Inequality is a worldwide problem. Air travel and the internet make it possible for the super wealthy to move their wealth to areas of least regulation. There probably has to be some worldwide framework to tax wealth and inheritance. Everyone would benefit when all people have a good quality of life. We can then focus on our share problems, our children, and the health of our planet.
4
Finally, the New York Times Editorial Board deigned to give Op-Ed space to a column actually suggesting that our sacred constitution may not be all that it's cracked up to be. Why the American people, the global leaders in innovation, haven't re-written an 18th Century relic that didn't work particularly well then, and is completely dysfunctional now, is a mystery. Or is it? Our constitution and the ossified political system it's created works very well for the top 20%. The next 40% largely still support it because they imagine that someday they'll "make it" or win the lottery. The proof is in the puddin'. Huey Long and Donald Trump, both demagogic populists, differ in one crucial respect. Long actually shook up Louisiana's corporate oligarchy on behalf of his low-brow supporters. Trump appointed Exxon's CEO Secretary of State and filled his administration with reactionary warriors for corporate oligarchy. That fact doesn't seem to bother his low-brow supporters because for them, it's not about building a more just and equitable society, it's about "winning" a zero-sum game that allows one to lord it over all the losers.
As a nation, in Donald Trump we have finally reached the apotheosis of Reaganism. Democracy is for losers.
67
Our founders did factor in inequality. Only property owners could vote, slaves counted as only part of a person, women could not own property, could not vote. That is a few of the ways inequality was built into our constitution. Maybe it is because I am 83 years old and my grandmother could not vote or own property that this is hard to hear. I grew up in Georgia. When I was very young, a man killed a man he found in bed with his wife. He was not charged. I asked my mother why and she said he would not be charged as he was "defending his property". This was in the 1930's!! I have a problem with people forgetting much of what our founding fathers believed. And yes, they were all "white fathers"!! No blacks or mothers!! I don't blame them as they were products of their culture. I just have problem with the romanticizing of our past.
46
I think our political disarray was inevitable when the People defaulted on a basic obligation of citizenship: they let others fund political campaigns. That handed more influence to the wealthy and put legislators at odds with voters, as funder’s goals often differ from public needs. This led to deception and secrecy that became widespread, and resented. So I ask legislators: “Why did you run for office? Did you really want to deny people care and endanger their lives or was it a derivative of fundraising demands?”
Why do we look to profit-driven intermediaries to provide social services such as the care of our health and planet? Their goal is to gain and retain revenue. Some do this by denying, delaying, and minimizing service. Others are granted tax deductions for certain expenses. These practices concentrate wealth in fewer hands and spread the cost to many taxpayers. It has led to greater levels of income inequality. Whether you call it a public subsidy to a business or its employees, low-wage workers cost the U.S. billions of dollars a year in supplemental public services. “Incentive” subsidies to businesses also increase the taxpayer’s burden. Redirecting these subsidies could provide many much-needed public services.
A proposed remedy to this disfunction is draft legislation titled The Fair Elections Fund--a Whole New Ball Game©, at www.thefairelectionsfund.com. It re-imagines the rally cry of the first Revolution: $7.00/year for "Taxation With Representation."
19
The author makes a valid point, but I would say that what is an even greater danger to our democracy is ignorance or worse, willfull ignorance. The Founders assumed an informed electorate participating in the public discourse. They could not have forseen a nation riddled with submissive intellects assimilating the proliferation of lies and "alternative facts" being force fed to the "collective conscience."
25
This view of our country's foundation is quite perplexing. It seems to say that economic inequality was not a problem because everybody who could participate in the political system was relatively equal economically. Besides leaving out the exclusionary nature of this system (women, slaves, indigenous people), it is hard to believe that "yeoman farmers" felt equal to the bankers, slave merchants, ship captains, plantation owners, who were actually the 1% of their own time. If ever there was a political system with economic inequality absolutely baked in, it can be found in our own Constitution.
18
Start small. Term limits for Congress. Then maybe the people's representatives will act on our behalf instead of for their own re-election and the large pots of gold that await them.
14
Ganesh Sitaraman, expert on our Republic and advocate for SAVING our Republic, presumably by a progressive left led by Hillary Clinton and her disciples who will RESIST President Trump. The same Hillary Clinton who gorged at the trough of Wall Street/Goldman Sachs contributions along the way to raising $1.5bn for her failed campaign. California's Kamala Harris, rookie Senator, is already hob-knobbing in the Hamptons. So much for campaign finance reform. In terms of antitrust law, where is Diane Feinstein and the left on Google and Facebook, other than advocating for a cleansing of conservative news on their platforms? But perhaps the left should ask who will save the DNC from corruption and scandal? It took a scandalized email dump to shed light on a scheme by the DNC and Clinton campaign, supported by the media, to sabotage the Sanders campaign. The breathless claims that Trump is a populist demagogue tearing our country apart is nothing more than hyperbole from a left with no answers and a track record of failure. You may not agree with Trump's policies, but hey, as Obama said "elections have consequences".
10
In Thomas Piketty's "Capital," he argues that progressive taxation is the only proven way to reach income equality. Yet taxation in America has become more regressive, with greater tax burden shifted away from the wealthy and more of the tax burden placed on middle income and even on the poor. The is not by accident.
My state, North Carolina, taxes car repairs. This clearly targets people driving older vehicles, such as single moms, retirees on fixed income, and the working poor. The wealthy are small in nunber but control all levers of power: political office, corporate boardrooms, the media platforms, lobbying, and the judiciary. They're not letting go without a fight.
For now their strategy is to get us to turn on the minorities among us. The migrant picking our produce, the transgender serving our military, the black youth hanging out after school...these are not our enemies. They have nothing to do with our stagnant wages. We will have to think outside the box, because the wealthy own that, too. We will have to build a new structure in its place.
39
The Original constitution stated; 1 for 30,000 (ie 1 US Representative for every 30,000 citizens); why this was altered in 1911 and implemented in the 1913 US Congress, I would like to know. "No Democracy in America Today" is what I see; do others see this ? More Reps. will = more parties which will equal more of what the founding father's had in mind. I think. Love to hear other's thoughts.
7
I am tired of this worship of the Constitution.
The Constitution was explicitly designed as an anti-democratic document. The founders were first and foremost concerned with protecting their wealth.
The author writes that it wasn't a "class warfare" constitution. Only someone who wasn't poor or a slave could think that. On the contrary, the Constitution was instituted as the prime instrument of class warfare.
America has never been a democracy. The closest we ever came was sometime in the 1960s and 70s, when women and blacks finally began to have a political voice.
But since then democracy in this country has been on the decline again. And the forces of oligarchy are rushing to stamp out its remaining embers.
People wring their hands, asking whether the Constitution will survive Trump. On the contrary, Trump is the natural result of the Constitution.
The only surprise is that a Trump didn't happen sooner.
13
A timely op-ed. Those who have much more than they need simply want more. Yet history tells us that this type of greed is simply unsustainable. What surprises me is that those have benefited the most from this nation do not realize that their greed will ultimately destroy it. And those who have the power to change it are simply bystanders, watching the destruction. It breaks my heart to realize that the world I am leaving behind to my son is far worse than the one he entered.
11
Once again we are blind to our original sin. The Constitution did have built-in inequality; we had slavery. Slavery is explicitly protected in the Constitution; maintaining slave power was in fact one of its most prominent goals.
9
I agree with the author: Over time, small defects can lead to catastrophes:
1. Patent law is enshrined in the Constitution, and worked to spur innovation for two hundred years. Today, it has become an anti-competitive and anti-innovation tool in both pharmaceutical and technology industries.
2. One third of the US workforce is subject to a non-compete agreement, a prospect that would have horrified the Founders. Yet there is nothing in the US Constitution to prevent this practice. (The California Constitution prohibits most non-competes.)
3. Our tax system is a profound driver of inequality. Major provisions--deductions for mortgage interest, 401(k), and employer-sponsored insurance--have created economic classes that rival many feudal societies.
4. The Electoral College and federalism have created undemocratic practices (gerrymandering, local police forces that are close to occupying armies).
5. The Second Amendment, as currently interpreted, has created a culture of violence that is hard to explain to anyone outside USA.
We need a new framework. The people in power today are the worst people to develop it. Therefore, for now, the best is if we stay with what we have, and get people who will improve things, as opposed to make them worse.
13
The American constitution seems, to an outside observer, to have a system of checks and balances based on reconciling regional differences and competitions and tugs of war between central and regional interests. These regional competitions and differences almost caused defeat in the revolutionary war and framers seemed anxious to avoid them in the future. They also probably looked to the Bill Of Rights as an arbiter of social strife and a check on institutional abuse of individuals. All of this probably needs to be revisited
3
The author is only stating the obvious - it is obviously true that the Constitution wasn't written for a world that is so drastically different from that which existed in 1787 - but that is not our problem. Our problem is that, peculiar to all of the modern constitutional democracies, we are so resistant to changing that outmoded constitution. Anachronisms like the Electoral College still survive (that was the direct cause of the reality television star being elected as President), and we still defend a Second Amendment that was written a hundred years before the first machine gun was built. Every other constitution - including the unwritten British constitution - has allowed for, and accommodated radical, dramatic changes, but we continue to worship 'originalism' to an extraordinary degree.
16
A liberal court could overturn Citizens United, holding that unfettered access to the wealthy in the political advocacy arena impinges on the rights of ordinary citizens. Wealth is a criteria for influence, access, advertising in that arena as well as a necessity to run for office. Ever since the Reagan years I've felt that money was god in this country, and until people stop voting against their economic interests nothing will change. And it's not the constitution that's the problem.
12
Another article about how everything is different this time, and nothing like this has ever been faced before. It's not true.
Our system of government wasn't designed to deal with a specific problem. It was designed to give engaged citizens the tools to address ANY problem, through politics rather than violence.
Of course it isn't perfect, because human beings aren't (see the Civil War and the Trump administration.) But there is nothing about the current situation that can't be solved within our political system, through adjustments to the tax code, minimum wage, health care system, political contribution rules etc. And it is not at all clear that such remedies can't or won't be passed.
Although it's never easy to achieve positive change in a large and complex society, our political system can still function effectively. We just have to use it,
11
It wasn't built for an age of automatic weapons either.
11
One is put in mind of H.L. Mencken:
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
16
"...would require all the wisdom of the wisest patriot."
And we have elected "King of the Swamp."
7
Wonderful. Let's call a Constitutional Convention and re-write the whole thing.
As the kids say:
What could go wrong?
10
Interesting commemoration of Sept 17, 1787 and an interesting thesis that our constitutional democracy was not designed to automatically correct rising income inequality. Current history at least since the 1970's affirm your thesis.
Clearly, free market capitalism has proved unable to adapt to the public needs of health and education and reach a politically acceptable distribution of income. For reasons that seem to have more to do with the media's narrative, the recovery from the 2008 deep recession did not produce the reforms produced after the Great Recession of the 1930s.
I am a fan of the late Mancur Olson, who wrote, "The Rise and Decline of Nations, published in 1982. His studies showed that the longer a society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop powerful special-interest lobbies and entrenched interests that use government to enact regulations that favor a certain industry allowing them to creep into monopoly control of the market. The problem is affluence can gain a larger slice of the economic pie but the overall effect if a much slower growing economic pie.
It has been particularly difficult for innovations to breakthrough in this system. For example, we know that it would be in the public interest to begin to develop technologies that will convert transport to electricity and to develop electric power generation that does not depend upon fossil fuels, but it appears that the US will continue to drag its feet on this challenge.
7
As the author readily admits, there are a host of later historical developments that the "founders didn't foresee." That's why they made provision for amending the Constitution and created a Supreme Court to interpret and apply it.
And the founders were blind to the possibility of extreme social and economic inequality? Really? Yes, they were all wealthy, privileged white males (the author tries to make this fact a basis for dismissing their views entirely) but they lived at a time (the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution) of extreme social upheaval and inequality but of rising hopes and expectations for a better future.
This article would never have been written if the history of US election laws and campaign finance had been different (the Constitution doesn't even mention political parties) or if Donald Trump hadn't been elected president. In short, the article is pure progressive politics masquerading as scholarship.
4
Constitution is what grants us our liberties.
You start Changing the constitution (according to which party is in power etc etc and you will most definitely end up with more inequality and partisanship, not less.
Thank the universe for our forefathers and the constitution because any body which will be responsible for changing it is in utterly shambles.
3
And this is exactly why conservatives, true conservatives, who care about ordered liberty, should be very concerned about the current lopsided inequality in wealth and corporate power.
6
This piece makes the same mistake the originalists make by assuming that the framers were all of the same mind. Jefferson and Madison feared the impact of economic inequality on the republic and hoped to minimize the danger by promoting geographic expansion and agrarianism. Hamilton immediately put the Constitution to use for the monied class by fully funding the national debt, assuming the state debt, and creating a national bank. He envisioned a republic (as did Jefferson and Madison to a lesser extent) governed by the natural aristocracy. But Hamilton used the new powers of the Constitution to heighten inequality. The Constitution has been doing a great job of maintaining a starkly unequal society ever since. Just ask the Whiskey Rebels.
6
Should the Constitution have structural checks against populism? If I recall correctly, Teddy Roosevelt was a populist leader who prevented continued oligarchy. Perhaps the omission was by design. Maybe a fortunate mistake. You might recall the founding fathers didn't envision a two party system in 1787 either.
Our current unpopular populist president is an unfortunate turn of fate. However, constitutionally prohibiting his ascension would also preclude any outside power from challenging the established authority. You can't change anything if nothing is allowed to change. This is a sure path to political corruption.
Populist movements are an important check on the established authorities. If the republic can't allow a political revolution to succeed, an actual revolution will surely follow. I think both parties are learning this lesson the hard way. The plebeians will almost certainly suffer the worst but the political structure needs occasional upheaval.
Democrats denied the call this time and Republicans fell victim to the worst possible choice. That doesn't mean our nation's current political discomfort is ultimately bad for the nation or the Constitution. The history of our present circumstance has yet to be written.
5
Professor Sitaraman refers to the reforms as a reaction to the inequality of the Gilded Age. One might add the later New Deal reforms, the later EPA, and all measures taken to improve life and the environment for as many of us as possible. Gouverneur Morris said the rich will always strive to dominate and enslave. Many people, even those not super wealthy, believe all restriction of business for profit is a sin, despite all the massive evidence of despicable consequences from unregulated making of profit, despite the massive inequality that resulted in the Gilded Age, despite the same inequality now reoccurring. Jesus felt the same way about the rich. Not all wealthy people are reprehensible morally. But one wonders why conservatives prefer the conditions that advance inequality. Perhaps the inner dictator stronger in some than others?
7
The Federalist Papers make it very clear our founders were well aware of the threat of oligarchs and populist demagogues when in Federalist 1, Alexander Hamilton (aka Publius) said,
"History will teach us that [a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people] has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism... and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."
Unfortunately, they did little to protect us from such demagogues, especially when the supposed checks and balances provided by separate legislative and judicial bodies is run by those with like minds as the demagogue they are supposed to be a check and balance on.
4
This is simply a bizarre essay. The Constitution is what it is - a relatively simple outline of procedures for governance. Of course it doesn't solve every human problem that can be imagined. in fact, that is part of its strength.
It is flexible enough to let the People and their Congress solve specific problems that need to be fixed. In fact, it trusts that problems will eventually be worked through as needed.
10
Our single biggest problem with inequality today was caused outside the Constitution by the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court, to allow unlimited legal bribery in elections. And nobody has a practical solution to that decision as it would require either a Constitutional amendment (a process far too complex for this issue) or for the Supreme Court to reverse themselves (not going to happen as the court becomes increasingly reactionary).
9
I beg to differ. The Constitution was written by men of property for same. What they did not envision was an industrial, commercial and technological revolution changing society. In 1787 it was assumed that common people could feed themselves off the land. They hadn't planned for a society that required thousands of dollars of insurances, fees and tuitions for hundreds of millions of average folks to maintain themselves within a corporate economy, a pay-check or two away from financial dissolution.
6
A place to begin with saving our country is to repeal the Apportionment Act of 1911, which set the number of members of the House of Representatives at 435. This results in inequality between the number of people represented by each member of the House. Instead each member should represent the same number of people.
Yes, the size of the House will be increased drastically, with consequences for the Electoral College, but so what? The overriding principle is equality in representation. Equality: yes or no?
Of course this embrace of equality will favor Democrats, so repeal will never happen with Republicans in control. Time for a lawsuit.
7
The real problem is the awareness and diligence of the citizens as we attempt to govern ourselves. The current political system is a sick sham of a republic where the rich and powerful seem to care only about more wealth and power. The Vandals and Visigoths are at the gate.
3
Oligarchy in this country goes all the way back to its founding fathers. The 'founders' were in the main British and mostly from the upper class. They not only enslaved African Americans and were violent against Native Americans, but also vehemently exploited poor immigrant Irish and other nationalities from early on in such projects as the building of the Erie Canal, early railroads and highways. This economic cancer has once again raised its ugly head today given its seminal origins, albeit in times of peril such as WWII, when all Americans tried to pull together. It's only when the rich get desperate that they feign some humanism.
2
The Constitution was written exactly for this. When it was first written, it enshrined slavery into our national psyche, and the Taney Court proved that States Rights with regard to slavery was a chimera -- all of the United States was a home to slavery -- even the Free States. Using the mechanisms contained in the Constitution, we changed all of that with the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to our Constitution. As a result of the Southern States attempting to curtail the new rights of ex-slaves, the Federal Government was given the obligation to enforce the Bill of Rights for every person in the USA. There is no going back to "These United States" from "The United States" -- none of us, save those who think like Robert E. Lee, consider ourselves first a citizen of our State and then a citizen of "these United States".
Some would deny the First Amendment based on wealth associated with the users of said amendment. As they posit that Citizens United was bad, they should think about multi-billion dollar publishers such as the New York Times; if expensive speech can be squelched, then what's to stop the squelchers from squelching the NYT?
Some would steal from the rich and give to the poor, and count themselves as those doing the giving. We have seen inner city communities destroyed by such "giving" -- the rise of single-parent households and the lack of opportunity in those households is the direct result.
Measure twice, cut once - carefully.
1
The last lines of this article show exactly where the problem lies today. And that it might be too late already. The "wise patriots" that it calls for, are here already, in abundance. The problem is that they yield no power nor influence. The Right, and their solidly rooted institutions (like Fox News) have managed to create a system in which the Left can't regain equality any more. Gerrymandering; voter suppression; the absence of term limits for members of congress; an educational system that fails to teach our children the capability of analytical thought and scepticism; the existence of the electoral college; a Supreme Court system where the Right consistently rules; laws that allow unlimited money pouring into our political system (Citizen United); racial inequality; the absence of laws that can curb a president when he or she turns out to be clinically insane; I can go on and on. As long as the educational and media system can produce voters ignorant enough to vote against their own interest, with as a result them voting GOP clowns in the House, Senate and White House over and over again, this country will inevitably go over the cliff. Get used to it.
4
We need a new constitution, or we need to stop pretending the Founding Fathers had godlike wisdom and start interpreting the constitution in the light of what 21st Century America is like. If Madison and his colleagues had written a constitution for today's United States, and told their constituents, "Someday the land will be four times as large and the population will be 80 times as large, there will be airplanes by the dozens crossing from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic every day, a device you can carry in your pocket will put you in touch with millions and millions of persons in an instant," they would not only have been thought mad, they would have been mad. The gun lobby, to pick out one interest group, clings to a right conferred in an age when a double-barrelled shotgun (muzzle-loading, of course) would have been a formidable weapon. Russian hackers are making mincemeat of our First Amendment. Whiz kids on Wall Street trade thousands of shares of stock in the blink of an eye and reap fortunes without adding a loaf or a fish to the produce of the country. Clinging to the past (when America was Great?) will bring our downfall. There is another Madison out there, a Jefferson and a Franklin, a Paine and a Hamilton. Let's give them the mandate to create the framework for a newer, more just republic.
3
Some people are inherently greedy. They love having more money than they know what to do with. They feel they are the winners and the rest of us are losers so who cares if we make healthcare unaffordable and the planet uninhabitable. Who cares if we slash the safety net so the super winners can have even more they don't need.
The GOP wants to cut health benefits so the rich, which is them and their donors, can deprive the rest of us a chance at ever winning a decent life.
5
The middle class is not "collapsing" it is moving up in wealth as it moves out of the middle class into a larger upper class. Our constitution is doing just fine as is our middle class.
http://www.aei.org/publication/yes-americas-middle-class-has-been-disapp...
5
This argument has a fundamental flaw: it's failure to address slavery as a form of "class warfare". The Constitution preserved slavery and enshrined such a racially defined class as basically not human. Our current inequality is heavily skewed to structurally favor the rich, but also allowed the institutionalization of a population in poverty: slaves, even when freed, and now currently, Latino immigrants remain desperately poor compared to whites. It is not the Constitution that is flawed, it is its implementation, where race trumps class. Populist demagoguery is almost always racist in nature, obscuring class as a potentially unifying political message.
3
Any talk of income inequality is quickly drowned out by cries of "socialism" (God forbid.
Until you address the ignorance of a large part of the electorate and the Republicans' skill at exploiting it, nothing will change.
8
Amen. This rising inequality is neither inevitable nor accidental. It is the result of purposeful legislation that reaches far beyond just tax laws, for example. Legislation that effectively results in the circumvention of U.S. labor law and environmental stewardship allows American companies to exploit foreign labor and the natural environment in ways that are not permissible in the developed world, creating an unfair advantage over domestic producers. It requires a kind of willful blindness and hubris, if not outright cynicism, for "progressives" to assert that an "improvement" in the material condition of foreign peoples somehow must take precedence over U.S. law, and trumps the economic well-being of a majority of the American population.
2
'...wasn't built for an inequitable economy'? Are we talking about the US Consitution that compromised with slave holders allowing them to keep slaves and codify permanent slavery? That Constitution that only spoke to White male landowners? The one that gave no rights to women, children, indigenous people, or kidnapped people? Oh, and excuse me isn't this the same Constition that protected brutal insanity so violent within and beyond the borders of the First states that genocide became a national past time, resource theft a way of life, and conflicts with other nations the path to power?
2
The Founders created our system to assure liberty so that members of our society would have the freedom to pursue their dreams.
That noble objective had been debased. No longer is the objective happiness, instead that's been replaced by a very poor proxy: simple material wealth. The emphasis on material wealth can be boiled down into one simple statement: "Nobody should have any more stuff than anybody else, especially me." Instead of focusing on happiness, we now just try to carve up the booty.
2
Eliminating the Electoral College would be a good beginning step. One person, one vote that is equal to all other single votes would make a society of voters that are equal in every way.
6
Our Constitution wasn't built for Donald Trump and his lack of knowledge and respect to say the least.
It was not built for his emoluments clause violations, obstruction of justice, conflict of interest, contempt for free speech and promotion of bigotry and hate and denial of facts regarding the law, the relationships borne of our strong base and constitutional law.
"Unlike Europe, America wasn’t bogged down by the legacy of feudalism, nor did it have a hereditary aristocracy."
But America continues to struggle with the legacy of racism that we're so good at ignoring. Identity politics has led us to completely ignore, vote against and demonize democratic correctives to current economic inequalities like a progressive minimum wage and taxation that would go a long way to making everyone better off.
1
Addressing the unsustainability of growing economic inequality does not require changing the Constitution, adopting communism, or the emergence of a tyrant. It simply requires an understanding by the people of what is happening to them and why. They have the what, but not the why, to paraphrase Molly Ivins. We need real populists like Teddy Roosevelt in government, not a phony demagogue like Trump who promised to unrig the system but is doing no such thing.
1
The United States has always been a class based society from the moment the first settlers arrived. It was based on land ownership, and poor whites were deprived of land and upward mobility, essentially becoming an enslaved underclass. Liberty and equality for all is a bunch of claptrap.
Read White Trash: A 400 Year History Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg if you want to read some fact-based history. It seems to me one of the worst aspects of America is that people have been fed an idealized vision of an equal America with the caveat that it is unpatriotic not to believe it. This ensures that the underclass stays where it is.
The concentration of wealth in few hands was exacerbated by the second World War, where America emerged rich and with its infrastructure unscathed.
A succession of dreadful presidents, who did little except to enrich the rich, has led to the situation of today. Another harmful dogma perpetuated by the ruling elite is that any attempt to balance the inequalities in society is "socialism" aka communism and must be avoided. Look at how advanced some of the so called socialist countries of Europe are on any measure of human well being and ask why the US is nowhere to be found.
One thing that must happen before anything else is to get corporate money out of US elections. That would be a start. Young people and minorities are going to change things.
4
If only.
2
There is, in my opinion, one very effective solution that can be implemented:
Term Limits.
Specify that EVERY elected office, and(!) EVERY judicial appointment up to and including(!!) the Supreme Court, shall be subject to term limits. Anyone may run for any number of terms, but they are required to "take one term off." There are no more (judicial) "appointments for life."
Also introduce the English concept of a "vote of no confidence." Grant the people the unrestricted right to evict any public official without any requirement to assert that this public official has committed wrongdoing: "the majority of us just don't LIKE you anymore, and we don't want you representing us."
