These are exciting times for progressives. We've passed a decent health bill, Obama and Russia are negotiating down our collective nuke supply. Nevertheless, the lack of a public option in the healthcare reform bill, and in general Obama's seeming deference toward corporate interests, has had me doubting if our nation is well beyond the possibility of really progressive legislation like we saw in the New Deal and the postwar period. I was wondering if we were at a point where no president would take on thorny, real issues. Even the beacon of hope that Obama was a year ago wouldn't dare represent working people, wouldn't dare challenge the complacent Washington world view that encourages us to associate corporate prosperity with our own well-being.
But I feel better after reading two NYT articles' analyses on recent legislation. Whether it's with the healthcare bill or in housing, it seems that Obama really is taking aim at some of the causes (or at least the effects) of wealth inequality in our country. I had long thought that in our new gilded age of widening gaps between rich and poor, ever-increasing job insecurity, and corporate impunity, wealth inequality was the elephant in the room that no politician would touch for fear of seeming too leftist. The political discourse in our country has become so neoliberal and class-blind that merely pointing out inequality, not to mention attempting to decrease it, smacks of wild-eyed socialist zealotry. But perhaps we may yet have another age of progressive legislation. Yes we can.
On the subject of ripping apart the longstanding tenets of neoliberalism, here's an article on the limits of the usefulness of the study of economics. It's by David Brooks, whom I normally think is a cocksure, pedantic crypto-fascist, but I like the gist of it.
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I think focusing on inequality of wealth is very misguided. Inequality of opportunity is a real injustice, whereas differing outcomes, i.e. wealth is desirable in a fair society. This is one of my biggest problems with people who identify as "progressives".
ReplyDeleteTo my anonymous commenter--
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for reading and critiquing. I appreciate your point about the difference between inequality of opportunity and inequality of wealth. In a pure meritocracy you'd be right to differentiate between the two. But in an economic system in which wealth grants opportunities, people with more resources to begin with gain ever more resources, so gross inequalities in wealth are effectively gross inequalities in opportunity. Hence the end result is an unfair society. In other words, an insistence on the theoretical fairness of maintaining wealth inequalities leads to an effectively unjust situation. And beyond the supposed desireability or not of maintaining wealth inequalities, the real-world examples of places like Colombia, Haiti, and increasingly the US, show clearly just how unpleasant it is to live in an unequal society.