It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, January 13, 2024
ELON MUSK ATTACKS AIRLINES’ DEI EFFORTS, PROMPTING CRITICISM FROM CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS
Musk claimed DEI efforts by United Airlines and Boeing will make air travel less safe.
Tesla CEO and X/Twitter’s “Chief Troll Officer,” Elon Musk, ruffled some feathers with his tweets about diversity, equity and inclusion, irritating civil rights groups, NBC News reports.
After criticizing DEI efforts by United Airlines and Boeing wanting to hire pilots and factory workers of color, he went on making false claims that diversifying workspaces will make air travel less safe.
He even blamed airlines for focusing more on DEI requirements than finding “qualified pilots.”
“The airline industry can’t find enough qualified pilots even without insane DEI requirements!”
His tweets caught the attention of the president and CEO of the National Urban League, Marc Morial, who called Musk’s statements “abhorrent and pathetic.” Morial highlighted how Tesla is facing numerous Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuits after being accused of abusing Black employees with racial slurs and nooses found on work grounds.
“Musk’s company not only refused to investigate complaints or take any steps to end the abuse, it viciously retaliated against employees who complained or opposed the abuse,” Morial said. “The only thing anyone needs to hear from Musk about diversity in the workplace is an apology.”
Musk’s comments were sparked after an Alaska Airlines plane made an emergency landing on Jan. 5 when a panel blew off 16,000 feet in the air. “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE,” Musk tweeted, misspelling the DEI acronym.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson took another route by criticizing Musk’s comments, saying they may promote hate speech, according to The Hill. “Reminder to @elonmusk: providing a home for the proliferation of hate speech and white supremacist conspiracy theories kills people. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion cultivates a more inclusive society,” Johnson tweeted.
“They are not the same. We are not the same.”
Another notable giving Musk the side eye is Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban. The two have been battling it out on social media, leading Cuban to chime in on the tech billionaires’ remarks. After Musk attacked the airlines DEI efforts, Cuban rebutted saying the efforts applies to training school and not the airline.
Elon’s only response was, “Mark Cuban is a racist.”
Massive Gas Outage Threatens Millions Of Americans’ Energy Supplies Amid Arctic Storm
Emergency shutdown at a natural gas storage facility in Washington state threatens mass blackouts.
By Alexander C. Kaufman Jan 13, 2024 In this Thursday, photo the Space Needle is seen in view of still standing but now defunct stacks at the Nucor Steel plant in Seattle. VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
A massive storage facility in Washington state serving the natural gas network that provides electricity and heating fuel to millions of Americans from the Pacific Northwest south to New Mexico went down Saturday.
The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility in Lewis County, roughly two hours south of Seattle, suffered a complete outage, triggering an emergency on the 1,500-mile Northwest Pipeline that ships gas to power plants and heating networks across a region currently struck by arctic weather.
The storage facility provided enough gas to power upward of 6 million homes if it was all used to generate electricity. The gas network also supplies heating furnaces as cities like Seattle freeze in the coldest temperatures in the city in 14 years.
The city of Ellensburg in mountainous central Washington issued a statement Saturday urging residents to conserve natural gas.
Gusty winds had already caused scattered power outages across Oregon as the winter storm sprayed the region with snow.
The utility that owns the gas storage facility, Puget Sound Energy, said the facility went offline at 2 p.m. and “has steadily been coming back on since then.”
“Puget Sound Energy is asking customers to conserve natural gas and electricity use through the evening hours,” a spokesperson for the company told HuffPost by email. “Due to the extreme cold temperatures facing our area, regional utilities are experiencing higher energy use than forecasted, and we need to reduce strain on the grid.”
The company didn’t say what caused the shutdown. But the watchdog Union of Concerned Scientists released a report last month showing an uptick in gas infrastructure breaking down during cold weather when the fuel is most needed.
The latest episode comes just two years after a winter storm left hundreds of Texans dead as gas pipelines froze and power plants failed, underscoring how the United States’ aging energy distribution networks are heaving under increased demand and extreme weather from climate change.
Federal regulators approved an expansion of the Pacific Northwest’s gas network in October. But the investments needed to prop up the fossil fuel system are facing increased scrutiny from those who say the money should be spent on new, zero-carbon energy infrastructure like solar panels and batteries.
On the Ballot in Iowa: Fear. Anxiety. Hopelessness.