We also should amend the Constitution to expressly remove "Citizens United," which only served to demonstrate that the US Supreme Court is just as susceptible to Bribery as is everyone else. Formally define what "a corporation" is, and what it isn't. Expressly affirm that the giving or taking of money, at any level or for any reason, is a "High Crime."
In the 228 years that our Constitution has been in effect, we have amended it only 27 times, and two of those didn't count!
2
How did term limits work out last time they were tried? Not so good. And we already have the concept of a vote of no confidence, at least for the House and its equivalent in most states--it's called biennial or similar term elections. We currently re-elect our representatives at a higher rate than the "representatives" to the Supreme Soviet in the old USSR. We approve of Congress as a while at a rate in the teens, but we approve of our OWN representatives in the 80-90% range.
Citizens United should definitely be overturned, but an involved citizenry is a much more important necessity.
2
Don't be fooled, Mike. Term limits don't do anything but make you, the voter, FEEL like voters are breaking the influence-monopoly on our reps.
But, in reality, it does nothing of the sort. Why? Because how long a representative is IN office doesn't correlate with the manner by which influence is wielded by lobbyists and campaign donors. The politician him/herself doesn't matter as long as the POLICY is maintained. And as long as donor money is allowed into the campaign process, the politician will always do the 'right thing' for donors, even when campaigning saying the complete opposite to voters.
All terms limits REALLY do is remove yet another lynchpin of accountability between voters and their representatives, choice, in the guise of presenting a new face, by turning donors into gatekeepers, manning a revolving door-now a predictable time period, due to term limits-for installing donor/lobbyist-friendly representatives in office.
It gives the wealthy the time and predictability to seek and groom the next friendly candidate to present to voters as a 'new face' with 'new ideas', with zero chance that a mistake, say, a representative that gets religion while in office, could backfire on the wealthy, elite, donors.
Term limits HELPS the wealthy keep their stranglehold on the process.
It codifies and cements into place the revolving door that already favors the Money in our politics...without ever addressing the Money that's actually pulling the strings in our politics.
4
" ... the deep question we must ask today is whether our generation has wise patriots ... " No. At least not many seeking public office. Our politicians are mostly driven by ambition, ego, desire for power and all the trimmings, and similar. They resort to accepting huge "campaign donations" (translation: selling influence), gerrymandering, voter suppression in their favor, pandering to their "base", etc. "Wise patriots"? Hardly. Cynical? You bet.
No document written by fallible humans is timeless. It is folly to endow any document with absolute, omniscient qualities. I’d like to think that the founding fathers were open-minded enough to view their creation as a “living” document, one that would organically change as needed. However, Sitaraman reveals the limited vision of the founding fathers in how they described American society: “exceptional because of the extraordinary degree of economic equality within the political community as they defined it.” And “as they defined it” is the problem for us today. This isn’t a question of us judging them by our values; it’s a practical question of recognizing that their standards no longer work. The founders defined the political community as a restricted, homogenous group: white, male and property owning. But their estimate of America’s “economic equality” and thus “exceptionalism” failed to consider slaves, women, Native Americans, and non-property-owning males. “Exceptional” applied only to the elite group. When they declared “all men are created equal …endowed …with certain unalienable Rights,” they were referring only to that elite group. Otherwise, they would have awarded that same equality and rights to slaves, Native Americans, and women. So, the Constitution was handicapped from the beginning by a restricted vision of society that may have worked in 1787, but it is inadequate for the reality of 2017. We now have to decide what year we want to live in.
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@Michael
Luckily, you don't need to 'think' that the Founders were open-minded enough to create a 'living' document. They actually did so. We have 200 years and 27 constitutional amendments to prove that they did. The constitution itself has a built-in mechanism for its own adaptation to an unknown future.
We just need to ensure that we maintain enough civility in our politics to take advantage of that mechanism. Something our self-described 'patriots' and constitutional Originalists would, conveniently, like the voting public to forget.
The constitution gives citizens the power to make fundamental change. We just need to want it badly enough to exercise that power.
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Many years ago, Aristotle noteed that every society, regardless of formal political structure, ends up with a group of elites at the top, and everyone else. Further, he points out that the behavior of the elites - regardless of the formal political structure - it is the behavior of the elites that determines the long term success of a society.
If the elites govern wisely and inclusively, the society will thrive. If the elites govern selfishly, the thing begins to collapse on itself.
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America, in its current form, is the most inequitable society in western history. America post WWII, with top income tax rate of 90%, was far more equitable with a larger middle class and less disparity between the middle class and top wealth holders.
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...Hence, the wise addition of an amendment process added to our constitution. Powerful forces acting upon the electorate today would like us to forget that we, citizens, possess that power, should we choose to use it.
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I suspect most of us have, by now, tried to imagine what the Founding Fathers would have thought of our modern predicament. I wonder if they thought they would make someone like Trump possible, would they have scrapped the whole thing and sent a nice apology letter to the king?
Probably not. But I'd like to think that the Framers would seriously reconsider the idea of making property owners the only voters, and therefore, the only fully functioning "citizens". Am I being too simplistic when I don't see much of a stretch between making property owners the only voters, and modern assertions by plutocrats that "corporations are people too, my friend" and "money is speech"?
I'd also like to think that the Framers did have enough imagination to find the efforts of strict constructionists and social conservatives to make time stand still to be laughable.
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Just where is this middle class that is "collapsing"? I know a heck of a lot of middle class people, and I can assure you that their standard of living is far above what it was when I was a child (I'm now 74). Just look at all the new, middle-income houses being built with 3-car garages as "standard"? Middle class households used to have ONE car! And vacations? Today, they take vacations to rental beach houses or DisneyWorld? In my childhood, it was a car trip to visit relatives.
As for the poor, I have yet to see a poor person who doesn't have a smart phone. In the past, there would have been a pay phone on the corner - none in their home at all. Our expectations have risen enormously! Even much of the Section 8 housing in my city has a washer and dryer in it. Just try to find a laundromat these days!
There are a tiny group of people who have extreme, unfathomable wealth There always have been. And then there is a big group who are wealthy in a "comfortable" way but in no way comparable to that tiny group above them. The rest of us are either middle class or poor, with the "poor" group having a wide range as well.
What is different today, from when the Constitution was written, is that we have a huge middle group of citizens. In the time of the Founding Fathers, that group was quite small, with most falling into the "poor" category.
The author of this article has a personal agenda and is trying to fit history to fit it.
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Less philosophical, but still of deadly importance, the Constitution was also not built for a highly urbanized citizenry wielding semi-automatic and automatic weapons with no good reason.
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Really? The founding fathers were not aware of severe economic inequality among white men? How about the fact that there were very wealthy landowners with slave-based plantations in the South or the fast-growing class of incredibly wealthy merchants in the Northern cities? Those white men were way wealthier and influential than your average white male Joe-Schmoe farmer in the frontier hinterlands or the wharf workers in the major ports. They were aware of this. In fact most of the founding fathers came from this influential, uber-wealthy class.
As are men of their exalted socioeconomic station in any age, the founding fathers had some blinders on and just were quite optimistic that things would work out. They had this optimism because the system worked for them, and had always worked for them.
I am glad that I read to the end of the article, because I was going to comment that the US Constitution did survive one bout of massive economic inequality--the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties, between 1880 and 1929. Like today, huge companies strangled the economy more and more with destructive monopolies, the rich hoarded more and more of the nation's wealth, populist demagogues started to rile up the populace through lie-filled propaganda (the yellow press of the late 19th century), the poor were dirt, dirt-poor and totally powerless.
The required reforms passed during Progressive Era were hard-fought, long, violent and ugly. But they worked. We need to fight again.
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We did make substantial progress last century. There used to be a 'check' on the rich and corporations - it was called taxes, regulations and unions. Now the rich get all sorts of tax breaks in exchange for doing NOTHING. Corporations get to enjoy reduced taxes, regulations and the elimination of unions with predictable results - all for doing NOTHING in return. I call it redistribution of wealth and welfare upwards, and "enslave the rest" with insurmountable debt.
The Constitution assumes an intelligent and RESPONSIBLE populace that would select such traits in their leadership. Instead, we have the wealthy elite choosing our candidates or candidates choosing the wealthy to pander to for funds instead of votes. Making matters worse the nomination process is restricted to a few states to control - a lottery of states to randomize the order of state primaries every election cycle could mitigate Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire and a few others from dominating the nomination process.
The Constitution never counted on the existence of monopolies - economic and political - that renders the Constitution mostly useless. Just look at McConnell's theft of a SCOTUS seat. Trump's impunity his entire life and now as POTUS.
Once he claims the Constitution fake, America will be his kingdom, complete with a huge wall, two oceans and a motte on the banks of Rio Bravo. to protect his domain.
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Inequality is a result of a series of choices: to give more power to corporations (corporations are people, my friend) and less to workers. Those changes can and should be undone.
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Sitaraman is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts. The founding fathers WERE oligarchs, albeit very enlighted ones, and there was plenty of inequality in their time, with George Washington owning thousands of acres and John Hancock having more wealth than hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Their success was that they did build a system that balanced democracy, oligarchy, and an elective monarchy of sorts along with a separation of powers between the states and federal government, and between the different branches of government. They successfully stopped demagogues, but Sitaraman's wishes would open the path to them.
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Our Constitution envisioned slavery. Slavery. The most wealth-unequal system that exists. Not only did the rich have more than the poor, and make more than the poor, they OWNED the poor.
Our wealth inequality doesn't stem from the Constitution, it stems from the wealthy and powerful successfully dividing the poor by pandering to them, convincing them that their respective parties are interested in them rather than in preserving their own wealth and power.
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This piece should be mandatory reading for the five "conservative" hacks on the Supreme Court, some of whom gave us Citizens United. Heck, it should be mandatory reading for every single American who intends to vote.
We're in a real pickle. No, we don't have enough "wise patriots" in our political system to undo the oligarchy and recreate a viable republic. Nor do we have enough voters who will make it a point to inform themselves so they will even understand the problem.. At this point we don't even have a major political party who identifies with the working class. The Democrats used to, but then under Bill and Barack they became the party of various moneyed elites in places like Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street.
The author's history of Rome, however, is spotty. Yes, the Romans had government structures in place to supposedly work on behalf of the plebs, but the patricians of the Senate did everything they could to corrupt or weaken those structures. Assassination of reformers became common: Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were the first, but Julius Caesar himself was killed, not to maintain the republic, but because he was going to dilute the oligarchy in the Senate, among other proposed reforms.
This column has clearly identified the problem. Solving it will take the sustained political involvement of millions of Americans who will be opposed by people with billions of dollars. I hope we are up to the task.
I think that Civil War II has already begun.
No taxation without EFFECTIVE, RESPONSIVE representation!
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The Constitution may have been written with only the rich landowners who wrote the Constitution in mind. That would account for their failure to recognize economic inequality. For them, it didn't exist.
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The American Constitution has a built in amendment process, therefore, by definition, it can adapt to anything.
Of course, the author could not advance a single constitutional change that would "deal with economic inequality". What is he proposing that is better than we have in the constitution of today?
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No need to change the Constitution. Simply increase the tax rates on the rich: 90% or thereabouts on annual incomes (of any kind) over $500,000 per year.
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If we distill the democratic ideal of the Constitution into the phrase "one person, one vote," as a principle it should work to temper the power of the few, the wealthy, the Oligarchy.
The author points to the facts, but gives no theory about how a constitution can address the current problems. Fix the following problems, and the Constitution might work: 1) disproportionate small state power in the Senate makes it easier to buy enough candidates to at least stymie progressive legislation; 2) gerrymandering at the level of House districts makes it possible for the majority of voters to end up at the small end of the stick in the House of Representatives; 3) unfettered legalized bribery in the form of campaign contributions to organizations everyone but the Supreme Court recognizes as partisan allows the wealthy to dominate the political discourse. Direct popular election of the President would also help.
In other words, true democracy was the goal of the original Constitution, and should be the goal of our next Constitution, re-worked to get rid of the easy paths our oligarchs have found to circumvent the ideal. In most cases the rich did not get rich because they believe in equality, quite the contrary. And the 30-35% of the voting public they target with their racist, anti-intellectual propaganda, did not come to dominate our politics because they are the majority - that power was cynically constructed by wealthy conservatives out of Constitutional flaws.
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The author asserts relative economic equality in 1787 but provides no numbers. Can anyone tell what the multiple between a yoeman farmer and a Jefferson or a Washington really was? In addition to income, there must have been a huge discrepancy in net worth as the latter owned both land and human life.
Worse, the Supreme Court has under the guise of protecting free speech exacerbated the problems pointed to by crippling the ability of the political system to limit the influence of money in politics. Thus the Court has invalidated post Watergate reforms aimed at this end as well as the century old law overturned in Citizens United. Nothing about the Constitution and its history, including the First Amendment, mandated or even strongly supported these decisions. What happened was the forces of wealth gained a Supreme Court majority, which then proceeded to entrench the interests of the wealthiest among us. This may be on the verge of getting worse as it is likely the Court will cooperate with rather than invalidate political gerrymandering, as evidenced by its allowing Texas to prepare for the 2018 elections by using a map that has been found as a fact to be designed to limit the influence of minority voters. Thus the Constitution which assumed considerable economic equality (albeit for white male voters) may be interpreted to enshrine the unequal influence of wealth, and to some extent this has already happened.
Ironically leftist purists who voted for Nader in 2000 and stayed home or voted for Stein in 2016 are major enablers of what has transpired to entrench the role of money in politics. It is not just the perfect that is the enemy of the good; it is Alison purists who vote with their guts without thinking of the politics they will be creating.
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The Constitution begins with the phase "We the People".
There is no mention of corporations.
The Courts made a very serious error when they began treating corporations as people .
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Economic inequality has nothing to do with our Constitution. The Constitution has to do with government, not economics. The big changes over the years from 1776 to modern times have been seismic changes in the nature of work and of money.
We have gone from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy to an information economy. At the same time money has gone from something concrete to something abstract.
The source of our current inequality -- and it is a real problem -- seems to be in that more and more the winners take all and the losers get little. All at a higher and higher level.
For example, think of all the men in this country. Then think of the men who play football in high school. They are the winners, but how many of them go on to play football in college? Then in the National Football League? then in the Super Bowl? At every level, the numbers get fewer, and the rewards greater.
It's tempting to try to find someone or something to blame for the inequality, but it is a hard problem and I don't think any of us have an answer. Certainly not the politicians. Or this professor at Vanderbilt Law School. They simply offer scapegoats, and focusing on scapegoats never solves a problem.
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If I recall my history properly, class was very much built into the constitution. At the time of it's ratification, only men with property (land owners) could vote. The poor, the women, and the slaves had no vote at all. The franchise has been considerably expanded since then to now include all adult citizens. Unfortunately by scheduling elections on a work day, we have effectively disenfranchised many of those same working poor. That they do not have the time or energy left after meeting their basic needs to attend to more than the most superficial of politics is another flaw in our system.
Could we put it simply and say that the Founding Fathers looked back into history to figure out the best form of government for our fledgling nation. But they did NOT foresee the power of corporations, big banks, and unimaginable concentrations of wealth over generations that formed their own "political factions."
You can say what you want about the rich, right and left, conservative and liberal, they basically think ALIKE and STICK TOGETHER when it comes to keeping and growing their power and wealth.
The author may be right, but this has all happened before. The irreconcilability of regional economies in the 1850s sparked the Civil War as much as they've spark the politics of today.
There is no question that we have "wise patriots" who would "save our republic", if only they had half a chance. But the game is rigged in ways that deny them the means to do so. That is the sad situation in which we find ourselves.
Essays like the current one can help, but the process of public learning, which is always slow, is heavily and deliberately disrupted by the spreading of lies through the digital media. The people, foundational to any republic, are kept in constant anxiety by an economic system that ignores or devalues them. Even wealthy people worry that they do not have enough. Rightist media encourage universal anxiety, hammering away with accusations and blame. The usual suspects are foreigners and minorities.
It is hard to imagine careful revision of the constitution arising from an anxious, fearful and confused public. Those who try to better imagine the means to a more equal society are pilloried merely because their ideas are not (yet) popular. True debate is belittled. Wisdom is considered weakness while force is championed.
We absolutely must keep trying to improve the system, including the constitution, so as to lessen inequality. Doing so in the face of so many obstacles is a continuous struggle.
While it's likely only a dream, it might be that a 75%~85% voter turnout and participation might get our democracy back on track.
Our politicians, both parties, have aligned their focus with the corporations and the wealthy 1%'ers. The media's complicity e.g., Bernie-Bashing, focus on Trump, numbing coverage of the "Clinton email non-issue" - has not helped stimulate the general population to engagement.
I believe that the sense of "...It's Washington... Nothing will change..." is the result of decades of the Reagan era attitude of "Government is the problem..."
We have been disenfranchised...
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The author is correct, but offers no coherent solutions. Let's start by rejecting European models like collectivism, socialism, Marxism, progressivism, and all of the rest of the anti-American, anti-libertarian ideas.
Let's repeal the 17th Amendment and restore the Constitution as intended. Senators should never be popularly elected, as the senate was created to insure that the states were represented. Only the House of Reps should be popularly elected, is it is the "people's house".
Progressivism has gotten us to this point. Only the Constitution, with an Article V Convention of States, can alleviate our problems. Restoration of the 9th and 10th Amendments is a good start.
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Missing from this analysis is an acknowledgement that the "class warfare" constitutions didn't actually work all that well. The Roman Constitution fell to a populist tyrant, and the old British Constitution only managed to soften oligarchy rather than prevent it, and was ultimately discarded in favor of a truly democratic system that didn't give special, outsize influence to the nobility.
We need reforms to address inequality, but the Constitution, for all its shortcomings, isn't really at fault for this particular problem.
This seems opportunistic, yet another chance to use Trump's election in ways that fundamentally change the U.S. But the Constitution isn't a statue. Madison and others were acutely aware of faction and its dangers. See Federalist Paper No 10, primarily. It's another reason why that document protects the individual, not groups, however those groups are defined.
Teddy Roosevelt took on monopolies without changing the Constitution. Where is anyone approaching Roosevelt now? There's a world of difference between TR and someone bent on destroying capitalism - which is what we're seeing on the radical "woke" left.. Big Pharma, Insurance companies, and trial lawyers have muddled insurance reform, even Obama's. We need better and braver lawmakers and better laws. That falls to the electorate and the lawmakers they choose, not the Constitution. Gerrymandering, on both sides, is a core problem, So is money in politics and the length of our political seasons. LObby? Fine -- no money. Committee chairs stay there much too long -- some are able to hold up legislation for decades.
Our egalitarian society is bound to once in a while elect Jacksons and Trumps. The Constitution withstands that, and has even withstood a civil War. The checks hold. The only legislator I can think of who is serious about reform is John McCain. He lost to Obama, largely because of his choice of Palin. We should create an environment to clean up the government, not change it.
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Nonsense. The situation in the late 19th century and into the early 20th had a lot of similarities, only the names were Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Astor, Mellon, etc. This led both to the passage of anti-trust law by Teddy Roosevelt, and the estate tax, an effort led by William Green a Republican Congressman from Iowa. If our schools focused on issues like this, instead of stuff like identity-politics, we might raise committed leaders who want to help ordinary Americans. Instead, both parties now exist primarily to do the bidding of special interests, helping retiring elected officials land million dollar lobbying jobs, lucrative think-tank positions and regular invitations to give $250,000 speeches for the major corporations they were suppose to properly oversee while in office.
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A thought-provoking and informative article. After the second paragraph, I was going to dismiss it outright as misinformed and inaccurate about constitutional structures of checks and balances. As seen in the Federalist Papers and The Constitution, the founding fathers were obsessed with preventing tyrants or incompetents, foreseeing, in effect, the first reality TV star president. Then I was mostly persuaded by Sitaraman's argument about economic inequality. I still believe that the Electoral College, the Impeachment Clause, term limits (in the Amendments anyway), and the Census serve as structural checks. However, like other commenters, I agree that gerrymandering and Citizens United have distorted the accurate and equal representation of economic interests.
My hope is that Trump will be treated like Warren G Harding and that Trump will be replaced by the likes of progressive "aristocrats" like TR and FDR, or at minimum, another Coolidge. By contrast, I think it was Madison who wrote that the Constitution does not protect us from buyer's remorse in the form of post-election regret. That is, unless the elected official commits an impeachable offense, we are largely stuck with our choice for the remainder of his/her term, even if we individually did not vote for him... bummer.
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It isn't a question of whether we HAVE the 'wise patriots'--we do. It's rather a question of whether we allow them to rise, and then, be effective when they do.
Today, due to our unwillingness to distinguish Money from Speech (or, for that matter, corporations--ie groups of people--from individuals) in civil law, we are incentivizing and empowering the maintenance of undemocratic influence, over the actual job of governance. That's the consequence of the 365/24/7 election cycle, coupled with the peculiar, and newly weaponized, loophole in electoral law called gerrymandering--allowing parties and their politicians to manufacture their own, special, corporate-funded constituencies which then elect like-minded representatives for state and federal office to match the external influence-peddling, ie lobbyists, funded by the same party-donors.
However, the present dysfunction is only the handmaiden of what is to come as a result of our infatuation with Wealth and Spectacle in our politics. As we can already begin to see, with the manufactured-minority Freedom Caucus and Tea Party in the House, which responded so enthusiastically in it's support for candidate Trump, these self-imagined 'populists' too will ultimately find themselves betrayed, by the same corporate interests that uses them to install corporate-friendly executives. Private power only tolerates public institutions to the extent they provide a public legitimacy to their actions. When that fails, violence ensues.
Excellent piece, and really I seldom say that!
I feel you could have almost as easily titled it "Why I am not an Originalist", or even "Why I am not a Social Darwinist".
The argument for narrowly interpreting the Constitution always revolves around the view that if its even open to a limited amount of interpretation, the "liberals" could read anything into it they want.
But wise, "original" observers (and authors) of the Constitution & thoughtful people along the way have understood that it was written for a people that hoped to remain independent small farmers & businessmen with almost an unlimited amount of territory in which to grow--the relative economic equality of colonial America was noticeable to visitors from Europe even BEFORE the Revolution and the Constitution.
But we have gone through two eras of rapid change & sharpening inequality, and that older world of relatively equal small producers has long since vanished.
The originalists claim to offer the only reasonable way of interpreting our Constitution, & will argue all challengers to the death against ANY other way. Unfortunately, though, history is filled with stories of unrest and rebellion in societies that have become too unequal, and no matter how ingenious the framers of our Constitution may have been, we are seeing that we aren't immune to these problems. Reform WILL have to involve SOME redistributing of wealth. What we need is an honest discussion about how to do it in the fairest way possible.
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The wisest among us always know of the limits to their own wisdom and this would certainly apply to the framers of the constitution. It seems unlikely that our nation's 18th century founding fathers would have intended their great new polity to extend indefinitely into the future, preserved as an infallible, quasi-religious document. As exceptional as our constitution is, it should not be invoked as a source of "biblical" wisdom to solve the most difficult problems facing 21st century Americans. The role of a constitution should be to facilitate the continuous improvement of a nation's government and not to enshrine the supposed perfection of its creation story.
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I have posted this question several times and have yet to receive a reply: what does an optimal distribution of income , in the U.S., look like, quantitatively? If economists cannot offer an answer, and back it up statistically, then really, what good is economics as a science or as a branch of sociology?
The constitution is not flawed because it rests on an assumption that income equality is a static condition of the country's economic life; its flaw is that the divided government it created insures a power vacuum. In this vacuum the wealthy rule. The founders chose occasional economlc and socials misery for minorities (as enshrined by the taxation clause and 3/5 rule) as a preferable outcome to cosolidation of power at the federal level.
Few remember the Articles of Confederation which were the law before the Constitution. Not to mention that back then the wealthy to the poor were even larger differences. Even poor people today live better than Kings back then, at least in this country.
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No. Economic success and access to the many technological wonders of modernity require investment far beyond the scope of an increasing number of Americans. Come out to Los Angeles and see how many people are living under bridges and overpasses without running water or even toilet facilities, in a place where relieving yourself on the sidewalk is against the law.
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Absolutely right on. The Founding Fathers did not foresee the concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations and a small clique of wealthy individuals. Structural political and economic changes are needed to save our democracy - changes which will bring about rising wages and greater autonomy for the individual family.
As a starter, I would end the perpetual existence of corporations, limit their purposes and deny them the rights of individuals. I would, also, abolish the Federal Reserve, a private banking consortium that charges us interest on money we have the inherent right to issue debt free, turn the Feds functions over to the Treasury Department and create a new Reconstruction Finance Corporation to finance important new infrastructure, in the tradition of Lincoln and Eisenhower to create jobs and raise living standards.
I would, also, save trillions of dollars in health care by moving to a whole foods, chemical free, diet for Americans and in defense by reducing our military commitments around the world. These savings would be reinvested in growing the real economy.
