Zucman offer reforms that
amount to a return to Keynesianism. They advocate "progressive wealth
taxation," [page 39] such as an estate tax; access to education; and
"policies shifting bargaining power away from shareholders and
management toward workers." Such policies would surely be better than
the austerity that has been on offer, but the authors’ wish that this
can simply be willed into existence is quite divorced from capitalist
reality.
Indeed, the authors go on to lament that one factor in stagnant incomes
is that "many individuals … do not know how to invest optimally." It is
difficult to believe that these two learned economists are unaware of
the relentless chicanery of the financial industry. How does one invest
"optimally" in a rigged casino stacked against you?
The past is not the future
Fond wishes for the return of Keynesianism will not bring those days
back. (And, of course, if you weren’t a white male those days weren’t
necessarily golden anyway.) The Keynesian consensus of the mid-20th
century was a product of a particular set of circumstances that no
longer exist. Keynesianism then depended on an industrial base and
market expansion. A repeat of history isn’t possible because the
industrial base of the advanced capitalist countries has been hollowed
out, transferred to low-wage developing countries, and there is almost
no place remaining to which to expand. Moreover, capitalists who are
saved by Keynesian spending programs amass enough power to later impose
their preferred neoliberal policies.
Capitalists tolerated such policies because profits could be maintained
through expansion of markets and social peace bought. This equilibrium,
however, could only be temporary because the new financial center of
capitalism, the U.S., possessed a towering economic dominance following
World War II that could not last. When markets can’t be expanded at a
rate sufficiently robust to maintain or increase profit margins,
capitalists cease tolerating paying increased wages.
And, not least, the massive social movements of the 1930s, when
communists, socialists and militant unions scared capitalists into
granting concessions and prompted the Roosevelt administration to bring
forth the New Deal, were a fresh memory. But the movements then settled
for reforms, and once capitalists no longer felt pressure from social
movements and their profit rates were increasingly squeezed, the turn to
neoliberalism was the response.
Nobody decreed "We shall now have neoliberalism" and nobody can decree
"We shall now have Keynesianism." Capitalist market forces — once again,
simply the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and
financiers — that are the product of relentless competitive pressures
have led the world to its present state and the massive inequality that
goes with it.
Even if mass social movements build to a point where they could force
the imposition of Keynesian reforms, the reforms would eventually be
taken back just as the reforms of the 20th century have been taken back.
The massive effort to build and sustain movements capable of pushing
back significantly against the tsunami of neoliberal austerity would be
better mobilized toward a different economic system, one based on human
need rather than private profit.
Reforming what is ultimately unreformable is Sisyphean. Going back to
the mid-20th century Keynesian era, even were it possible, would be no
more than a detour on the way to the 19th century. Building a better
world beats nostalgia.
Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog. He has been an activist
with several groups.
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