Lisa Lerer Updated Sat, January 13, 2024 Republican primary presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a campaign event at Wellma
ALTOONA, Iowa — Presidential elections traditionally speak to future aspirations, offering a vision of a better tomorrow, the hope and change of Barack Obama or the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush.
Yet this year, even before a single vote has been cast, a far darker sentiment has taken hold.
Across Iowa, as the first nominating contest approaches Monday, voters plow through snowy streets to hear from candidates, mingle at campaign events and casually talk of the prospect of World War III, civil unrest and a nation coming apart at the seams.
Four years ago, voters worried about a spiraling pandemic, economic uncertainty and national protests. Now, in the first presidential election since the siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, those anxieties have metastasized into a grimmer, more existential dread about the very foundations of the American experiment.
“You get the feeling in Iowa right now that we’re sleepwalking into a nightmare and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Doug Gross, a Republican lawyer who has been involved in Iowa politics for nearly four decades, ran for governor in 2002 and plans to support Nikki Haley in the state’s caucuses Monday. “In Iowa, life isn’t lived in extremes, except the weather, and yet they still feel this dramatic sense of inevitable doom.”
Donald Trump, the dominant front-runner in the Republican primary race, bounces from courtroom to campaign trail, lacing his rhetoric with ominous threats of retribution and suggestions of dictatorial tendencies. President Joe Biden condemns political violence and argues that if he loses, democracy itself could falter.
Bill Bradley, 80, who served for 18 years as a New Jersey senator, remembered when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, spending more than 75 days in Iowa during his bid. “We debated health care and taxes, which is reasonable,” he said, adding, “Civil war? No. World War III? No, no, no.”
This presidential race, he said, is “a moment that is different than any election in my lifetime.”
He added that the race for the White House in 1968 “was a pretty tough election, but Humphrey versus Nixon was not exactly Trump versus Biden. The difference is just so stark in terms of American values and in terms of, what is the future going to be?”
On Thursday, with the snow piled up in the parking lot, farmers and cattlemen in a ballroom in the Des Moines suburb of Altoona took part in a timeworn political tradition: listening to pitches from Republican presidential contenders eager to woo them.
But between the stump speeches and the campaign promises, there was a once-unimaginable undercurrent in a state that prides itself on being a heartland of American civics.
“There’s civil war coming; I’m convinced of it,” said Mark Binns, who had heard from two Republican candidates, Haley and Ron DeSantis, earlier that morning.
Binns was hardly the image of a radical: He’s a 65-year-old chemical engineer who lives in Kentucky and was in town for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. He voted for Biden in 2020 but isn’t sure whom he will vote for this year.
In fact, he’s considering avoiding the electoral season altogether. Fearful of the possibility of political violence, Binns is weighing going to Brazil in November.
“Quite literally, I may leave the country for that week,” Binns said. “The division is too wide.”
The fear Binns and other voters express is bipartisan, although each side blames the other for causing it.
Democrats worry that a second Trump administration could plunge the country into chaos, trample constitutional rights and destroy the legitimacy of elections. Trump and his supporters make false claims that the previous election was stolen, that the riot on Jan. 6 was not an insurrection and that the Biden administration has been using the legal system to prosecute its political opponents. In the years since the attack at the Capitol, Trump and both mainstream and fringe elements of the conservative media have pushed a steady drumbeat of those lies, an effort to turn upside down the narrative of Jan. 6 and undercut the legitimacy of the Biden administration.
The result is a disorienting frenzy of facts and falsehoods swirling around issues once considered sacrosanct in public life. Recent polling shows Americans have a gloomier view of the future and express a new openness to political violence.
Just a little more than one-third of voters in a Wall Street Journal/NORC survey in November said the American dream still holds true, substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012. In an October survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, nearly one-quarter of Americans agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” — a record high in the poll. In the early weeks of 2024, a host of officials — politicians, judges, election administrators — have withstood threats and harassment, including bomb threats at state capitols, fake calls to the police and a barrage of violent calls, mail and emails.
“What’s going to happen in this next election?” Michelle Obama, the former first lady, said on a recent podcast. “I’m terrified about what could possibly happen. We cannot take this democracy for granted. And I worry sometimes that we do. Those are the things that keep me up.”
As politicians, commentators and voters grasp for historical analogies, one of the darkest chapters of American history keeps being evoked: the period leading to the Civil War. Some see a parallel in the clash of two Americas — not North and South now, but Red and Blue.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, mentioned the Civil War during his speech as he dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday and questioned whether Americans would support democratic values. He recounted the story of Benjamin Franklin being asked by a woman in Philadelphia what kind of government the Founding Fathers had given the country.
