Daily Archives: September 28, 2017

The Problem is Civil Obedience

Law, Politics,

Judging by the last few days’ letters to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Trumped-up controversy over NFL players protesting racial injustice has angered that segment of our country’s population that disapproves of civil disobedience. Trust the late historian Howard Zinn to have the perfect response. (Thanks to columnist Will McCorkle for reminding me of this quote.)

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves . . . (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

In this video, Matt Damon reads longer excerpts from the speech from which this passage was drawn. Dr. Zinn delivered it in 1970, when Americans were protesting the Vietnam War.

Of course, it’s more than a little incongruous to hear a speech condemning (among other things) wealth inequality read by an actor who earns $20 million or more for making a single film.

Inequality of Wealth

Economics, Politics,

The Federal Reserve has released its 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. The charts below were compiled by the People’s Policy Project. The takeaway is that in 2016 the top 10% owned 77% of the country’s wealth, and 38.5% is owned by the top 1%.

Not surprisingly, the gap between rich and poor is increasing. The top 1% owned “only” 29.9% of the nation’s wealth in 1989.

After declining slightly due to the great recession of 2008, the wealth gap between Blacks, Whites and Latinos is increasing again. Mean White family wealth is now greater than it was in 2007, but Blacks and Latinos have not yet recovered from the recession. (By the way, if these dollar amounts seem high, remember that they are means, which are skewed by the wealth of those at the top. The medians are much lower.)

This provides an interesting backdrop for the Republican Tax Plan, which cuts the top individual tax rate from 39.5% to 35%, and reduces the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. (Since capital-based income is concentrated among the rich, a corporate tax cut is simply another tax cut for the rich.) It also eliminates the estate tax. To partially pay for these giveaways, the President proposes cuts of $4.3 trillion to Social Security, Medicaid, public education and other non-military spending. The House Republican budget calls for a $5.8 trillion cut in these same programs.

Here are the results of an analysis by the Tax Policy Center of who benefits from Trump’s tax plan.

You may also be interested in reading:

On Obama’s Speech

Whose Opinion Matters?