Economic Inequality Is a Serious Problem in America

Table of Contents:Further Readings

Bill Moyers, keynote address at the Inequality Matters Forum, New York University, June 3, 2004. Copyright © 2004 by Bill Moyers. Reproduced by permission.

Bill Moyers is a television journalist, author, and social commentator. He also served as press secretary under President Lyndon Johnson. In the following viewpoint, excerpted from a 2004 speech, he argues that the gap between the rich and poor in the United States is large and growing to such an extent as to call into question the fundamental fairness of American society. He further contends that the wealthy in America have had increasing success in "rigging" the American political system for their own benefit. At the same time, Moyers claims, poor and middle-class Americans are working longer hours, experiencing greater economic insecurity, and wielding less political clout than in previous generations.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. What two families does Moyers describe?
2. What does equality mean, besides equal incomes, according to the author?
3. What forces and people are threatening equality in America, according to Moyers?

Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours and still falling behind; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans—eight out of ten of them in working families—are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.

Astonishing as it seems, no one in official Washington seems embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it's been in 50 years—the worst inequality among all Western nations. Or that we are experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said those people down there at the bottom were single, jobless mothers. For years they were told work, education, and marriage is how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it—among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. Our political, financial and business class expects them to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.

Two Families

Let me tell you about the Stanleys and the Neumanns. During the last decade, I produced a series of documentaries for PBS [the Public Broadcasting System] called "Surviving the Good Times." The title refers to the boom time of the '90s when the country achieved the longest period of economic growth in its entire history. Some good things happened then, but not everyone shared equally in the benefits. To the contrary. The decade began with a sustained period of downsizing by corporations moving jobs out of America, and many of those people never recovered what was taken from them. We decided early on to tell the stories of two families in Milwaukee—one black, one white—whose breadwinners were laid off in the first wave of layoffs in 1991. We reported on how they were coping with the wrenching changes in their lives, and we stayed with them over the next ten years as they tried to find a place in the new global economy. They're the kind of Americans my mother would have called "the salt of the earth." They love their kids, care about their communities, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week—both mothers have had to take full-time jobs.

During our time with them, the fathers in both families became seriously ill. One had to stay in the hospital two months, putting his family $30,000 in debt because they didn't have adequate health insurance. We were there with our camera when the bank started to foreclose on the modest home of the other family because they couldn't meet the mortgage payments after dad lost his good-paying manufacturing job. Like millions of Americans, the Stanleys and the Neumanns were playing by the rules and still getting stiffed. By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America was widening.

What turns their personal tragedy into a political travesty is that they are patriotic. They love this country. But they no longer believe they matter to the people who run the country. When our film opens, both families are watching the inauguration of Bill Clinton on television in 1992. By the end of the decade they were no longer paying attention to politics. They don't see it connecting to their lives. They don't think their concerns will ever be addressed by the political, corporate, and media elites who make up our dominant class. They are not cynical, because they are deeply religious people with no capacity for cynicism, but they know the system is rigged against them. They know this, and we know this. For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30-fold. Four decades later it is more than 75-fold.

Growing Inequality

Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionately. But that's not the case. As the economist Jeff Madrick reminds us, the pressures of inequality on middle and working class Americans are now quite severe. "The strain on working people and on family life, as spouses have gone to work in dramatic numbers, has become significant. VCRs and television sets are cheap, but higher education, health care, public transportation, drugs, housing and cars have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. And life has grown neither calm nor secure for most Americans, by any means." You can find many sources to support this conclusion. I like the language of a small outfit here in New York called the Commonwealth Foundation/Center for the Renewal of American Democracy. They conclude that working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life."

Household economics is not the only area where inequality is growing in America. Equality doesn't mean equal incomes, but a fair and decent society where money is not the sole arbiter of status or comfort. In a fair and just society, the commonwealth will be valued even as individual wealth is encouraged.

Thomas Jefferson's Words

Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots [is] built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal. So what could he possibly have meant by that ringing but ambiguous declaration: "All men are created equal"? Two things, possibly. One, although none of us are good, all of us are sacred (Glenn Tinder), that's the basis for thinking we are by nature kin.

Second, he may have come to see the meaning of those words through the experience of the slave who was his mistress. As is now widely acknowledged, the hands that wrote "all men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hemings. She bore him six children whom he never acknowledged as his own, but who were the only slaves freed by his will when he died—the one request we think Sally Hemings made of her master. Thomas Jefferson could not have been insensitive to the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms. He had to know she was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness.