“He said to the woman, ‘A republic, if you can keep it,’” Christie told voters in New Hampshire. “Benjamin Franklin’s words were never more relevant in America than they are right now.”
David Blight, a historian at Yale University, has been surprised at how his once-obscure academic specialty in the Civil War has become a matter of current debate: In recent months, he has been repeatedly asked to speak and write about whether that period of strife has lessons for today.
Blight does see the comparisons. “It’s not the 1850s, but there are many similarities,” he said. “When are the times when the divisions are so terrible that we feel on the brink of losing the whole? When are the parts tearing us asunder in ways that we fear for the whole enterprise of this ideal? And we’re in one of those; there’s no question.”
The fears come despite what on paper looks like national stability. Inflation has fallen, unemployment has returned to a pre-pandemic level and layoffs remain near record lows. The Federal Reserve plans to cut interest rates several times in the coming year.
The incumbent president and his Republican challengers do also speak optimistically about the future. Biden promotes the economic progress under his administration. Haley promises to cut federal spending, expand mental health services and rebuild America’s image abroad. And DeSantis says he will cut taxes, curb illegal immigration and crack down on China.
Yet, at events across Iowa in the week before the caucuses, voters talked about issues far beyond the standard political debates over the economy, foreign policy, health care and education. Politicians, strategists and voters from both parties described an inescapable sense of foreboding, a feeling that something might go dangerously awry.
When Vivek Ramaswamy called on voters at an event in Waukee on Wednesday afternoon, one of the first comments praised the candidate’s anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy and raised the potential of World War III; “that’s a threat to all of us normal people,” the questioner said.
To Maria Maher, who was listening in the back of the restaurant with her youngest son, that kind of catastrophic thinking didn’t sound shocking. Trump’s defeat in 2020 convinced her that the country’s democratic system was broken and government was a “criminal operation.” Maher, who has a small farm, had been raising and home-schooling her nine children on her own after her husband died following a difficult battle with cancer about a dozen years ago.
“Voting is a joke, and it’s — what’s the word — fraud because of the machines,” said Maher, 62, who was deciding whether to vote for Trump or Ramaswamy. “If we’re going to get a sham president like Biden again, we’re coming in the back door. We’re going to bypass the president’s power.”
Dave Loebsack, a former congressman and political science professor, said he was worried about political violence, even in places like Iowa. He was shocked by how divisive school board elections had become in his small town of Mount Vernon.
“The fear is driving both sides, and that can drive both sides to extremes as well,” Loebsack said. “This is not a good situation.”
For some voters, some of the hopelessness stems from the candidates themselves. Biden and Trump appear to be heading toward a rematch election, despite polling showing that both men remain deeply unpopular among large swaths of Americans.
Standing by the bar in an Irish pub on a snowy Tuesday morning in Iowa, Terry Snyder, a photographer, said she was more worried about the results of this election than any other in her lifetime. Snyder, 70, had driven through the storm to hear Haley but doubted that the former South Carolina governor could win the Republican nomination.
Trump wasn’t an option, she said: “He’s a dictator. And I don’t like that aspect.”
But Snyder said she was no less worried about an America led by Biden for another four years.
Her three grandchildren are now teenagers, and if Biden is reelected, she said, she worries about their future and a liberal culture that she fears would police what they could say. “I’m afraid they are going to have so many of their rights taken away that we have always enjoyed,” she said.
c.2024 The New York Times Company
Why A Teamsters Strike Is Brewing At Anheuser-Busch
Five-thousand workers across the country could hit the picket lines soon if the storied brew-maker doesn't give job guarantees to the union.
D.J. Edwards comes home smelling like beer every morning. He works from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. as a filler operator at Anheuser-Busch’s brewery in Jacksonville, Florida, running a huge machine that fills 165 12-ounce cans every time it rotates. He takes a lot of pride in the job and says he’s willing to strike to make sure the company takes care of its workers.
“We’re really fighting for job security,” Edwards said. “We need to know they’re committed to keeping breweries open and keeping us employed.”
The union contract covering 5,000 Anheuser-Busch brewery employees expires Feb. 29. The Teamsters union says it made some progress on negotiating a new five-year agreement until talks stopped abruptly in mid-November. The two sides haven’t met since then and remain apart on key issues like pay increases, pension contributions and guarantees on jobs, according to the union.
