On Distribution

Part II of II

Due to automation (The Digital Age) and the offshoring of production (Globalization), since the early 1970s, we have seen less demand for labor lead to fewer production workers with less bargaining power settling for lower wages, leading to significantly less wealth being distributed to fewer of the population.  For this and other reasons (significantly, financialization, for example):  Today, forty-four per cent of the US workers don’t make a living wage (up from ~17% in 1972).  From 1981 to 2021, we saw $50 Trillion of wealth move from the bottom 90% to the top 1% of Americans.  

We have a worsening wealth distribution problem and are not doing anything about it.

Since the beginning or at least the 21st century BCE, and especially since the beginning of the Industrial Age, much of wealth distribution has been by way of wages paid in exchange for labor performed.  As noted, due to automation and offshoring, this mechanism for distributing wealth is becoming less effective. This diminishment plays a significant role in the huge, upward-trending transfer of wealth to the wealthy we have seen over the past fifty-plus years; begs for best thinking about better means of wealth distribution; for consideration of everything from for every person a share in the ownership of the means of production, employee ownership, cooperatives, redistribution, redefining work, …, to any and all possibilities yet unthought of.  To any and all of which we can expect fierce opposition from most of the very wealthy.  

One of these, redistribution, refers (herein) to a transfer of wealth from those who have a lot to those who have little or none, to a means of wealth distribution that is not in exchange for labor.  It is — no surprise — a word that strikes fear in the hearts of some.   In the days of the robber barons, the Vanderbilts, Mellons, Carnegies, and Rockefellers kept it at bay with help from all levels of government. These days, much abetted by the US Supreme Court’s ludicrous Citizens United decision, the in-thing for the wealthy is to buy politicians and judges and fund right-wing think tanks; and, as in the days of robber barons afore, use the power of their wealth to control the media to convince the manipulables that things like redistribution are really bad. Over just the past few decades the uber- rich have spent $Billions and $Billions on these types of endeavors, to avoid having to share their wealth. 

Various forms of redistribution have been tried for various reasons going back centuries. FDR’s New Deal was allowed in the mid nineteen thirties because capitalism had failed spectacularly; was down for the count.  As soon as it was able ( with government help) to begin getting up off the floor, it was — “once more to the barricades!”  It was communism, not capitalism, that was the threat.  

In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began looking everywhere for communists.  Theirs was the first Red Scare; followed, McCarthyism, the second.  Both were witch hunts in the interests of the wealthy.  

Their present-day succeeding sycophant, the Heritage Foundation (1973), is the proud author of Project 2025, facilitator of the 2024 election of Trump along with dozens of other Republican unworthies; and, stuffer of federal courts with right-wing ideologues.  All done in close association with its lifelong accomplice/sidekick, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), who helped out by writing and getting enacted great gobs of right-wing state and federal legislation designed to prioritize, protect, and preserve the interests of the wealthy.  The very same wealthy who are ever at war for their interests; in defense of capitalism — else — it would have been long gone. 

All this under the guise of a once respectable Republican Party. 

Why all the fuss?  Because, to accept redistribution (as an example) is to admit that the Stone Soup, capitalistic, whatever-you-call-it, economic model had failed to equitably distribute wealth and a multitude of other ways; was not a good choice for going forward.  Better to have peonage and other forms of servitude, women and children — people of all sorts — going hungry and starving to death or dying from exposure, lack of healthcare, and such, than to have the wealthy pay a fair share, lose predominance.  ‘Twas all god’s will until the rabble learned to read and write, how to think for themselves.  Followed, ideas like democracy. Then, demands for redistribution!  Lewis Powell said it was the colleges’ and universities’ fault.  William F. Buckley thought it was something to do with Christianity.  From whomever or whatever, capitalism/wealthism was under assault and must be defended.

Recent history teaches that under a kinda-sorta democracy model of government with a Stone Soup, capitalistic/whatever-you-call-it like economic model without equitable distribution you get extreme concentrations and disparities, of wealth — as back in the Gilded Age — as today.  That, under the same models, with a more equitable distribution you get a growing middle-class — as in America’s halcyon days of the mid-1930s to the early-1970s.  

Other during its halcyon days, the US has no history of an economic model that equitably distributed wealth; that might be capable of addressing transitioning from an Industrial to a Digital Age.  None of one suited to address an era of Climate Change in a crowded world.  

During the halcyon days of higher wages and shorter work weeks, the rich were still very rich; it’s just that they don’t like sharing.  

Disinclined to leave things to chance, wealthy people have a long history of hiring bright people to look as far ahead as possible for possible threats to their interest; of doing whatever it takes to eliminate those threats. Have proven themselves to be masters at both defensive and offensive strategies.  The New Deal was acceptable to them at the time only because it saved their/capitalism’s butt(s).  As soon as able to get up off the floor, it was, “Charge!”  Not “Charge” as in “Forward Ho!”, more “Backward Ho The Wagons!” to when wealth ruled.

The current Republican House majority just passed legislation that would deprive some 21 million American citizens of the right to vote. Specifically, those who might not vote Republican.  All much in the interest of the wealthy. This sorry, anti-democratic, bunch of cultural warriors posing as Representatives of the people (Thanks Newt!) are following orders from the sycophantic Heritage Foundation; thus, indirectly serving their masters.  There will be no redistribution, no new economic model, no change for the better, unless and until we can rid Congress of their ilk;  unless and until we can eliminate the influence of wealth that put them there.

Change is hard, something that usually takes generations. The older one gets, the harder it is.  Change takes time; something that we don’t have a lot of.   It is unlikely that older generations will/can overcome ingrained thinking in the one generation we might have.  Our best hope is the younger generations who are not so locked into the past, are more receptive to thinking anew.  It is their future.

We’ve come a long way in sharing power; until the white backlash led by the likes of Lewis Powell, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson.  Newt Gingrich and both the Rehnquist’ and Roberts’ Court majorities were consequences of this backlash; did not believe in democracy.  Newt defines amorality. Both the Court majorities were/are nakedly regressive and partisan.  This while here and around the world religious zealots, oligarchs, and wanna-be dictators try to take us backwards.  Wo be unto advancement.  Since the mid 1980s, the US has been too busy going backward.

Since and before the 1980s. There has been great regression in the sharing of wealth.  Neither the lessened sharing of power or wealth was by chance.  Lewis Powell understood.

After The Magna Carta; Declaration of Independence; First – Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments to The US Constitution; and The Civil and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s; the logical progression would have been declaring freedom from the tyranny of wealth, from want of basic necessities like healthcare, housing, food, education, ….  We were doing well until we weren’t.  What the how in hell happened?

No doubt, twenty-thirty years from now history will have an answer.  We’ll be lucky if we have a year.  We should have seen this coming.  

We have been undone by the influence of concentrated wealth in association with craven politicians; a few (what have turned out to be fatal) flaws in our Constitution; and the terminal ignorance and manipulability of large segments of the population.

By Lewis Powell and the powerful wealthy elite he represented who saw better distribution of wealth and power as a problem.  As it was, for them.   For the rest of the world,  the problem was the maldistribution of power and wealth.