Breaking down figures provided by the Federal Reserve, the People's Policy Project found that the top 1 percent of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989 while the bottom 50 percent lost $900 billion. This means that wealth inequality in America is worse today than it was in the 1920s, right before the market collapsed and created the conditions for the Great Depression.
If we're to believe in the logic of the market, the wealth gains of the top 1 percent over the past 30 years is due to the fact that they're smarter, stronger, harder working and better looking than the rest of us.
But we know better. Since the 1980s the U.S. government has deliberately created the conditions for wealth to accumulate at the top, while systematically working to drain more of it from those at the lower end of the economic scale.
How does this happen? Very simple. It's deliberate and, as I pointed out in an earlier post, it's happened before. History helps us see how it's happened, and how we're cutting our own throats in the process.
Arnold Toynbee, author of the epic A Study of History, believed that there was nothing in the biology, geography, or mysticism of a civilization that determined their destinies. In his view, theories of master races, an abundance of natural resources, or Manifest Destiny-like visions don't determine history. What determines a society's ability to adapt, survive, and prosper as a civilization is the way it responds to collective challenges.
Toynbee believed how great civilizations - or at least the 21 or so civilizations that he located - responded to challenges depended on how "creative minorities" acted when confronted with protracted problems.
It could be spiritual, as was the case when the Catholic Church responded to the Dark Ages by organizing Germanic tribes and kingdoms into a single religious (and Catholic) community. This helped make the Dark Ages less dark, and set the stage for the emergence of feudalism and, eventually, the rise of our modern nation-state system by 1648.
Responding to challenges could also be physical, as when the Sumerians organized society to drain and reconstitute the swamps of present day Iraq, in the process building large scale irrigation systems that allowed the agriculture revolution in the region to take off. The ability of the United States to conquer the vast expanse of the continent with canals, the railroads, and the Army Corps of Engineers is evidence of responding to the collective challenge of geography too.
When civilizations stop responding to big challenges creatively they begin to spin into gradual collapse, with nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority overshadowing and finally replacing the ingenuity of creative minorities.
According to Toynbee, apart from nationalism, militarism, and tyranny, one of the features of a civilization in decline was growing wealth inequality - or what Toynbee might have called the "schism" between the never "satiated" elites and the unfortunate "hungry" pawns at the bottom.
Once incomes and wealth became more concentrated great civilizations were on the path of decay. This path was paved by the reluctance of elites to participate in the maintenance of society and, especially, to the maintenance of those at the bottom rungs of society. This is what makes growing inequality today so troublesome.
Compared to history's financial gluttons - when there were fewer rules, and slavery was legal - the income (and wealth) gaps we're experiencing today tell us that history is whispering in our ear. And it's not good.
Our modern "schism" works like this. American conservatives today see a world where those with wealth earned it on their own. Liberals like Hedrick Smith - author of Who Stole the American Dream? - and I see wealth created by corporate lobbyists and obsequious members of Congress, who douse their rich patrons in favorable legislation, undeserved bailouts, unrelenting attacks on labor, and wealth friendly tax cuts that effectively guarantee financial success and class dominance - all at the expense of the American middle class.
Put another way, growing inequality in America - and $21 trillion in new wealth for the top 1 percent - is a deliberate process that has more to do with political connections than hard work. Arnold Toynbee would recognize it. We should recognize it, and understand what it means for our future. But we don't.
If we're to believe in the logic of the market, the wealth gains of the top 1 percent over the past 30 years is due to the fact that they're smarter, stronger, harder working and better looking than the rest of us.
But we know better. Since the 1980s the U.S. government has deliberately created the conditions for wealth to accumulate at the top, while systematically working to drain more of it from those at the lower end of the economic scale.
How does this happen? Very simple. It's deliberate and, as I pointed out in an earlier post, it's happened before. History helps us see how it's happened, and how we're cutting our own throats in the process.
Arnold Toynbee, author of the epic A Study of History, believed that there was nothing in the biology, geography, or mysticism of a civilization that determined their destinies. In his view, theories of master races, an abundance of natural resources, or Manifest Destiny-like visions don't determine history. What determines a society's ability to adapt, survive, and prosper as a civilization is the way it responds to collective challenges.
Toynbee believed how great civilizations - or at least the 21 or so civilizations that he located - responded to challenges depended on how "creative minorities" acted when confronted with protracted problems.
It could be spiritual, as was the case when the Catholic Church responded to the Dark Ages by organizing Germanic tribes and kingdoms into a single religious (and Catholic) community. This helped make the Dark Ages less dark, and set the stage for the emergence of feudalism and, eventually, the rise of our modern nation-state system by 1648.
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| Historian Arnold J. Toynbee |
Responding to challenges could also be physical, as when the Sumerians organized society to drain and reconstitute the swamps of present day Iraq, in the process building large scale irrigation systems that allowed the agriculture revolution in the region to take off. The ability of the United States to conquer the vast expanse of the continent with canals, the railroads, and the Army Corps of Engineers is evidence of responding to the collective challenge of geography too.
When civilizations stop responding to big challenges creatively they begin to spin into gradual collapse, with nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority overshadowing and finally replacing the ingenuity of creative minorities.
It's at this time that civilizations begin to swirl the drain of history.
According to Toynbee, apart from nationalism, militarism, and tyranny, one of the features of a civilization in decline was growing wealth inequality - or what Toynbee might have called the "schism" between the never "satiated" elites and the unfortunate "hungry" pawns at the bottom.
Once incomes and wealth became more concentrated great civilizations were on the path of decay. This path was paved by the reluctance of elites to participate in the maintenance of society and, especially, to the maintenance of those at the bottom rungs of society. This is what makes growing inequality today so troublesome.
Compared to history's financial gluttons - when there were fewer rules, and slavery was legal - the income (and wealth) gaps we're experiencing today tell us that history is whispering in our ear. And it's not good.
Our modern "schism" works like this. American conservatives today see a world where those with wealth earned it on their own. Liberals like Hedrick Smith - author of Who Stole the American Dream? - and I see wealth created by corporate lobbyists and obsequious members of Congress, who douse their rich patrons in favorable legislation, undeserved bailouts, unrelenting attacks on labor, and wealth friendly tax cuts that effectively guarantee financial success and class dominance - all at the expense of the American middle class.
Put another way, growing inequality in America - and $21 trillion in new wealth for the top 1 percent - is a deliberate process that has more to do with political connections than hard work. Arnold Toynbee would recognize it. We should recognize it, and understand what it means for our future. But we don't.
We're approaching our future as if history never happened.
Worse, we're acting like historical illiterates.
- Mark
- Mark
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