In general, discussions of economic inequality assume that people continue to view the existing economic system as legitimate. As foreclosures rise, jobs disappear, and the divide between the have's and have not's increases, our ability to take this for granted becomes far less certain.
If people start to feel they no longer have a stake in our society, that the game is rigged, that they will never get out from under, they become alienated and our fundamental economic system loses its legitimacy.
Here's a chilling example of what can happen:
Last week, my new book It Could Happen Here was the subject of a 45-minute segment of Tom Asbrook's OnPoint, which airs nationally on NPR. To demonstrate, how income inequality can divide a nation, It Could Happen Here, which is a nonfiction book, opens with a fictional scenario involving American terrorists who threaten the nation with dirty bombs demanding an end to foreclosures by "vulture banks," and free access to healthcare and higher education for all. Tom Ashbrook asked hard questions about this scenario. I said to him think of a laid off engineer who works with radioactivity to create medical devices...
Here's the transcript of the discussion:
"BRUCE JUDSON: First off, here's a flash point for you. In the scenario, in the fictional scenario, I talk about ... It is very easy to imagine that an engineer, or someone else with the necessary knowledge who works on, let's say, medical devices and has used radioactivity to create a better world ... to save lives, is laid off. You can imagine that he suddenly is facing foreclosure. He's an educated person unable to put his kids through college."
A few minutes later the show took calls. The show received a chilling call from an out of work nuclear engineer -- who had helped to build 13 nuclear power plants but had not worked in two years. You can read the transcript of his call below, or click to listen to his call here.
Click here to listen to out of work Nuclear Engineer:
"TOM ASHBROOK: Certainly inequality's a big issue. Let me get a call right here from New London, Connecticut. And
Don. Hi, Don. You're on the air.
CALLER: Hi.
TOM ASHBROOK: Hi.
CALLER: I think you should be listening to this guy, Judson. I'm an unemployed nuclear engineer. I've worked on 13 nuclear power plants. Making a dirty bomb is not a big deal. I'm not going to go out and tell everybody now to do it, but I'm just saying things like that can happen. And it sounds like you're just being dismissive of all his ideas and what he's saying. Because there's a lot of anger out here, and there are a lot of people who feel that the American Dream is slipping away from them, they don't have a chance. And the only entrepreneurial opportunity for them is to sell drugs and to be an outlaw. It's happening.
TOM ASHBROOK: [OVERLAPPING] I hear you, [PH] Don. We've got Bruce on for an hour. So, I can't say we're not listening to him. But let me ask you, you've got a lot of expertise in your field, nuclear engineering. But does that mean you're unhappy if you're unemployed? Do you really feel like the country's ready to revolt?
CALLER: I'm not an expert in revolution, and I don't really know how they happen. All I know is I'm 60 years old. There's not a lot of people who want to hire a nuclear engineer who's 60 years old. And there are a lot of people out there like me who are out there who, you know, once you have so much gray hair, you're out of here. And there's just a lot of people that are just not happy with the way that the country's going right now.
And I don't know ... where it's going to take it, or what's going to be its spark, or what's going to be the event. But people feel like there's just no way to climb out of the hole. Like there's just nothing that's going to get them out. This attitude, that I've seen, over 60 years, I've never seen anything like it. It scares me.
TOM ASHBROOK: Up against it. And with an education, a particular education. Don, thank you for your call."
Earlier this week, in a New York Times column Safety Nets for the Rich, Bob Herbert, details our emerging have and have not society, where two-thirds of the entire income gains of the nation between 2002 and 2007 went to the top 1% of Americans. Herbert writes:
"And we still don't seem to have learned the proper lessons. We've allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one -- not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party -- has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I'm amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage."
Unfortunately if we do not change course, Herbert's amazement may end in circumstances that we do not want to contemplate. We are witnessing the unfolding of a chain of dangerous events associated with our collapsing middle class and increasingly two-tier economy. Sadly, the dynamics outlined in It Could Happen Here that lead to political instability are occurring with increasing ferocity. More on this in my next post..