1
The problem with government really isn't inequality, it's poorly-educated white people voting their grievance, blaming their own problems on foreigners and minorities. Our Founding Father's blind spot was race. They couldn't eliminate slavery on the country's founding, and we have been paying the price ever since. As their share of the population inevitably shrinks, this grievance held by less educated whites will become more acute, challenging our democratic institutions like we have not seen in over 150 years. By putting Trump into office they're voting for more inequality not less. They view the mainstream media as the enemy and they look at cultural elites, not rich people, as accelerating the decline of their race-based privilege.
There is much more to this than economics. Failing to acknowledge this will result in policies that exacerbate the problem, not lessen it.
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Timely op-ed. Some readers, has implied by their comments, are very quick to point out that we don't need more regulation. It's not a question of more, but of make sure the regulations we have effectively insure a level plain field, which do not today. The examples that big corporations, powerful industries and wealthy individuals are not subject to the laws and regulations that everybody else has to abide by is obvious and it's this nascent class of oligarchs that in the long run will threaten our democracy.
We need people on both parties that have the courage to abandon their orthodoxy and craft new solutions to keep our democracy vibrant and viable for EVERYONE.
3
Please, let's go back to Federalist Paper 68, Alexander Hamilton, 1788:
"The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."
The language is flowery, but the intent is clear: it's up to the Electoral College to eliminate people with "talents for low intrigue" who may have been elected as a result of the "little arts of popularity" and ensure that we never elect a president who is not to "an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."
But, the Electoral College has become nothing but a group of political hacks. It was more important to them to empower the Party of the One Percent than it was to do its duty to the Nation.
The only thing saving us is that the Democrats are finally deciding not to be the "Republican Lite" Party. They're battling on tax reform and DACA. Sanders is pushing Medicare for all. Warren is fighting for her CFPB. We'll see.
6
This opinion piece suggests that a drift towards inequality is taking place in the shadows. But, on the whole, only the upper middle class and the liberal upper class are against it. The rest are only against its effects. For some reason, most of America, particularly the poorest, will defend the wealthiest part of its nation's right to bogard its wealth with unrestrained dedication and passion. Any attempt to even out wealth of the nation is very likely to crushed by regulation written by politicians voted in by poor voters based on ads paid for by extremely wealthy donors. None of this is secret.
3
In our country, we have seen that cutting taxes does not result in domestic economic growth from increased investments by the private sector when the existing economy fully satisfies the needs of those domestically while the biggest opportunities for greater returns on investments are from global endeavors. Since the 1970's the U.S. consumers have gone from the world's producers and consumers for the greatest part to a far smaller proportion of producers while remaining the greatest proportion of the consumers. The U.S. has become the cash cow for global economic entities and our government with it's fixation upon supply side economics, greater and greater defunding of the public institutions of our country and faith in the magic of free markets and free trade has done nothing to address the inevitable inequalities and domestic economic stagnation that developed. We are not making any rational efforts to address our national needs. We know that markets left to themselves are prone to shifting from moderate golden mean performances to extremely destructive booms and busts and distortions where buyers or sellers can gain control over the others. We know that tax cuts where there are no surpluses lead to deficits and are weak stimulators of the economy and can even produce severe credit problems as well as debt. The drive to avoid constraints leads businesses to act selfishly and to destroy environments and people to remain competitive requiring good regulation.
2
We have had great inequality before during the gilded age. Then came the depression and the labor movement. For every action in our society there is a reaction. Our constitution will survive this only if we pay attention to the issues facing the middle class. We can start with Medicare for all. Before 1965 older people couldn't even buy insurance. Then Medicare was enacted into law amidst cries of socialism and communism by people like Ronald Reagan. Now, even the Republicans on Medicare like it. Let's finish the job. We have tried working with the "free market" via Obama care and it didn't work well for everyone. There are some things that are inalienable rights and should be guaranteed. Just like the U. S. Constitution was written as it does say that happiness as a basic right.
4
Medicare for all sounds good, but as is the case in all countries with socialized medical systems the elderly will not be treated and those without life threatening illness will wait years to be cared for. Check the statistics for hip replacements or knee replacements. It is very romantic to want to insure everyone, but are you ready to tell your father that he won't have bypass surgery when he is over 80? Rationing care is inevitable.
3
"Just like the U. S. Constitution was written as it does say that happiness as a basic right."
Aren't you thinking of the Declaration of Independence, which says that "our Creator" gave us "inalienable rights" like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? Nothing in the Constitution says anything about the government protecting our happiness.
Bernie Sanders, with his "Medicare for all", is like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, leading us to a place we would be foolish to go. Making medical care free would, paradoxically, make it much too expensive for us to afford.
1
This is a decidedly left-liberal view of our troubles. They are all the fault of Wall Street, the big corporations, and the oligarchs.
The working, middle-class have a different take. They’re worried not about the oligarchs above them, but the immigrants below them, taking their jobs and threatening their way of life. They also deeply resent the liberals who scornfully dismiss their troubles as of their own making.
Who's right? Everything is relative; what you see depends on where you stand. What we need in this country is bridge-building, both figurative and actual.
5
Ron, respectfully, you have it all completely wrong. I suspect you've been watching far too much conservative TV and listening to too many conservative talk show hosts. Those folks are bought and paid for by the advertisers (big corporations) and the actual owners of those media (big time wealthy conservatives). So, of course they are going to point the finger in the wrong direction (down the economic ladder) instead of at their own noses.
You probably know a few immigrants, legal or not, and so you probably know for yourself that they are no threat to our way of life. With their work ethic and modesty they are the very essence of our way of life. Stop listening to the pundits and pay attention to your own common sense, and we'll be okay.
1
"In major sectors of the economy — banking, airlines, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications — economic power is increasingly concentrated in a small number of companies."
You left out one of the most important: the consolidation of the media industry. Otherwise, excellent article.
ADVERTISEMENT
3
Stop and talk with the person who checks out what you are buying at convenience store, drug store or grocery. Might learn something. I met a woman at a gas station convenience store and then saw her again 15 miles away working as a parking lot ticket seller. She said she works three different minimum wage jobs so she can have a better life. She didn't complain. She said the work was relatively easy and she likes the extra money.
One reason for the vast inequality in our economic life is so many people are just getting little more than slave wages. If you work a normal schedule and don't earn enough to support yourself fully or just enough to scrape by, what are you besides a slave who with wages? You have no options in life.
"“The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest,” Gouverneur Morris observed in 1787. “They always did. They always will.”"
The mentality of how people get paid has not moved that far from slavery: get labor at the cheapest possible price, don't give a thought to the consequences. Probably 1/3 of the nation works for pay that cannot, or can barely, support them and a huge portion of those get welfare benefits from the rest of us, really just subsidies to the corporations that refuse to pay decent wages.
A nation bent on competition to the death will find just that. Without balance, the economic system will destroy itself like a broken machine that keeps running but eventually consumes its own parts with the clash of hard metal
6
And when you increase wages here, which products do you think those same people are going to buy when they go to the store? The one that now costs more or the cheaper product from Mexico or China? Look for the Union Label was a great jingle that didn't spur more purchases. Gone is the high school kid who bagged groceries for less than minimum wage and gone is the kid who pumped your gas and got a tip. Why? Minimum wage.
You mean "Populist Oligarchs" like President Obama and his 'pen and phone'? The author needs to spend a great deal more time reading the Federalist Papers, instead talking his own book.
2
in fact, the framers did think they were guarding against a populist oligarch. Three times during the convention, they overwhelmingly rejected James Wilson's proposal that the people elect the president. As George Mason put it, trusting the people to choose the president would be like referring "a trial of colours to a blind man." Until the last two weeks of the convention, the framers deemed it best that Congress select the president, but Gouverneur Morris and a few others thought that would make the president too dependent on Congress. Through clever maneuvering, Morris forced a reconsideration of the issue, and on September 4 a committee proposed a compromise: the system of electors, with which we have been saddled ever since. Wise and independent electors, the theory went, would prevent the selection of an oligarch. Further, a politically independent president could mediate between what Morris, Hamilton, and others characterized as the "democratic" House and the "aristocratic" Senate. In other words, the framers did foresee class disparity but tried to guard against it—but their safeguard broke down in the first contested presidential election, in 1796. Once two parties formed and electors pledged allegiance to a particular candidate, the hope for a politically independent president proved a pipe dream. I lay this out step-by-step in my book, Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive (Knopf, 2012).
2
Sitaraman: "The founders didn’t foresee ... They didn’t plan ..."
That's a straw man. The Preamble to the US Constitution uses the word "posterity", so the framers did indeed understand that there is an unknowable future and that they must secure the "Blessings of Liberty" for future generations.
The Preamble to the US Constitution can be read here:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
2017-09-17 17:47:09 UTC
The things that even the most brilliant systems of government tend to overlook are the immensity of time and the constancy of human nature. We deal today with the same basic issues all men have dealt with:
Those with power and seek to maintain it, increase it, and pass it to their progeny; the basis of natural selection.
The future is unknowable. What we seek to influence and improve for our generation and the generations of our children can one day come to be harmful to them; just as antibiotics were developed to control bacteria, bacteria in the course of time become resistant and even more threatening.
The key then it would seem is to see human nature for what it is and account for it in the development of governance and the distribution of wealth, while also compelling the modification of governance over time and ensuring that all citizens participate in a thoughtful and educated manner.
2
I recently read the New Yorker piece on Carl Ican, who, after being appointed a special advisor to Trump, tried to set aside a rule that was causing business losses to himself. Ultimately, he was unsuccessful, as other players in the industry, who were not losing money, stepped in, along with Senator Grassley from Iowa, to put the brakes on Ican's influence. The fact that struck me, was this: almost all of the players in that little incident were not our elected officials, but were members of industry, who were directing government policy. More than any time in my lifetime, I fear that we may be taking the final steps towards the creation of a richman's oligarchy, who's tentacles will be so deep into our government, that it will be impossible to extract them.
20
The problem with America is there isn't any class warfare. We ought to have it and we aren't. Why? Perhaps because we are now a population of these types:
(1) those ( small percentage) that are living the dream and go to bed secure in the knowledge that "there is nothing wrong with a class system as long as you are on the top" They use jujitsu to subdue below.
(2) those that are constantly tricked into thinking that it is their own fault that they are not upper class - some sin that that committed or some flaw in their ethic. The corollary they believe: "anyone and everyone can become rich in America if only they work hard enough in this land of opportunity"; their attitude toward a more egalitarian society: "I want government small and taxes low because someday I'll be rich and besides those (except me and my family) that need government help are losers".
(3) those so marginalized yet placated that they see no horizon past their present sub-culture and environment. Their attitude: "as long as my basic needs met it's all the same to me"
(4) those have a half way decent life and that have been tricked into thinking the pie is so small it is all a zero a sum game. Their expressed fear: "we just cannot afford it".
(5) those that know better and recognize the nightmare unfolding but somehow feel powerless to overcome 1, 2, 3, and 4 at the ballot box because they've been tricked into political cynicism/apathy.
Whoa is us - unless we wake-up and VOTE 2018/2020!
12
I've often heard over the years that w/o a strong middle class our American system of Democracy could not work. Professor Sitaraman provides a clear, well articulated underpinning for why this is so. Teddy Roosevelt and other monopoly busters helped save us from encoaching oligarchs in the Gilded Age. Who or what will help us fight off the increasing power of the oligarchs of today? The Koch bro., Mercer, Adelsen, Murdochs and their ilk are using their great wealth and power to inadvertently drive our country into the arms of the likes of Trump.
5
Our Constitution is basically a framework for a system of government but it does not include any values or desired outcomes beyond these few phrases in the preamble: "...in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."
The rest of the document provides form and structure. It never establishes, for example, a right to a good education, a goal of protecting the environment, or anything about economic equality, as later constitutions around the world do.
The values we strive for are left to the Congress to enact via legislation, the executive to enforce, and the courts to interpret. And now that powerful economic elites have virtually taken over those institutions, we are left with chronic inequality. We've also learned that just electing different people and hoping for better doesn't work. Money pervades our system.
Structural change in the form of constitutional amendments is the only permanent answer. We need to change the rules so whomever we elect or appoint must behave better. There are many groups pursuing this path: Move To Amend and others working to overturn Citizens United. Federal Accountability Amendment changing the operation of Congress to give the minority power and remove obstruction by leadership. Find them on Google / Facebook.
2
On the contrary, Madison was concerned about factions and the large factions taking away the freedom of small factions. Our Constitution was written for economic inequality. That is all they knew.
2
This comment overlooks the apprehension the founders expressed about accumulations of wealth. They saw that business corporations could grow so powerful as to challenge the central government. Of course, the rich don't want to acknowledge this.
As with slavery, the founders temporized and looked the other way, hoping that liberty and democratic instincts would lead Americans to do the right thing. To our loss, we have failed miserably during the last generation.
This argument does not seem grounded in history. The Constitution was written by white male property owners who gave voting rights to themselves alone. Women, slaves, Native American were excluded. The Constitution is a much different document today, reflecting a much broader definition of citizenship. Yes, politics is a crazy game but the Constitution and the system of law it supports are our greatest strengths in dealing with economic inequality and many other challenges
1
At the end of the article, the author wonders whether a mastermind will emerge who can "save us". Is this not ironic -- the article laments the rise of populism and demagoguery, but then concludes with a yarning for a "wise leader" who will reinterpret the constitution. Is this not a recipe for the destruction of the republic? The author also correctly writes about the evils of big money in politics and how this cripples the ability of the govt. to tackle real problems. How about term limits??? term limits for congress and the supreme court. That would go a long way I think with regard to combating the influence of big money. Practical steps like this rather than hoping for a wise leader to come down from on high and save us make a lot more sense and are much safer.
2
A wonderful and insightful commentary.
Our Constitution could not have predicted the advent of a reality show president nor could it have predicted the rise of an ignorant 40% of the voting population being 'malleable to the point of innocence' in the words of a recent columnist (or ' despairingly stupid' to be more direct.)
The founders may have also assumed that Americans would treasure their republic, take their choices seriously and do the intellectually daunting work of being informed on the issues we face in order to keep the union strong. While these are reasonable assumptions given the difficulty we went through to establish a country, none of it turns out to be the case
In fact, as fine a document as the Constitution may be (and it most certainly is) it may be impossible to govern by democracy for the long term. People are too susceptible, too lazy and all too eager to trade in their legacy for a few magic beans when given the opportunity.
Franklin (Ben) said it best-- 'A republic--if you can keep it.'
4
The author is worried about the Constitution surviving the current era, while I am worried that the Constitution and similar documents survive too inflexibly.
Let's take the example of gun rights. Those who want little or no weapons regulation tout the second amendment as justification to bear arms. In 1791, when the amendment was adopted, it may well have served a practical purpose. However the writers could not possibly have anticipated automatic weapons, purposeless mass shootings or the perils of a militarized population. The outdated second amendment now serves as an impediment to urgently necessary and common sense social change.
A similar argument can be applied to a number of other ways that the Constitution cannot keep up with society. Not least is the idea of American exceptionalism, which probably made sense at the time but is ridiculous in today's world.
I appreciate the author's broaching of the subject of constitutional appropriateness to current times.
2
We need to concentrate on changing two things:
1. Raise the minimum wage.
2. Put a cap on campaign money.
If we can do these two things, we can help reduce oligarchy.
The question is how do we infiltrate this information to drive these changes that can greatly improve the lives of millions?
2
" the deep question we must ask today is whether our generation has wise patriots"
It seems to me the short answer is no.
4
The Founding Fathers absolutely anticipated these problems, and built in a brilliant solution within the Constitution.
We can effectively change our government every four years through elections.
Make your case!
1
Marx - and the Utopians - would have been well pleased with this thoughtful and powerful essay!
1
This op ed ignores the rather important fact that the Constitution was written based on the assumption that only white landowners would vote.
3
On the other hand, the Founders d, as a practical matter, pit rural and urban against each other, and often region vs region as a result, by the 2 senators per any size population state rule, electoral college, etcetera. And it's currently putting the majority of Americans, living in metropolitan areas, vs their states and the tendencies of the Federal government. The rural, small state/much land minority has an upper hand now that is defeating for the whole system, It would likely be more challenged now but for the fear that messing with the Constitution these days will only result in much less liberty.
The pre-Constitution era of the U.S. found abuses of democracy and threats of anarchy which demanded protections for individuals against too powerful central government but more central government to assure order and stability which could keep local centers of power from creating anarchy. The Senate was undemocratic with members selected by state legislatures not by direct election by the people. The economic institutions at the time were small enough that none could dominate in the larger economy of the U.S. because no corporations yet existed which were not intimately related to governments until the second half of the next century. Even later through the 19th and the first two thirds of the 20th century the issues of inequality could easily be addressed by our form of government. Now, our Constitution has little ability to enable our democratic institutions to deal with inequalities in the distribution of new and future wealth generated globally, which has and continues to deprive our republic of the means to assure economic prosperity for our country as a whole. When we have wealth created in this country transferred to new wealth creating activities abroad, those who are not dependent upon owning those endeavors for income but upon real economy jobs which are not reflecting much growth are gradually being locked out of any chance to prosper. This will require redistribution of wealth policies to remedy but our Constitution could never anticipate such an arrangement.
The Constitution addresses political equality - not economic ones.
The US at the time of the Revolution was a country of economic unequals.
The richest 5 percent of adults held 59 percent of net worth in the
13 colonies.
As Lindert notes the share of slaves in the overall population rose from near zero in 1630 to 40 percent in 1770. So great a rise in zero-wealth population, and in people who represented wealth for others, must have raised wealth inequality.
That is the writing of the Constitution was preceded by 40 years in which inequality dramatically rose inequality within the South
Not yet a word about economic inequality is in the Constitution. Of the 41 signers, only 16 never owned slaves - a possible reason for leaving it out.
http://web.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/pdf/Reference%20Media/Lindert...
3
Our constitution also wasn't designed to serve a continent-spanning nation of 50 states that have inherently different conflicts of interests; it ws designed for a compact and homogeneous nation of 13 ex-British colonies with common experiences under a somewhat oppressive monarchy. It was designed for a nation in which these ex-colonies would maintain sovereign autonomy within a national government whose powers were carefully delimited. It was designed to be controlled by males who owned enough property to free them to serve the public weal for relatively limited periods of time. There are many other changes in our society that the "Founders" didn't foresee, so they designed a constitution sufficiently imprecise that it can be utilized in a world more complex than they envisioned.
3
"The people who own the country ought to govern it." -- John Jay, our first chief justice, and the author of five of the Federalist Papers. (For the quote, see, among others, Richard Hofstadter, "The American Political Tradition," p. 19. I would say that Jay's take, and the political views he shared with so many of the founders, seem to fly in the face of Prof. Sitaraman's argument. Also relevant are deTocqueville's worries about the dangers of a "manufacturing aristocracy" that he saw taking shape in the early 1830s. Nothing was more dangerous to democracy than this, he concluded.
2
In the list of what people did "[s]tarting more than a century ago ... [o]n the economic side," Sitaraman mentions that they "fought for minimum wages." Yes, and they formed unions. As a matter of history, that's a major omission. The labor movement had a major impact in both unionized and non-unionized industries and companies: on wages, benefits and the ability of workers without money or nepotism on their side to rise through the ranks. Is the word "union" too incendiary to mention, or has it become forgotten?
5
A key point is glossed over rather superficially: the constitution was drafted by a group of white men for white men only. So, while perhaps historically the document was a milestone, it was fatally flawed from the get go.
While legal scholars research and interpret the constitution they ignore the reality of our nation's founding. The land was stolen from native Americans and they were systematically killed, raped and otherwise exploited. How dare we condemn other societies who do the same today?
The author additionally pays lip service to the exploitation of women and minorities while touting the constitution as some sort of revolutionary document. Indeed what was perhaps the most revolutionary aspect is the level of hypocrisy contained in the constitution. Is it any wonder the radical right wingers of today are such ardent proponents of the constitution?
Today we dismiss terrorist groups and others who despise us as simply fanatics hell bent on destruction. Could it be that they recognize the hypocrisy of America that we are all blind to?
Inequality is nothing new and was rampant by the 1920's culminating in the Rockefeller economic oligarchy. Who could be so naive to think that Karl Marx and other did not recognize this?
Over the years we have created our own enemies and now our greatest enemy may indeed be ourselves. Someday we might thank Donald Trump for exposing America for what it really is. Perhaps then a revolutionary change may finally come about.
4
Actually, it's a good thing that the author didn't get mired in race, gender, and hypocrisy. That way he was able to speak to acknowledge the existence of other problems.
1
the average guy in the new world had only one hope..... the seemingly ever expanding frontier. a place where he could go and stake his claim, native americans be damned. as our country filled up? the rich do what they have always done.... take away the gains of the people that perform the labor. once the west was "tamed" big money stepped in and tamed the little guy. the town of seligman AZ is named after the owners of a large east coast cattle company that "bought out" smaller ranchers. when silver was found at cerro gordo, CA the wealthy had the rules on how a claim could be filed changed. if you were a poor miner living at 8,000 feet you probably didn't understand how this could happen or even know it had happened. even today the elites on the right tell us to pull up our bootstraps, get out there and climb another mountain. they don't tell you that they already own the valley on the other side.
6
Money buys power.
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
A recent study by Princeton University, done in the Obama years, concluded that America is an oligarchy. We now depend on rich strangers who do not believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive; their role model is not the Good Samaritan. Parents, schools, and religions have failed to teach the most important things. But nothing is new under the sun. "behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit," sayeth the Preacher.
The constitution should certainly be amended so that, for example, the president is elected by popular votes, not electoral votes. And the biggest problem is that the framers of the constitution never envisioned a situation where congress would enable a president of their own party, as the GOP congress does with Trump.
But part of the problem is the way in which the constitution has been applied.
For example, nothing in the constitution says that a state's presidential electors must rubber-stamp the popular vote winner in that state by a winner-take-all system. Electors could, and should, be awarded in proportion to that state's vote. That would practically eliminate the possibility of a popular vote winner losing the presidency , and it would force campaigns to complete everywhere.
Nothing in the constitution says that representatives to congress must represent certain geographic districts. The constitution only says that each state is apportioned representatives in proportion to that state's population. The fact that voting for representatives is based on geography leads to gerrymandering, which distorts political power. Representatives could, and should, represent their entire state, just as senators do (state boundaries can not be gerrymandered).
2
The constitution, when drafted, was more of a compact between states, with a few enlightened federal laws (e.g., separation of church and state). Fast forward a few hundred years to a country which is more centralized and less about the individuality of states. This is a good thing since it makes it more possible to carve out individual rights (e.g. LGBTQ rights). Side note: the NYT pick actually argues for the opposite.
The author makes a very good point: unless the rights protecting the individual's economic rights against the depredation from the rich, are enshrined in the constitution, it becomes very difficult to change without a revolution.
I fear that is where we are headed. Trump may be more of a norm than an anomaly.
2
My takeaway from this excellent article is the great need for historical consciousness of the perennial human issues and problems the constitution was trying to address. The ideological absolutism that has paralyzed Washington can be traced to a blindness of these perennial issues.
1
The simple beauty of the US Constitution is that it does allow for administrators, legislators and jurists to perform the will of the people and to act in a fashion which is good for the country as a whole and not the would be Oligarchy. The problem exists in that the would be Oligarchy is working above the board with decisions like Citizens United and corporations like Amazon to subvert the good of the individual and the nation in favor of the bottom line and narcissistic pleasure be it political of financial. As happened a century ago the State and Federal legislators have the power to stem and reverse the tide of inequity, the question is will they. The answer to the question lays in the people who will either smarten up to the fact that they are being snookered or not. And if not then the American experiment will ultimately fail.
2
Progressive taxation is our great economic leveler. If we don't use it more effectively we will get continuing concentration of wealth at the top. Ironically, there are probably more ultra-wealthy people in blue states. Regarding the last presidential election, you could easily drive from Idaho to South Carolina and never drive through a blue state. The deep South especially is poor, but its citizens voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Along with the current majority Republican Congress, this team will never support an even more progressive income tax, with increased revenue going to universal health care which would certainly help the poor and middle class.
My opinion is that many rural and not-very-wealthy people are alienated by incessant liberal harping on social issues. Their vote for Trump was a way to show Democrats and their scolding establishment elite their middle finger.
1
So in other words, as m th mother used to say they cut off their noses to spite their faces, and they wonder why people on the coasts call them fools.
1
One reform that might help, and a change more keeping with the intent of the Framers of our Constitution: drastically increase the member of representatives in the House. Increasing population has resulted in congressional districts that are far to large - resulting in our representatives being less in touch with people and requiring constant fundraising in order to run large scale campaigns. More representatives - more in line with proportional representation similar to that of the early years of the republic - would dilute the power of the relatively small number of seats in the House, and make each individual seat (and campaign) relatively less powerful. Running for office would be less daunting. There would be less incentive to gerrymander districts, and the electoral college would be much better reflect the popular vote in presidential elections. Added bonus: this change does not even require a Constitutional amendment.
