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Plutocracy.Pdf $ PLUTOCRACY in AMERICA » How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor RONALD P. FORMISANO Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press INTRODUCTION 1 All rights reserved. Published 2015 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 THE WEB OF INEQUALITY 9 1 The Founders’ Vision 10 Johns Hopkins University Press American Think They Live in Sweden 12 2715 North Charles Street The Middle Class and Poverty 16 Baltimore, Maryland 21218- 4363 www.press.jhu.edu Rising Public Awareness 18 The Great Recession 21 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Some Are More Unequal Than Others 26 Formisano, Ronald P., 1939– Plutocracy in America : how increasing inequality destroys the middle THE MYTH OF OPPORTUNITY 30 class and exploits the poor / Ronald P. Formisano. 2 Mobility 30 pages cm Education 32 Includes index. 38 ISBN 978-1-4214-1740-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4214-1741-7 The For-Profits (electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-1740-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN Eating Tuition 43 1-4214-1741-3 (electronic) 1. Equality—United States. 2. Poverty—United Rise of the Adjuncts: “Teachers on Wheels” 49 States. 3. Income distribution—United States. 4. Democracy—United States. Death of a Contingent: “She Was a Professor?” 50 5. United States—Economic conditions—2009– 6. United States—Social conditions—1980– I. Title. HN90.S6F67 2015 THE SHRINKING MIDDLE CLASS 52 305.50973—dc23 2014043206 3 The Lost Decade 53 The Geographic Dimension 56 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Running in Place and Falling Behind 57 Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more informa- Jobs and Wages 60 tion, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. Wage-Productivity Gap 62 “Why Screwing Unions Screws the Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- Entire Middle Class” 64 consumer waste, whenever possible. Staying Afloat / Sinking in the New Economy 69 KEEPING THE RICH (FILTHY) RICH THE FRACTURING OF AMERICA 146 4 AND THE POOR (DIRT) POOR 75 7 Americans Do Care about Inequality 147 Rent Seeking and George Washington Plunkitt 76 The Founders Cared about Inequality 149 Two Tax Systems 76 Public Opinion 152 Corporate Taxes and CEO Compensation 80 The Constitutional Stacked Deck 157 The 47 Percent 87 The Decline of “the Commons” 161 Keeping the Poor Poor 89 Minimum-Wage Welfare Queens: CONCLUSION: CONSIDERING McDonalds and Walmart 94 THE UNDESERVING, POOR AND RICH 166 INEQUALITY, LIFE, AND Antipoverty Programs: Effective? 167 5 QUALITY OF LIFE 102 The Undeserving Poor 169 A Tale of Two Counties 102 The Undeserving Rich 170 Struggling to Make Ends Meet 106 Plutocracy on the March, Democracy Food Insecurity, or Hunger amid Trampled Underfoot 181 Moocher Agribusiness 109 Inequality and Health 112 Notes 191 Two Americas? 115 Index 245 The Spirit Level 117 Affluenza versus the “Hidden Prosperity of the Poor” 119 POLITICAL INEQUALITY 122 6 Participation and Citizens United 123 Political Polarization 127 Disenfranchisement 128 The Assault on Voting 131 The Assault on Voting, Continued 135 Prisons and Felons 138 Deferred Maintenance and Inequality 139 8 » Plutocracy in America 1 their nation resides inside the minds of Americans? Do they imagine communion with their fellow citizens? There could be many answers to these questions. Much has been written about citizens of the United States “sort- ing” themselves into groups with different lifestyles, conflicting polit- ical allegiances, and other societal subcultures. These analyses bring to mind a nation increasingly lacking cohesion or common goals. I THE WEB OF suggest that another image increasingly occupying space in Ameri- cans’ minds, at the expense of the imagined community, is that of a INEQUALITY hierarchical society, with increasingly explicit and visible class lines. Many members of this nation now envision it as something other than a community, nor do they feel a sense of communion across class or (the long- standing) racial lines. What sense of national community Today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exists between an employee working two minimum- wage jobs and exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be a hedge- fund manager? Across most of the bottom half or more of that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of the socioeconomic spectrum, images of separation and distance are exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points. replacing a sense of unity. Hence the ties that bind a nation together, This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when the imagined community, dissolve. food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of So long as extreme disparity of income and wealth perpetuates inequality. hardship and undermines representative government, it needs to be