A Pew poll published on May 2nd was headlined "Why people are rich and poor: Republicans and Democrats have very different views”, and it reported that, “Most Republicans link a person’s financial standing to their own hard work – or the lack of it. Most Democrats say that whether someone is rich or poor is more attributable to circumstances beyond their control.” The partisan difference on this issue was stark: “By about three-to-one (66% to 21%), Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say hard work, rather than a person’s advantages, has more to do with why someone is rich. By nearly as wide a margin, Democrats and Democratic leaners say the opposite: 60% say a person is rich because they had more advantages than others, while just 29% say it is because they have worked harder.” So, I decided to look at the data regarding this question. On 10 June 2014, Carter C. Price, at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, headlined "Patterns of economic mobility in the United States”. It’s a really terrific report (48 pages long in its linked pdf version), which summarizes lots of previous studies related to this question. For example, the opening of this report shows that the physical location where a given person lives within the U.S. is a crucial determinant of that individual’s likelihood of being able to draw a higher annual income than that person’s parents did. Some parts in the U.S. have remarkably low class-rigidity, whereas other U.S. regions have stunningly high class-rigidity, more like a caste system than like any sort of equality-of-opportunity or democracy. Not only is the U.S. a nation of extremes, but it’s a nation where some areas are, regarding class-rigidity, close to embodying the Republican view of the entire nation (i.e., exhibit remarkably low class-rigidity), and other parts of the country are extremely not (i.e., they have exceptionally high class-rigidity). This disparity is made shockingly clear in the map of the U.S. shown on Price’s page 8 (and also — and more clearly — here). The biggest “extremely not” region (i.e., with very high class-rigidity) extends (and here is a U.S. map showing the outlines of each state) all the way from Michigan, down to Florida, and this area is also very wide, extending from Louisiana in its southwest, to Virginia in its northeast, thus encompassing both the rustbucket states plus almost all of Old Dixie. But the largest “very yes” (i.e., with highly equal-opportunity) region, where the traditional American dream of intergenerational mobility is almost a reality, extends from the Dakotas and Minnesota, down through Nebraska and Iowa, to Kansas. Remarkably, both of those two large extreme regions, the “extremely not” and the “very yes,” are overall heavily Republican. Whereas in the “very yes” region, Republicans might be overwhelmingly endorsing the view that America is an equal-opportunity society on account of what they are seeing within their own states (which is remarkable equality of oportunity), there is simply a mystery as to why Republicans in the “extremely not” states (Old Dixie) are likewise overwhelmingly endorsing the view that America is an equal-opportunity society — because those Republicans live in areas that are anything-but equal-opportunity regions. (A hypothesis on this matter might be that Old Dixie happens also to be known as the Bible Belt — it’s famous for the residents’ extraordinarily high amount of faith; and this means that believing counter-factual things is especially easy for these individuals; empirical evidence is ignored if it conficts with any item of faith; indeed, in their high-faith culture, faith is highly honored by them; and this could explain why Republicans in Old Dixie think that they live in an equal-opportunity society.) So, of the world’s ten wealthiest individuals in 2010, 8 were sons of millionaire founders of major corporations and organizations. 1 was middle-class, and 2 were lower-class. And, the two lower-class ones were at the bottom of the top-ten list, and both of them weren’t Americans. Among the top 8, all but 1 (Ellison) were from extremely rich parents. The advantage that being born to wealthy parents produces is enormous: The children of the very rich constitute only a tiny minority of the population, less than 1%, but they included, in 2010, 70% of the world’s ten wealthiest individuals. Eike Batista was typical of the group in proudly saying “All my businesses started from zero. ... I made my own connections.” But even he had to admit, after turning $6 million he had made in gold-trading commissions into only $300,000 and then taking the gamble of buying a gold mine with it, “Thank God, the mine was idiot-proof. Only an extremely rich mine could have withstood all the mistakes I made. I was lucky.” So, the general formula for becoming extremely wealthy is to have the luck to be born rich, and then to have luck yourself in business (or else in the performance of your portfolio). Just being a “brilliant” businessperson