In his book on the Declaration, my late friend Mortimer Adler said Jefferson realized that whatever things are really good for any human being are really good for all other human beings. The happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. A just society is grounded in that recognition. So Jefferson kept as a slave a woman whose nature he knew was equal to his. All Sally Hemings got from her long sufferance—perhaps it was all she sought from what may have grown into a secret and unacknowledged love—was that he let her children go. "Let my children go"—one of the oldest of all petitions. It has long been the promise of America—a broken promise, to be sure. But the idea took hold that we could fix what was broken so that our children would live a bountiful life. We could prevent the polarization between the very rich and the very poor that poisoned other societies. We could provide that each and every citizen would enjoy the basic necessities of life, a voice in the system of self-government, and a better chance for their children. We could preclude the vast divides that produced the turmoil and tyranny of the very countries from which so many of our families had fled.

We were going to do these things because we understood our dark side—none of us is good—but we also understood the other side—all of us are sacred. From Jefferson forward we have grappled with these two notions in our collective head— that we are worthy of the creator but that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Believing the one and knowing the other, we created a country where the winners didn't take all. Through a system of checks and balances we were going to maintain a safe, if shifting, equilibrium between wealth and commonwealth. We believed equitable access to public resources is the lifeblood of any democracy. So early on ... primary schooling was made free to all. States changed laws to protect debtors, often the relatively poor, against their rich creditors. Charters to establish corporations were open to most, if not all, white comers, rather than held for the elite. The government encouraged Americans to own their own piece of land, and even supported squatters' rights. The court challenged monopoly—all in the name of we the people.

In my time we went to public schools. My brother made it to college on the GI bill. When I bought my first car for $450 I drove to a subsidized university on free public highways and stopped to rest in state-maintained public parks. This is what I mean by the commonwealth. Rudely recognized in its formative years, always subject to struggle, constantly vulnerable to reactionary counterattacks, the notion of America as a shared project has been the central engine of our national experience.

A Profound Transformation

Until now. I don't have to tell you that a profound transformation is occurring in America: the balance between wealth and the commonwealth is being upended. By design. Deliberately. We have been subjected to what the Commonwealth Foundation calls "a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." From land, water and other natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and to politics itself, a broad range of the American commons is undergoing a powerful shift toward private and corporate control. And with little public debate. Indeed, what passes for 'political debate' in this country has become a cynical charade behind which the real business goes on—the not-so-scrupulous business of getting and keeping power in order to divide up the spoils....

Economic Inequality and Political Inequality

So what does this come down to, practically?

Here is one accounting:

When powerful interests shower Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get what they want. But it's ordinary citizens and firms that pay the price and most of them never see it coming. This is what happens if you don't contribute to their campaigns or spend generously on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America's tax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from paying. You're compelled to abide by laws while others are granted immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not. You're barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast, the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed.

I'm not quoting from Karl Marx's Das Kapital or Mao's Little Red Book. I'm quoting Time magazine. Time's premier investigative journalists—Donald Bartlett and James Steele—concluded in a series last year (2003) that America now has "government for the few at the expense of the many." Economic inequality begets political inequality, and vice versa.

That's why the Stanleys and the Neumanns were turned off by politics. It's why we're losing the balance between wealth and the commonwealth. It's why we can't put things right. And it is the single most destructive force tearing at the soul of democracy. Hear the great justice Learned Hand on this: "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: 'Thou shalt not ration justice.'" Learned Hand was a prophet of democracy. The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.

Class War

I know, I know: this sounds very much like a call for class war. But the class war was declared a generation ago, in a powerful paperback polemic by William Simon, who was soon to be Secretary of the Treasury. He called on the financial and business class, in effect, to take back the power and privileges they had lost in the depression and New Deal. They got the message, and soon they began a stealthy class war against the rest of society and the principles of our democracy. They set out to trash the social contract, to cut their workforces and wages, to scour the globe in search of cheap labor, and to shred the social safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control.

The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of [economist] Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us....

Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs—if this isn't class war, what is?

It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong.