In a sign of the high expectations for a strong contract, workers recently voted 99% in favor of authorizing the Teamsters to call a strike if they don’t reach a deal by the end of next month.
That means Anheuser-Busch could see the most high-profile work stoppage of the new year, hitting a dozen breweries in 11 states and shutting the taps for Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Stella Artois, among other big-name macrobrews owned by Belgian parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev.
“The momentum is swinging in our direction. It's time to take care of the worker.”
- D.J. Edwards, a filler operator at Anheuser-Busch in Florida
Having watched other workers walk off the job amid a surge of U.S. labor activism, employees like Edwards believe now is the time to demand more from the storied brew-maker.
“We feel like at this rate the momentum is swinging in our direction,” said Edwards, a 37-year-old new father who has been at Anheuser-Busch since 2019. “It’s time to take care of the worker.”
It’s certainly a favorable moment to be hitting the picket lines.
Bolstered by a tight labor market and inspired by other contract fights, union workers have been walking off the job in numbers not seen since the wave of red-state teacher strikes that began in 2018. Writers, actors, autoworkers, nurses and baristas were all among the more than 400,000 workers who made 2023 a banner year for striking, and helped put corporate executives and board members on their heels.
Budweiser cans are seen at a grocery store in Las Vegas on Nov. 17, 2023. JAKUB PORZYCKI/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
But not all major contract battles have led to work stoppages lately. Some 300,000 Teamsters members at UPS threatened to walk out last summer, but the union and its new hard-charging president, Sean O’Brien, managed to secure what they called a historic deal just shy of the strike deadline.
As the booze news and culture site VinePair reported in its continuing coverage of the fight, the Teamsters standoff comes at a critical time for Anheuser-Busch. Right-wing commentators waged a damaging boycott of Bud Light last year after Anheuser-Busch worked with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on a one-off social media promotion, leading America’s top-selling brew to lose market ground in historic fashion. While still profitable with revenue climbing globally, the embattled beer giant would surely like to avoid the news coverage of a nationwide strike at a time when union favorability hovers near a six-decade high.
“This company is going to put themselves on strike come March 1 if we don’t have an agreement that we can all be proud of.”
- Jeff Padellaro, the director of the Teamsters’ brewery conference
Jeff Padellaro, the director of the Teamsters’ brewery conference, said what happens at Anheuser-Busch all depends on how much the company moves on the union’s core issues by the end of February. He accused the company of “walking away from the table” after union negotiators said that they wanted to discuss job security measures in November, two months after bargaining began. He said the union never got an opportunity to make its proposals on the issue.
“We’ve made our demands clear. We’ve made our expectations clear,” Padellaro said in an interview. “This company is going to put themselves on strike come March 1 if we don’t have an agreement that we can all be proud of.”
An Anheuser-Busch spokesperson declined to address the hiatus in talks but said that the company has “a long-standing track record of reaching agreements” with unions.
“We continue to be at the bargaining table and willing to negotiate, and we look forward to resuming formal negotiations to reach a mutually acceptable agreement that continues to recognize and reward our employees,” the company said.
Like the United Auto Workers in its strike at the “Big Three” automakers, the Teamsters say they are looking to recoup some of the ground that workers lost at Anheuser-Busch in previous contracts. Padellaro borrowed a phrase that he said the union leader O’Brien likes to use: “The concession stand is now closed.”
Teamsters President Sean O'Brien led the union in its high-profile negotiations with UPS last year. VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Before the bargaining sessions stopped, the two sides managed to reach a tentative agreement on a crucial issue: eliminating a two-tiered health care plan. The system, established in a 2019 contract, foisted higher costs onto new employees hired after its implementation. Such arrangements can sow deep divisions within unions, since workers are treated differently despite doing the same work.
The disparate treatment even exists within families. Edwards, who is one of three brothers working at the Jacksonville brewery, said that he is subject to the more expensive plan. So is his youngest brother. But their middle brother, who has the longest tenure, enjoys lower health care costs through the legacy plan.
“Our health benefits [are] not as good as anybody hired pre-2019,” Edwards said of newer employees like himself. “That was the most important thing to me and guys like me. ... Sitting there thinking about a young family, now I have to plan around my health care.”
The union appears to be having a harder time securing guarantees on jobs.
“The ones picking up the tab on everything is us, the workforce.”
- Levi Kovari, a brewer and union shop steward at Anheuser-Busch in Colorado
Although he declined to discuss union proposals in detail, Padellaro said the Teamsters want assurances that workers won’t lose their positions during the life of the contract. He noted that AB InBev announced a $1 billion stock buyback amid negotiations, and argued that the company should assure the same sort of investment in its employees.