3
We do not have "wise patriots" in a position to fix our political system -- one that now vests unfettered power in a president to launch nuclear wespons; enables special interests to control the frderal and state governments; and places no term limits on elected federal officials, including both Congressmen and Supreme Court Justices. What we need is another Constitutional Convention (much like the one held by the founders on Philadelphia) iniated by the People and for the People. Thos would of necessity be a revolutionary body since it is not authorized by the present Constitution -- an anachronistic document thst is almost impossible to change in the ways most needed to save our country from autocracy or mob rule.
3
Inequality has been a problem for any number of countries. Our Constitution did not plan against inequality, very likely because most of its signers were still the elite of their day.
At the time slavery was still an institution in all states but Massachusetts and possibly NH. Slavery was unequal.
So what is proposed--to scrap the Constitution and start over? A solution roughly that extreme would be needed to do away with economic inequality. But how to get there from here after 235 or so years which have strengthened the Constitution so much that its sweeping change would be unlikely?
We no longer have a collection of the wisest patriots that we started with to figure this problem out.
Looks like we face further division and being locked in place.
3
The founders created a system of checks and balances which we are all familiar with: the Senate represents states, the House popular vote, and the Presidency represents popular vote unless overturned by the Electoral College. A great irony is that the College, intended to protect the nation form the ignorance of the masses, put in place the losing populist candidate.
If the founders didn't expect inequality, it was likely because the natural resources available were all but unlimited. There was a job opportunity for anyone with a wagon and an axe.
Our collapsing middle class isn't a Constitutional problem, it is a political problem. Frankly, no one wants to face telling people what reality is in the face of the end of the post war boom and technology growth spurt, and what stasis looks like for a nation. No one wants to cut off the political money.
Economies ALWAYS tend toward oligarchy if not managed. Just look around: how many natural middle classes exist in the rest of the world? Most economies are strongman dictator or oligarchy.
Middle class protections are labor laws, financial regulations, pollution controls, tax policy, programs which create jobs, excellent education, fair access to resources. The Constitution gives us the ability to protect the middle class. We just fail to do so.
196
How ignorant can you be, the popular vote was never intended to elect the president to prevent what we now would have with a total popular vote for president, that being the majority abusing everyone who disagrees with them.
Dear Cathy: Your last sentence captures the essence of our predicament: We just fail to do so.
"A great irony is that the College, intended to protect the nation form the ignorance of the masses..... "
Wrong.
If the only people allowed to vote were wealthy, land-owning white men, then why the need to be protected from “ignorant” masses.
If what you claim is true then the framers were in effect protecting themselves from themselves and referring to themselves as “ignorant” since only people like them could vote. These people weren’t “the masses." They were a privileged voting MINORITY.
In other words, the framers weren't "protecting" anyone from "the ignorant masses" because those ignorant masses were not granted suffrage. They were ensuring that a minority among the minority had the final say.
1
the constitution is not designed to protect against greed or lying. both are protected 'rights' .
we can't ever achieve full equality until we stop protecting the rights of people to be creeps.
1
I read some of the comments on this excellent article and I believe most have missed the point. Let history be history. We all know the founders of the United States were brilliant men with good intentions for the most part. The problem as stated in the article is that the Constitution has permitted "institutional corruption"; i.e. legal undue influence by vested interest on the government for their own benefit. (And depending on Mueller's investigation some illegal corruption as well) The "institutional corruption" has distorted the function of government so much that the United States is neither a democracy nor a republic. As a result, we have a government that no longer cares for its people.
4
For our Constitution or any legal system to work, government officials must act in good faith to follow the laws and govern responsibly. Without that, we have autocracy or anarchy. Rising income inequality is definitely chipping away at this. Our elected representatives give lip service to the complaints of ordinary citizens, but then, as in the case of the so-called American Health Care Act, exploit those concerns and the citizens who make them, to enact policies that overwhelmingly favor the rich and don't solve the problems raised. It will take a massive effort to reverse this trend. As Barack Obama likes to say, Democracy is not a spectator sport.
IN 1776, maybe until 1920, agriculture--and land--was the source of wealth, at least enough for individual survival.
With their awareness of a vast largely unsettled continent, apparently affording an independent living to all (white) inhabitants envisioned for as far into the future as the imagination ran, the drafters did not believe attention to class struggle was required.
From its inception, Capitalism of any kind, regulated or not, by its very nature is completely opposed to democracy. Capitalism says it is OK that some of us own a great deal and everyone else owns little. The only way they can justify this injustice is by making the false claim that some people are better than others and deserve more, even when their vast wealth essentially comes from the financial manipulations of the stock market. All the justifications for not getting rid of Capitalism fall apart if you really believe in "all men are created equal."
1
You misunderstand what equality means or rather what equality meant to the founders. Equality means equal protection of the laws of the nation: equal rights. It does NOT and can NEVER mean equal results. Jefferson, Washington, Madison et al understand that human beings are not equal in intelligence, initiative, creativity, drive, aptitudes, interests, persistence, temperament, and a host other things that make for wealth inequality. In short, political equality is not economic equality and never will be.
1
Berkshire Hathaway said, "Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won, It's been a rout."
The forces driving inequality through the class warfare that Warren Buffett points to are cumulative. It is the compounding effect of shift away from taxes on capital income such as dividends, capital gains and inheritances each year as the rich get proverbially richer which is the prime generator of inequality.
Today the top 3% of households pay about 50% of Federal taxes and the rest of the 97% pay the other 50%. In 1969 the top 3% of households paid 75% of Federal taxes and the rest of the 97% paid only the other 25%. In computing those figure the government correctly attributes the corporate income tax payments to the households who own shares in the corporation. It is quite possible that the Republicans may be able to have the top 3% of households pay only about 25% of Federal taxes and the rest of the 97% pay the other 75%.
The Republican controlled congress will enact elimination of the estate tax. This literally could be called taking from the millionaires to give to the billionaires. Estates under $5.49 million are now totally exempt from the estate tax. Billionaires are not as able as mere millionaires to employ various strategies to avoid estate taxes. Repealing the estate tax will give billions to a fraction of the top 1%, which will ultimately have to be made up by the rest of the taxpayers. .."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4067359
4
So welcome to American Oligarchy, courtesy of the Trump Administration. Day after day yields additional power to corporations. A presidential cabinet chock full of CEOs.
"We'll be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank," after entertaining financiers and bankers since his inauguration. Goodbye ethics, no more rules for stock brokers and financial advisers. Hello Equifax Breach--with your ridiculous password and your fees. Internet providers given green light to sell our private personal confidential data.
Overturned measures to block the Keystone & Dakota Access Pipelines. Rolled back the Clean Power Plan. Goodbye Paris Accord. Goodbye EPA scientific analysis. Hello Big Oil. Hello Dow Chemical. And Alchema.
And $54 billion to the military-industrial complex this year alone?
CEO Eric Prince was looking to privatize the military at a meeting scheduled with Trump and the generals at Camp David?
Willing to forego health insurance for families to enable giant tax cuts for corporations and for billionaires. Oil magnates can disguise money exchanges to newly created governments overseas, and at home here---federal contractors need not worry about employee health or safety.
It's not that Mrs.Trump wore a jacket costing over $50,000 dollars or went to see flood victims in thousand dollar shoes. It's the policies, executive orders, and dismantling of federal agencies as if weakening every facet of what keeps citizens in a democracy optimized, instead of victimized.
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Excellent points. It makes you wonder what Trump is going to do now that he has gotten some credit for FEMA's decent performance these last few weeks -- even if it was because Obama rebuilt it after W. had put his cronies in charge of it. Contrary to Reagan's "witticism", the phrase "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" actually is comforting, at least to regular people.
Wow. This is good to know. Some of us thought this started long before January of this year.
Thank heavens for Senator Elizabeth Warren and other elected officials like her who fight for average Americans every, single day. Thanks to she and President Obama for starting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that addresses some of the most egregious Robber Baron acts against average Americans of all ages.
Thanks to Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton and President/Michelle Obama and the people who worked for and supported them for deciding to stay active in the political arena and teach young people what true democracy, as outlined in this article, means and how to preserve/protect/restore it.
The article says, "Noah Webster, best known for his dictionary, commented that there were “small inequalities of property,” a fact that distinguished America from Europe and the rest of the world. Equality of property, he believed, was crucial for sustaining a republic." Yes, home ownership accounts for most of the wealth of average Americans and now it - and the idea of being a homeowner - are under attack. The same Robber Barons who caused the crash of 2008, via manipulation of OUR mortgages, are buying up foreclosed homes and the best real estate around the world. They want it all.
WE THE PEOPLE are the stewards of OUR United States of America and democratic governance. It's up to US. WE must help people understand their individual importance and badger them into voting every, single time for socially conscious women and men. That is how to save OUR beloved country.
2
The phrases “income inequality” and “wealth inequality” are often used by the both the media and our politicians without first clearly defining these terms.
For example, if we are discussing income inequality, are we discussing the inequality between the middle class and the top 1%, or are we discussing the inequality between the lower middle class and people in poverty?
Democrats often discuss raising the minimum wage as a remedy to income inequality while other citizens want higher taxes on the top 1% to reduce their power and influence. It is the media’s job to define these terms, otherwise we are just shouting past each other.
3
There's a natural ambiguity here which benefits the 1% or is it .01%. That plus our country's history of jingolistic anti-socialism helps protect the financially powerful in their struggle for control of our government.
As James Madison (4th US President) wrote in the Federalist Papers: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."
And, in the words of Czech writer Karl Kraus, "'The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he."
9
The Constitution is an excellent instrument, serving the country and its people well. What we are seeing today is its misinterpretations and in altogether too many instances its abuse.
Yes there is a need for revision to keep up with the times and the circumstances, the electoral college being one of them.
But altogether too many instances exist of misquotations even at the highest level. This must be dealt with before it becomes a death blow.
3
When the USA becomes a oghligarc?
There is one in the White House with most of cabinet filled with them. Who are you trying to kid here?
They are trying like crazy to take healthcare away from 20 million little people to give the 1% a 800 billion dollar tax break gift.
They moving to make the Corporate tax rate 15%. You know who will make up the difference.
They are giving away billions of dollars in military equipment to local people forces for a reason.
It's already here so pick a side.
8
Our cops are already too heavily armed and too often repress the citizens--see all the black people killed without reason or need.
We need better hiring, training, and firing--as well as prosecution for crimes by those in uniform, to restore the principles that they work for us and that they intrude only minimally to maintain the peace.
A wonderful document. A flawed document. Often I have thought we need to get a new one more appropriate for our time. But then I think of the persons today most likely to be involved in such a constitutional convention, and I shudder. As you say, Madison thought such an endeavor would require “all the wisdom of the wisest patriots.” When I think of such a gathering today, all I can envision is a bunch Fascists, Ku-Klux Klanners, ultra-conservative Christians, Berne Sanders supporters, and special interest groups paid for by the 0.1% gathered in the same room. The result would likely resemble the last half hour of the movie "Mother!" In the words of another movie, "There Will Be Blood."
1
The closer Bernie gets to power the more consistently maligned he is. There's an increasing drumbeat to marginalize him as a radical. Imagine healthcare for all Americans? How radical. Republicans and "moderates" said the same about FDR over social security and LBJ over Medicare. History just keeps repeating itself.
1
Does anybody know American history ? Does anybody read Jefferson? Does anybody know what the Boston Tea Party was all about? The US Constitution was written for exactly times like this.
It was the East India Company that put the tax on tea. It was the East India that was the large multinational corporation that owned and operated more than half the globe including the 13 colonies.
It was the East India Company ship flying the East India Company flag carrying East India Company untaxed tea that was boarded and had its cargo dumped in Boston Harbour.
It was the independent merchants of Boston with the support of independent merchants from around the globe that dumped the tea of the East India Company because the East India Company was able to write the tax law that gave their tea a huge competitive advantage.
Jefferson warns about plutocracy and it is the plutocrats with the help of sophists like Scalia, Cruz and Gorsuch that are robbing you of constitution and your democracy.
Citizens United is nothing new Jefferson warned you.
Neoliberalism is the economic system of the 18th and 19th century and is your economic system since Nixon ended Bretton Woods. You let sophists steal your constitution which was written for a time just like this.
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The East India Company was only collecting the Tea Tax for the Crown, which had determined that taxing a luxury item consumed primarily by the rich would be the fairest way to defray the government's debts incurred defending the Colonies during the French and Indian War.
Today the laws are written by Koch Bros and think tanks financed by other 1%. Otherwise how can we understand the pending tax cuts for the wealthy not only taking healthcare away but also will have to be financed by more debt.
2
Montreal Moe.....What's confusing is the unfortunate terminology.
Neo liberal today usually refers to those who want less govt regulations on business. In past centuries capitalism was developing and it's goal was the 'liberating' the merchant class from the strictures of the monarchy and the church.
But today it's liberals who are the group wanting more regulation by govt on business to protect the majority of citizens from plutocrats that exploit our democracy.
Then we have to define neo-conservative. What do you say?
Even more confusing is that what's liberal in the US today, is centrist in many other democracies, like health care for all, as 1 example. And their right wing parties abroad don't go to the extremes of our Gop on economic issues and on an anti govt ideology.
The ancient Greeks knew that democracy had no real defense against a demagogue. If people were willingly lulled by the spectacle and false promises, a demagogue is what they got.
The Trump Show knows that, too, as does the Russian government.
"Take your seats, folks, and marvel at just how many clowns can fit in one car", they bark,
"and just ignore that man behind the curtain, and the price of the ticket."
7
Will our generation have wise patriots who, like the progressives a century ago, adapt the institutions and laws of our country — and save our republic?-- With Republican gerrymandering, Citizen's United, war on the environment, science, health care, minimum wage?.... Good luck with that, America.
3
The Constitution was in trouble early on. The ink was barely dry when during the Adams administration the First Amendment was castrated with the Alien and Sedition Act. Our Constitution maintained slavery until 1865 and did nothing about Jim Crow unti 1965.
Economic Equality was not an idea to which the Founders subscribed. This notion of economic equality is a liberal progressive fantasy.
Equality was announced and promoted in our Constitution but it's a difficult to attain goal (see slavery, jim crow, voter rights for women, etc.). What level of abuse from extreme inequality would push the country into violent rebellion I don't know. But when good people are elected and equality and opportunity are increased there is less suffering for Americans.
Re: "The rich would tyrannize the poor, and the poor would revolt against the rich."
Yes... Remember the Bastille.
1
And we already have our own Marie Antoinette in our treasury secretary's wife. Good grief, when will people wake up?
3
Idea !
How about a Government "Of The People, By The People, For The People" ?
This Government, Of the Greedy, Of the Oligarchs, Of the traitors, just doesn't seem fair.
4
Constitution not built for the threats of oligarchs and populist demagogues? Nonsense. Those are what the Electoral College is for.
2
Who is doing the interpreting of the document is key here. We have a degraded lot in the House of Representative (Tea Partiers and the like), we have aging and out of touch senators and Supreme Court justices--prime example, Gorsuch--who clearly favor corporations and big money, a Justice Dept. determined to take America back to 1950s style racism it's leader Jeff Sessions grew up with. We won't even get into the demagogue in the White House whose fake orange-painted face says everything we need to know about his Jokerish villainy. Who, who, who is reading this important document and has the power to decide what it means and how those meanings should be implemented?
2
Who even has standing to challenge the constitutionality of anything these hypocrites do? Catch-22 precludes any fundamental challenge to Congressional defiance of the first amendment prohibition of faith-based legislation.
Who knew government was so complicated?
1
Our cartoon times don't acknowledge complexity.
Regarding America. ...a journalist recently asked citizens on the street in several European countries what their stereotypes of America were.
The answers included descriptive words like fake, superior, obese, naive, backward, uneducated, and arrogant.
If Americans persist in their self delusion that their country is number one and superior to all others, the prognosis for improvement will be grim indeed.
As an expatriate American for 14 years, I can only tell you that my European neighbors are speechless at the cultural downturn brought about by Trump's unexpected arrival on the scene!
5
We are too, at least the educated among us.
Of course one tactic of the republicans seems to be to starve and discourage good public education. To facilitate their control?
3
There are over 330,000,000 Americans. The vast majority of them live paycheck to paycheck, worry about their healthcare, their job security, their ability to retire. For most of them there are no high speed trains; their infrastructure is crumbling; many don't take vacations out of fear that their absence won't be appreciated. The few that accumulate riches either by their smarts, plain luck or inheritance control the media, the think tanks, local, state and the federal government. Now we have a Manhattan real estate developer in the White House who was put there by these same people described above. It is even safe to throw it all in our faces with the e-trade ads where working stiffs are shown gross inequalities and told not to get mad but to get rich through stock investments. Mitch is married to the daughter of a billionaire; Ryan lives on his wife's inheritance. Kellyanne lives in an $8,000,000 mansion with 13 bathrooms. Mnuchin, Cohn, Jared, Ivanka, Ross, etc. - all filthy rich. We might as well call our society a modern version of feudalism.
7
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that a revolution would redistribute the wealth to create a classless society, and we know how that idea worked in practice. But a Marx-Engels analysis at least identified monopoly as a problem that Adam Smith's "Invisible hand" of markets in a capitalist system does not. Unfortunately, a political revolution only disrupts, as it redistributes, temporary consumptive wealth, its manufactured products or commodities.
But the machinery of productive wealth is not about ownership of the industry but about control of the markets for it, the real issue when most countries go to war (Hitler's idea that a "Great" Germany needed to seize land, people and colonies like Great Britain to become "Great").
Wealth inequality is after the fact. Seizing the wealth of the wealthy to redistribute is simple-minded (Consider the original communist failures to expand, the lives of religious orders like Monks, and one sees how attempts to live according to "need and ability" quickly break down). Instead of reapplying misguided Marx/Engels, look at limiting ownership of markets, in order to improve team (corporate) market competition for our franchise, our Democratic Republic.
As Benjamin Franklin puts it, our country is "an experiment." Let's redistribute patents for software, technology, drugs, after the Gates, Jobs, Murdochs, oil and basic food corp. have taken control of one-quarter of their markets for their products. More competition, not less.
1
Hmm, let's see. 1913 : pass a constitutional amendment to have an income tax, which starts at 2% now is over 40% for those who earn a lot of money. Income inequality rises. 1933: social security, income inequality keeps rising. 1938 Fair Labor laws and minimum wage : income inequality rises. 1965 : Medicare, medicaid, welfare for the poor : income inequality keeps rising, out of wedlock births skyrocket 1993 : family and medical leave act : income inequality keeps rising, 2010 : (Un) Affordable Health care act : income inequality keeps rising.
Can the liberal readership of the NYT at least for a few moments consider that maybe all the legislation of the 20th and 21st century has hobbled free enterprise and capitalism and made inequality worse by making it impossible to employ people with little skills. That all welfare has done has fostered the family breakdown which is the reason behind the rising number of children growing into adults with very poor upbringing ? The outstanding feature of the 20th and 21st century has been the growth of government from 3% of the GDP to about 33%, and this is the result !
A final tweak to show the hypocrisy of the government in regards to inequality. They advertise, continuously, a prime creator of extreme inequality, the lottery ! It takes billions from many (many of whom can't afford it) and gives millions to a lucky few, then the politicians whine about inequality !! Is that is not a perfect microcosm of the welfare state fraud ?
1
Income inequality has greatly fluxuated over the years you described. Peaking in the late 20s just before the Great Depression and at historical lows in the prosperous 50s. Check your facts/numbers. Much error in your narrative.
I can't help but think of the Steely Dan song, IGY...
"A just machine to make big decisions,
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision.
We'll be clean when they're work is done.
We'll be totally free yes, and eternally young..."
Alas, we have just the opposite: thieves and scoundrels of unimaginable greed.
I hate to think that violent revolution is the only solution. That would be an unimaginable tragedy.
Thomas Pickety was in the news not too long ago, and should still be.
1
The constitution was built exactly for times like this but when you don't teach your children history, literature or ethics you believe sophists like Antonin Scalia, Ted Cruz and William F. Buckley and can't tell fact from fiction. The late 18th had no such thing as a language called legal English the first dictionary was published in 1755 and lawyers like many of the founders were educated in philosophy and ethics and especially Latin and Greek.
We live a society governed by something we call neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the economic system of the 18th and 19th century.
In 1773 the Boston Tea Party was held and it had nothing to do with government tyranny. The East India Company was a giant multinational Corporation that owned and operated over half the globe. The East India Company had a cash flow problem and two giant London warehouses filled with tea. The East India wrote the legislation taxing tea. Everybody's tea was to be taxed except their's. The ship anchored in Boston flew the flag of the East India Company. The tea dumped into Boston Harbour had a huge competitive advantage, it was untaxed.
What the revolution was all about is getting rid of the same advantages today's multinationals have when they buy laws, legislators, political parties, judges and even seats on the Supreme Court.
Jefferson is explicit in his warnings about plutocracy and if it was written for tomorrow's NYT it would be just as timely as it was in the 18th century.
4
The presumtion here is that there are persons in power with the intellect, knowledge of history and desire for a just society to reform or replace the vast and growing inequalities. Wrong on all counts. The planned adaptation to a feudal planet, complete with lords and vassals, serfs and the shunned, is well into the execution phase. Contrived economic upheavals, constant war, roiling politics the world over, mass refugee movements caused by deliberate policies, amiable religion in decline, radical murderous religion on the rise, threats of pandemic rising and soon - famines and water shortages. These are the tools of the global elite intended to impoverish, to infect and after driven to total despair, the only choice will emerge. We will willingly surrender. Your children will be programmed into roles. Their children will do what their parents did. No one escapes their serf-like existence. And as the need for humans to perform labors decreases with the force of Moore's Law, so will the need for so many superfluous humans. Open your eyes before your mind shuts down.
2
If there is going to be a revolution it is going to be the middle class revolting against the limo liberals voting to raise middle class taxes to support the liberals' social programs that keep people on public assistance for generations . Middle class people are going to tire of getting up before dawn ,working 60 hour weeks or more just to survive so they can pay more taxes to pay for the endless programs we absolutely can't live without. The rich will have enough no matter what, so what do they care. They have enough loopholes to minimize their tax burden, and the people who contribute nothing want more. That will be this county's undoing.
2
Republican/conservative politicians have pummeled the "middle class" to provide for their wealthy patrons. Even the orange "populist" in the WH can't bring himself as a populist, to raise taxes on his wealthy peers.
Perhaps the greatest constitutional irony is the Electoral College... originally deigned as a check against direct election of an unsavory president by the Great Unwashed and Un-enlightened.
It failed.
4
Something else the Founders had no way to anticipate was the rise of the instantaneous, two-way communication and financial reward that the internet made possible. Joe Wilson yells out "You lie!" from the floor of Congress during a Presidential address. His coffers filled overnight from his fellow bigots and he remains in Congress to this day. These circumstance defeat the purpose of having a republic; hothead Joe Blows can directly, immediately influence a pol with a few keystrokes. The Constitution needs some fixes, but the idea of any kind of overhaul in this age is beyond dangerous.
1
The american electorate have the power to vote out scoundrels but not the power to pass official judgement on federal laws let alone economic laws.
If we had, we would not likely have the paid for republican party nor the
confused democratic party. I have given the subject of this article considerable
thought over the last several years and agree wholeheartedly with the authors
premise. The only solution I can see is voting on selected issues, be they
economic or noneconomic but definitely economic. The constitution was built
on debate and this is one we all need to have. I find it tiring to elect a
representative and watch him or her go over the hill to washington harboring
selfish,false perhaps self serving assumptions that inevitably lead to
concious or unconcious corruptions. They need to be given official marching
orders to which they can be held accountble. Change will be slow but
democractically achieved.
1
You say our Constitution doesn't deal with a TV star president. It doesn't. But that president has never violated the Constitution.
The previous one did, several times. The first was before he was even elected.
When he was asked if he filled the Constitutional requirement that he must be native-born, he just said he was and ignored proving it. And even so, you elected him.
Fine article from an equally fine author.
The framers were trying to sell the fiction of a neutral government as a fair arbiter among conflicting interests when they were, per John Quincy Adams, the "aristocratic party" and well in favor of entrenched wealth as government. Read Jay's rant about limiting the franchise in Federalist LXVI or Madison's defense of
"the minor party" in Federalist X and show me it is not so. Mr. Sitraman is yet another academic telling me how to perceive my world. His position as a law professor makes him entirely of the hegemonic culture...i'm not buying it.
2
The article has it wrong in regards to the founding fathers. Madison deplored majority rule and came out for minority rule. A minority of property holding white men. Recall that the President(Washington) was the richest man in the land, and was put in place by the non elected Electoral College. Senate members were picked by state legislators , for the house , only the white propertied could vote . Fabled Hamilton was a monarchist (" the people, sir, are a great beast," said he.
So, from the beginning we had inequality and the rule of the rich. Still that way.
3
Nice article but, how many people will read it? Out constitution was also created on the concept of town hall / public participation in government. Maybe the real threat to our democracy is getting the public interested in the real facts instead of being spoon fed pseudo news and opinion on TV.
I believe Gerry Professor is missing the point. The article by Sitaraman is not about how the Constitution was written. He is talking about economic equilibrium as a basis for political democracy which made our Constitution work for many years. While this may or may not be a Constitutional issue, the fact that the rich are getting richer and the middle class is shrinking is well known.