FURTHER READINGS

• Maurianne Adams et al., eds. Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: An Anthology on Racism, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Heterosexism, Classism, and Ableism. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• William Kweku Asare. Slavery Reparations in Perspective. New Bern, NC: Trafford, 2003.
• Gerald Beigel. Faith and Social Justice in the Teaching of Pope John Paul II. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.
• Gilberto Cárdenas, ed. La Causa: Civil Rights, Social Justice, and the Struggle for Equality in the Midwest. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2004.
• Matt Cavanagh. Against Equality of Opportunity. New York: Clarendon Press, 2002.
• Michel Chossudovsky. The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms. Mapusa, Goa, India: Other India Press, 2001.
• Lee Cokorinos. The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
• Giovanni Andrea Cornia, ed. Inequality, Growth, and Poverty in an Era of Liberalization and Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Pablo de Greiff and Ciaran Cronin, eds. Global Justice and Transnational Politics; Essays on the Moral and Political Challenges of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
• Keith Dowding et al., eds. The Ethics of Stakeholding. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Joe R. Feagin. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• Ellen Frank. The Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation About Deficits, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
• Stephan Gilliatt. How the Poor Adapt to Poverty in Capitalism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
• Patrick Hayden. John Rawls: Towards a Just World Order. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002.
• David Horowitz. Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002.
• John P. Jackson. Social Scientists for Social Justice: Making the Case Against Segregation. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
• Timothy P. Jackson. The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.
• Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Freedom, Equality, and Justice in Islam. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2002.
• Michael S. Kimmel. The Gendered Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Michael S. Kimmel and Amy Aronson, eds. The Gendered Society Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Mary C. King, ed. Squaring Up: Policy Strategies to Raise Women's Incomes in the United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
• Christopher Lake. Equality and Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Timothy Macklem. Beyond Comparison: Sex and Discrimination. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Deepa Narayan, ed. Can Anyone Hear Us? New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Vicente Navarro, ed. The Political Economy of Social Inequalities. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2000.
• Robert L. Nelson and William P. Bridges. Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets, and Unequal Pay for Women in America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• David Neumark. Sex Differences in Labor Markets. New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Otto Newman and Richard de Zoysa. The Promise of the Third Way; Globalization and Social Justice. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
• Martha C. Nussbaum. Sex and Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Fred L. Pincus. Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003.
• Thomas W. Pogge, ed. Global Justice. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.
• Randall Robinson. The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. New York: Dutton, 2000.
• Stephen Steinberg. Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.
• Anthony Stith. Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Sexism and Racism in Corporate America. Toronto, Canada: Warwick, 1998.
• Richard F. Tomasson et al. Affirmative Action: The Pros and Cons of Policy and Practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
• Sarah Owen Vandersluis and Paris Yeros, eds. Poverty in World Politics: Whose Global Era? New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
• Raymond A. Winbush, ed. Should America Pay? Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations. New York: Amistad, 2003.

• C.W. Baird. "The Living Wage Folly," Freeman, June 2002.
• Leon Botstein. "America's Stake in the Estate Tax," New York Times, July 23, 2000.
• Christian Century. "Is It Fair? Estate Taxes and Wealth Disparities in the United States," December 4, 2002.
• Chuck Collins. "Tax Wealth to Broaden Wealth: A Proposal to Tax the Inherited Fortunes of the Rich in Order to Fund a Policy Agenda for Greater Wealth Equality," Dollars & Sense, January/February 2004.
• Clive Crook. "John Rawls and the Politics of Social Justice," National Journal, December 7, 2002.
• Economist. "America's Widening Rich-Poor Gap," September 4, 2003.
• Bill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins. "Long Live the Estate Tax!" Nation, January 27, 2003.
• Kevin A. Hassett. "Rich Man, Poor Man: How to Think About Income Inequality—Hint: It's Not as Bad as You May Think," National Review, June 16, 2003.
• David Hilfiker. "On Poverty: Despite Massive Wealth, the United States Is Abandoning Its Poor Citizens," Other Side, March/April 2004.
• Rosie Hunter and Chuck Collins. "Death Tax Deception," Dollars & Sense, January/February 2003.
• Daniel Kadlec. "Why These Guys Are Dead Wrong: Keep the Estate Tax, Say the Billionaires. Sure—They Can Afford It," Time, February 26, 2001.
• Paul Krugman. "The Death of Horatio Alger," Nation, January 5, 2004.
• David Leonhardt. "Time to Slay the Inequality Myth?" New York Times, January 25, 2004.
• Steven Malanga. "How the 'Living Wage' Sneaks Socialism into Cities," City Journal, Winter 2003.
• Multinational Monitor. "Inequality and Corporate Power," May 2003.
• Jonathan Rowe. "Every Baby a Trust Fund Baby," American Prospect, January 1-15, 2001.
• Isabel V. Sawhill. "Still the Land of Opportunity?" Public Interest, Spring 1999.
• Edward Wolff. "The Wealth Divide," Multinational Monitor, May 2003.

Gale Document Number: EJ3010397206