“We told them straight out, ‘We need a commitment to protect the head count,’” Padellaro said. “We showed up to have that discussion, and the company sent their negotiating team home.”
Levi Kovari, a brewer and union shop steward at the company’s Fort Collins, Colorado, brewery, said that a lot of workers have lost overtime due to drops in beer volume. While the impact of the Bud Light boycott on corporate employees was well documented, Kovari said that workers got stung on the factory floor as well.
“The ones picking up the tab on everything is us, the workforce,” he said. “We’ve seen drastic cuts in overtime on the packaging side. We’ve seen a reduction in the amount of man-hours on the brewing side. We’re all feeling the effects of all of this. But the company, they’re still spending money, and they’re still extremely profitable.”
Kovari called himself “a product of Anheuser-Busch.” His father worked at the company’s Colorado can plant for years, and his cousin now works in the same plant as Kovari. He said it’s gratifying to make a product that millions of people know and enjoy. He just hopes Anheuser-Busch agrees to a contract that reflects the work employees put into it.
“The company has made these commitments to their shareholders,” Kovari said. “They need to make the same commitment to their employees.”
A review of Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, by Kevin Phillips, 2002, Broadway Books, 472 pages.
Although Wealth and Democracy was published 22 years ago, the New York Times bestseller is worth revisiting, because it continues to have a big impact on how influencers and policy makers think about income inequality. The author’s earlier book, The Politics of Rich and Poor, also had a big impact.
This review summarizes and critiques the book’s major themes, which are as follows:
– Income inequality is a serious problem in the United States and has gotten worse since the 1970s.
– Wealth is too concentrated, and the wealthy have too much political power.
– Corporations also have too much political power.
– Many rich people have become wealthy through crony capitalism, not market competition, and it’s been this way since the nation’s founding. Many others have inherited their wealth through family dynasties.
– The economy has shifted from saving and production to indebtedness and financial gimmickry—similar to the shift that speeded the decline of the Spanish, Dutch and British empires.
– Both political parties have had a hand in the above, but Republicans more so than Democrats.
– The Federal Reserve has also played a role.
– All of this has corrupted democracy.
An astonishing amount of research went into the book. Data on wealth and income go back to the nation’s founding and are presented in a large number of graphs and tables. The book even lists the wealthiest individuals and families at different points of time in the nation’s history, including two people I worked for in the 1980s.
The amount of data is overwhelming, even to a data hound like myself. There is so much of it that it’s difficult to get through all of it or to study it in detail. It makes the reader wonder how many reviewers who gave the book a good review actually made it through all of the material.
Poring through the data is made more difficult by the author not always being clear if he is referring to nominal dollars (i.e., dollars not adjusted for inflation) or real dollars (i.e., dollars adjusted for inflation).
Comparisons are made for various periods between the income of the richest Americans and the income of everyone else. The comparisons are expressed in absolute dollars and in the form of a ratio.
For example, a chart shows that Elias Derby had the largest fortune in the US in 1790, a fortune of $1 million. The ratio of this fortune to the median family or household wealth at the time was 4,000:1. In contrast, Bill Gates’ fortune of $85 billion was the largest fortune in 1999. The ratio of his fortune to median family or household wealth was 1,416,000:1.
There is a big difference, however, between how Derby and Gates acquired their wealth. Derby became wealthy from being a privateer during the American Revolution and sacking British ships. Gates became wealthy from marketing a computer operating system to millions of people around the world, a system that may have been technologically clunky but provided value to users.
The book notes that privateering was a big business during the Revolution. An estimated two thousand vessels sailed under letter of marque from the revolutionary government or one of the thirteen colonies. They captured and plundered some three thousand British ships.
This is an example of how wars can generate wealth for some individuals. Of course, wars also destroy wealth.
The book goes on to show that income inequality becomes most pronounced during periods of technological innovation, such as the invention and adoption of the spinning jenny at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the spread of railroads in the nineteenth century, the growth of the oil industry after the discovery of oil in western Pennsylvania, or more recently, the development of semiconductors and the internet.
Other factors came into play beginning in the 1970s, such as global competition and tax and monetary policies that, according to the author, benefited the wealthy more than the non-wealthy. He wrote this before the advent in the twenty-first century of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing and zero interest rates, which increased inequality by benefiting owners of homes, stocks, and other assets.