What we have is a percentage of very angry voters, who may be rightfully angry, who elected a lousy president and he in turn appointed lousy people. Right now, I would favor a system like the Brits where we would have the Constitutional right to vote out Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Scot Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.
What the Constitution could not have addressed is how the democracy plays out in current times. Gerrymandering which erodes democracy at its heart, lobbyist which influence legislators and the Electoral College which flies in the face of a true democracy and actually encourages people to not vote, need to be addressed. And of course the tax code which inordinately taps the resources of the middle class.
Lets also remember the two party system is failing. The Republicans have gone far too right and the Democrats do not know how to select candidates at the national level. So we are left with politics of the rich.
The Constitution was written in time of great leadership. We need leaders and we need to get out of this mess.
One of the most lucid and insightful articles I have seen yet. Once upon a time there was a man named Robert Kennedy who in fact became a Tribune of the Underclass in the late 1960`s.; and the fact that 50 years later nobody has had the courage or wisdom to pick up his mantle is evidence of a terrible legacy of greed and injustice since June 6, 1968. Kennedy perceived a nation stained with horrible growing inequality; and dedicated his life to reversing it. If Americans are really to save themselves from the ever growing power of the Oligarch class; they better change things fast; if it is not already too late. The U.S. has become a hollow shell of what it once was. This article is a clear lesson of why and how. Let us see if it can yet still be redeemed?!
1
The Constitution is pretty much whatever Congress says it is, even down to ignoring the constitutional prohibition of legislation giving respectability to faith based beliefs, and its own commerce clause mandate to quash economic competitions between states.
Professor Sitaraman's article leaves arguable loose-ends respecting the intent of the Constitution Fathers. His claim that the Constitution, "[wasn't] designed for a society with economic inequality", begs the question, "did the Fathers of the Constitution start-off with a goal to ensure economic equality"? I think the answer is "no". A bigger issue looms.
The Constitution conferences were attended by representatives of the wealthiest and privileged state citizens. Capitalism and enterprising colonists transformed the settlements into global economic trade outposts of social-economic inequality. Wealthy connected residents appointed representatives to the Constitutional conferences - 1776-90. The final check and balance after Congress and the Executive branches would be the Supreme Court (SCOTUS).
The SCOTUS decision in two early cases appealed from lower courts confirmed application of Articles III and VI as permitting SCOTUS to review lower court cases. But even the best laid plans can go awry, thereafter.
In Plessey v. Ferguson (1896), the SCOTUS decided that states' had the authority to discriminate against Blacks by permitting public school segregation. It required more than sixty years for the SCOTUS to recant the doctrine of "separate but equal" in Brown v. Board of Education (1952), that overturned Plessey.
The bottom-line: the best laid plans do not guarantee a just result, especially when politicians and wealthy folk have vested interests in the outcome.
1
A well meaning essay that puts too much emphasis on The Constitution in a way that almost portrays our founding document as "The Problem".
But as pointed out, economic inequality has always been and will always be a destabilizing and counterproductive force in any society under any political system.
The historical precedent this essay absurdly ignores is The New Deal which actually did counter income inequality while strengthening the economy and prospects for democracy. It did this through taxation, regulation, redistribution, and the fortification of institutional forces such as organized labor. Of course, all of these have become dirty words in the mass produced culture machine controlled by corporations and the concentrated wealth that dominates them.
Social Security is, arguably, the most rugged stabilizing institution created by The New Deal though, of course, it has been weathering unceasing attack since its establishment. The same goes for Medicare and Medicaid which were established in The New Deal's last hurrah in the 1960s
The New Deal is the precedent we should all be focusing on, and Bernie Sanders, the "raving socialist" is ultimately an old fashioned New Dealer. What's needed now is a return to Relief", "Recovery", and "Reform" both economically and democratically. But reforms must also be extended to corporate purpose and governance so that communities, labor, and consumers have meaningful oversight of these Goliath earth shaking institutions.
2
Madison was not discussing the issue of inequality in that some people will get too rich. The problem he was addressing was to the contrary, that since at the time only those who owned property were allowed to vote he was concerned about the time in which there would be masses of people who did not own property and would feel disenfranchised.
On the other hand today the issue of inequality is not one of numbers at all, in that there are masses of people who are suffering from poverty due to inequality. And this is because then we discuss inequality, the issue is not that there are poor people, but instead that despite the middle class in the USA doing relatively well for itself, there are some who feel that its massively unfair for there to exist those who are so much richer than the average.
In fact it the number of those massively richer than the middle class would be 15% or 20%, for some reason that would be fine with those people. Their problem is that the wealth is concentrated in the hands of 1% instead of being spread among the top 20%. This despite the fact that the top 20% are doing extremely well for themselves, and that they, the middle class, would be faring no better if the wealth in the hands of the 1% would be spread among the top 20%.
In addition even if it were decided to yank all of that massive wealth out of the hands of the 1% in the form of massive taxes, that money would not be distributed among the middle class so that there will be less inequality.
10
"wealth concentrated in the hands of the 1%"--I suggest that all of those NYT commenters who claim such nonsense actually work to understand the appropriate definitions of wealth, control, and ruler, and other absurd charges that fail to match reality.
??? You lost me buddy. P.S. don't read about the middle class doing that well.
1
This is really an oversimplification both of what Madison believed, and what inequality has been doing to the society.
And the people you mention may be somewhat petty in their views, and perhaps are doing better for themselves than they actually THINK they are, but those 80% who feel themselves to be struggling are not completely imagining it either, due to out-of-control increases in health care and educational costs.
And honestly, no reasonable person is saying to "yank" the wealth of the 1%--that idea seems to have died with Huey Long. But increasing taxable income for social security and taxing the excess wealth of the super wealthy to guarantee health care for the poorest Americans seem like a very a small amount to ask of the 1%, don't you think?
1
While the author may or may not be correct in his analyses of the degree of inequality in America now versus then, he is incorrect in at least one of his conclusions. The Constitution was specifically built for the flow of history, having built within it two different methods to amend it to suit changing needs. It does not have specific structural checks built into it, because it allows them to be added if and when they are needed.
2
In early America, there were certainly various classes of people, from slaves to slaveholders and from poor farmers to rich ones, as well as artisans and others. While the Constitution did not designate class distinction into our Senate and House of Representatives, the founders were well aware of class differences.
They created a country that allowed anyone, though hard work and education, to rise in society.
Our problem is not the Constitution, but those who are now tasked with interpreting it and those who are tasked with enforcing it through modern laws. While we tax the wealthy at low rates relative to the middle class and lower middle class, we will find more disparate earnings. It was not this way in the 1950s, for example, when tax rates on the wealthy were much higher than today.
At that time, first-generation Americans like my parents could "make it" without even a high school diploma, through sheer hard work, determination and perseverance. That is more difficult today, even though all my my second generation family has done well, having learned that work ethic and gained more education.
Now, knowing this, what will we do to reform our tax structure to again encourage this sort of work ethic and entrepreneurialism?
2
Excellent article! Our founding fathers chose capitalism because it was the system that had proven to work in England. While capitalism is unquestionably the best system for producing products at the cheapest price, it is also a system which naturally concentrates wealth over time.
The best way to counteract this concentration of wealth is progressive taxes. It is odd that conservatives look back in fondness to the stronger family values in the 1950's, but do not recognize that unions and progressive taxes created the worker income to enable these strong families.
11
The article needs statistical estimates for wealth disparity at the time of the nation's founding. I don't have those statistics, but I do have anecdotal evidence of significant inequality in the late 1700's. Slavery is the ultimate in wealth disparity. In addition, most people even in the South were not wealthy enough to own slaves, whereas others had many slaves and great estates also. In the North, the revolution against Britain was initiated and propagated by wealthy merchants seeking competitive advantages and tax reductions. Wealthy men became field-grade officers in the military by recruiting and paying local men. Wealthy people funded the revolution, and after the war they made sure they were repaid. Those attending the consitutional convention dressed and behaved like upper-class people, which they were.
As the author writes, the gilded age of the 19th Century was also a time of great wealth disparity, as was the Roaring 20s and even the depression (almost all the depression-era comedic movies were about wealthy people).
I certainly agree that there is too much wealth disparity in the U. S., but there has always been too much, sometimes more and sometimes less. Reductions in disparity require accurate data, real education, and dynamic leadership. It's been done before. But let's start out with the best possible data, not just data-free pronouncements.
1
Thank you for this thought provoking column. I learned to look at our Constitution in a deeper way. Why were there so many American thinkers in the past who could clearly reflect upon and clearly state important ideas? We have fallen into such a state that we have a president who thinks not at all about great ideas and can only write in bursts of 140 characters. I remember the interview with Sarah Palin when asked who is your favorite founding father and she responded all of them. It was obvious she couldn't tell us the differences in the views of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, but 'the people' just loved her. I doubt that today's tea partiers know what motivated the originals: taxation without representation, not no taxation. And so we continue to slide down the slope to the obliteration of our republic. The last great Republican president was Theodore Roosevelt.
3
Ganesh's thesis is interesting for the era of universal formal disenfranchisement, which is only definitively present since the 1964 Voting Rights Act. Still, the relation of the Constitution to the issue of inequality and governance is largely coincidental. It is quite unrelated to the intentions of the drafters of Constitution who wrote for a radically unequal world split between affluent political notables and poor farmers and "mechanics, " most radically split in the slave plantation states where an elite of world historically high affluence reigned over non-planter masses, half of whose members were dehumanized slaves.
That said the prime cause of our present stalemate is radical polarization that is due to the coincidence of partisan and Social conservatism that followed the Dixification of the GOP and that blocks the legislative process in a nation requiring a coincidence of party with partisan power over Presidency, House and Senate --usually power that must in the Senate overcome the filibuster.
2
This is a gorgeous piece The author takes our most pressing and complex social and political problem and dissects it for all to see clearly. The historical references illustrate starkly that the problem is neither new nor "fake."
The question is whether even such a masterful treatment can help our leaders--a term which now seems quaint, a consequence largely a result of the problem discussed--can find the solution, or more realistically, find the road to the solution.
Wise men (and women of course)? it seems that wisdom has also become quaint and out of style. If so, the latent pessimism which appears toward the end of the piece may carry the day. We should all fear that. But whether we will is the real question posed here.
2
It appears to me that the arguments put forward here fail to look at several issues I believe are of the utmost importance. First and foremost, population growth needs to be considered when debating economic inequality. While the population grows globally and imagration to wealthier counties continues we, as a nation, must either accept the fact that less educated Americans and immigrants will earn less then the educated population or increase the scope of the welfare system. In addition, as the population grows and people are replaced by technology there will be less jobs for the growing population, educated or not. So when discussing economic inequality we must take population growth and immagration along with automation as the major contributing factors in income inequality.
Maybe the right answer is the simplest answer. Curb population growth so that the population stabilizes. Create an educational system that is accessible and not profit motivated. Educate the populatiom, teach personal responsibility and enforce the laws we already have in place. I fail to see why root problems such as population growth, immagration and technology fail to make into these debates. Until we can address these basic issues and include the impacts they have on society, we can argue income inequality forever and not progress.
1
Part of the problem is that most of the citizenry just has no idea of the astonishing degree of income inequality; surveys show them consistently underestimating it; and it's in neither party's interests to enlighten them. Bernie tried but his message was boiled down to a few pithy slogans, tailored for a low attention-span electorate and didn't do much to educate on the juicy particulars. The real challenge is to make the case to people who have been convinced they have more important things to do than ponder their serfdom.
On the other hand, I wonder if we're already too far gone? Have the frogs in the pot boiled without anyone even noticing? If there were a revolution today, we'd have to make sure it didn't occur around - to name a few -the Superbowl, the Oscars, March Madness, the World Series or the Country Music Awards, all fed to us at monopolistic prices by a plutocracy that loves to see us all sedated, fat and ignorant. When you're complicit in your own destruction, it's hard to complain afterwards.
8
It's time for concerned Americans to pull the safety lever our Founding Fathers designed into our Constitution: an Article V Federal Convention followed by State Ratification Conventions.
Our Article V Convention could propose Constitutional amendments to address:
> Federal Campaign Finance
> Climate Change
> Voting Rights
> Gerrymandering
> And so much more...
These proposed Constitutional amendments could then be reviewed and voted upon for ratification into our Constitution by State Ratification Conventions - the safety valve against any extreme, proposed amendments.
This Article V process does an end run on D.C.. It has only a nominal role for Congress to call the Federal Convention (in response to submitted states' petitions) and NO ROLE for the Preesident.
This is the only feasible way to get America back on track to a robust and constructive future - at home and around the world - and with a sense of urgency to successfully address Climate Change.
11
Agree that issues Voting rights, Campaign finance, Gerrymandering need be addressed, and would empower electorate to address Climate change and other important issues!
BUT, be careful of what you wish for??!
In this highly partisan world, Issues of Balanced Budget, Flag protection and open carry would likely dominate debate, and such a convention would either breakdown, or produce a long overly particular constitution that would rapidly lose support leading to further chaos and conflict?!
BEST to organize youth to participate as they have energy and attitudes most in line with signers of Declaration!!
1
Steve Pino,
I ask that before we agitate for an Article V end run around Congress and the Executive, we would all take a good hard look at who now controls the majority of state legislatures and who resides in the majority of Governors' mansions. They would control who represented the various states at any convention and would determine the language of any proposed amendment. I guarantee you that my state would be represented by men and women who supported the rights of corporations and would write amendments, written by working groups at ALEC, that would further concentrate power and capital in the hands of the few. Ditto for the entire South and almost every state west of the Mississippi and east of the rockies. And don't forget the good folks running Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana. What kind of agenda would they promote at a convention to alter our constitution?
Then consider the fifth item on your shortlist of problems to be addressed by constitutional amendment, "And so much more..." Do we really want to go down that road?
Let's win back the House in 2018. Let's take back control of as many state legislatures as we can before the 2020 census and redistricting. Seems safer.
2
Thanks for writing an article that explains, for the four people in the world not paying attention, what all the rest of us already know since trump ascended to the presidency.
3
Why must liberals always attack the rich as if they are criminals and have earned their money in an unequal fashion? The truth is our capitalist system allows those with talent and vision to realize their dreams and profit handsomely in the process. These people also create the industries and the jobs needed to grow and sustain our economy. Those on the left are quick to immediately blame these people for their lot in life rather than do a more close self examination of the choices they have made in their lives which have placed them in their situation. Yes there has been discrimination and injustice but there are countless numbers of success stories of people overcoming adversity and achieving their goals and dreams. The left tries to convince people that they are not responsible for their own shortcomings and blames the achievers who don't play by the same rules. The left seeks to attain power by controlling people and gains it's money through excessive taxation of those who create. They create nothing and believe that the solution to all problems is to take from those who make and shift it to those that don't. Eventually those who create lose their incentive to do so and stop producing. The money runs out as there are far fewer creators and far more users and the whole thing comes crashing down.
People need to take stock of themselves and stop looking for others to bail them out. They need to look in the mirror to see where the credit or fault truly lies.
3
This may be fine as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far at all. Leaving aside whether it's premise has any truth to it (unlike the main piece this comment offers no support for the thesis that any of the rich merit their wealth), the fact is that those who can claim, whether truthfully or not, to have earned their wealth are a small minority.
The large majority of wealth in this country is inherited. no work was involved acquiring it. No talent, no intelligence, no genius, no sweat. The comment is all wrong and it serves to distract us, as usual, from the task discussed. And it distracts us untruthful. Enough.
1
Ian Rand Good writer, not so good architect of good governance?!
The author doesn't include much data, possibly because it does not support his thesis. http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Garmon.pdf is a paper that attempts to judge the state of inequality in the early US. The author asks one not to quote from the paper without his permission, but since he has posted the paper for all to see, I am going to disregard his request a little.
After a long discussion, he concludes that the Gini Coefficient of Wealth is the most accurate way to judge inequality in the period partly because the available data allow a more accurate estimate. His results are that the Gini Coefficient of Wealth for the US was 0.726 in 1785 and 0.791 in 1975.
To day that figure is 0.8056, not that much different from 1787. BTW this figure is the highest in the developed word.
http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/
It appears that in spite of the protestations of the founders, inequality was already well established when they were writing the Constitution. Either they did not realize this (which seems a bit hard to believe) or the Constitution was PURPOSELY constructed to facilitate inequality.
2
At the time of the Revolution, in addition to the substantial fraction of the population who were slaves, many were indentured or apprenticed for room and board.
There is no legal basis in the Constitution to insure economic equality. The call to promote the general welfare in the preamble has been interpreted as no more than a platitude. Our constitutional law has come to recognize protected classes of persons and three levels of legal scrutiny for new laws passed regarding protected persons. Among those classes are the race, religion, gender, and age. These are all considered immutable characteristics; that is why constitutional law protects them. Unfortunately, economic class is not a protected class of person, even though evidence shows that mobility between classes is difficult. In the US, class mobility is even lower than in the U.K., which is seen as inflexible. The heart of the matter is the wealth disparity that we have now in the U.S. Be honest with yourself and acknowledge that whites are far more wealthy and blacks and latinx.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great...
Bernie was our shot. The self-appointed wise patriots of the Democratic Party turned out to be bankrupt of wisdom.
At this point, it's probably too late. Scour history for a single example of a country surviving the level of degradation of norms and mores which 2016/17 has wrought. Our empire is convulsing in its death throes, and China has taken on the mantle of responsible, stable leadership.
Only an ignoramus could be blind to what's happening, for it has happened so many times before.
4
"...our Constitution doesn’t have structural checks built into it to prevent oligarchy or populist demagogues."
And what would those structural checks look like? Perhaps Mr. Sitaraman could provide a model text?
Article V provides all the flexibility necessary for additional amendments that can be as revolutionary as the country desires. All the vices of pay-to-play politics can be addressed by these means provided within the Constitution.
What no constitutional text can provide - and this is the great flaw in democratic theory - is its vulnerability to a vastly ignorant and even demented voting population. Democracy is only as good as its citizens. The key problem is not a flawed Constitution, but an under-educated and malicious population.
4
Abandonment of the parliamentary system was an expression of foolish faith that politics could simply be repressed. For better or worse, politics is the only lawful process we have to negotiate the social contract we must live under.
Do the 1% really think they can continue their business as usual? The middle lass which has all but been wiped out, was the buffer between the super rich and poor. As the rich grow richer and more powerful the poor grow poorer and less powerful. There can only be one outcome, revolution. When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose and if our current congress and White House has their way, the less fortunate will have less than they have today. If not stopped soon, our country will be a society that even the rich will not want to live in.
The anger and inequality the trump supporters expressed is an example of this but what they haven't a clue about is, the hideous man they elected is the perfect example of what they are so against. He played them like a fiddle under most likely Putin's direction. That segment of the country was ripe for the picking. This was calculated without a doubt and whomever or whatever is behind this is the true enemy of our government.
God help us.
7
The article and comments could not be more wrong about the middle class. It has not been "all but wiped out", but is doing quiet well, thank you. Just look around you - 17 million new vehicles sold each year, unending complaints about new subdivisions sprawling across the land, airplanes, hotels, resorts, and theme parks full, record numbers of visitors to Europe and other foreign playgrounds, highways crowded with tour buses, $100,000 motor homes and $40,000 pickup trucks pulling $60,000 boats, jet skis, and all manner of other toys. Go to Gatlinburg, Destin, Pensacola, Orlando, the Ozarks, Branson, or any national park, none of which are magnets for the rich and famous, and you will find the crowds elbow-to-elbow and long waits at the restaurants. Middle class Americans are living a lifestyle thought impossible in the 1950's "golden age" of the middle class. The wealth of the 1% was not made by oppression of the poor and middle class, and confiscating it all would not put a penny in the pockets of the less well off.
Our Founding Fathers also did not envision semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines. They also did not envision someone as incompetent as Trump being elected President. However, with our grossly polarized political system, it is doubtful any meaningful amendment to the Constitution could be passed. It is a very sad state of affairs.
3
I guess the founding fathers misjudged avarice as one of the most powerful incentives to trample others for personal gain. And a capitalistic system, unless constrained by sensible regulations, and where capital always trumps labor, will end in a rising inequality, and the evil inequities it engenders. Correcting the record is of the essence, not primarily for justice, but for the survival of the system. That devious interests of the 'rich and powerful' (and, of course, it includes corporations and even socially sterile adventures like 'derivatives') do corrupt the system by bribery is beyond doubt, given we humans are all corruptible, it just depends on the price we are willing to sell ourselves (witness the pliant congress we have, genuflecting to the rich...as they contribute to their re-elections in perpetuity). Madison didn't take into account that 'whites' where the only guys allowed to have a voice, and vote, and the discipline it required to grant freedom to this class, to the detriment of African Americans, brought to the U.S. against their will for slavery. Hypocrisy is another 'attribute' we are endowed with, hard to shake, but ever-present. Have we really changed that much, to survive, and to save the republic? Certainly not by having elected a greedy and vulgar brutus ignoramus, intent in destroying what's left of this flickering democracy.
6
This is a really enlightening and astute essay. Thank you for writing it! It actually says something new that I had never thought of.
3
America's political leaders today, from BOTH wings of the decrepit and corrupt two party duopoly, would not be fit to mop the floors of Independence Hall in 1787. The lower classes of the 18th century could do a better job of public administration than the so-called elites of today. The last thing we need those incompetent disgraces doing now is trying to tamper with the Constitution. Fortunately, any such nightmare is unlikely, because -as this column overlooks- 3/4 of state legislatures have to ratify any amendments. When was the last time in this post voodoo economics, post political correctness down-dumbing society, when 3/4 of state governments agreed on any substantive and far-reaching change?
1
I have a real problem with the underlying premise of the article, that the Constitution did not deal with an economy with income inequality.
The Constitution enshrined the institution of slavery and gave enormous power to landholders all over the country. The owners of slaves and the landholders in the north were the aristocracy of early America. Only a small portion of the citizens, white male landholders, were allowed to vote. That is not a representative democracy, that is a oligarchy.
And blatant income inequality doesn't get much more severe than slave master versus slave.
I am not suggesting that the Constitution does a good job of managing those inequalities (We had to fight a very bloody civil war, for example to end slavery); but income inequality, in all it's ugliest manifestations, was here in America, right from the beginning.
6
The fact that the Constitution is largely mute on economic equality is moot. We have the ability to analyze, understand, legislate, and govern to make our society more just and more prosperous.
That we do not do this is a testament to highly effective right wing fear - anger - hate machine. The Koch Brothers and other rent-seeking billionaires have hired conservative politicians to block legislation that would cost them anything through regulation or taxes. They have hired Fox News to camouflage these actions with outrage and contempt toward the liberal nanny state and a few thousand indulged college students -- really, can we step back and recognize the ludicrousness of breathless discussions of campus demonstrations as "the greatest threat to our democracy"?
As long as there is enough pandering, gerrymandering, and stupidity, we are going to destroy history's most dynamic economy, and an important champion of justice in the world.
5
Wise patriots? I don't think so. What we have in the way of leaders is men (and women) bloated with self-interest and, sadly, our society has made it so.
1
A few wise and willing patriots might yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Not that the smart money is on it, because it ain't.
Meanwhile the American people have not proven to be exceptional, judging by who they elected and how closely they stand by him.
A central premise of Ganesh Sitaraman’s, “Our constitution Wasn’t Built for This,” is that the Founders never contemplated economic inequality in governance because the voters were all wealthy. Indeed, the only ones who were franchised were white propertied men. Where is the amendment that enabled non-propertied white men to vote in that era of so-called Jacksonian Democracy of the 1830s? But at the outset, with slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of representation but having no vote, that gave the slave-holding states greater representation in Congress and slave-holders outsized political power. Further, any semblance of economic equality in politics was erased by Scalia's Supreme Court with Citizens United, which equated cash with “free” speech effectively giving those with more cash more “free” speech and therefore more say and more power in controlling politics and policy. The notion that the Founders were god-like – as if they were omniscient – the basis of “originalism” embraced by Scalia (who conveniently makes his own law in Bush v. Gore, gun control and Citizens United) is fantasy. The Constitution's authors recognized that they were embarking on a great Experiment in self-governance, that they were humans with frailties, and what is more, had to make compromises (slavery) to get the consensus needed to form a “more perfect” union. They saw the Constitution as a living document that needed to be responsive to the people, just as much as a framework.
5
A needed op ed.
America was created to repudiate rule by aristocracy. Yet our richest corporate elites are in effect 'ruling' our nation as a privileged US aristocracy with political power.
Our candidates depend on subsidies by the rich who expect return on investment. We the People can’t hope to compete for influence for our needs. A total contradiction to our founding ideals, yet this is rationalized by slogans of ‘freedom’.
Ironically, we’re verging on an American caste system, compared to other democracies. Look at the Gini scores of OECD nations online. We rank the lowest of advanced nations in economic equality. And all other capitalist democracies have health care for all.
Princeton’s Martin Gilens proved congress passes laws per the wishes of elites on most issues. Jimmy Carter said we veer toward oligarchy.
Our revered 1st amendment is distorted by the S. Court calling corporate megadonations ‘free speech’. It's self reinforcing, drowning out majority speech, so our wishes can’t be translated into political action. The Gop subverts voting rights to entrench it's power. The US, once a role model, is becoming a democracy in name only.