As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved discussed. So long as inequality harms the life chances for tens of by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial millions of one’s fellow citizens, it must be shown the light of day. speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, While a distended plutocracy reigns and tramples a democratic po- no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that litical culture underfoot, then its arrogance must be confronted. So matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills. long as millions of the disadvantaged are denied access to the vote Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium and even to effective citizenship, those un- American circumstances must be illuminated. As a nation, the United States once aspired to Of course, Pope Francis knows that social ills arise from causes other be better, as, in Lincoln’s words during the “fiery trial” of the Civil than inequality. They often follow on the heels of natural disasters. War, “the last best hope on earth.” While a gap has always existed, too Cultural, religious, and racial differences contribute to the world’s often as a broad chasm, between our ideals and our practice, this is problems. The personalities of individuals play a role. Mental illness one of those times— a New Gilded Age— when the gulf between them afflicts both the poor and the rich. But in the second decade of the has grown to undermine our very sense of who we are. twenty- first century, inequality must command the attention of citi- Before the United States existed as a political entity, Americans zens and governments throughout the world. And the United States, thought of themselves as “exceptional.” Whatever the notion of ex- once an egalitarian society, a “city on a hill” offering opportunity, ceptionalism signified across more than two centuries, it did not rest hope, and the “untrammeled pursuit of happiness,” has become in- on a bedrock of inequality. stead an exemplar of the scourge of inequality. 9 10 » Plutocracy in America The Web of Inequality » 11 THE FOUNDERS’ VISION submerged by a government of the extremely wealthy who now iso- late and remove themselves from contact with ordinary citizens by This was not the vision of America’s founders. Although the framers a withdrawal into gated neighborhoods, private jets, chauffeured of the Constitution of the United States launched a new republican limousines, and helicopters and by disdain for mingling in common, government that was well insulated from popular majorities and public spaces. This plutocracy continues to enjoy the fruits of years possessed aristocratic elements, in another generation the nation of government policy directed toward maintaining their inordinate would become a democratic republic with an egalitarian political political influence that, in turn, enables the upper caste’s continued culture. Even before then, during the early years of rule by the gentry, accumulation of wealth at the expense of everyone else. political rivals often accused one another of being “aristocrats.” This This development is hardly a well- kept secret. A huge outpour- pejorative tarred opponents with the stigma of un- republican atti- ing of information addressing inequality and its consequences for tudes and actions, of posturing as privileged elite set apart from ordi- democracy has appeared in print and on the Internet in the past few nary citizens. Aristocrats, in the mind of a democratic republican like years. Many voices warn that the United States is losing its character Thomas Jefferson, wanted to lord it over the great majority— their as a democratic republic. Former secretary of labor Robert B. Reich, “inferiors”—by flaunting their wealth with displays of luxury. But who has tried as much as anyone to alert Americans to the destruc- the American Revolution ingrained a conviction in men and women tive force of inequality, echoes many commentators in asserting that who shared Jefferson’s mentality that “republican simplicity” should the country “is perilously close to losing an economy and a democ- prevail among the citizenry. racy that are meant to work for everyone and replacing them with an Some of the gentlemen who formed the governing class in the economy and a government that will exist mainly for a few wealthy early republic privately modeled themselves (at least to a certain and powerful people.” I assert that such a government already exists. degree) on the European grandees they publically scorned. Jeffer- Several decades of legislation, along with rulings by the current bloc son treasured books and learning and enjoyed fine French wine, as of five reactionary Supreme Court justices, have created an economic well as the comforts dozens of African American slaves provided and political infrastructure “rigged,” as Reich himself acknowledges, on his Virginia plantation.
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