Today's Financial Times (motto: World's Favorite Pink Newspaper) neatly summarizes the latest statistics on the distribution of wealth worldwide. Here's the lead: weath is distributed very unevenly.
We expect these new statistics to become fodder for more calls for more even distribution of wealth in the United States and globally. But we continue to confess ourselves to be more interested in other questions. Rather than asking how evenly distributed the world's wealth is, we'd prefer to know what percentage of the world has access to clean water, adequate nutrition, functional housing, basic health care, decent education, and political and religious freedom.
If pressed, we would confess ourselves also to be interested in the growth of institutions that lead to the growth of prosperity. Banks and capital markets, with the fairly enforced laws that assure their honesty, create opportunities for individuals to maximize their creativity and productivity and so to acquire assets that provide more of the kinds of things described above.
But why should it matter that the top 1% has scads more stuff than anyone else? The rich are at best only marginally better off in experiential terms than those who have access to all the stuff noted above. Perhaps we all need that reminder now and then.
3 comments:
Okay, I'll take the bait (again). Here's one reason why it should matter that the top 1% has scads more stuff than anyone else:
Disproportionate wealth entails disproportionate power. The fact that George Soros is so filthy rich he can do whatever his little heart desires doesn't bug me. The fact that he's so filthy rich he can force me (politically and otherwise) to do what his little heart desires is something else altogether. Granted, the rich will always be among us, but wealth measured in the millions doesn't have nearly the political (and otherwise) clout that wealth measured in the billions has. The narrower we can keep the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the better off politically (and otherwise) the have-nots will be.
I actually agree with you on that. But which is easier, to redistribute wealth, or to encourage the have-nots to ignore the political machinations of the haves? How much forcing can the haves actually do?
There's a refreshing frequency with which we observe the have-nots deliberately rejecting what the wealthy induce by the spending of their wealth on politics. That's the upside of populism, if you will.
For some reason I am much less afraid of George Soros' money than that of Mitt Romney's and his church's money. Call me a modern day "Know Nothing," but the machine that is the Mormon corporation has been cranking away at society for many years now trying to normalize their social status with their "family values" doctrine. My fear stems from the fact that they seem to have been successful thus far and nothing could more adequately cap that success than placing one of their boys in the position of PotUS.
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