written 8 December, 2024
published 15 December, 2024
Much has been written about why the Democrats lost the election. Two popular themes are inflation and ignoring the working class. But little has been discussed about how the American distribution of wealth has affect this.
A recent study sampled 5,000 people across the political spectrum, asking what their ideal wealth distribution might look like, and what they thought the real distribution is. The ideal distribution was relatively even across all incomes. Each fifth of the population, starting from the bottom to the top would have: 11 percent, 14 percent, 21 percent, 22 percent, and 32 percent for the richest. This is a fairly socialist distribution, with the richest fifth of the population holding three times the wealth of the poorest fifth.
When asked what they thought the real distribution might be, the same division by fifths from poorest to richest shifted to: 3 percent, 6 percent, 13 percent, 20 percent, and 57 percent for the richest. This was more skewed, with the richest fifth holding 19 times the worth of the poorest fifth. That is not close to the actual distribution.
Total wealth in the US is $135 trillion. The poorest 40 percent of the country holds 1 percent of that. If it were evenly distributed across those 134 million Americans (which it is not), each would have just $10,000. The middle fifth of the population holds another 3 percent of the wealth, making them 6 times wealthier than the poorest 40 percent. In all, the bottom 80 percent of Americans (272 million people) hold only 7 percent of the wealth.
The second richest 10 percent hold 27 percent of the wealth, and the richest 10 percent (incomes over $1.8M) hold 66 percent. Even that is very skewed, as the richest 1 percent (incomes over $10M) hold almost 30 percent, and the richest 0.1 percent (incomes over $38M) hold almost 14 percent. There are about 700 billionaires in the US, and their wealth doubled in the last decade.
The top 1 percent of America owns half of all stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, while the poorest half owns less than 0.5 percent. The average corporate CEO earns 380 times the average corporate worker.
The Republican party has always been dominated by the very wealthy, and has spent decades protecting their position of privilege (literally "private law"). More than a century ago, it was declared that corporations are people, with rights under the law. Beginning with the Clinton, the Democratic party decided they needed to fight money with money, and became dominated by their own big donors.
Five Republican Supreme Court Justices tipped the election to Bush the Younger in 2000. Since then, the Supreme Court declared money to be protected speech, opening the door for unlimited and anonymous cash flooding each election cycle. The Court has decided it is now legal to bribe a politician, and the president has no legal limitations on his actions, effectively a king. Biden's cabinet was worth about $118M, and Trump's new cabinet will be worth about $13B, not including Musk, who would push the value to $360B, two thousand times more concentrated on benefiting the wealthy.
Think about this for a moment. Is it any surprise that costs keep rising and workers are disenfranchised? Only the people at the bottom feel the pinch in any meaningful way, and they have no control. The entire system is designed to extract wealth from everyone and move it up to the very top, who are insulated from mundane economic pain by their extreme wealth. With concentrated ownership of everything, competitive pricing is a fiction. Inflation and worker impoverishment are features designed into the system, not a bug.
In addition, we are exhausting the natural resources upon which our consumer economy depends. The resources easy to access, and therefore cheaper to produce, are already gone. Furthermore, there are more of us on the planet each day, accelerating the pressure.
Almost 40 percent of Mendocino county voted Republican this last election, hoping for change. I imagine few read this column, but if you are one, consider writing down what you think Trump will accomplish that will benefit you and yours. See if any of that comes to pass. Trump is part of the billionaire class, and I believe his interests have nothing to do with helping the larger majority of Americans, no matter what he says. Unfortunately, we all get to see the outcome.
