Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

Okay, I'm back. And leaving the brouhaha surrounding Barack Obama and Reverend Wright behind, I'll return to something you said, Roger, and which needs to be addressed:

Very good question. Yes, you are right, I do want to redistribute income. Do I want to do it no matter what the consequences to the economy might be? Am I willing to bankrupt society and throw society into a depression, or at the very least a recession, just so I can take money from the rich and give it to the poor? No. But unlike you, Roger, I don't think it is a prerequisite to a healthy growth of the economy that the rich get to pay lower taxes. Yes, I think that you are right in your belief that tax cuts for the rich may indeed prove to be a fairly efficient economic stimulus. But for one thing, I believe that there are other ways to stimulate the economy. And for another, if the boom resulting from a tax cut for the rich ultimately ends up shifting more of society's wealth from the average and median income earners to those who are already rich, then I do think that this is both harmful and unfortunate, certainly in the long run.

I believe that such a shift has indeed happened in the United States lately. Roger, you mentioned the IT bubble. I replied that I think that the IT bubble ended up benefiting a few rich people enormously, while very many low-income people suffered from the almost-recession that followed. To stimulate the economy and prevent a recession from happening, George W. Bush gave tax cuts to the rich. (And as I have said already, a tax cut for a rich person will bring in many more dollars to that person than a “same percentage tax cut” for a median income person.) So in order to fix the problems that happened as a few rich people made off with enormous IT loots and created huge problems for low-income people in America, George Bush gave tax cuts to the rich, including, presumably, those rich people who had created and benefited from the IT bubble in the first place. To help the poor, Bush gave economic breaks to the rich.

It is clear that the rich in America have grown so much richer during the Bush years, both in absolute and relative terms. But I have said, quoting New York Times, that the median income earners have actually become poorer, when you take inflation into account. Roger, you have replied that median income is up, but you have not said anything about inflation. I take this to mean that the median income earners do make more dollars now than seven or eight years ago, but because of the fall of the dollar, the median income earner can't buy as much for his salary today as he could at the end of the Clinton Presidency.

In other words, I am going to assume that I was right. Median income in America is indeed down, while the top incomes are up enormously. And in my opinion, a country whose median income is down has not had a good economic development, no matter how much its gross national product is up.

It could be the fact that I'm so interested in astronomy that makes me think that the problem of the rich becoming richer can't be solved just by making the poor richer, too. Okay, let me amend that. Yes, I do believe that it is possible to make the poor richer while the rich become richer, too. But I believe that this is a development that can go on for only so long. I am very strongly aware that all the riches and all the wealth that humanity owns put together all emanates from the Earth. Ultimately, it is our planet Earth that gives us all our riches. And as humanity grows larger in numbers and as we grow hungrier for resources and riches, the Earth, the source of all our prosperity, does not grow larger.

[img]http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=65046&rendTypeId=4[/img]

Because I don't believe in unlimited growth, distribution becomes very important to me. The idea that more and more of our limited resources should be deliberately shifted over to already rich people seems downright immoral to me.

One thing that worries me is that this trend of shifting over money from low- and median-income earners to rich people has been going on for almost three decades now, since Ronald Reagan became President. While this has happened, people's way of thinking of the distribution of money between rich and poor people has changed. I strongly believe that more and more of us have begun taking for granted that rich people generally deserve the money they get, while we often question the welfare and subsidies that go to the poor.

It frightens me, too, how short our memories are. I have been questioned before for using a sort of all-inclusive “we” and seemingly speaking for members of these boards, so here and now I will only speak for the people I meet in real life here in Sweden, and for myself. It is frightening how short our memories are.

A couple of years ago I found a copy of my local newspaper, Sydsvenskan, in the attic.


This particular copy of Sydsvenskan was from 1987. I started leafing through it and came upon a short news item about unemployment statistics in Sweden in 1987. Unemployment in those days was – what??? It was 1.2% of the workforce?


Unemployment figures, though not from Sweden or from 1987.

I was flabbergasted. These days we in Sweden are used to the idea that unemployment is around 5% if we are lucky, and more like 8% if we are unlucky. How could it be 1.2% in 1987? How could our society have changed so much since then? And why didn't I remember what things had been like in the eighties? Since when had I started taking the new unemployment figures for granted?

I started to try to remember. And, yes, thinking back, I remembered that the Social Democratic government that we had back then used quite a bit of its tax money to employ people who couldn't really compete with other people for ordinary jobs. The Social Democratic government created its own “protected” job market for people who were physically and mentally disabled, people who were sick, or tired, or recovering from drug abuse or alcoholism, etcetera. People who couldn't find a job elsewhere, and who weren't strong enough to keep a job on the open market, these people had jobs created for them by the Social Democratic government. These people went to work every day, or as often as they were able to, and they got their pay checks like everyone else. I don't remember that we ever spoke ill of them or of the jobs they had. And Sweden had an unemployment rate of 1.2%.