The author correctly notes that data on income and wealth don’t capture improvements in quality of life, such as advances in medicine, safer and less polluting cars, larger homes, and so on. Parents of children afflicted with polio prior to the development of the polio vaccine would no doubt have been willing to forgo some income to have had a vaccine available.
In spite of the staggering amount of research that went into the book, and in spite of the author not making overtly biased political statements, the book doesn’t give the complete picture and omits relevant facts. This leaves the reader to wonder if the author had a hidden political agenda.
The Rest of the Picture
Transfer Payments
The author omitted transfer payments from his statistics on income; that is, he excluded what people receive from welfare, entitlements, subsidies, and earned-income tax credits. These payments can be substantial.
In their book, The Myth of American Inequality, Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early add transfer payments to earned income and get a different picture of income inequality. In brief, they conclude that the bottom fifth of Americans in earned income actually have more income than the next fifth when transfer payments are added to earned income. And they have almost as much total income as the fifth above that, which is where the middle class resides.
Granted, these three authors focus on income, not wealth or assets. It is indisputable that there are huge differences in wealth between socioeconomic classes in the US (and in much of the world).
Racial/Ethnic Diversity
Another flaw is that the book compares the US to cherrypicked countries that have less income inequality, including, predictably, Scandinavian nations, but not to the many countries that have greater income inequality.
The problem with comparisons to Scandinavian countries is that the US is much more racially and ethnically diverse and encompasses ethnocultural groups of significant size that lag in income for reasons other than public policy. At the same time, the Scandinavian countries are more homogenous and much smaller, thus making for more cohesiveness, stronger social bonds, and more willingness to share wealth. That’s changing, however, due to a marked increase in those countries of immigrants who have different values and less education and skills than the native-born population.
Take Sweden. Since the book was published, Sweden has made its tax code less progressive, and, according to some sources, is now surpassed in progressivity by the US tax code.
On a related note, the book doesn’t address how income inequality is affected in the US by an influx of emigrants from Latin America who are impoverished, unskilled and poorly educated. Unlike when my poor and poorly skilled and educated grandparents immigrated to America in the early twentieth century, it’s much more difficult for the unskilled and poorly educated to get ahead in today’s technologically advanced society and job market. Still, just by crossing the southern border and finding a job at minimum wage, today’s immigrants can see their income increase by 400 percent compared to what they were earning in their mother country—a point that goes unmentioned in the book and in other publications that bemoan US inequality.
Also unmentioned is the rise in single-parent families that began in the 1970s, a rise that has contributed to income inequality and to other social problems.
Corporate Power
The book claims that corporations have too much political power, which might be true; but two important facts go unmentioned.
The first is that corporations are not monolithic in their political interests and affiliations, and are often at political cross-purposes. Examples: Domestic sugar producers want tariffs on imported sugar, but candy producers do not. Hollywood leans left while the oil and gas industry leans right. The political culture within Google is quite different from the political culture within Lockheed. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has different politics than Disney CEO Bob Iger.
The second fact is that many nonprofit organizations are not only very powerful but also uniform in their politics. For example, the American Federation of Teachers ranks near the top in political power and is decidedly leftist and Democrat. The same for other public-sector unions. University faculty, who are the gatekeepers on what is instilled in college students, are Democrats by a margin of eight to one over Republicans.
Environmental groups also have considerable political power, as I know from heading one in metro New York. Then there are scores of interest groups with political power, such as the NRA, AARP, ACLU, NAACP, Urban League, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Black Lives Matter. Professional associations also abound, such as the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the Society for Human Resources Management, and the Association of International Certified Public Accountants.
The foregoing suggests that political power is widely diffused in America, but it also suggests that individual voters are at a disadvantage unless they join an influential group to protect or advance their interests.
The Power of the Wealthy
Do the wealthy have more power (and influence) than the non-wealthy? No doubt. For sure, a fast-food worker has less power as an individual than either Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos. But that would be true even if the worker’s pay were quadrupled, or if the income gap between the poorest and richest Americans were reduced by half, or even if Gates, Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos had their wealth reduced by 99 percent.
A reality of the human condition is that people live and work in hierarchies, where those at the top of the pyramid have more power than those at the bottom. This is true regardless of the nature of the political and economic systems that they live under.
In fact, the power gap between the top and bottom is particularly wide in communist systems, where, theoretically, there is no income inequality. Party leaders and senior apparatchiks have authoritarian control over the masses. They also have valuable perquisites in lieu of income, which was the case in the former Soviet Union, where the nomenklatura had swank apartments, well-appointed dachas, well-stocked private stores, chauffeured cars, special medical care, and top schools for their children.