works for very few, and it fails for virtually everyone else who is “brilliant.” But having wealthy parents who teach you their trade will increase enormously your likelihood of success. The top key to being on the world’s wealthiest list was to be born rich. (Many hard-working geniuses are like Mozart, or Turing, or van Gogh — they die poor.) Hereditary wealth was the most important feature (70%) of the top ten members of the global aristocracy, in 2010. What, then, is the difference between the Republican and the Democratic Parties? The level of hypocrisy is even higher amongst the Democratic Party’s billionaires and their agents, than amongst the Republican Party’s billionaires and their agents. In the Democratic Party, the line is: Don’t worry really about America’s extreme inequality of wealth, but only about America’s inequality of opportunity. Larry Summers, the chief economist for President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama, is an archetypal aristocratic agent in the Democratic Party, and so he represents very well the line of that Party’s billionaires. On 15 June 2012, Bonnie Kouvassi at Huffington Post, bannered “Larry Summers: We Need To Focus On Inequality of Opportunity”, and she presented a video of him teaching at Harvard, saying, “I think we can accept, I think we should accept inequality of results, recognizing that those who earn more are in a better position to contribute more to support society.” He attacked those who criticized America’s extreme inequality of wealth, and he praised at length “those who are in a better position to contribute more to support society.” Summers’s aristocrat-enhancing view was that, even in a nation of such extreme wealth-inequality as America, inequality of opportunity can be reduced without also reducing inequality of wealth. It’s not just false, but absurdly false: In a country with such extreme wealth-inequality, inequality of opportunity is largely the result of inequality of wealth. Addressing the former without also addressing the latter is doomed to fail. One side of that whole cannot be attacked without simultaneously attacking the other side of it. As a reader at a blog phrased the matter, on 29 September 2013: “The privileges of wealth grow exponentially with each generation in no small part because of the greater educational opportunities the children of the rich have – with less distraction from needing to work their way through school and less debt with which to begin the ‘rat race’.” If anyone should know about that, it’s the former Harvard president Summers. However, Summers routinely displayed enormous respect for wealthy people, and contempt for the poor. He was quoted in Ron Suskind’s 2011 Confidence Men as saying in 2009 (p. 197), “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of a disequalizer. ... One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way they’re supposed to be treated.” In other words: he holds that the enormous and increasing inequality of wealth in America reflects more than in prior eras the enormous inequality of worth among individual citizens: the super-rich are just super-terrific, and the poor are just super-terrible, in his view. He authentically reflects classical writers such as Quesnay, Smith, and Pareto — agents of the aristocracy in their own time (and they all despised the poor, just as Summers does). But those same classical writers are also implicit in the Republican aristocracy’s agenda. The big difference between the two Parties, is that, though both are essentially the same (one-party — aristocratic-party) rule, over the country, the Democratic Party’s aristocracy and their agents (the Democratic wing of the aristocratic party) are far better at hypocrisy. They pretend to care about the public’s interest. Whereas the Republican Party’s aristocracy (the Republican wing of the aristocratic party) rely upon ‘tough talk’ and a ‘hard-nosed’ approach, the Democratic Party’s (wing) rely instead upon ‘equality of opportunity,’ but both sides of the aristocracy are actually pumping the same basic lie. And, of course, the Democratic Party’s mass of voters haven’t got a clue to that reality. But, neither do the Republican Party’s. The voters, in both, are deceived, by different sides, of the same con-operation. Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
ERIC ZUESSE, Senior Contributing Editor Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.
ERIC ZUESSE—During the American Revolution, Americans finally came to understand the game, and overthrew and replaced the British aristocracy. Perhaps some day, Americans will overthrow and replace the American aristocracy. But, as of yet, no way is clear as to how that could be done. If it ever happens, it will be the Second American Revolution. However, one thing is very clear: if it ever happens, no American aristocrats will be donating to it, nor assisting the American people in any other way, to gain freedom.
[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]