It’s a truth as old as time: The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.....Unless you DO something about it.
Like matter in outer space, wealth accumulates naturally.
In outer space, the force that accumulates matter is gravity. On Earth, the force that accumulates wealth is economic advantage.
Economic advantage comes in many forms, but it boils down to the fact that once a person has wealth, it becomes easy to accumulate more. For example: put your money in the stock market, sit back, and watch it grow.
Economic disadvantage, on the other hand, is like a trap. Small setbacks, like a necessary but unaffordable car repair, can mean the end of your employment.
In America today, many people seem to have somehow forgotten that this is the natural way of the world - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The confused notion that the rich have earned everything they own, and the poor deserve their poverty, ignores this age old truth, this common knowledge.
And It’s not just confused notion, it’s a toxic lie, because it erases our responsibility to correct for this natural but unfair accumulation of wealth.
We have to DO something to counteract this nature accumulation of wealth and growth of poverty. We accomplish this in part through progressive taxation, where tax rates are higher for higher incomes, and we accomplish it in part through government spending to alleviate the burden of financial disadvantage.
And so, the effort to fight against wealth accumulation, and to see to it that the disadvantaged have a fair chance, that is a just effort that must alway go on.
This is what I mean by a fair economy.
In terms of policy it means many things:
Progressive taxation, not regressive taxation - the greater your income, the greater your tax rate.
Universal Free Healthcare, paid for via progressive taxation.
A living minimum wage, national, indexed to inflation.
Universal free childcare, paid for via progressive taxation.
Universal free public college or trade school, paid for via progressive taxation.
A Federal Jobs Guarantee - just as under FDR, the Federal Government can be the employer of last resort.
“Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings” - Nelson Mandela
“The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organized society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber” - Sri Aurobindo