New research from the RAND Corporation shows what working Americans have suspected all along. From 1975 to 2020, the top 1% of Americans have stolen 50 trillion dollars from the aggregate annual incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans. Everyone in the United States today would be healthier, happier, and better educated if we had not allowed this to happen.
A full-time worker at the median (half of the people above, half below) income currently makes about $50,000 a year. If the growth in the American economy in the past 45 years had been shared as broadly as the growth of the previous 30 years, that worker would be making $102,00 a year!
Full-time workers in the 25th percentile would be making $61,000 instead of $33,000. At the 75th percentile, workers who now make $81,000 would be making $126,000. Even those at the 90th percentile would be better off — making $168,000 per year rather than $133,000.
So where did the money go? The study shows that the average yearly income for the top 1% (yes, one) is now $1.2 million. Had income been distributed fairly for the past 45 years, they would “only” be making $549,000 a year.
Look at the above numbers again. Calculate roughly how much your own family has been affected. These numbers are outrageous. People should be marching in the streets over this.
Revolution or collapse
Inequality of this magnitude typically results in either revolution or societal collapse. If the people know what the problem is, and who caused it, they historically have taken to the streets and overthrown the wealthy people in charge. However, if the people are too divided, and a significant portion of them scapegoat the poor and/or minorities rather than correctly blaming the super wealthy for the country’s problems, then the society collapses into tribalism.
The United States theoretically has the political tools to reduce this inequity without precipitating either revolution or collapse. Workers can join Unions. People can rally, organize, and speak out. The voters can wake up and choose wise and principled leaders who, over time, can legislate fairness back into our economic system.
But the anti-democratic forces are hard at work weakening our system. They are suppressing the vote, stacking the courts, and corroding public discourse. Soon it will be too late to recover.
We must resist
The people who pulled off this historic heist are politicians, judges, bankers, financiers, CEOs, conservative think tank rationalizers, talk radio conspiracy-mongers, and the Fox News propagandists. They masquerade as respectable pillars of the community, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. These people are consummately evil. They literally steal from the poor to give more to the rich.
All of American society is worse off because of what they have done (and are still doing). It is essential that we fight back immediately and strongly. The first opportunity to make a real difference is the upcoming 2020 election. We absolutely need to elect Democrats at all levels. The most critical races, of course, are the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Because of reapportionment, state legislative races are also crucial this year.
After a successful election, the work will just be beginning. While the Republican party, at all levels, has given itself wholly over to the plutocrats, too many Democrats have also served the whims of big money. We must convince them to start working for the common people or we must replace them. It is time for the Democratic Party to return to its working-class roots.
Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
Hubert H. Humphrey
Sources: Nick Hannauer and David M. Rolf, “The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure,” Time, September 14, 2020.
Rick Wartzman, “‘We were shocked’: RAND study uncovers massive income shift to the top 1%,” Fast Company, September 14, 2020.
Yasmin Tayag, “Huge Human Inequality Study Hints Revolution is in Store for U.S.,” November 15,2017.
Yep. Reminds me of Nibley’s comments in “What is Zion? A Distant View” about power and gain, and money. “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,” where Mammon is the Hebrew word for banking. And the D&C 49:20 on “But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin.” And I’ve been thinking of the story Lucy Mack Smith tells how a young Joseph said, “You look at Deacon Jessup.. and hear him talk very piously. Well, you think he is a very good man. Now suppose that one of his neighbors should owe him the value of a cow, and this poor man had eight little children; moreover that he should be taken sick and die, leaving his wife with one cow, and destitute of every other means of supporting herself and her family–I tell you now that Deacon Jessup, religious as he is would not scruple to take the last cow from the poor widow and orphans in order to secure the debt, notwithstanding he himself has an abundance of everything.” (HJS, 91) She goes on to say this prophesy was literally fulfilled. And that attitude, it strikes me, is the essence of Republican legislation, stacking the courts now to destroy the ACA rather than deal with the pandemic in ways that might cost them anything, despite their abundance of everything.
Well fine, both you and I agree on this, but it will fall on deaf ears in our religious culture because the contemporary Church holds to the views of Ezra Taft Benson and Cleon Skousen. Things may change if Trump implements dictatorial powers (?).
So, here we are just 3 weeks from an election which will reveal a whole, A WHOLE, lot about our culture. Will we LDS resist Trump when he refuses to leave office, or will we, as I suspect and fear, just roll over and die?