Equality depends on social norms. See David Leonhardt “When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer”. He contrasts CEO George Romney with his son Mitt.
Correlate the weakening of our middle/working classes with Reagan---govt is the problem not the solution, and then Democrat Bill Clinton--the era of big govt is over.
150
how long before the poor revolt against the rich?
The social security tax diminishes middle class, wage earner incomes far more than corporate profits or CEO stock options and bonuses.
It was written to prevent ruling by a monarchy. An educated aristocracy at the top was assumed a priori.
The argument here is simplistic. The fault lines revealed during reconstruction are still very much with us -- blame the immigrant, disenfranchise unacceptable voters, create dubious moral dilemmas to reinforce white Christian nationalists, hammer on government reform but do less than nothing to actually remove or restrict corruption. Same old story, modernized.
Representative government can no longer exist. The complexities in most of our lives point very clearly to the fact that decision making today is very complex and thereby requires almost all of us to make our own decisions and not rely upon having someone who does not know us make our decisions. Therefore, it is imperative, if we decide to retain having control over our governments, that we change the way our government works and do so by having the taxpayers make the choices for every government run program. In the book "True Freedom - The Road to the First Real Democracy" I have designed that path. Unfortunately, however, after speaking to many, it seems that most Americans are poorly educated and hence cannot even begin to think that they can control their governments in a far better way than simply complaining or even worse thinking that someone can represent them for all of their choices. It could take another couple of centuries before the evolution of the human brain allows us to learn properly and begin to address the needs and wants of ourselves and those around us. This too may be far too optimistic.
Equality and Liberty are enemies, not allies. Insuring equality can only be accomplished by limiting the freedom of one man to advance himself beyond the station of others. Our constitution, and the capitalism it enables, may not be perfect for every individual, but it is the best system ever devised for a nation of individuals.
One might argue that we are in our current predicament not because of some constitutional failing but because of what de Tocqueville warned: "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
1
Yes, inequality is not effectively regulated by the constitution, but I'll venture the more controversial opinion that that's less a problem than the over-regulation of the poor, which is not a constitutional problem, but a political issue. The so-called conservatives argue "for less regulation" of the corporate world, at least of taxes, and what they call "small business," by which they do not mean mom and pop stores. The latter are potentially too disruptive of their cash cows. Unfettered regulation at the mom and pop level is what capitalism is all about and it's undermined daily with petty and deliberately obstructive legislation. For example, the political administration of copyright and patents are primarily aimed at preventing mom and pop operations from getting off the ground. This isn't an argument against all copyright and patents. It's an observation as to how they're administered.
The Constitution isn't the kind of document that needs changing whenever the line between what is and what isn't legal changes. That it doesn't address class warfare doesn't mean that class warfare isn't real and constant, but solving that issue isn't a constitutional matter--and shouldn't be. The best and perhaps only solution to helping the poor--as a class (the concern of the Founding Fathers)--is dignity and freedom, which contemporary politics prevents. Dignity and freedom are precisely constitutional matters and the Constitution does just fine on that score.
The Constitution was written to maintain the economic inequality of that time period. Wealthy founding fathers had a fear of people like Daniel Shay. Not to mention the indigenous and slaves. A stronger national government was necessary for many reasons (commerce, taxes, military), another just might have been domestic unrest due to inequality!
Our tax code is the problem, your use of the Constitution to discuss inequality gets a headline and does the subject injustice.
Ganesh Sitaraman thesis has its forerunner in the writings of Sheldon Wolin. He sees Democracy and corporate power as incompatible. Wolin coined the phrase “inverted totalitarianism” in order to underscore the peculiar combination of two contrasting, but not necessarily opposing, tendencies. In the post-war United States the powers of government to control, punish, survey, direct, and influence citizens have increased, but at the same time there have been liberal-democratic changes that appear to work against regimentation, e.g., measures against discriminatory practices based on race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. During this period both government and economy sought to center power. If governments and bureaucracies had their “seats” in a capitol, corporations had their “headquarters.”
It my be that the corporations are willing to yield on social issues as it cost them little so long as control is not weakened. Mounting opposition to that control seems unlikely. But the end of the 19th century saw similar concentrated power slowly reversed under political leverage in the 20th. Hope spring eternal.
1
The constitution was not just flawed by economic assumptions, but also social: race, gender, sexual orientation, marriage, heck even free speech, which certainly did not intend to include hate speech. But it kept open enough flexibility for future generations to expand or limit/reverse, by means of amendments and political action.
The latter of which, is now work-in-progress by the Trump administration, and prioritized according to their voter base. Economic equality is being achieved by redefining it, not with easy statistics, but in ways people without ivy-league education can readily understand. To reduce inequality, reduce immigration. Check. Reduce unemployment, check. Increase skills, in progress. Increase infrastructure spend, in progress. And so on and so forth.
This opinion's thinly-veiled proposal for Socialism has already been echoed for years by a certain Mr. Bernie Sanders, to the point of making him completely irrelevant. Nobody's listening. Meanwhile, the GOP, together with Trump, continues to solidify grip over the electorate nationwide.
Up next: 2/3 majority, followed by constitutional amendments restricting hate speech, defining marriage as the rest of the world know it, refining citizenship by birth to mean born in domestic soil to at least one American parent and with it eliminate anchor babying for good and whatever hopes Ted Cruz might have to have another go at becoming prez. And a whole lot more.
The ducks for version 2 are lining up. Be there.
1
The fight against all that the progressives won in the 19th - to early 20th Century was finally lost with Citizens United.
Maybe we are on the cusp of a new Progressive era, or if that fails, the cusp of a revolution.
The election of the SCP seems to indicate that demagogs and dictators will win.
1
Like many things in life, the Constitution is hyped as much more than what it is. Mythological in stature, people seem to forget, it was written by mostly rich men, nearly all of whom owned slaves, and not a single woman or minority was involved. It only ever gave a nod to equality. As we have seen time and again, necessary change is nearly impossible. The egotistical prose it was written in, only leads to more confusion, as is evident in the 2nd and fourteenth amendment.
It belongs in the circular file.
The reason we have a strong central government is because state government failed miserably, indeed even abetted the rise of the rich as the only political power. It took a Great Depression, and a World War to change that model. Now we seemed determined to repeat all the mistakes of our history.
Sad
Since super rich extremists can now greatly influence the outcome of our elections, I can't see how you are going to take that power away from them unless we overturn Citizens United and once again limit how much money people can spend on ads, etc. for a candidate. I can see the day when the U.S. gov't. will pay everybody who needs it, a minimum amount of money to cover food and shelter and basic necessities and completely do away with Welfare, etc. programs. Health care would be covered as a right. When people have food, shelter, and healthcare basics covered, they can lead happier lives and not be totally worried and stressed out, and crime would drop significantly. I think it is a fabulous idea. There should be no hungry, homeless children in our rich country. We all need to take care of each other, just like Jesus says in the Bible.
2
To emphasize the inadequacy of our Constitution, please allow me to point out that it was written before the Industrial Revolution, for an agrarian society. Telegraph and railroads were but pipe dreams. 97% of Americans lived on farms. Bloodletting was still an acceptable medical practice. We were not dumping poison into the land, sea, and sky at such a rate as to pose an existential threat. We need a new governing document based on human need, not corporate greed.
excellent analysis. However one can argue that since the industrialization and big monopolies in the 1880s and the closing of the American frontier, we've been in monopoly capitalism and a worldwide imperialism. Great ideas from the founding fathers--except for slavery--but our America has been dominated by the rich for well over 140 years. The contradictions and flaws of our monopoly capitalism may provide space for reform
Recently, we vacationed in Ecuador. Under their democratic socialist government, there has been a great deal of progress in reducing poverty as the government has invested oil revenues in improving the lives of ordinary people. Public education, which is mandatory through 8th grade, is free, including public colleges. Health care is free. It is worth noting that in Ecuador, voting is mandatory for all over 18, and optional for 16 year olds and the elderly.
1
How about a constitutional amendment that says:
No person holding a public office or employment, whether elected or otherwise, may receive money or any thing of value or the promise therefor during his or her term of office or employment or for five years after the term of such office or employment except the salary paid by the United States. Any such money or thing of value shall immediately upon receipt or promise therefor become the property of the United States.
2
Inequality was the reason that Trump was elected. The sad truth is that he conned many angry and worried white voters into believing that he would do something to correct the perceived cause of their eroding economic fortunes. Little did they know that he had no plan to do so, and even he did he doesn't know how to do it. To his credit, he has jettisoned some of the worst of the White House staff, and began to listen to General Kelly who at least has some concept of leadership and governance of this diverse nation. That said, he has not presented a coherent economic vision for the country beyond a tax cut, which will benefit the rich, and taking away health insurance from the very people who were counting on him to solve their economic trauma.
2
The Founders envisioned a small federal government with limited, specific powers. The states were supposed to do more for their citizens than the feds (or not, depending upon the will of the people in those states). As our federal government has grown and become more powerful and more intrusive, the powers of the rich--individuals, corporations--has become magnified nationally. All that money pouring into DC has attracted parasites, and the number of rules and laws that can be bent to the will of the wealthy have exploded.
Lessen the power of D.C., return power to the states, and a lot of our sorrows will go away.
Corporations were not conceived to be "people". Citizens United simply diluted the voter and with that rule threatens the core of the Constitution.
3
Although he reportedly never used the word "obscenity" in his ruling, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously offered his threshold test saying "I know it when I see it." Professor Sitaraman did not quite say explicitly in this essay that we do have today an oligarchy, but most of us know it when we see it. You really aren't paying attention if you don't believe in 2017 that the United States is not dominated by the super wealthy. The founders worried about this but couldn't fix it. In Federalist #10 Madison agonized over factions but essentially admitted that they were irreconcilable.
So who is now calling the shots? The “people”? The 1%? We presently have a government held captive by the highest bidders. We may as well put congressional seats and state legislative seats up for auction on eBay. “Elected” official should wear logos on their suits proportioned to the size of the contributions made to their campaigns. Money doesn’t talk, it swears. We know how influence is peddaled. We know that “constituencies” now are really abstractions. Ours is a system of patronage. Let’s finally dispense with the platitudes “e pluribus unum” and “equal justice under law.” Face it, we operate under an over-riding principle today that ought to be inscribed on our currency and etched on the stone of our capitols: “The best government money can buy.”
3
Great article and spot on. I am dreadfully allergic to "pitchforks and torches", which is what we will face if economic inequality continues unabated. Just as it is foolish and dangerous to interpret the Bible and most religious dogma literally in modern times when confronted with issues and circumstances that did not exist thousands of years ago, so too the Constitution must be a living document capable of rational adaptation to current issues and circumstances.
4
It is clearly problematic to base all of our most important decisions on a document that was created more than two hundred years ago.
1
As a younger person whenever I was taken to a patriotic event, heard the national anthem, heard the reading of our founding documents, or visited Wahington DC., a feeling of pride would resonate in my body. Since Nixon and the Vietnam War, when I read the Bill of Rights, the Gettysbug Address, or the Constitution, I shake my head in disbelief and anger that hardly any of those inspiring words ring true anymore. Our leaders, especialy the GOP, have turned their backs on the people and Democracy for greed, the cancer in our society and the world. Hopefully, the rich will soon pay the price for the class warfare they created. Heads should roll.
4
Our constitution was never an egalitarian document. It enfranchised the elitist attitudes of the planter class into law at the expense of Africans, women and workers. We live today with these encumbrances. Democracy is frustrated, elitism is encouraged and economic inequality is the norm. No one would write such a document today. Even for its time, the constitution was a regressive enterprise. The French did a better job than we did. I think we need a rewrite.
2
Today, corporations have the rights of people (but not the taxation). Within Congress the majority party GOP is attempting to rule only by its own party votes, thus disenfranchising the majority of voters who are Democrats. Primaries determine our candidates and magnify the power of donor money. Our elected officials are more scared of being "out-primaried" than of losing to an opposition candidate -- and the Constitution's ideal of consensus government has now become the exception rather than the usual.
Our Supreme Court is politicized. The norm is now a President who lies as easily as he breathes. Our Congress? They normalize his lies and refuse to perform there Constitutional duty of Presidential oversight.
Our elected officials now place party loyalty over that owed to the nation, and personal gain over national service.
If you look at the three generals in Trump's WH as the so-called "adults" we are in the midst of a benign coup where General Kelly now controls access to the President both in terms of people and information. (And, given the ineptitude of Trump, most of us are glad.)
Our press repeats political statements even as we all know them to be untrue: (trickle-down economics fails yet is still the mantra of our ruling party.)
I do not know how we recover from this.
2
From the first proto-human who figured out wielding a stick as a club to the corporate giants using wealth as a club, inequality, class warfare and power seeking have always been a feature of whatever government a body of people choose to use as their structure for living.
Democracy, socialism, communism, etc. exist only in the minds of those who believe and trust in these "systems" and, much like "religion", depend upon everybody settling down and agreeing to the terms of whatever is chosen as the vehicle of governance. In general it seems that "democracies", especially when one looks at voting in this country, always boil down to 1/3 agreeing with the leaders, 1/3 opposing the desires of those elected and 1/3 not bothering to vote at all.
In the dictator driven systems, the leaders offer "show elections' then rule by the power of arms and money (Just look at the jailed/murdered in Russia and China as an example) while in the Western "democracies" this same sort of force is translated by money into fake Facebook ads, innuendo ridden campaign ads, PAC's, donations, etc. while actually killing/jailing opponents is not yet part of the venue.
With so-called "populist" campaigns being financed by the one percent, and the resultant violence it has unleashed lately, the time for political violence is certainly at hand.
In short, its a tad late to "save our republic"; there's too much money/power to be made and THAT won't change anytime soon.
1
It appears that GOP actually stands for the Great Oligarchy Party - tax cuts always for the wealthiest amongst us. Hiding behind monied interests is evident in both parties but has primarily become manifest in the conservative Supreme Court passing Citizens United. Chief Justice Roberts - what a corrupted legacy you leave us. It's so easy to be for the rich.
4
Prof. Sitaraman's observations about economic inequality now and then are likely accurate--as far as they go--but not new: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/us-income-inequalit... .
But there is a problem with these sorts of economic analyses: slavery. Such a shock. The Founders could never have built the Republic or written the Constitution without having facilitated the inclusion of slavery within the economic functioning of the USA. Hence that early "economic equality" is skewed because it ignored significant segments of the populace that were removed from consideration, that were considered property, considered chattel.
Then there is the Industrial Revolution and movement away from an agrarian economy: http://www.economist.com/node/21564413 ("As you were"). As an aside, this piece in "The Economist" uses Jane Austen's writing as a model for explanation--an early example used by a more recent author attempting to explain certain elements of economics ("The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return" by Mihir Desai, 2017--I am left wondering if Desai were the actual author of that earlier 2012 essay).
Our Constitution was not written for an economy of equality, far from it. It was written for the citizens of this country. Human beings. Churches were not allowed to take part, not because they were religious, but because they were not people. They were organizations. They were alternative governments. They were not democratically elected by the people. They represented a potential threat to our duly elected government.
Unfortunately our founders never predicted the growth of corporations. Corporations are also not people. They are organizations. They are alternative governments. They are not democratically elected and they represent a threat to our duly elected government. Not a threat any more really, but a clear and present danger. They own the press and the majority of our elected representatives. Our Constitution wasn't built for this.
3
Wonderful piece. I must cloud its wisdom with my own less brilliant insight. The duality expressed by rich and poor is like a lot of dualities in that its appeal to the imagination is greater than its faithfulness to the truth. Our upper middle class rather than our plebs is the rival class to the oligarchs. Till the last few election cycles, the UMC has owned the allegiance of most of the less affluent. As a result, perhaps, the UMC has done as well during this period of growing income inequality as have the oligarchs, while their control over everything except commerce has been stunningly, conspicuously greater. Most obviously, the UMC controls immigration by the less affluent into its own ranks. It and not the oligarchy then appears as the agent of inequality. Yet the thinkers to whom the author appeals are certainly well established within the UMC. How will they struggle with the problem?
Nothing about the rise of American Unions and their decrease over the last two decades under Republican state and federal governments and legislation? Nothing about the rise of the Socialist Labour parties in Europe that fought for a more just income distribution? It's not just the Constitution that falls short in American government and social-political organization. And do not dismiss race based slavery and Jim Crow era - it was unique to America in comparison to (ancient) Europe, America's prosperity and growth was built on it, and it was a huge part and cause of income inequality and systemic and generational poverty among African Americans, which is not the case among voluntary immigrant groups like the Irish, Italians, and Asians.
2
I clearly see the issues. Citizens United is awful. CEO compensation needs to be limited to some multiple of the organization. Inheritance tax never made as much sense as when I just read the words “hereditary aristocracy”. Symptoms of sickness are abound and I yearn for a leader to organize and get behind. Sadly, I wish I was that person so I could start- I’m tired of feeling helpless.
3
Well written and articulated! Thank you.
I am disappointed that in this age where more information is avaiable more easily than ever before, why the opposite is true. More people vote on beliefs than facts. Depth of knowledge on issues is appallingly shallow and misinformation thrives almost as a result of the information glut.
Information can easily be manipulated, designed to spur anger and fear which have a way of disabling higher thought processes.
Looking at the New Deal, FDR must have felt some relief when Huey Long died because he could then continue the hard patient work of empowering "the common man" and take on sources of concentrated economic power. Let us not forget that "every man a king" as promoted by Long was an attempt at demagoguery as much as making America great again is now. Long took care of folks in Louisiana by giving them services, much as the Gracchis gave Roman poor their dole. But it remained about power through demagoguery. Inequality breeds too many dangerous non-solutions. The absence of wisdom in both leaders and voters assures bad outcomes. So the issue is: how do we foment knowledge and wisdom over the alternatives?
1
those "small differences" in means that existed at the nation's founding rise exponentially, like population, unless strongly reined in. The original sin was never rescinded, just let ride.
1
Context is everything especially with a document such as our constitution. Most of our economy is not capitalism now but oligopoly. Will we allow our government to go down the same road?
1
Prospects for the American Constitution, Declaration, Bill of Rights,--American founding values in general--when faced with modern pressures such as overpopulation, technological advancement, Weapons of Mass Destruction, economic jousting between capitalism and socialistic trends (not to mention the ongoing problem of economic inequality)?
Probably at its most simple, America--and France as well--were at inception something of a cutting into the pyramid or triangle shape of previous society (alteration of monarchical form of government). But over the past two hundred years, for all democracy, all attempts at greater equality, all socialistic trends, what has actually occurred is something of an increased pyramid base by increasing population and wider top of pyramid. In short, chart by computer over the decades a fundamental pyramid shape of society and see how much it alters shape over time (increased flattening of pyramid, increased equality between people) and how much the fundamental shape is just restored by increased population, organizational capacity of society, technology, etc.
It appears that in modern America for all founding documents, we just have a larger pyramid, a vast population increasingly controlled by relatively few (oligarchy or new aristocracy) and this pyramid shape reinforced by vast technological/bureaucratic control. Various human pressures appear to constantly defeat ideal founding documents, utopian conceptions, of human society in time.
1
It is not the Constitution that is the problem, it is our limited understanding, our stubborn inability to read the map that the Preamble offers us.
The privileged by race and gender Founders did not write; we the white, Christian men. No, their miraculous opening salvo was; We the people. Their first priority was not to reap profit but to form a more perfect union, to establish Justice and to ensure domestic tranquility. In the same breath that they referred to providing for the common defense, they reminded any reader, in any era, to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty for those alive at that moment, and for their posterity, not for their sons or those divinly anointed.
The Constitution is not limited, we are limited because we do not read, reflect and act on the directions on the sign posts. Not surprisingly, we have lost our way. We will get back on course only if we can understand that the map of the Preamble , the Comstitution, is a Partnership document and not the Domination based system that now threatens our democracy.
188
Well said: our Supreme Court needs to read...then digest your comment...and then go back and undue everything it has done that goes against the spirit specific mandates of the Preamble, the heart and soul of our democratic republic. To wit: Citizen's United, the Second Amendment, the electoral college and a host of others that have, through their willing inability to read, subverted the dreams and mandates that we all say we strive for as Americans.
Well written. Our constitution is a masterpiece and the cornerstone of our nation. Let's not mess with it!
great post. the preamble should be the Democratic theme song. full stop. everyone on board.
In principle, the runaway processes that lead to pernicious
inequality can always be brought under control by appropriately
calibrated taxation. It should always be possible to design a
tax system that accomplishes this without compromising the
incentives inherent in a free-market system. That's the way this
engineer thinks about it, at least. Everywhere I see opportunities
to apply that most elegant of mathematical concepts, optimization.
It could be a liberating concept in the public discourse. What's not
clear is how to place it there.
8
It seems the author misses the one big technical detail - we have the power to replace those who pass laws we disagree with, including the tax rates and business and banking regulations. One of the main reasons the rich keep getting richer is the change in income and corporate tax laws beginning with Reagan. When he took office the highest marginal rate was 70% and when he left office it was almost 50% lower. When you combine that with rising corporate tax rates companies have incentive to give profits to executives and shareholders. When individual tax rates are high and corporate rates are low then companies have incentive to reinvest the money in research, employees and corporate development.
5
Let's take a really long term look at the causes of inequality. In "Wealth and Democracy." Kevin Phillips points out that there is a feedback in economic distribution because as the rich get richer, they use their wealth to get more power. They then use their power to get more wealth and so on. This process has been going on for centuries.
In feudal times, nobles kept an army of thugs called knights to extort money from the peasants and merchants. They then used the money to hire more knights.
Today, the Rich use their money to buy politicians who then pass laws and appoint judges who get more money to the Rich. Rinse and repeat, See Citizens United.
There seems to be a tipping point where this process becomes impossible to reverse. When inequality becomes bad enough, the country soon goes down the tubes. {hillips gives several examples, e.g. the 18th century decline of the Dutch Republic. Chrystia Freeland used 14th century Venice to illustrate this process in a Times article, but history is replete with other examples.
According to Phillips, the great success of America has been that before the tipping point was reached, something has always happened that reversed the flow of money upwards, e.g. the rise of unions, FDR's reforms.
Will that happen this time?
1
Unfortunately the wisest patriots who might do much to save our country from the ravages of inequality are not to be found in the current majority of the Supreme Court. As that bare majority showed with its Citizens United and Shelby decisions, it is more dedicated protecting a fading political party that champions the perquisites of the political donor class.
16
Is our Constitution really so limited? Or is the issue its interpretation--an interpretation increasingly purchased by multimillionaire political donors?
Once upon a time money wasn't deemed "free speech." Once upon a time no one would have dreamed of arguing that the First amendment swallows up all business regulation, giving businesses the right to say or do anything in the name of "freedom." But that is the current push in Constitutional litigation by the libertarian Cato Institute and the network of other think tanks supported by the Koch brothers and other top league conservative donors.
Those same donors are also throwing immense amounts of money into state legislature elections to assure Republican control of the drawing--and often gerrymandering--of Congressional districts. That not only assures a tilt in their favor in the House, it also gives them the possibility of assuring Republican control of presidential elections via state laws--such as those proposed in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia--to allocate electoral votes via Congressional district.
The framers of our Constitution assumed that the Senate would confirm Supreme Court justices who would apply and interpret it with intellectual integrity, without the influence of partisan politics. If elections can be bought, there is nothing but the personal and intellectual integrity of nonpartisan Supreme Court justices standing between us and the purchase of absolute power.
19
Nor could they foresee, in businesses, the replacement of human labor with machine labor. As technology continues to advance, and businesses continue to squeeze out labor costs to the point where no humans are employed in creating goods and services and none but the investment class have the money to purchase them.
20
Its not the goods and services that the rich take up, it is the property in the good places. They hog the coastline so you cannot see the ocean have to pay to see a little sliver of it or other big water access that they control. If we have a revolution, I want to see land redistribution.
2
If that happens the robots will be useless because there wouldn't be enough rich people to keep them profitable.
Within the enumerated powers specified by the Constitution, the founders gave future leaders of the United states a broad mandate and flexible power to address unforeseen developments that is denied by many who deem themselves 'strict constructionists'. The first enumerated power includes this: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States...' NOTE that congress is mandated to provide for the general welfare of the country, a vague admonition which can certainly be construed to include education, healthcare, and the maintenance of a decent standard of living for all its citizens.
As Sitaraman points out, the severe and worsening effects of the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few is negatively impacting the general welfare of the many. However, he is incorrect in asserting the Constitution doesn't provide a framework for rectifying the situation. What the Constitution lacks is a mechanism to insure that Congress has the will and wisdom to act. To promote this purpose, that Congress acts to protect the public, the Constitution gives citizens the power of the vote, with the implied stipulations that citizens educate themselves and then get to the polls. We find ourselves bedeviled by the onset of plutocracy not because the Framers or Congress have let us down. WE have let ourselves down.
34
Yes and a certain portion of the "commoners", if let free rein, will spoil and desecrate that which is beautiful and decent, in essence hogging it for their own careless purposes. We need institutional control as well as sharing of the bounty.