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So.... should I respond the way White Middle Class America has responded when this situation was confined to the Black ghettos, and say "Get an education, stop commiting crime, stop using drugs, and do something for yourself. If I can do it, so should you."?
Naw... maybe not. That would be inconsiderate. But I will say "my, my... how the wheels of fortune turn."
But perhaps that's what was the real story behind the Aleynikov story (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axYw_ykTBokE).
Corporations have decided that the average American can "eat cake" while the corporate executives take the profits for themselves.
Americans are unlikely to storm an American Bastille anytime soon.
But, Democracy in American seems to have failed because corporate giving has allowed a handful of corporate executives significantly greater influence than they would have in a real democracy.
Time to prohibit corporate political donations of any kind.
Let politicians seek donations from the people, not corporations.
There's a good use of Gore's internet.
The current one dithers with no strings attached bank bailouts, appointing people to positions of power and influence that are loyal to Goldman Sachs, BOA and the moneyed class instead of the US citizens, wildly increasing deficits that saddle future generations with debt, and turning a blind eye to the massive Wall St frauds. Might as well have Bush back.
A revolt is in the making, lets hope it is limited to tossing out the corrupt BUT I don't think that is where it will end.
Obama still has time to toss out Summers, Geitner, reign in the FED and procecute the guilty that have plundered this country and restore the rule of law and hope.
Instead he fiddles..........
We have seen the blatant threat of Big Insurance will raise rates if Health Care Reform is passed. What kind of threats do you think the Big Finance and Banking people made?
There is A LOT of law-enforcement activity that goes on every day which very studiously does NOT get in the papers, and should not. ("Loose Lips Sink Ships. The Message Is Still The Same.") The people who have dedicated their lives to this, put their lives in great danger for us every day and get not one scrap of credit for doing so. They like it that way.
The U.S. feels like it is a strange oppressive foreign country when I visit. I feel more at home in my wife's native country, where we have reverse migrated with our two children for better opportunity, and a better quality of life in a much more civilized environment. My wife had lived in the U.S. for over 40 years, since she was 3 years old. Thankfully we had the option to escape the lunacy. Most Americans can't. Although I know several people who have done this. Reverse migration is an under reported phenomena in my view.
I am one of the very last of the baby boomer generation. In my lifetime, the values, principles, social contract, rules, and all other written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken societal conventions have been completely abrogated, perverted, and twisted to serve special interests at the expense of the individual. It is absolutely shocking how unabashedly oblivious politicians are to the plight of the American individual.
It is equally shocking how uniformed many Americans are about how things are done, and how people are treated in other countries.
A nation of slaves and aristocrats.
Everything is being taken away from us, the rich get richer, and the citizens of the United States of America do nothing.
Unbelievable
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVo1lQXzmus
what happens at the aggregate level is a function of the decision calculus at the level below.
So the dynamics of this whole scenario results from the simple observation that limited liability applies not only to corporations (and encourages them to gamble in ways that are sometimes breathtakingly immoral and unethical) but also to individuals (and encourages them to gamble in ways that are sometimes breathtakingly immoral and unethical).
I have to entertain the idea of making a few examples. I would like to think that this would not require violence but nothing else seems to be sinking in. You know that all of us in the old middle class are only hear because we are lazy or so the super rich will tell us.
Any kind of General Strike would only be an excuse for companies to purge payroll’s and hire far more qualified people at far lower pay rates. And yes I think it would happen.
And most of all it bothers me that the Far Right will keep stoking this anger and fear thinking that it is all pointed at the Obama administration and I am sure quite a lot of it will be. But once the revolution starts I really don’t think the R or D behind a persons name will make that much of a difference. Once that spark happens and I fear it will happen, all the people that were stoking this uprising will act shocked that they can’t simply put the genie back in the bottle while flying off in private jets to someplace safe.
It also scares me to think that I might be standing next to a birther or a tea bagger when this does happen. But maybe then we will be able to find some common ground.