Who Will Bell the Cat?

       An ironic Ukrainian proverb declares “We’re standing on the very edge, so we’re taking one step at a time.” The PBS News Hour this week looked over the edge of a real world precipice—the Alabama prison system—at a national horror story that requires many steps so far not taken. It also serves as a parable of the  national and global divisions created by inequality.

        At its Holman prison the Alabama state budget has 24,000 human beings “living” cheek by jowl in bunk beds inches above, below and next to each other. There are frequent riots—a guard and the warden were recently stabbed in the midst of trying to stop one.

       As parable this PBS  story is also a story about global inequality. OxFam reported a year ago, just before the annual Davos conference of the world’s wealthiest finance and political leaders, that by the end of 2016 the combined wealth of the richest 1 percent will overtake that of the other 99 percent of people. Oxfam’s researchers show that the richest 1 percent have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014 and

“Of the remaining 52 percent of global wealth, almost all (46 percent) is owned by the rest of the richest fifth of the world’s population. The other 80 percent share just 5.5 percent and had an average wealth of $3,851 per adult – that’s 1/700^th of the average wealth of the 1 percent.”

       In this abyss of inequality ISIS-style terrorists from the ranks of the have-nots now operate in Libya, Kenya, Somalia and across Europe. In the U.S. they may find fertile soil among the imprisoned. Untold unrest is growing among clusters of have-nots that includes tens of millions of workers with frozen wages and disappearing benefits. There are 10 million undocumented immigrants, 29 million citizens without health insurance and from Silicon Valley to New York a growing absence of affordable housing.

       There is a strange immobilization within both political parties and the candidates about this enveloping disaster. The absence of specificity about policy is striking in the face of many reality factoids. Clearly, its evolution grows from the weaknesses and absence of regulation in global capitalism; a system profoundly analyzed two years ago by political economist, Thomas Piketti, whose equation— R>G —says the rate of return on capital “r” is greater than “g” the rate of economic growth;  and this equals growing inequality.

       Who among campaigners and parties or members of congress and their candidates seems willing to bell this cat? able, that is, to speak appropriately in proportion to the disasters around us. The race for votes in New York over the next ten days will tell us something.