Or take Latin America. Much of it still suffers from the legacy of the Spanish empire, a legacy of a two-class society of aristocrats at the top and the poor at the bottom, without a large middle class in between.
Causes and Solutions
Concerns and conflicts over disparities in income, wealth and power are of course nothing new and will never be completely settled.
The author recounts historical watersheds on the subject, going all the way back to the philosophical and constitutional disagreements between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
My list of watersheds in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries includes the following:
Theodore Roosevelt’s trust busting, the Prairie Populism movement, the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and the corresponding establishment of the Federal Reserve and income tax, the early battles between management and labor, the socialism of union leader Eugene Debs and his Wobblies, the Progressive era, FDR’s New Deal and Social Security Act, LBJ’s Great Society and passage of Medicare, the social and political turmoil of the sixties, Richard Nixon’s closing of the gold window, Henry Kissinger’s opening to China, Jimmy Carter’s stagflation, Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics, Pat Buchanan’s nationalist run for the presidency, H. Ross Perot’s anti-globalist run for the presidency, Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism, Barack Obama’s national healthcare, the series of foolish wars and military adventures beginning with Vietnam, the staggering growth of the regulatory state, and a half-century of deficit spending.
More recent watersheds are Donald Trump’s populism and the shifting constituencies between the Democrat and Republican parties.
Speaking of Trump, the book was published in 2002, which was well before Trump ran for president. But the author claims that Trump had advocated a wealth tax in 1999, and specifically, a onetime levy of 14.25 percent on net worth of $10 million or more, in order to pay off the national debt.
A similar idea is a stiff estate tax. Proponents say such a tax would end the political and economic dynasties of rich families and would uphold the American ideal of meritocracy, in that the offspring of the wealthy would have to earn money instead of inheriting it.
But such a tax is an example of how attempts to reduce inequality can result in a different form of inequality. An estate tax does nothing to end the advantages that children of the wealthy or politically powerful have—the family name, the family connections, the prestigious K-12 schools, the special tutors, the legacy admissions to prestigious universities, and so on.
If Joseph Kennedy had left no wealth to his sons John, Robert and Ted, they still would’ve had an edge over unknowns named Tom, Dick and Harry. If George Herbert Walker Bush had left no money for his sons George and Jed, they still would’ve had an edge over Joe the Plumber.
Likewise, if Hunter Biden’s last name was Schmoe instead of Biden, it is doubtful that he could’ve parlayed his name into millions of dollars from foreign entities. And if Chris Cuomo, the brother of ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, had the last name of Dokes instead of Cuomo, it is doubtful that he would’ve become a TV personality.
Or take Warren Buffet. Please take him. In spite of advocating a confiscatory estate tax and wanting his kids and everyone else’s kids to earn their way, he placed his daughter as head of a foundation he had handsomely funded. She has a nice income, job security, and the prestige and influence that come from doling out millions of dollars in grants.
Joe the Plumber just wants to bequeath his small business to his son, but powerful politicians and others want to penalize him for doing so while feathering the nest for their own kids in non-monetary ways that are actually worth a lot of money. That’s a strange idea of equality.
So, what’s the solution to perceived disparities in income, wealth and power? At the risk of sounding naïve, idealistic, and glib, it is for citizens to learn all sides of issues, to be leery of ideologues, partisans, and dogmatists, and to value and advance the freedom they have in a pluralistic constitutional republic to change things without resorting to a revolution.
Conclusion
Wealth and Democracy is a tremendous work of research and scholarship, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Nor does this review.
For the rest of the story, Americans have to get out of their comfort zone and echo chamber, have to spend less time in the shallows of social media and “See Spot run” sources of news and information, and have to demand that political agendas and ideology be removed from K-12 schools and universities.
I guess I’m naïve and idealistic after all. _______________ Living in Tucson with his wife, Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist, activist, and retired business executive and consultant. Contact: ccan2@aol.com or craigcantoni@gmail.com.
Exclusive: Top Biden Aid Official For Gaza Will Soon Leave Post
Retired ambassador David Satterfield was appointed by President Biden as a special Middle East envoy on humanitarian issues focused on the Israel-Hamas war.
