by Elliot Campbelton
Sept 2019
Negative wealth distrebution, as far as inequality is concerned it's been growing quite rapidly worldwide every year.
Oxfam leading development agency publishes a detailed extensive report of the state of poverty and inequality in the world, in the year 2014 they found that about 90 individuals had half of total world wealth, which is an extraordinary degree of inequality. In the year 2015 their, latest publication, the number has been further reduced from 90 to 62.
There are many unfortunate consequences to this. To take one example from the Oxfam report they point out that 5 million children are dying of starvation every year.
That means by the time it takes you to read this article, 500 children will die starving where they could very easily be saved.
The resources are certainly there to save them but policy is designed so that it goes to enriching the super rich and the powerful not to saving millions of children from starvation.
The OECD
Of the 31 countries among the OECD, the US is at the extreme in both inequality and poverty. The report states the share of top incomes in the past year increased especially in english-speaking countries, this was disproportionately skewed by wealth generated in the United States far more than others (by top incomes they mean the top 1%).
With regard to poverty and inequality, by most measures the United States ranks within the poorest of the 31 countries, it ranks alongside of Mexico and Turkey. Poverty rates and inequality in the United States are much greater than poor* European countries like Portugal. This has been consistent over the last 50 years. The same is true of measures of social justice, that is measures that include things like infant mortality, hunger etc, of the 31 OECD countries, the United States ranks 27th along with Greece, Mexico, Chile and Turkey.
Moreover among the segment of the American population less educated (white males that means without a high school education), life expectancy is actually declining. Furthermore, real wages, evaluated relative to inflation (for male workers), are now at the level of about the late 1960s. While there has been considerable growth, it's gone into very few pockets.
The unemployment among youth is extraordinarily high, people are living at home into there 40’s. There's much debate about the causes but there's ample evidence that it doesn't have to do with any economic laws, rather the policy decisions that in some way stream from the United states initally domestically but also throughout the global economy.
Whats different about the US?
We should recognise that the United States is different from other societies in many ways, not least of which as it is the richest Society in the world with incomparable advantages given it's place in the world, being the defacto creator of world debt etc. This has been made possible by the United States being a predominantly business run (inherently capitalist) society. This as a means of governance has sprung from the US not having grown out of existing feudal institutions.
Interestingly one of the leading scholars who studies contemporary electoral politics Walter Dean Burnham did a study of the socio economic profiles of non voters in the United States. He discovered that their socio-economic profile matches those in Europe, who would conceivably vote for a labour or social democratic party, however, owing to a lacking of such parties in the US system, this bracket simply do not vote. As an aside, the study also revealed that voting, (considering the 2014 mid term elections) was approximately the same as in the 1820s when the vote was restricted to property owning white males.
Do people feel represented in the US
Work conducted by Mark Collins and Larry Bartel studied the policies that representatives vote for, combining this with the attitudes of the people who they represent.
Looking at historic voting records of elected officials to congress, It turns out that for about 70% of the population (the lower 70% on the income wealth scale) they are as good as not represented. Representatives vote in ways dissociated to the electorates preferences.
They found, as they move up the income wealth scale the more influence on representatives an individual can accrue, ultimately culminating in near direct access to policy.
Other mainstream political scientists, Gillum's and Benjamin, in a recent study published by Princeton University, in which they investigated several hundred major decisions made relating to policy, comparing them to popular attitudes around those issues.
Their conclusions point to the economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens have little or no independent influence.
The results provide substantial support for theories of economic elite domination and biased pluralism, but not for majoritarian electoral democracy or majoritarian pluralism.
As a result we see today policies of deregulation, leding to financial crises, concentration of wealth and the rise of financial institutions. This has lead to the rise in unskilled labor which, creating a surplus in labour resource, drives down wages, giving rise to a vicious cycle of wealth concentration.
Which in turn begets political power, which begets policy choices that increase the concentration of wealth still yet further.