Then Ronald Reagan was not only elected but re-elected in the United States. This created a political shift to the right in Sweden, too. In 1988, Sweden got a right-wing government. This government quickly lowered taxes, especially for the rich, but it didn't cut spending. This resulted in a terrible economic imbalance and a huge budget deficit for Sweden. The right-wing government lost the next election and the Social Democrats returned, but now the Social Democratic agenda had changed. “We have to cut spending to get our national finances back in order,” our Prime Minister told us, grimly. And cut spending they did. Suddenly there was no more money for the special protected jobs for the people who could not get or keep an ordinary job. Suddenly they all became unemployed. And then Sweden joined the European Union, whose statues say that people in Europe have the right to compete for jobs everywhere in Europe. Suddenly the special protected jobs that had existed for disabled people became illegal. These days it is illegal in Sweden to give a handicapped Swede a job that could have gone to a healthy Pole instead.

These days so many more people are denied access to the job market. They are dependent on welfare instead. Their lives are probably worse, and the welfare money they get is probably lower than the pay they got from their special jobs. Other people resent them more and mutter about lazy people who live off welfare. And everyone takes the present situation for granted. When I asked my colleagues at school and other well-educated people that I know, not a single one of them really remembered what things had been like in 1987.

We forget so quickly. We adjust to new situations so quickly.

I said that these days people in Sweden mutter about unemployed people who live off welfare. We have a right-wing government in Sweden again, because when George W. Bush was re-elected in America, this caused another political shift to the right in Sweden. The new government has begun cutting down on welfare for poor, sick and unemployed people. Have you been on sick leave for more than six months? Then you are not eligible for more of it, buddy. Have you got cancer? Can't you work? That's not our problem. Go get yourself a job.

What happens to a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Well, there are interesting examples of what happened in such societies in Europe in the past. In the late 1980s I bought an illustrated book describing life in the medieval English village of Gerneham, in the early fourteenth century. This village was owned, lock, stock and barrel, by a rich nobleman, Geoffrey Luttrell. Sir Geoffrey's ownership of the village was so complete that the author of the book, Sheila Sancha, called Gerneham “the Luttrell village”.


Sir Geoffrey Luttrell and his retinue.

What about the people who lived in Gerneham, in the Luttrell village? Judging from Sancha's book, the largest group of people who lived in the village were called – no, I'll not tell you what they were called just yet. But this is how Sancha describes them:

This is how Sheila Sancha describes this group of people in her glossary:

The people I have described were a kind of serfs, who can almost be compared with slaves. This is how Wikipedia describes the reasons and ceremonies that turned medieval European people into serfs:

According to Wikipedia, people were sometimes intimidated into becoming serfs by a threatening baron. “Be my serf, or else…!!” Or people might be forced to become serfs because of poverty. If they could not support themselves any other way, they had to, well, sell themselves as laborers to a lord in exchange for the right to grow a bit of food for themselves on his land. And not only did the serfs sell themselves to their lord, but they sold their children and grandchildren and all their future descendants as well.



Medieval serfs.

So what were these special serfs called, then? Okay, I'll not keep you waiting any longer. They were called villeins. I guess the name has something to do that they always had to live in the village. But I suppose that the name, villeins, reminds you of something else. Villains. So how did the poor rural serfs in medieval Europe give a collective name to lawbreakers and criminals and people of ill intent everywhere? This is Wikipedia's explanation:

So villeins could escape their bondage by running away from the village where they were kept “prisoners” and escape to a city and live there for more than a year. But since the villeins were dirt poor and had almost no means of supporting themselves, they were sometimes forced to take to crime for survival. And the city people apparently strongly disapproved of them. Instead of asking themselves if they could help the villeins support themselves by honest means, and without forcing them into serfdom, the city people reinterpreted the designation of villein so that it came to mean criminal people of bad character and ill will.



Villain.

Speaking of crimes, and who was defined as a criminal, it is interesting to ponder the question of crime and punishment in medieval Europe. What punishments were meted out for what crimes? And did it matter if you were rich or poor?


A page from Äldre Västgötalagen, the oldest known Swedish law.

This is one page of the oldest Swedish written law in existence, Äldre Västgötalagen, laying down the law in the Swedish province of Västergötland in the thirteenth century. Äldre Västgötalagen states that if a person commits murder, he will have to pay a fixed fine for this. However, if a person commits theft, he will not only be tortured and executed, but he will also mangled and cut into pieces after death, and he will not be buried in consecrated earth. Moreover, he will be damned forever, and the priests will not pray for his soul. Any earthly property that he owned could not be inherited by his children or relatives.

If you think of this a bit, you can easily see that this law was made specifically to meet the needs of rich people. The law was frankly written so that rich people could get away with murder. And the richer they were, the less the fixed fine would hurt them, and the more people they could afford to kill. A really rich person could therefore become a mass murderer and still remain totally respectable. A murderer was not condemned by the church, was buried in consecrated earth and could leave all his property to his heirs.

