This morning seeking new viewpoints, I went to the conservatives–conservative Democrats like Evan Bayh (a wonderful governor and senator with whom I probably agree about the spending bill) and a Wall Street Journal opinionist whose argument against Mr. Obama’s approach includes these comments:
” . . . he’s proposed additional taxes on earnings above the current payroll tax cap of $106,800 — a bad policy that would raise marginal tax rates still further and barely dent the long-run deficit. Increasing the top tax rates on earnings to 39.6% and on capital gains and dividends to 20% will reduce incentives for our most productive citizens and small businesses to work, save and invest . . .”
When I saw that, I realized there is a baseline difference in perspective at work here, one that has less to do with taxes and spending than with class. The phrase in bold indicates that money is the proof of productivity–much as it once was of divine favor. Depite the obvious fact that those who got us into this economic mess were making obscene profits while those doing what I would call very pointedly “honest” work have lost thousands of dollars that represent large percentages of their net and gross worth. To top it off, those CEOs, CFOs and brokers retain most of what they “earned;” the big stick aimed at them consists mostly in denying them access to future use of perks like planes and luxury conferences, not in jailing or fining them for their obvious misdeeds.
Hell, from what I can figure out most still have their jobs while millions of Americans–8.1 % of those who want to work and are registered (leaving out those, like my own daughter, who are not)–have lost their jobs, may lose their homes and are terrified about the future.
I don’t pretend to know the right answers here, but I refuse to listen to anyone whose arguments are predicated on the theory that income correlates one to one with productivity. Consider the poor, legal immigrant woman working 2 jobs so her children can go to college. Consider the teacher working for considerably less than 100,000 dollars each year, whose students, nonetheless, excel. Consider police, fire fighters, artists, musicians, construction workers. Then tell me the two five-storey buildings outside my office window are not as “productive” as the airy palaces of greed that swallowed our nation’s true productivity while shipping millions of those truly productive jobs (in the sense that something is produced) overseas.
This kind of attitude is past my contempt and pushes me from attempts to “understand” the other point of view to sheer fury. The more I consider it; the angrier I become.
I suppose the response would be that the author is using “productivity” in some arcane, economic sense. That would still mean, however, that productivity is identical to amount of money generated. And that, I submit, is the enormous error this country has made and the key to our current difficulties. Because money is both power and purchasing potential, its reflection and the status accrued by spending it–whether one has it or not–seduced the majority of Americans into reckless spending. And that includes our government. The desire to increase political power by increasing purchasing power infected not only those on Wall Street and in its tributary enclaves around the globe but also politicians–who demonstrate their effectiveness by bringing home the bacon. And those presiding over this consumer culture which is foundering now on its own addiction to deficit spending have sailed on in their yachts and will reappear with greed intact to prey on us again if we don’t get our priorities straight.
Money may be power, but power, as the suddenly much-praised Canadian government and culture seem to comprehend, is not necessarily healthy. Less craving for both money and power, more attention to values and to each other’s needs, would cause a vast improvement in America’s health: financial, political, and, yes, spiritual as well.
Progressives as well as conservatives must take note. Conservatives must realize that to conflate wealth and worth distorts reality in highly destructive ways. Progressives must recognize that our own lists of must-haves–from high speed rail to solar arrays–may have to undergo the same scrutiny and deferment that we bring to the examination of defense spending. We’re in a huge mess and the fact that we “won” cannot be our governing mantra.
But here’s my final point: as power and wealth are conflated–and have been since time immemorial, military might symbolizes power and is among the most difficult icons to let go. But, again looking at Canada, there is a quiet and persisten prosperity of another sort available to those who tend their own gardens and foster no ambitions to rule the world. I’m not talking about protectionism or isolationism. I’m talking about humility and common sense.
All of us want our country to be “the best.” Americans particularly suffer from this because our so-called experiment seems to us self-evidently proof that our system is superior, our citizens superlative and our right to dictate therefore obvious. But our so-called “enemies” do not acknowledge that superiority and their ascendancy suggests that, as with all dominance, it has passed. This may not be a repudiation of our system. It is a sign that other systems, however flawed they may seem to us, may triumph or at least persist; it is a sign that our system–which has so transformed the world–is severely flawed when seen from an outsider’s (and many insiders’) point of view.
One approach to hostility is to expend all one has on the tools and symbols of power and to attempt to beat down the opposition. All signs point to “no” in that regard. Our global opposition has more people than we, rapidly increasing wealth and technological prowess, and little sense of obligation to us. If we would lead, it must be by example. If we want peace, that example should be pacifistic.
Reduced defense spending may not seem an obvious conclusion to the syllogism that begins with wealth is not worth. But military spending, as I said before, protects and also represents wealth. We are attached to our guns both because we think they protect us and because we think they convey our power and value to the world. But just as the wildly “successful” financial wizards in fact have destroyed nearly 75% of the stock markets’ value in the last two years. While the auto worker and the farmer, in spite of dismal prospects and returns continue to produce machines and food. The benefits of military might–and investment–seem vastly over stated. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan far from making us safer have sapped our coffers, destroyed many lives–most of them non-American–and left an unstable mess. Worth is not wealth. Wealth can promote worth only by investing in what has true value. True value begins with mutual respect based not on consumption or income but on our common plight and infinite potential–when we work together.