2
While I agree that voters share responsibility for what is now happening to our country, it is worth remembering that the election process is now seriously hampered by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and a deliberately degraded educational system that all function to allow ignorance, racism, and misogyny to dominate at the polls. We MUST address all these fronts--and eliminate foreign interference (obviously)-- before we can be assured of once again having a Congress and Chief Executive with the strength of character to honor their oath to the Constitution.
1
The states have to stop sending anti-federalists to Washington to perpetuate unequal protection of law.
1
"Our Constitution was not built for a country with so much wealth concentrated at the very top..."
capitalism was the intended economic engine of the new country...certainly those given the freedom to pursue their fortunes under constitutional protection would be mindful of their obligations to contribute to the preservation of the system that guaranteed those protections..
alas, not.
most of the profiteering class are not mindful of anything past their profits, rather exploiting than preserving, textbook bad faith.
the destruction of any business where profit taking far exceeds investment, is virtually certain.
16
This article produces yet another example of a professor twisting meanings and interpretations to match his political beliefs.
The critical reason for the Constitution was to hold the states (newly created from colonies) together most importantly in defense, commerce, and several other issues. In delegating authority to the General government, it also assured the States that their authority in all other areas of governance would not be overridden by the General government.
Read the anti-federalist papers to see this critical part of the debates. Read Patrick Henry's objections. Read the First amendment. CONGRESS shall make no law... Most (but of course not all) of today's income/wealth/social concerns have arisen as the General government usurped its delegated authority. National banking is a case in point.
Moreover, the figures cited about wealth and incomes depend on so many determinants that any conclusions without deep analyses yield anemic validity. Consider three: CPI ( a woefully inadequate measure), household size and demographics), and immigration (difficult to enhance the temperature of a pot of water when cold water persistently poured in).
As a final point, if "inequality" is viewed from a consumption and standard of living lens, much different perspective arises. To the degree "inequality" is to be understood, analysts must look far beyond those oft cited gini coefficients.
11
The people who led the Revolution were among the wealthiest in the British Empire. G.W. was the Warren Buffet of his day. The Stamp Act notwithstanding, American colonists were paying less taxes than the people of England. But the rich never have enough: hence the Revolution. Hence an electoral college system designed to give out-sized representation to less populous states. And now, with the GOP controlling all branches of gov't (plus 2/3 of state legislatures), and with accelerating voter suppression & gerrymandering (led by GOP), our doom is all but certain.
31
Our Constitution does not assume that Americans will remain relatively equal economically. It provides a structure for government that enables wise, and not so wise, men and women to govern. During the 50's we had greater equality than we have today. We had a tax code that made the accumulation of great wealth much more difficult than today. We had antitrust laws that were enforced to prevent one or two corporations from dominating a market. We had labor laws that enable worker to organize and prevented the top 1% from reaping 80% of the productivity gains. We had an FCC that enforced a fairness code. The Constitution provided the framework for the government of the 50's.
The issue is not the Constitution. The issue is the political leadership of our nation. We no longer have an FDR, an LBJ or a Louis Brandeis. We need political leaders in the Congress, the White House and on the Supreme Court who understand the importance of economic opportunity and equality. We have not had that for over 30 years. Bill Clinton, the Bushes, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama lacked FDR's vision. John Roberts is no Brandeis. Mitch McConnell is not even a Alben Barkley. Paul Ryan is no Sam Rayburn.
Throughout our history we have had long periods with lackluster political leadership that favored oligarchy -- the last third of the 19th century and the 1920's for example. We have been in such a malaise since 1980.
54
Excellent summary of recent American political and economic history as it relates to the issue at hand.
5
Actually, the House of Representatives did have originally have a strong populist element. If we had maintained the original representation ratio, it would now be much closer to the average voter. Having one Representative per 750,000 virtually guarantees that being a Congressman will be a relatively important and high-level position, which was not part of the original intent.
15
"the institutions and laws of the country would need to be adapted, and that task would require “all the wisdom of the wisest patriots."
I think the major obstacle is our patriotic belief that Capitalism is the backbone of our value system, rather than simply being the best and most efficient way to produce goods and services. The problem with this is that the Capitalism's value system is all about maximizing profits by whatever means, not about sustaining the vibrancy of the the nation.
This is not a criticism of Capitalism, but a criticism of the government organs that are responsible for sustaining the vibrancy of the nation. And just about every politician that runs for office promises, in different ways, to do just that. Then, after being elected, doesn't, especially if it means stepping on the ubiquitous toes of the private sector.
One of the most serious challenges we now face is the outsourcing of middle class talents and expertise to robots and their AI enhanced intellect, i.e. autonomous automation. For example, some tech companies are projecting the displacement of millions of truck drivers (making good wages) by way of self driving trucks. The wisest patriots (with extra thick skins) will be needed to alter the outcome, or even open the debate.
20
What's missing in both the article and the comments is any suggestion as to how to amend the constitution. Here's one. Make it clear that organizations - corporations, associations, etc. - are not persons and do not have the rights that persons have.
Here's another. Establish a mechanism to provide specifically for a wealth tax.
50
Good point.
What should be done?
Good suggestions too.
The topic addressed is perhaps too big for a short essay, so perhaps it would be worthwhile to pick up Ganesh Sitaraman's book. Off the cuff, I would comment that the underlying synthesis of his thesis seems sloppily argued. It seems to roughly state: the American constitution has done a pretty solid job over almost 200 years, but given a recent trend (spanning 1-2 decades, a hiccup in time comparatively) this document should be discarded. The main reason it has failed of late is because it ignores the possible effects of economic inequality in formulating how insitutions should be structured. Other constitutions which did so (Roman, British) have fared better historically.
Whether any of this is try or not, there are good arguments for why it is a bad idea to simply discard a constitution. I'll give a simple example: I was recently driving in England in a rental vehicle with a stickshift gear. I managed to survive but it was a very educational experience: I concluded (perhaps incorrectly) that a left-handed stickshift is probably more apt to lead to accidents than a right one. Also, I realized that despite this, it would be next to impossible to change the British system, because it is "frozen in" (inertial). Similarly with a 200+ year old consitution and institutions built atop. Tinker around the edges, attempt to make up for peculiarities, little more. The French Revolution was so bloody because there was no other way to "reboot" the system with a new constitution.
2
He doesn't say we should discard the Constitution – rather, we need to change it and adapt new laws better-suited to the situation (with direct election of senators and anti-trust regulations as examples from the last time this was done.) The professor's point is that if we *don't* change it, then we run the risk of it being weakened/pushed aside/obliterated by oligarchy, demagoguery, or revolution. The American Constitution is very well equipped to handle modification; it was modified before it was even ratified, with the Bill of Rights. That's the most important aspect of its governing creed that our new government got right, in my opinion: ensuring that it could and would be a living document.
7
If there were on reform of the Constitution that could do the most to address inequality - of power as well as wealth, it would be an amendment that required all businesses to live by a charter in which they were governed by a stakeholder democracy of all - workers, consumers, suppliers, the general public as well as investors - who had a stake in that business or industry, and for workers to elect management and vote on hiring, firing, promotion and how to organize the work and workplaces. Real economic democracy. Any income differences would then be the result of negotiated processes by people with a voice in how organizations in our economy are run, not treated as though they were natural or neutral results of the market.
4
I believe that the original colonial Massachusetts law governing incorporation required any group of people applying for a corporate identity to prove to the governor and council that their corporation would benefit the people at large, not merely themselves.
10
In some ways I find the essay to be nonsense. It says re the Constitution, "It was written on the assumption that America would remain relatively equal economically. " Well, yes, but it excluded from that economic equality so very many - women, people of color, but also white males who were not land owners, i.e., the poor. So the 'equality' the 'founders' saw was limited to a very small and select group. We could have nice equality today, too, if we simply cordoned off large swaths of the population.
Perhaps we need a new constitution; certainly we must move towards better equality, but the founders' vision of equality wasn't at all what it seems to be.
30
A new constitution? Such heresy! It might put us in danger of a country with true equality for all.
People of color were categorized in two ways, geographically. In New England there were very few slaves left--most black people were free, and some black farmers were among the Minutemen who fought at Bunker (Breed's) Hill. In the south there were few free black people. America has been divided over race from the very colonial beginnings.
The author is spot on. A myth expounded by modern-day conservatives and the GOP is that the founding fathers opposed any redistribution of wealth as a violation of the "natural right to property" (see, e.g., the 'Tea Party' movement). A quick search through the writings of the founding fathers on the National Archives website shows that this couldn't be more wrong. Struck by the condition of the laboring poor in France, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following in a 1785 letter to James Madison:
"Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour & live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation."
You read that correctly -- Thomas Jefferson believed the unemployed poor who could not find a job should be provided one by the state. Who knew the author of the Declaration of Independence had so much in common with the "Bernie" wing of the Democratic party? The left should take the founding fathers back from the right, as their false appeals to the authority of the founding fathers has for decades exploited the patriotism of otherwise decent persons and turned them into GOP loyalists.
44
Seems to me you take some liberty with the interpretation of Thomas Jefferson's letter. He mentions that the problem of poverty must be addressed, that unemployment must be solved, but he most decidedly does not state that " the unemployed poor who could not find a job should be provided one by the state"!
8
This article refers to the Constitution. The "founders"--and more importantly, the Americans of that day, held all varieties of views from Thomas Paine to George Washington to Alexander Hamilton to the dozens (perhaps hundreds who wrote political pamphlets and newspaper opinion pieces.
However, consider this potential clause of the Constitution: "The General government shall determine the appropriate level of income, wealth, and property that shall be held by any person or persons. When deemed excessive, such income, property, or wealth shall be taken from persons so designated and given to others such that the Nation's gini coefficient shall not exceed .3.
Would that clause been approved then--or now? Of course not. Any arguments to the contrary fail.
2
I suspect that the methods that Jefferson refers to were indentured servitude, slavery, or the Poor House. Is there any record of him actively, concretely, handing out free land to any person, male or female, who was an "unemployed poor"?
2
The American Revolution was in many ways itself a class war, in which an affluent American middle class initiated a civil war over the economic constraints created by a newly-supreme "British" Parliament. Average people were pretty much unaffected by the "Intolerable Acts" and felt that the colonial system represented them well.
The author's claim that westward expansion was the economic equalizing force also ignores the fact that westward expansion required slavery, which rested on the false assumption that westward-moving folk would breed their own agricultural labor force to compete with the deeply entrenched slave-owning aristocracy of the East.
Egalitarianism arguably had nothing to do with the US Constitution -- merely the historic pattern of millennia in which a rising economic power resorted to violence to wrest some power from the established powers.
10
The US revolution was led by a coalition of southern slavers, frontier land-grabbers, and New England mercantilists.
The question is not whether the constitution can survive, but whether we the people have the courage to change our course which is bent now upon self immolation. The constitution is after all only a document, a set of common understandings and guiding principles. It has only the power we wish to give it. Why has Donald Trump not been impeached? He has given full evidence from the violation to the emoluments clause to colluding with a foreign power to undermine the 2016 election which put him in the White House. The answer is clear. We are led by weaker men, and women, who rather than stand up for the constitution cower in fear of some perceived base of support for Donald Trump.
The country has not been so at odds since the 1850's nor more at risk. This is a time that tries our souls. But our hearts are strong. I believe in the strength of the people to see clearly the evil before us. I have to believe this, for to believe otherwise would be to despair. And I will not despair. I have seen the dedication in faces during the Women's March and in the response the Charlottesville. I have seen it in the courage of those who call Trump out for what he is, a white supremacist, a lier, and a fraud. And I have seen it in the grace of all who responded to Harvey and Irma and wildfires and everyday needs in their communities. The constitution is only a guideline, we the people are the way.
33
Steve, how right you are.
Perhaps the US was less class stratified than England or France in 1787, but Professor Sitaraman appears to overstate the distinction. If you read Nancy Isenberg's White Trash, you get a pretty clear picture of an America organized by class distinctions even during the colonial period and consistently through our history, with lower class whites kept at bay by keeping the race issue front and center. The Constitution, written and debated primarily by wealthy white men, reflects their concern about popular rule by preventing the direct election of Senators or the President and allowing for limitations on who can vote. These were very major concessions to the oligarchs running the country. So I think it is simply incorrect to argue that the Constitution was not designed for class inequality. However, it proved to be a flexible enough document to allow for change as the country grew and its economy took off. This should not obscure the fact that, except for a few periods in our history, money has always called the shots.
22
In chapter one of Mary Beard's history of ancient Rome, SPQR, she notes how Cicero conducted a persistent public relations campaign to promote himself as consul. There were no newspapers, but Cicero was a rich man and willing to put a lot of slaves to work copying his self-promotional writings, as well as to spend money having these copies lavishly distributed throughout the city.
It is an early example of how the wealthy are able to spread their views, promote their own propaganda, and persuade others to agree with them. If your rivals aren't as rich and consequently have less access to marketing tools, they aren't going to be as successful in spreading their ideas.
Economic systems such as ours function because people believe that the rule of law and the balance of power will continue to be enforced. As we witness our own president defy the courts and challenge the balance of power, as we see more and more media outlets falling into the hands of a few wealthy families like the Mercers and the Murdochs, we also see these same people trying to warp society and the law to favor them, while they seize more wealth and power. This shakes the ordinary citizen's faith in the whole system, leading to the cycle of tyranny and revolution our ancestors tried to escape by leaving Europe.
Looking at it from the long-term perspective, the rich are working against themselves if they keep this up, because it will ultimately take us all to a place where none of us want to be.
27
If one extrapolates the data, that quoted regarding the amount of income flowing to the top, the ratio of CEO income to that of the typical worker increasing more than ten-fold in a few decades, and our progressively stagnating upward mobility, it appears unsustainable. I believe for the first time in my life that our society could actually destabilize.
Add something else the Founders likely did not anticipate: an ignoramus and sociopath in the Oval Office, and our nation is imperiled indeed.
40
Mr. Sitaraman, surprisingly, failed to acknowledge the beginning of the end of any semblance of equality here in the United States.
The last nail in the coffin of economic equality for the 99% happened when SCOTUS ruled on Citizens United. The bloodless coup was complete.
Who among us can compete with millions, likely billions, of dollars used to curry the favors of our Washington electorate? (As long as, of course, the money isn't given DIRECTLY to those pimps. Supreme Court said so.)
We'd better get used to the fact that the conglomerates and corporations (comprised of, and ruled by, the 1%) steer our government according to their needs for profits, not the Peoples' need for livable wages and health insurance.
And it will not get better. Supreme Court said so.
128
The country started with the inequality of rich, land-owners and indentured servants and slaves. That's our beginnings. That's what the Constitution was written around.
The founding fathers all had deep reservations about the 'mob' (democracy). They believed in an aristocratic leadership of proper gentlemen; with a semblance of democracy including property-owning, white, men.
Dr. Sitaraman is on the money about our greatest challenge as a nation - equality: the great unsaid. Even the NY Times is guilty of avoiding the issue; due possibly to it's reliance on the elite to help pay for things (such is our world). So, good to see real, deep truth said. Huzzah! (as they might say 230 years ago)
Until compassion is king, love is our anchor and government our honorable guide, we will continue to fall. The rich give us sport and calamity and celebrity and binge-watching. We're lost in a seductive fog of commercialism and right-wing veils of talk-radio and fake issues. We don't talk equality, we don't face poverty, we don't love.
So, glad to read this. Glad that the Times printed it. This is the big issue (along with climate change). Black lives do matter. All lives do matter. Getting rid of poverty matters; so, let's do that.
We are so capable, so adaptable, so gifted as a people. If we can stop creating systems that reward the few (who in turn buy lobbyists, lawyers and politicians to 'represent' their 'interests'), then we can have the 'more perfect union'. We can. We can.
21
In reply to ttrumbo: Spot on comment, Thank you.
The query, ultimately presented, is what do the rest of us do? We will never be courted like these men. As long as their lobbyists purchase laws and the Supreme Court continues unabated as the cheering handmaiden of the wealthy, American prosperity will be no different for decades. The current President simply dwells on his daily ratings. There is no greater good left to summon until, we the people, begin to elect ourselves. These kings will never depart the arena of power, and will continue to own this century, but we must try to regain some economic power, or our children will be devoured by younger and leaner plutocracies across the world, dying in more endless wars in the process.
13
There should be limits on how the very rich can spend their money. With enough money, one can control the airwaves, control all the media in a large area, dictate to politicians dependent on constant donations, and generally force one's personal beliefs (political, economic and religious) on the nation. Even foreigners with enough money can purchase so much of a city's real estate that the native non-wealthy citizens are driven out in a desperate search for affordable housing (note Vancouver, B.C. and London, England).
15
Your Constitution, this magnificent piece of political talent, needs substantial amendments. It makes no sense to consider it like a religious text in spite of its obvious obsolescence. Most, if not all constitutions in the Western world have been amended several times to adapt to social and economic changes. The sight of USA legislators and judges talking about your Constitution as if it was the Bible makes any civilized looking forward human being sad to the extreme. The result of your Constitution is President Trump and aberrations such as the glorification of violence through the right to carry weapons as if you were cowboys of the XIX century. So, please, engage in some intelligent debate on how to change your Constitution, keeping the good things and at the same time updating it to present times. Are you brave and courageous enough to do so?
33
Highly doubtful.
Income distribution in a capitalist society behaves like global warming: there is a tipping point where the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the few goes completely out of control. The rich become richer and richer, as they use their power and influence in a positive feedback loop that makes them vastly richer and more powerful - and the rest of us are left behind, if not outright poorer. I call it "runaway inequality".
This is what is happening in the world today. The oligarchs at the top have the means to influence government, trade and tax policies at global level to benefit their wealth accumulation. They are able to gain control of most sources of information to the public and they can influence democratic elections. They are able to shape public opinion into believing whatever suits them.
Among the richest elites there are good people who are driven by higher, nobler ideals than sheer enrichment and power - just look at the Gates foundation, the Zuckerbergs, Elon Musk and other like them, who are actively trying to promote scientific progress and the well-being of humanity. But the majority of the oligarchs are parasites dedicated only to their own power and wealth, who are destroying the fabric of civil society. As recently as 40 years ago they were heavily taxed and their power was kept in check by a strong democratic state, in the USA as in the rest of the western world. It's time to reverse the clock on the Reagan era and all the damage it did.
793
The Gates, Zukerbergs, Musk and others are among the wealthiest people in the world, and it's likely that middle-class and working-class Americans donate a larger percentage of their income to charities than these billionaires.
3
You don't understand, today with machines that can do much of what unskilled labor can do better and cheaper of course capital will be much more valuable than unskilled labor. Not to mention globalization.
Don't be fooled by Gates and Zuckerberg. They used underhanded tactics to wrest their vast wealth from the hands of others, and are now trying to assuage that guilt by giving a fraction of it away. While making sure we all see them do it.
The Constitution states:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
It should be noted that an adult paid so poorly that they must work 2 or 3 jobs to provide for their family is effectively in a state of involuntary servitude to an unjust system.
43
The author makes Hamilton sound like a wise man. Yet Hamilton was the principal motivator of making this country an oligarchy (something Jefferson was well-aware of). Hamilton is arguably the great villain of American history.
5
“...all the wisdom of the wisest patriots.”
The missing link, as it were; the problem at hand. It is not that we do not have wise individuals. It is that we do not have wise individuals who look out for the Public-at-large, rather than the small interest groups. Those groups are not minorities based on race, gender, etc., but they are groups based upon wealth and privilege.
And the individuals who could, who in fact have the power and the obligation, to ensure that the Public is at the forefront of legislative thought and "wisdom" is the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is wise enough to know that the survival of the USA is not a game of politics, of Us vs. Them, rich vs. poor, or the like. It is an equal application of law (for all) based upon and understanding of the Constitution, of its meaning and intent.
The Supreme Court is the balance of law, yes, but also to act as arbitrators of morality and fairness, which is not necessarily "law," but may be outside of law.
Veil of ignorance. Rawls. Certainly this is still mandatory reading for lawyers, no?
4
The constitution wasn't designed for the election of people who refuse to carry out the duties of the office. Too many have preferred to shut down the government rather than legislate. Obama did his duty and nominated a justice to fill the vacancy when Justice Scalia died, but McConnell refused to do his duty to discuss that nomination. In these and other ways the constitution is not appropriate to the world of today.
“What is surprising about the design of our Constitution is that it isn’t a class warfare constitution.” Really? With the Electoral College, designed to protect slave owners? As for today's inequality, the wealthiest 1% have inordinately more than the lowest 50%. But that 50% have much more than their counterparts did centuries ago. “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” and a lot of money is spent to boost our envy of the rich and the beautiful.
If a working democracy is possible today (post-Comey, post-Putin, it is not workable!) it’s because the concerns of Madison and T.R. have been heeded. But there is no reliable sign that they are heeded. We’re in quick-sand of greed and ignorance, and the more we struggle, the deeper we go.
9
The call to scrap or re-write the constitution, so often justified on economic grounds, is often a disguised effort by the ultra conservative right to replace a document that has been interpreted to allow same sex marriage, abortion, equal rights for women and minorities and so on. These "re-writers" have no interest in furthering "the Rights of Man" but rather in furthering the rights of MEN - men who would push us back into a time of religious, white male dominance. Scratch an advocate of scraping the constitution and often you will find a "Christian Reconstructionist" or his kin of similar mind, who has cloaked himself in the garment of economic reform or even of class struggle.
6
You are mistaken. "...equal rights for women.." was thrown out back in the early 80's by Reagan and the Religious Right. There is no Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution. Women are limited to one Constitutional inclusion: They can vote. That's it. You are confusing a Federal Constitutional Amendment with the "Titles" or the Constitutions of the States, those that HAVE stated that their female citizens have equality with men - but do not confuse "State's Rights" with "Federal Inclusion", for they are not the same, as proved by the example of the Federal Government (and the States that have never installed equality for its female, tax-paying citizens) interfering with women's access to reproductive control for their own bodies. Note that there are no controls on male's reproductive rights. That is legal because women are second-class citizens, a form of Jane Crow laws.
2
"With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death.""
https://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/10/estate_tax_and_foundin...
7
Adam Smith has been blamed for this right-libertarian approach for far too long. Smith sought to encourage enlightened self-interest, not endless greed. Enlighted self-interest meant taking care of the commons as well as your own property. Smith warned us against collusion to control markets because it distorts the "invisible hand of the market" just as there is no tooth fairy or Wizard of Oz." The Creation of these psychotic OCD captains of industry are using perversions of Adam Smith's theories to build walls and take over the economy. I mean the global economy. Today's captain of imdustry wins by shipping jobs out of the US, while transferring the filth with the workers. It's called externalizing costs. Therefore, economic activity produces waste, and the waste to significant amount must be foreseen, accounted for, and neutralized to achieve a fair clean distribution of waste product instead of a leaking dam on a sludge pond taxpayers will love us to stay.
My father asked me agree with him. But I couldn't reconcile the Pretty pictures he painted for the kids who came to foster homes, we will work very hard to make you think is shonmas
Yes, Jefferson. and Adam Smith...Too bad that the elimination of entail and primogeniture, by breaking up great estates, opened up the breaking up of slave communities and families through sale which previously was prevented by entail. Jefferson was well aware of it. He even tried to redistribute land in small lots to landless farmers in order to build up that dreamed of middling class of yeomen, the very bones and sinewes of the republic. But he failed. Democratically, in Virginia the legislature voted against, idem with public elementary school. Idem with preserving slavery. But this would take us elsewhere, to discuss the workings of democracy. As for demagogues, ever since Antiquity, philosophers have been warning against them being acclaimed and installed by the populace. I thought the Electoral College was a tool devised to avoid the election of a demagogue in such precise way, among other things (like favoring the slaveowners beneficiaries of the 3/5th clause). Well, I must have misjudged....or misread the text. From Europe Trump looks like a nightmare that the Constitution itself cannot prevent : the caricature even of the feared demagogue acclaimed and democratically voted up (like Hitler, or Erdogân) by the 'populace' . There is a strange atmosphere of tragicomedie while waiting, or simply hoping (probably,hélas, in vain) to see the national disgrace eventually leave the premises.
I do not think that the cause of inequality in the USA should be searched in the Costitution or in the foundation of the state. What is more important, and surprising from an european viewpoint, is the lack of political parties based on working classes, and of strong trade unions. These two factors, weaker in the USA that in Europe, have not been able to counteract the spontaneous tendency to inequality of a capitalistic economy and society.
7
Part of the issue I believe, is that America is in the midst of a basic change on how we earn our living. We were first an agricultural economy, then a manufacturing economy. We are in the middle of changing from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge based economy.
Any time there is a change of this sort, people are displaced, however this time a large group has been displaced and combined with other factors, it is causing a lot of resentment. In the other change it was possible for farmers or their kids to move to the cities and work in the factories. This time the barrier to entry is too high for the vast majority of the displaced. You are not going to take a 50 yr old auto worker and teach him /her computer coding or make him / her into a nurse.