By Akbar Shahid Ahmed Jan 13, 2024, HUFFPOST Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, speaks with David Satterfield, right, director of Rice University's Baker Institute, during the Shell Distinguished Lecture Series at Rice University Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)
David Satterfield, a retired ambassador who President Joe Biden appointed as a special Middle East envoy on humanitarian issues focused on the Israel-Hamas war, will leave his post in the coming weeks, according to a source familiar with his plans and a U.S. official.
The departure is striking amid Israel’s ongoing U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza, which it launched against Hamas — the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group — following a shock Oct. 7 attack inside Israel. The United Nations and aid groups warn Gaza faces famine and the amount of humanitarian assistance flowing into the territory is deeply insufficient given restrictions imposed by Israel and Egypt.
Spokespeople for the State Department — where Satterfield is serving — did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.
UK
Green Party urges government to launch urgent international peace effort for Gaza
The Green Party has urged the government to launch an urgent international peace effort to end the Israel Gaza war.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said: “The horrific loss of Israeli civilian lives on October 7 has been compounded by months of devastation for the people of Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, leading to over 23,000 deaths and the escalating risk of wars spreading through the region.
“Now is the time to search for new peace initiatives that can break this cycle of pain and create the conditions for a lasting peace in the region.
“We need the UK government to work to restore trust in the international institutions designed to protect people and that offer peaceful, legal and diplomatic avenues to end conflicts.
“Of course, it is for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples to agree the long-term solutions that will offer each security and peace.
“However, the UK government can do much more now to encourage that process to begin.”
The Green Party is calling on the government to:Unequivocally back an immediate ceasefire to allow the free flow of humanitarian aid, free the hostages and create space for dialogue Support the UN General Assembly in its overwhelming backing for a ceasefire and use its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to vote for rather than abstain on ceasefire votes Support the role of the International Criminal Court in its investigation of war crimes, including the use of sexual violence by Hamas and disproportionate use of force by the Israeli government Support South Africa in its decision to ask the International Court of Justice to rule on whether Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza. Help reduce military action by suspending arms sales to Israel
Denyer continued: “By supporting international institutions and encouraging peaceful solutions, the UK government can act as a partner for peace rather than a proponent for further pain and suffering for the people of the region.
“It will take courage and determination to change course and recognise that UK foreign policy is failing to bring this conflict to an end, but a change of course now, can help chart a new path to peace.”
Switzerland pro-Palestinian activists bash the country’s ‘neutrality’ during new protest
On the Global Day of Action for Gaza, protesters in Switzerland called for a permanent ceasefire in the region, accusing the country of being “complicit in genocide” despite its declared neutrality.
More than 15,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Switzerland have taken to the streets of Basel on Saturday to hold their first national protest in support of Gazans since several German-speaking cantons introduced a ban on such actions, calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the region.
The demonstration, held on the Global Day of Action for Gaza by the newly founded Federation Swiss-Palestine (FSP), called on people all across Switzerland to come together to protest their country’s government “complicity in the deaths of at least 22,300 Palestinians,” a press release shared with Euronews reads.
Protestors take to the streets of SwitzerlandCatarina Viegas
The ban on protests in several German-speaking cantons was introduced after the national demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians on 4 November 2023, the first since Hamas’ attack on 7 October and Israel’s war against the militant group.
The FSP, which represents an alliance of collectives and organisations from all over the country, said the ban is “an unconstitutional infringement of the fundamental right to protest.”
The group criticises Switzerland’s declared neutrality, saying that the country’s neutral and humanitarian commitment to according to UN resolutions has been “flagrantly violated” due to the clear pro-Israeli stance it has taken since 7 October.
“This makes Switzerland complicit in the ongoing genocide,” the group said. “The Swiss complicity goes from banning the right to demonstrate in certain Swiss cantons, over censoring academic work at Swiss universities, cancelling the financial support of Palestinian NGOs, attempting to cancel UNWRA work which is crucial during this humanitarian catastrophe, to directly aiding Israel’s genocide through military cooperation and continuing economic relations with the apartheid state.”
Protestors take to the streets of SwitzerlandCatarina Viegas
“Neutrality is a policy that only serves the Israeli apartheid regime and its settler colonialism,” Catarina Viegas, one of the activists attending the demonstration on Saturday told Euronews. “While genocide is being carried out before our eyes, we refuse to remain silent facing the violence of power and until everyone is free.”
The FSP is now asking Switzerland to introduce military and economic sanctions against Israel through the UN Security Council, the halt of investments in companies implicated in Israeli settler and security policy and the decriminalisation of the Palestinian solidarity mov
