What if you're wrong?

What if you're wrong? What if enriching the top few percent of earners is a path toward economic devastation? What if the way we all get a better life is by raising the standard of living for the poorest among us? It seems to me that we've never really tried to impose a minimum standard of living, by which I mean the institutions of this country haven't come together and agreed that nobody should be without certain necessities and figured out what they were willing to do to get us there. The narrative in the US is strongly pro-capitalist, and the justification for this narrative seems to be a combination of the desire for a merit-based economy and the desire to inspire and support innovation.

A capitalist society is not a meritocracy. It is untrue that if work is important, it will be valued accordingly by market forces. For example, we undervalue caretaking work in the capitalist market, but without motherhood, child care, and elder care, it would be impossible to imagine the family unit or for people to survive past infancy or into old age. It seems to me that the people in a family who work outside the home, in the market, are dependent upon the caretakers to make sure that home life continues. Is anybody really suggesting that those who do caretaking work are without merit? And yet they don't get paid much, if at all, for arguably the only truly necessary, life-sustaining work that exists in ths world. Capitalism's idea that the truly important work will be valued appropriately in the market is flat wrong when it comes to caretaking work. Not coincidentally, this caretaking work has traditionally been done by women. Could it be, then, that the magical, unbiased hand of the market is skewed after all, since it actually just reflects the biases of its human participants, but on a macro scale?

I attack the idea that capitalism is a meritocracy because I think that assumption contributes to the notion that the poor deserve to be poor. Without interrogating and ultimately defeating the idea that there are people in society who do not deserve a minimum standard of living that includes food, shelter, education, and a chance at upward mobility, it will be very difficult to argue for the reversal of the trickle-down narrative.

The other reason people insist that capitalism is necessary for the success of the country is that it supports innovation. The argument goes that great rewards must be available to those with new ideas, because new ideas make great technology and commodities for all of us to use, and people will flee the US if those great rewards are not available here. Sometimes this goes into the argument that the rewards for innovation must be hugely disproportionate to the income of those around the inventor: people will never invent things if they can't be assured that they'll be much more fabulously wealthy than even other rich people, otherwise, why would they bother? That might be true, but I don't think so. Look at the Global Innovation Index: the US is first, then Germany, then Sweden, then the UK. Which of these things is not like the other? Sure, the US is first, but it seems that Germany, Sweden, and the UK are doing just fine. And they're doing fine while being social welfare democracies. The difference between the poor and the rich in the US is staggering: Americans in the top quintile of our wealth hierarchy control 84 percent of the nation's wealth. The bottom 20 percent of Americans control 0.1 percent. In contrast, in Sweden, the top quintile controls 59% of the wealth, where the bottom quintile controls 32%. And the best part is, Sweden's actual economic distribution is what Americans overwhelmingly say they want! . FYI, nobody asked the Americans in that poll anything about Sweden, nobody even mentioned Sweden. Americans just liked the idea of those distribution numbers, and they happen to be near the numbers in Sweden. And of course, as everyone knows, Sweden's quality of life is very high.

So, market economists, libertarians, and capitalists, what if you're wrong? What if there is no justification for keeping the majority of this country poor so that the tiny percentage of people on top can be fabulously wealthy? What if it would make us all better off, and more of us richer in terms of the real value of our money and what we get from our government, if we focused on making the poor better off? Wouldn't it be weird to hear people say "redistribution of wealth" and mean that the real wages and income of the poor and middle class have been consistently reallocated to the top of the economic scale for the past 30 years? I think at least it's worth looking into.

A Fence is No Substitute

The much-discussed and sometimes popular notion of a fence on the American border with Mexico isn't going to solve our immigration problem. Let's pretend that we had physical barriers around this country that were very difficult to penetrate. For example, let's pretend we were an island in the Pacific, far from neighboring land masses. Australia! Let's pretend America is Australia. Given the mythical properties that people ascribe to a border fence, that it can keep immigrants out and solve our problems, you'd expect that Australia has no immigration problems. But you'd be wrong. People wash up on Australian shores in a desparate attempt to escape persecution in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, and Iraq, among other places. And when they do, Australia puts these refugees, who are not even simply immigrants looking for work but desperate people seeking asylum from death and torture, in "detention centers", which are indistinguishable from prisons. Basically, Australian refugee policy is deeply troubling. It in no way substitutes for meaningful reform and a legitimate set of procedures for processing refugees, giving them asylum, allowing them a legal status, and providing them with the opportunity to become contributing members to Australian society.

Americans, a border fence will not protect us from needing a comprehensive policy on immigration. The only solution is reform, based in an understanding of 1) our shared humanity with immigrants and refugees, 2) and acknowledgement that America was built on free/cheap labor and still exploits those with no bargaining power to get it, and 3) the economic policies of the US in relation to Mexico and Central America have contributed to the poor economies of those countries and therefore to the dire straits of those who live there. We need an immigration reform plan that stops demonizing people in public while doing nothing to punish the corporations that exploit immigrants because immigrants cannot enforce the minimum wage requirements.

We need a policy that incorporates the need this country has for the labor that immigrants do. This policy must give immigrants some measure of safety and accountability, so that we cease our shadow world of undocumented people working under the radar for either individual or institutional employers. We need to recognize that immigrants pay taxes: even if they get cash for working, they pay sales tax and value added taxes on commodities such as gasoline and cigarettes. We should grant them some kind of guest-worker status that allows them to contribute more of their income to this country. There should be a citizenship plan for these guest-workers that is much less restrictive and punitive than the current system, so that these productive, hardworking people can reap the benefits they've paid into with their sales taxes and payroll taxes. The American-born children of immigrants should unquestionably be granted the citizenship that is their right under the 14th amendment. Both American-born and immigrant children should continue to be sent to public school, since education is the best way to ensure that those new citizens produce and pay taxes in the future. There is a proven need for immigrant labor in this country, and it's time to stop demonizing people who want a better life and start crafting policy that makes it easier for us all to live better.