The self-immolation of the Republicans this week is not without
its satisfactions: the President-elect’s weird way with words and obsessive tweets,
his party’s promise to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act with no
replacement in sight; and of course the hawkish billionaire cabinet and absurd
rewards for faithful service: a brain surgeon to run HUD, politician Rudy
Giuliani as cyber expert.
Still, the Democrats seem not to want to be out-done in the category
of self-immolation. They remain silent about what they will offer to the
citizens who threw them out of office; silent about how to respond to the
hurricane of inequality and how to head-off the near collapse of democratic
institutions. Like the Republicans, they
seem more interested in the chance to score media points.
The good news is that while neglected in the inauguration furor, there are prophetic voices in the field of economics and political science who
are sharply focused on reducing inequality. They’re saying there is no force of
nature about to vanquish inequality, but there are answers people of faith can
support rooted in ideas of justice and fairness: Like guaranteed cash
endowments for every young person as they reach adulthood, a national savings
program that equalizes returns on savings and investment, guaranteed jobs and
income for the unemployed and democratization of access to capital.
The
research-based diagnosis that’s producing these prescriptions is the result of
the magic of high speed computer analysis. A collaborative study over the past dozen
years led by French economist Thomas Piketty, and many others, gathered two
hundred years of real estate, estate and income tax data from France (back to
the Napoleonic era), Italy, Spain, Great Britain and the United States that
proved definitively that rising tides for the rich do not raise the other ships.
Historically speaking this research shows that rates of
return on private capital investment are greater than rates of economic growth for
a nation. This means that private owners are constantly capturing greater and
greater shares of sovereign funds needed for the public good of a nation, whose
resources are constantly squeezed. Economist Piketti underlines this significance
“Once constituted…the past devours the future…The likely decrease
in the rate of growth of both the population and the economy…are potentially
terrifying….especially since it is occurring on a global scale.”
Piketti’s predicted terror is happening around the world
now. That’s why the steel mills closed, why Detroit was abandoned, why the poor in
urban communities —African Americans, Latinos, Asians are trapped today in cities
without jobs.
The other good news is that by changing tax policies to increase
taxes on wealth and the wealthy a whole universe of progressive policies can
begin to happen for everyone without destroying the rich (making them, of course, a bit less rich). Piketti reports in the N. Y. Times Magazine, January 15, 2017 on the progressive social
policy proposals of the brilliant British economist, Anthony Atkinson, whose 2016 book,
”Inequality, What can be Done?” suggests new steps legislators can take that will level the playing field
substantially while stimulating rising standards
of living. These include:
·
giving every young adult in the nation (every
one of them) at age eighteen an endowment of $5,000 to $10,000 to help them
start their lives in a secure way;
·
establishing
a national savings program
allowing each depositor to receive a guaranteed return on their capital similar
to those earned by wealthy investors; (whereas wealthy investors may earn 10 to
15 percent on their large investments while an average workers’ smaller investment
may receive only the passbook savings rate of 1 percent today.)
·
Creating guaranteed minimum-wage public jobs
for the unemployed;
·
new
rights for organized labor;
·
public
regulation of technological change, and
·
democratization
of access to capital.
In Atkinsons’
view, these reforms are intimately bound up with the larger issue of a new
approach to public property and the possible development of a new form of
sovereign wealth fund. “The public authority cannot resign itself merely to go
on piling up debt and endlessly privatizing everything it possesses.”
This is where
the day after the Trump inauguration and the disgraced Democratic Party begins. If it is to be, such a new day of just and fair economic policy should be on the agenda of every Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Hindu meeting. A reform economic agenda means
mobilizing study groups, conducting town hall meetings, making sure there is
plenty of food, water and blankets if you have to march sometimes. It may mean
you have to leave your political party behind. No more immolations!
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