When liberals or anyone else express concern about the growing economic inequality during the current Bush administration, the typical right wing response is to accuse us of “class warfare”. They claim that we would like to deny the rich their just rewards for … whatever they do to earn those rewards; that more money for the rich doesn’t hurt us, so we have no reason to be concerned about it; and that anyhow, over time that money will trickle down to the rest of us.
But increasing income inequality does not mean that the rich are becoming more productive in comparison with the rest of us. Rather, it is a result of government policies that benefit the rich and reduce opportunities for the rest of us. Most people are not unemployed because they choose not to work, but rather because jobs are becoming unavailable.
Furthermore, it is not true that more money for the rich doesn’t hurt the rest of us. To understand that fact, we only need to use some logic and common sense.
The cost of housing as an exampleI am not an economist, but common sense and logic will tell us what happens when economic inequality becomes extreme, as when CEO to worker pay ratios become
431 to 1. This example deals with housing, but it could just as well apply to anything else that people need or want:
As people become obscenely wealthy, spending a couple of million dollars on a house may seem like hardly any burden at all. Under such conditions the quality of the house becomes all important, while the cost is almost immaterial. Builders can then sell houses to the rich for obscene amounts of money as long as they make them nice enough. Thus, it comes relatively much more profitable to sell houses to the rich than to anyone else. So why then would anyone bother building houses for the poor, the working class, or the middle class? In order to make such houses worth building at all, builders would have to charge much more money for them than they did when income inequality was not so great. This is at least one of the reasons for the current housing crisis, with all the accompanying personal tragedy.
Private vs. public securityFor a long time our country has accepted as a given that certain services are so important that we cannot trust anyone but our government to provide them. Basic security, as represented by police and fire departments, is a major example of that. But right wing politicians, especially under the Bush administration, have made great strides in their attempts to reverse this process by privatizing more and more government functions.
Naomi Klein, in her book, “
The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, in Chapter 20 – Disaster Apartheid: A World of Green Zones and Red Zones – discusses what has been happening in recent years in the security industry. She notes the massive proliferation of private security companies spurred by the Bush administration, coupled with
massive government debt. Then she considers the relationship between government spending on private security contractors and spending for public security, and what will happen when our government has to cut back on expenditures to private security companies – and expenditures on public security as well:
The U.S. government is barreling toward an economic crisis, in no small part thanks to the deficit spending that has bankrolled the construction of the privatized disaster economy. That means that sooner rather than later, the contracts are going to dip significantly…
When the disaster bubble bursts, firms such as Bechtel, Fluor and Blackwater will lose much of their primary revenue streams… The next phase of the disaster capitalism complex is all too clear: with emergencies on the rise, government no longer able to foot the bill, and citizens stranded by their can’t-do state, the parallel corporate state will rent back its disaster infrastructure to whoever can afford it, at whatever price the market will bear. For sale will be everything from helicopter rides off rooftops to drinking water to beds in shelters.
Already wealth provides an escape hatch from most disasters… It buys bottled water, generators… and rent-a-cops. During the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, the U.S. government initially tried to charge its citizens for the cost of their own evacuations, though it was eventually
forced to back down (Scroll down to first and third articles). If we continue in this direction, the images of people stranded on New Orleans rooftops will not only be a glimpse of America’s unresolved past of racial inequality but will also foreshadow a collective future of disaster apartheid in which survival is determined by who can afford to pay for escape.
Such are the glories of the “free-market”.
Glimpse of a future where virtually all security is privatizedKlein talks about the desire of the private security companies, in collaboration with right wing politicians, to completely privatize security in our country, including police and fire protection. The following is a
quote from John Robb, a consultant to the security industry, on the future of security in our country. Reading these words out of context, one would probably think that they are meant as a
warning of a disastrous future, or even as a parody such as one might read in
The Onion. But Robb actually means these words to be taken realistically and in a positive light:
Wealthy individuals and multinational corporations will be the first to bail out of our collective system, opting instead to hire private military companies, such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, to protect their homes and facilities… Parallel transportation networks… will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily-pad to the next… The middle class will soon follow suit, forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security. These ‘armored suburbs’ will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links and be patrolled by private militias…
As for those outside the secured perimeter, they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America’s cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services.
Post-Katrina New Orleans as a glimpse into the futureKlein then points out that New Orleans already provides us with a glimpse of the future that Robb has portrayed:
The future Robb described sounds very much like the present in New Orleans, where two very different kinds of gated communities emerged from the rubble. On the one hand were the so-called FEMA-villes: desolate, out-of-the-way trailer camps for low-income evacuees, built by Bechtel or Fluor subcontractors, administered by private security companies who patrolled the gravel lots, restricted visitors, kept journalists out and treated survivors like criminals… murder rate soared and neighborhoods… descended into a post-apocalyptic no-man’s land….
On the other hand were the gated communities built in the wealthy areas of the city… bubbles of functionality that seemed to have seceded from the state altogether. Within weeks of the storm, residents there had water and powerful emergency generators. Their sick were treated in private hospitals, and their children went to new charter schools. They had no need for public transit.
A local lawyer and activist, Bill Quigley,
commented upon the current relationship between New Orleans and the rest of our country:
What is happening in New Orleans is just a more concentrated, more graphic version of what is going on all over our country… Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, public healthcare, and criminal justice. Those who do not support public housing, public healthcare, and housing will continue to turn all of our country into the Lower Ninth Ward unless we stop them.
A final word – global warming as a metaphor for our privatized stateThe issue of global warming fits in well with this whole discussion, in more ways than one. George W. Bush and virtually all other right wing politicians have persistently ignored or disingenuously disclaimed the warnings of
our best climate scientists, to argue that global warming need not be taken seriously. By doing this they have provided themselves with an excuse for failing to develop government policies that would curtail global warming, thus sheltering corporations that continue to pollute our atmosphere and thereby accelerate the warming of our planet, while accumulating immense profits. This of course helps to widen the wealth gap, while portending a catastrophic future so many of our world’s inhabitants. Klein speculates on one more reason why right wingers are so unconcerned about the impending catastrophes that are likely to follow the continued warming of our planet:
Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it. This may also partially explain why so many Bush supporters are Christian end-timers… The Rapture is a parable for what they are building down here – a system that invites destruction and disaster, then swoops in with private helicopters and airlifts them and their friends to divine safety.
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