Why, then, were thieves punished so cruelly? I'd say that this was because thieves threatened the foundation of rich people's power – the thieves threatened the rich people's wealth. Rich people were so incredibly powerful because they were so rich. They could buy themselves splendid property, they could buy themselves protection, they could buy themselves hit men, they could buy themselves suitable wives, and they could buy themselves spokesmen, soldiers, workers and priests. But take away their wealth and they can buy themselves nothing. Suddenly, they are nothing. And nothing could be worse than robbing a rich man of his wealth and power. Therefore thieves (and their families) were punished so cruelly, while rich murderers got away with a slap on their fingers, if that.




There are thieves in the manor.

But let us stop and think for a while. Are these examples from the Middle Ages the least bit relevant for us? Do they have anything to teach us today? Back then, democracies did not exist, and there were no such things as legal human rights. We have democracies and human rights here in the West. Our laws forbid us to turn people into slaves. And surely we will never sentence people to harsher punishments just because they are poor?

I believe – yes, I do – that the very existence of democratic constitutions and laws that recognize human rights constitute a very strong and important protection for people who are poor and powerless. Our modern Western societies are not comparable with those of medieval Europe. What happened back then, in those societies, can't happen here. Not for now, and not in the same way.

But I said earlier that people's memories are short. Unless we make an effort to remind ourselves of our history and the lessons it has taught us, I don't trust us to just remember. I don't trust us to, well, just naturally fight for the idea that all people have the same value. I fear that if some people keep getting poorer and more powerless in our own countries, here in the west, many others may start assuming that these bums don't have the same worth as the rest of us, and they can't really ask for the same treatment.

In some ways, de facto slavery already exists in the West. Some years ago I saw an episode of 60 Minutes, which described the lives of some illegal immigrants who worked at an orange plantation in Florida. If I remember correctly, the workers were not paid cash, but instead they were given some sort of tokens that could be exchanged for food, clothes and other things in the store that was owned by the plantation manager. After labouring for a season, picking fruits, the plantation manager announced that his workers were in debt! They owed him money! Well, because they had bought too much in his store, or so the manager said anyway. And the only way laborers could pay back their debts was to stay on for the next season and pick fruits for nothing. In effect, these illegal immigrants had become serfs.

Okay. There people were illegal immigrants. If they don't even have the right to be in the country, it is not so strange if they aren't protected by the same laws as those people who are citizens. On the other hand… we are not talking about a handful of illegal immigrants, but of huge numbers of them. Many industries and producers in the West are totally dependent on these “paper-less” workers who are treated almost like slaves. The oranges we buy wouldn't be so cheap if they had been picked by American citizens who were paid at least minimum wages.



One interesting thing that happens all over the West, and particularly in countries where the poorest people are relatively well paid, is that rich people who own companies move those companies to countries where wages are lower. One such country that has attracted many Western investors is China.

Several years ago, maybe fifteen years ago, I remember that there was a horrible fire in a toy factory in China. About two hundred workers, almost all of them young girls, died in the fire. They died because the doors of the factory were locked, so that the girls could not get out. The fire called attention to the fact that the workers at toy factories were normally and regularly locked up inside the factories, and not only during working hours, either. They were locked up in the factories day and night, because that way their employers could squeeze a maximum amount of work out of them. It goes without saying that a country that treats its workers like that doesn't worry too much about human rights.



Workers in a Chinese toy factory, perhaps mostly young men in this case.

Only a few years ago, probably two or three years ago, Chinese authorities decided that employers in China would have to clean up their act. Chinese workers would be granted at least minimal human rights by law. But guess what? According to New York Times, this provoked sharp protests from many American investors in China. Why, said these Americans, would they want to build factories in China if the workers there could ask for at least minimum pay, and if they could refuse to work more than a maximum number of hours per week? In other words, if the (rich) Americans were not allowed to treat Chinese workers as slaves, why would they want to employ them?

Rich Americans are already moving their factories abroad, where they can treat their workers more or less like slaves. If poor people keep getting poorer here in the West, can we be sure that our democratic constitutions and jurisdictions will protect them from being treated like slaves in our own countries? Do democracy and human rights really work in a situation where the poorest people of a society just keep getting poorer? Do they work in a situation where people forget, as they tend to do, that there used to be a time when society was different?

Let me end this post by addressing those of you who call yourself Christians. Do you take the words of Jesus seriously? Remember that Jesus spoke out quite sharply against rich people many times. No, I really don't think that he described worldly wealth as something that will necessarily make a person evil, but yes, I do think that Jesus describes the collective of rich people as a negative force in society. Judging from what Jesus says in the Bible, I think it is out of the question that he would support the idea that rich people should be given extra millions of dollars because of tax cuts that are based on a percentage of their taxes. Those of you who are Christians, do you think that the warnings that Jesus directed to rich people are irrelevant? Those of you who might describe yourselves as belonging to the religious right, do you think that Jesus would share your political views?

Ann