Let me tell you what I think you already know, but you have to say it out loud. Inequality is by design.
Lily Eskelsen Garcia
From those who colonized us 400 years ago, systems were built around people in power, by people in power, to keep their power.
And 400 years ago, who were those people in power? White, male, Protestant, property owners — people with money.
Those guys set up systems to make themselves the decision-makers.
Inequality in the United States has never been more extreme than it is now. For decades the wealthy have been using their wealth to buy power so they can accumulate even more wealth. Their appetite for power and gain has been insatiable. We are now at a tipping point between repentance and reform, or revolution and collapse. The Nephites are our model.
The wealthy created the poor
For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.
Doctrine and Covenants 104:17-18
Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment.
God created a world of plenty for us, His children. He would not and did not create a world wherein His children would have to fight each other for a limited amount of scarce resources. The reason that many of us live in such a world is that the wealthy and the super wealthy have selfishly stolen and hoarded God’s bounty for themselves.
The wealthy do not support the common good
The oligarchy is not committed to the public good. It does not want to raise the wages of working Americans, reduce inequalities, guarantee all Americans access to good health care and a world-class education, or stop climate change. The oligarchy’s allegiance is to corporate shareholders, and its major interest is enlarging their and its own wealth.
Robert B. Reich
The oligarchy does not care about the average American. These people have never experienced hunger. They do not know the anxiety of having a medical bill one cannot pay. Their children do not attend the local public schools.
They do not understand or care about the lives of regular people because they have no shared experience with us. They can’t see us because they don’t live with us, or live like us.
Corporations work for shareholders rather than for stakeholders
The easiest way to lift share values and enlarge the oligarchy’s wealth are to hold down wages, roll back regulations, find ever-cheaper places around the world to produce products and services, fight unions, and secure giant tax cuts that result in less money for education, health-care, and everything else most Americans need.
Robert B. Reich
Since at least the 1980s, big corporations have abandoned any pretense of obligation toward their employees or to the communities in which they are located. The corporate raiders of the 1980s scared CEOs into focusing solely on short-term shareholder profit.
The quest to maximize profits has worked directly against the interests of employees and communities as jobs are lost, wages are cut, pensions disappear, and factories are moved overseas.
Governmental regulation is our only hope
There is only one thing in man’s world that can offer any check on the unlimited power of money — and that is government. That is why money always accuses government of trying to destroy free agency, when the great enslaver has always been money itself.
Hugh Nibley
Governmental regulation of the economy is the solution, not the problem. Unbridled capitalism is dangerous and destructive because of its narrow single-minded focus on profit. It needs to be regulated to constrain its excesses and to protect the people. The market cannot be a fair contest without a referee.
Since Ronald Reagan’s active disparagement of government oversight of the economy, and his blatant attacks on unions, the share of increasing worker productivity that has actually gone back to the workers in the form of wages and benefits has flat-lined. If history is any indication, at some point the workers will revolt and demand what was stolen from them.
Republicans proudly work to destroy government regulations
And the regulations of the government were destroyed, because of the secret combination of the friends and kindreds of those who murdered the prophets.
3 Nephi 7:6
Any time you hear a politician denigrate government regulations, you can know that that politician is a friend of money and not of the people. Our democratic government, when it is working correctly, is the “voice of the people.” The corporations are the voice of “power and gain.”
Latter-day Saints who have read the Book of Mormon should not be confused about which of these two voices are the bad guys.
The difficulty is not that corporate power is beyond the control of the American government. It is that corporate power controls the American government.
Robert B. Reich
Source: Robert B. Reich, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, Knopf, 2020.
Greg Sargent, “The massive triumph of the rich, illustrated by stunning new data,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2019.
Hugh Nibley, “Beyond Politics,” Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless, 2nd Edition, Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004, p.313.
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, Keynote Address to the 99th Representative Assembly of the National Education Association, July 2, 2020.
“Collapse” by Jared Diamond is a perfect book to read about this very subject. It’s about Societies in our past that fell apart because of the wealth gap and the imbalance between the rich and the poor. It happened in smaller societies where we can analyse and study it, but it will happen in larger societies as well for the very same reasons.
Yes. In Will and Ariel Durrant’s little book, The Lessons of History, I remember best their observation that one of the lessons is that wealth gets redistributed eventually. The choice is between the French Way (violent revolution) or the English way (taxation). So when the Powers that Be revolt against taxes and limits on their gain at the expense of the poor (“a man prospers by his strength, and whatsoever a man does is no crime, and let’s stack the courts with our people so that we can’t be sued or held responsible in any way, and stack the government with de-regulators so we don’t have to worry about the health or safety or economic well being of the poor, ect), they are leading us down the path of violent revolution.