When the barrier to entry is combined with the abandonment of the middle class by the political establishment to chase big money, you have the so called 'White Anger' that led to the Trump revolution. He spoke to the displaced and said, "Only I can solve your problems, I will make America (meaning you) Great Again." It was water to a dying man, of course they grasp it. No one else was paying attention.
This is the issue, the economy is move on and the displaced have no place in it. The only way they can have an effect is to vote. They have at least two more elections left. We had better find a way to solve this issue or the Trump Revolution will look like a walk in the park.
6
1. "Our Constitution doesn’t mandate that only the wealthy can become senators [or Presidents]." No, it is Citizens United that mandates that. Thanks, US Supreme Court. 2. "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Louis D. Brandeis. The reason why we are where we are today as a nation is that, at least for the last 37 years, the national Democratic Party in the US has been just as happy as the Republican Party to have this concentration of wealth. All the Democrats ever asked for was "a piece of the action"; they had no fundamental objection to the gross levels of inequality, so long as they and their friends benefited from it. In short, it took two parties to destroy the equality that is the predicate to the American experiment in democracy. Truly, the Republicans couldn't have done it without the acquiescence and complicity of the Democrats. FDR is rolling in his grave.
401
Brilliant: "All the Democrats ever asked for was 'a piece of the action'; they had no fundamental objection to the gross levels of inequality, so long as they and their friends benefited from it. In short, it took two parties to destroy the equality that is the predicate to the American experiment in democracy."
I registered as a Democrat at age 18, after history and civics classes. I asked my father, a skilled construction worker, the difference between Republicans and Democrats. He said, "The simplest explanation is the Republicans are for the rich and the Democrats are for the poor". That was then.
Look at Democrats now: multi-millionaires who became wealthy because they were politicians: both Clintons, Al Gore, Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton didn't see anything wrong with reaping millions from speeches to Wall Street investment bankers. In hindsight, HRC admits it was 'bad optics'. "I didn’t think many Americans would believe that I’d sell a lifetime of principle and advocacy for any price,” she writes in her new book. “That’s on me.”
Many American voters put together the Clintons' "dead broke" on leaving the White House with buying a home in NY for $1 million and a second home in DC for $2 million with NAFTA and TPP and the Clinton Foundation and saw a lifetime of accumulation, not advocacy.
Same for Barack Obama with week after week with billionaires and an $8 million dollar house.
Like my father, Harry Truman is rolling over in his grave.
2
Please note, too, that Brandeis opposed a mega-central government that exerted power over every nook and cranny of American life. If you refer to Brandeis for your support, at least quote enough to reveal what he actually believed.
Reagan taught us that greed is good.
Clinton taught us that sex is good.
Trump is showing us our teaching errors.
1
Our country has gotten to the point of unequal representation, and we need to make changes for fairer representation in our national government. First of all the Electoral College has got to go. It is unfair for a person's vote in one state to count up to five times as much as a person's vote in another state. Each citizen needs to fill that his or her vote counts, which doesn't happen in the Electoral College.
Secondly, we need to get rid of gerrymandering and the ability of a political party to control legislative districts. Have it done by computer with a bipartisan oversight committee, in case the computer overlooks something.
Thirdly, we need to get rid of voter suppression tactics, like the completely unnecessary Voting Commission put together by Trump headed by an unethical Republican.
Finally, we need to make our voting systems a top priority. They need to have a paper trail and be impervious to manipulation. We need control of the systems to be outside of a political party. We need to spend the money necessary to have an excellent system that will stand up to audits and other checks.
It's hard to have a strong democracy if people lack faith in the integrity of their country's voting system. So far, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem too concerned about correcting problems in our voting process. The Trump administration can't even agree that there was Russian interference in our elections!
10
Ironically, maybe our founding ideals contain the seeds of today’s inequality, which exceeds other advanced nations who are also capitalist democracies. America wanted small national govt, states rights, weak regulations, low taxes, and a philosophy of individual responsibility, ambition and self reliance as the measure of a person’s worth. We weren't European peasants ruled by barons.
But small govt can go too far, leaving citizens unprotected by the govt they elect to represent them. This opens the way for corporate power to exploit and dominate.
Only after the Great Depression did federal govt actions to help citizens gain support with FDR. And later with LBJ's great society and Medicare and civil rights.
Then big govt became the problem not the solution under Reagan.
The Citizens United decision legalized corporate election megadonations as ‘free speech’ protected by the 1st amendment. Corporations use the excuse of American ‘freedom’.
The country seems to lack the means to fight this, and to re-assert the influence of the citizen majority over their own govt.
5
Agreed: the country's political leadership should recognize economic inequality as a threat to the country's very viability and begin the tough slog of adapting our founding documents accordingly. This will take a long time, but guess what? The press can adapt RIGHT NOW. Recognize that the "business world" is not at all separate from the overall life of the nation. Apply to corporate leaders the same attention and scrutiny you currently reserve for government officials. Examine how business decisions and policies relieve or exacerbate inequality, and editorialize with praise or condemnation as needed. Move news on corporate America from the "Business" page to Section A, all the time. The founding fathers would be proud.
4
How societies perceive class is so variable according to time in history. Our Founders set up a constitution designed to repudiate rule by hereditary monarchs and aristocrats in England and old Europe. We were free, not serfs or peasants. But they had no idea of universal voting even by all white men.
Only men of substantial property could vote. This shows their attitude toward the masses. Then those with less property, later no property could vote. It all took time. Most people were farmers, not needing much education, and even universal high school education only came much later.
What did contribute to the start of American prosperity was the Homestead Act in the 19th C when the govt gave land away to citizens to cultivate. Coupled with westward expansion, meanng Indians in reservations.
Contrast with today--- millions of our jobs have been sent off shore, removing means of making a living. Our voting rights are suppressed. Our influnce over govt is weakened by big money. Our education is underfunded, and our college tuition is a profit center, causing big debt for grads who are seeking jobs at salaries that haven't risen in decades.
Seeing this, our Foundes would be dumbfounded.
4
It's not our constitution that's the problem, it's the distortions made to our constitution by small individuals who have focused on immediate political gains at the expense of a nearly timeless compact. Is it surprising that economic inequality has dramatically increased in tandem with the rapid growth of the administrative state? We've had plenty of times when poorly educated, impoverished immigrants arrived on our shores without experiencing the huge gap between upper and lower income levels that are experienced today. It wasn't campaign finance nor other bogeymen. What's changed? The biggest change has been the shift of regulatory power from states to federal and federal to administrative agencies. Added layers of expense via regulation have dramatically affected mid sized and smaller businesses, much more so than at any previous time. The solution of more government at the top to solve inequality will add to our ills, not help us. Want s better functioning government and less inequality? Get rid of centralized control in DC and send more responsibility back to the states. A mandate for Monsanto is manageable but for the corner grocer a disaster. The result is few, ever bigger international businesses dominating our business and political life.
76
Employees of "corner grocery stores" need safety regulations and protection from being exploited by not being paid for all their work time. No employee should be exempt from regulations designed to prevent dumping of dangerous waste products into public water supplies or released into the air. Monsanto-sized employers may have a larger impact in specific locations, but the small and medium-size employers add up to a larger effect on the national environment and a larger total number of vulnerable employees (working off the clock with no SS or disability protection) especially those working with dangerous equipment that is not maintained or is obsolete. If small businesses cannot protect their employees or the general public by meeting minimum codes of safety, they are not competing on a fair level with businesses that are ethical and responsible.
Businesses succeed or fail for many reasons; the expense of meeting reasonable regulations is rarely more than an excuse given by those who were not good enough to succeed.
No one wants to eat or shop in a business which doesn't meet health codes. No one wants to buy a product that injures children. No one wants to pay for a product that isn't what it claims to be. No one wants a home with plumbing leaks, roofs that leak, floors that buckle. No one wants car that doesn't run. No one wants to be an employee injured by a tool that was dangerous. Regulations for all prevent these problems as much as possible.
2
But hasn't the increase in inequality correlated with deregulation?
2
Do you trust Alabama to act fairly towards all its citizens? Really? Or Mississippi or South Carolina? These, and other, states historically favor one race over all others; therefore, to install and maintain justice, the federal government must be involved: Kids can't play nice together without supervision; but they're good kids when guided.
1
Professor Sitaraman is mistaken. The Framers were very concerned about class differences, income disparity, and a potential tyranny of the common majority. James Madison wrote about the "danger" of the "leveling spirit" and about building "necessary fences" between the common people and the affluent. The U.S. Senate was designed specifically to create a further barrier between classes . Senators were elected by state legislators,not simply property owning white males. That created an additional "fence". The Senators term of office was for 6 years, not two years, as was the case in the House. Senators had to be 30 years old and a citizen for 9 years as opposed to the 25 years and 7 years in the House, not an insignificant difference in an era or relatively short life spans. Finally 1/3 of the Senate was elected every two years. This gave that institution significantly more stability than the House which could have a complete turnover in membership every two years. Class distinction was an integral part of the Constitution.
9
Mr Sitaraman's OpEd offers a well thought out assessment of the limitations of the US's Constitution in today's multifaceted economy. Yet, he fails to put forth some reasonable solutions. So, here are a few:
Corporations should be forced to die. Just like the people they are suppose to be modeled after, corporations should have a limited life, say 75 to 99 years. This way engorged wealth and outsized influence of corporations can not build up decades after decades.
Corporations shouldn't be taxed, their owners should be. A corporation's earnings, whether distributed or not, should be attributed to every notional and fractional shareholder at the end of each year. This would be an accounting nightmare but it would have the salutary impact of severely limiting the unproductive churn that is Wall Street trading.
All forms of income should be treated equally. That would mean earnings, dividends, capital gains, inheritances, etc would all be taxed at the same rate. Then whether that rate was 40% - or 50% or 25% or 15% - would need to be worked out by Congress and the President. This would correct the bias towards capital wealth so ingrained in the tax code.
These are just a few common sense policy corrections that could be made within the existing framework of the Constitution. These would all go a long way to restoring economic equilibrium here in the US.
17
The economic organization of society has a relative independence of its political organization. However, they are tied together in reciprocal interaction. The constitution has not prevented the emergence of monopolies (that was the case starting in the late 19th century) or the increasing inequality. These are phenomena intrinsic to capitalist society. However, class warfare has impacted both on the law and the organization of society. The superich have tenDe to benefit from the law and have been influential in their design. On the other hand, socialist parties were important tools to adavance legislation favorable to the working class (no the pejorative plebeians used in this article). One cannot fathom the Social Security and Medicare without the social movements and the socialist parties behind them.
While I agree that current constitutional arrangements can't prevent the formation of monopolies or the rampant inequality we now live in, we cannot trust that the political parties in power would attempt to change that. We need the social movements to organize in independent political organization with demands proper to their working class nature. The socialization of health care and education together with higher taxes on the superich to fund these initiatives should be a good start.
7
Beyond concentration of wealth in major corporations, the rise of trans-national corporations may be the more severe problem. Politicians who represent them (primarily the Republicans) no longer have the national interest at heart. The United States ultimately matters to them only insofar as it maintains a stable business environment. This leads to the incredible situation today, in which public goods like education hardly matter.
9
In a way, Professor Sitaraman offers a clue to the underlying premise of his assertion. In his presentation of the Founders' rationale, the continuing westward expansion of the Republic would act as a safety valve.
As we know, and they knew, this implied both the violent expropriation of lands used by others and, inevitably, an end-point, when there would be no more land to take off the natives. We're well past this point.
But, and this the Professor fails to mention, we find that the rise of democratically empowered demagogues is on the rise everywhere. And this cannot be due to an omission in the US Constitution...
There are, however, similarities. The expansion of rule, which benefited the economies of Europe, to the detriment of natives elsewhere, in Africa, Asia and South-America, has also come to an end. Indeed, the nations at the positive end of globalization are primarily former colonies or 'protectorates' or, at the very least, these countries that managed to adopt and adapt manufacturing practices and technologies and exploit them most effectively, without the drawback of having to tend to a historical build-up of costs. We cannot, reasonably, begrudge them this.
The true drama is unfolding as we speak, though. Economic expansion at the rate we are witnessing, driven by the desire to emulate the West's material success, is hollowing out the planet's ability to sustain humanity. This is likely to cause upheaval on an epic scale. And we're not ready.
12
I don't believe our founders intended a permanent aristocracy and we can ensure that by a near total estate tax. The descendents of the wealthy are already born with a huge advantage and should be given the opportunity to make it on their own.
Our Constitution is exceptional in creating the first secular republic and let's keep that way. Jefferson and Madison would be appalled at a "Nation under God".
21
Not true. They did not want a European aristocracy with titles and such, but they wanted to pass along their wealth to their children. And they did.
The founders bequeathed us a Constitution for the ages. It was intended to be robust to all sorts of changes in our society. And, of course, it provided a means for its own amendment, so that it could be adapted to unforeseen emergencies and crises and social change.
Ganesh Sitaraman offers little or no evidence that it was intended only as a fair-weather Constitution. If the founders (most of them grandees) had wished, they might have written it to limit inequality. Instead, they showed a solicitude for property.
Sitaraman is not alone in being concerned about inequality. But inequality is mostly an obsession of our own contemporary grandees -- like law school professors -- and much less a concern of ordinary Americans. And Madison is plainly referring to poverty -- a real problem -- not inequality. Not only that, but our economy has weathered even more extreme inequality before without imploding.
The Constitution does not enact Professor Sitaraman's political preferences. A greater threat to the Republic than inequality is when our unelected elite -- like our 100% Ivy League Supreme Court -- conveniently mistakes its own priorities for our founders' plain intent.
6
One of the assumptions built into Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and its notion of comparative advantage was that capital (and to a lesser extent, labor) was difficult to move internationally, but goods and services could be freely traded. When capital can be easily transfered and there are few rules or penalties to prevent it from doing so, a race to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions of the commons is the expected result of many models. More importantly, we have been witnessing these effects of globalization for the past several decades.
This free international flow of capital has important implications for patriotism. When business owners and wealthy investors no longer regard their assets as being bound to the fate of their nation, there is less incentive to fight for the betterment of their home country. For the less wealthy, this implies less assurance of opportunity at home, which also works against a sense of patriotism.
Wise or not, I cannot think of many modern Americans who strike me as true patriots. Most of the people I encounter who refer to themselves as "patriots" strike me as more interested in asserting advantages through the political process for the minority of people they identify with rather than taking principled stands for the greater good of the whole nation.
There does not seem to be a pleasing way to bring patriotism back to those most able to better the country. It appears to be an opportune time for tyrants and despots, unfortunately.
32
The question isn't whether we have "wise patriots" who can see past all this mess. It's whether we can all stop fighting with each other long enough to work together to solve problems. St. George and the Dragon this is not. It requires patience and persistence, and working with people that don't agree with you.
That said, the planet is sending us incontrovertible signals that if we don't get it together, the earth itself will reject its apex predator. It's getting late.
32
Hello! The constitution survived the Gilded Age and the roaring 20's; it will certainly survive the current era as well. Beside wealth inequality is being driven by the middle class moving up and poverty is shrinking.
3
Huh? Quite the reverse as far as I know. Please let us in on the secret if you know how to change reality.
12
For example, many skilled jobs are now done for under $20/hour with no benefits, and there's the benefitless "gig economy" that pits owners against workers. Skilled labor used to receive a healthy salary including inexpensive quality health care, paid time off, disability, and retirement benefits.
19
Just because it has does not necessarily mean that it will.
1
I'd go a step further: public campaign financing for all elected reps. until representatives are responsible to the people and not to the money, we will never fulfill the constitutional design.
230
Incumbents win 80% of re-election campaigns. They will be the ones who write the "public financing" rules, and those rules will favor the incumbents. New entrants will have to prove their legitimacy to get any funds, and the incumbents will write the laws to make that virtually impossible.
4
There was public financing in Arizona, for a while. It worked so well that Scalia had to kill it.
1
The rise of Donald Trump was caused very heavily by inequality itself.
Let us not forget the loss of jobs, health, and ultimately hope that drove so many to Trump to begin with.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/opinion/reaching-out-to-the-voters-th...
Over the past 24 years, 16 of them have been ones where a Democrat was in charge. Regardless of whether the Democrats or the GOP have been in charge, middle class America and even more so, poor America, has been losing ground at the expense of the rich.
Today the rich rule everything. They can buy politicians, run for office themselves as Trump has dramatically illustrated, reap most of the capital gains from corporations, and benefit at the expense of the majority.
The article is right. The US Constitution was never built for this. In many ways, poor and middle class America is facing the types of abuses from the wealthy today that its ancestors faced from an oppressive British Empire.
Perhaps the American Founders, themselves some of the wealthiest men in America of that era, never considered the possibility that their descendants of privilege might wage the type of class warfare on their fellow Americans that inspired them to revolt to begin with. Perhaps that is why the US is in its current crisis.
Without such anticipating, there never would have been any defenses built into the US Constitution to defend against an overly aggressive wealthy class. Sadly we are all seeing the impacts.
15
Chris, since 1980 when Reagan was elected, we have enjoyed two periods in which the middle class saw its incomes rise in real terms: the middle six years of Clinton's term and the last two of Obama's both after very modest increases in federal taxation of the wealthy.
148
The glory years of Clinton were derivative to the "peace dividend" that was the direct result of Reagan's foreign affairs management and the result of the economic vitality resulting from the Reagan tax reforms. By the end of Clinton's rule, we were in recession, and our national defense had been decimated.
When Reagan took office we had double digit inflation and double digit unemployment.
Under Obama, the middle class saw decreasing real income, followed by increasing real income. We returned to the real income that existed under Bush because Obama prevented the economy from recovering. Eight years of Obama economic policy resulted in the rich getting richer and the middle class and poor getting poorer.
Under Obama, the taxes collected from the wealthy declined after he raised the rates.
One of the defects of the author's analysis is that when top marginal rates are increased on the wealthy, their reported taxable income declines, and vice versa. The reported increase in the share of income after the Reagan tax rate reductions [which also eliminated many loopholes] did not represent an increase in the amount of income for the wealthy, it increased the amount of income they reported to the IRS and the amount of taxes they paid.
3
Arguments about the relative tax policies of democrat vs republican administrations inevitably wind up with confusing statistics and conflicting numbers. However, it has been abundantly clear that greed has been the motivation for virtually all the policies dear to conservatives since the Regan revolution.
5
Professor Sitaraman is a law professor, and I but a trial lawyer of 37 years; however, I offer my own humble observations.
The Constitution was designed to protect property, and is not a plan for an economic order between citizens or the government as Marx or Stalin had in mind. Under the three-fifths compromise, a slave counted as 60% of a free man so slave-owning states wouldn't be politically overwhelmed in the House of Representatives. FDR, the greatest president of the 20th Century, ordered Japanese into internment camps in 1942, of which 62% were citizens. SCOTUS affirmed FDR's order.
Professor Sitaraman fails to point out that there was no such thing as a relatively prosperous middle class until after WWII, and then only for the next 30 to 40 years relative to the upper economic class, which post-WWII period saw the rest of the world digging out of the rubble of war. The history of economics suggests a prosperous middle class may be a transient occurrence which cannot be guaranteed politically. The comment of "R. Law of Texas", below, is very insightful, where he or she says that the real question is how much "socialism" capitalists will endure.
As Louise Bryant said to Jack Reed (at least in the movie, "Reds"), after he told her he was going to Russia to get the Soviet Comintern's blessing for his workers' party in America, an economic revolution isn't going to happen in America because every American thinks he may be the next to get rich.
58
It isn't accurate at all to say there was "no such thing as a relatively prosperous middle class until after WW II." All you need do is drive around any small town in this country and look at the big, old houses on Main Street to see that there certainly has been a middle class for a long time. My own family has securely held onto middle or upper middle status in this country, generation after generation, for some 300 years.
2
I have to agree, but I think the "I may get rich, too" explanation is not complete. There is strong propaganda in most media that obscures the distance between our ideals and our realities. There are endless circuses for our distraction and amusement, and the food and clothing prices remain affordable for the vast majority. Also, there's the physical difficulty of having enough time and energy left at the end of the work week to organize and be active politcally. The obstacles are daunting, as we witnessed when the sizable movements of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and The Women's March produced no lasting effects due to the lack of an articulated leadership, a specific acheivable agenda, and a serious stategy to achieve their goals (i.e. taxing investment incomes more fairly, reforming sentencing, bail, and corrections policies, starting a third party or movemnt such as the Family Party or the Peoples Party based on fare wages, family leave, universal pre-school and health care, etc.). Of course, public campaign financing, term limits and election reforms will never be approved by the Congress, since they all benefit from the broken system. The irony about this article, is that all of the above can be done with legislative reform, not the third rail of Constitutional ammendment.
Where are our next progressive leaders and what are they (we) waiting for?
1
The idea that we all think we may get rich is just an excuse, part of the hoax the powerful use to flatter the masses in identifying with them. It's so transparent. Most people don't even mind the wealthy, if they get their riches it legally, AND don't confiscate our nation's resources to widen the inequalty gap. That's the crucial point.
The post war middle class was strengthened by specific govt policies---the GI Bill, subsidized state college tuition, support for unions-- 1/3 of all workers---plus rising wages and benefits, the federal US highway system, with new suburbs, home mortgage lending support. And, crucially --jobs that stayed here, not offshored to Asia. Plus much narrower gap between CEO pay and average worker pay.
See David Lonhardt, "When the Rich Said NO to Getting Richer", contasting the attitudes of George Romney with his son Mitt. And under Gop Ike in the 50s, the top marginal tax on highest incomes was 91 %.
Business, workers and middle class prospered with rising wages and higher consumer demand. This great contrast is mosty ignored in our media. Why?
It's the practical, democratic role model that once worked.
The founders rightly were suspicious of too much power concentrated in one place. Hence federal and state governments; three branches of each type of government; and multiple checks and balances throughout. What they failed to foresee, however, was the rise of the corporation and the United States Supreme Court's blessing as the corporate form grew to have overwhelming power. Corporations are not persons and should not be viewed so by the law, and they should not enjoy First Amendment freedoms to the extent that they do. Our nation suffers as a result.
48
The Constitution is an extremely flawed document. It has never been as vaunted as most Americans which to portray it. It is not the Declaration of Independence, to be sure. That document soared; it proclaimed to the high heavens a most gloriously optimistic outlook on what a nation should aspire. By comparison, the Constitution is basically a glorified contract of commerce, a set of laws on how to conduct interstate business among 13 sovereign states.
Our Bill of Rights, about which Americans love to boast, are in actuality the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Amendments are corrections. Ten corrections are what they are. They were left out of the original, just to give one an indication how little the Founders viewed them. They were mere afterthoughts.
The longer the United States exists the more those myriad flaws which initially were paid no mind, because back then the US was basically, in today's vernacular, a "nothing burger". Two centuries later those once trivial pursuits by the Founders now have enormous repercussions on society. The Constitution has become an albatross, hanging around our nation's neck, strangling any means to proceed forward, to progress from the 18th to the 21st century. Some view the near impossibility of amending this flawed document a blessing. I find it a curse, a rusty chain rubbing US the wrong way. An object we cannot cut through to ourselves and our nation of outmoded ideas. We are stuck in the past.
DD
Manhattan
8
Agreed, and this is not discussed much in the media. But see Slate article:
"The U.S. Constitution Is Impossible to Amend.
Blame the founders—other countries routinely update their constitutions, but ours may as well be written in stone." By Eric Posner.
If other nations can more easily amend, that those democracies are operating better than ours. And they've not turned their elections over to the richest special interests for financing, giving their politicians the chance to work for average citizens.
The Founding Fathers were by-and-large a landed aristocracy who designed our Constitution to be a republic ruled by such men. What they missed was the formation of political parties and the influence that money could have on governance. Their hope was that through a tripartite division of power that "checks and balance" would result. Unfortunately, as with ancient Rome, they miscalculated that money would buy political (and not just military) power corrupting all three branches and leading to the democratic abyss we currently confront with a single-party representing the monied interests of giant corporations in control. Unless we have the public and political will to remove all private money in our political system we will move, as we are now, toward an autocracy of oligarchs.
13
Having just finished Carl van Dornan's classic work "The Great Rehearsal" about the convention in which the constitution was written, I saw no support for the premise of this piece. The founders discussed the concerns about the rich states dominating the poorer states, but could hardly have been concerned about economic equality of individuals. The determination of the qualifications of voters was left to the states, where some such as South Carolina severely restricted enfranchisement with requirements for such large holdings of property as to form an elite oligarchy. The people were given the right to vote for neither Senators nor the President. The deluberatly thwarted establishment of democracy, wisely in my view.
I can't imagine what factual basis the author is working from. The elite had their tens of thousands of acres and slaves, the common yeoman little more than an axe, a hoe, and a lease on a thin-soiled hillside. Then there were the laborers and indentured servants.
7
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that our constitution did not consider anything other than the interests of land owners.
4
The Constitution considered the rights of taxpayers. The only taxpayers were the landowners.
1
Democracy in all its forms is really a self correction mechanism when things go wrong in society. At times of real distress change comes when the ruling party is voted out by a majority of voters. The Depression and the great Recession are examples in American history. Authoritarian regimes by their nature do not have a self correcting mechanism so things can easily go from bad to worse as a dominant group clings to power. Venezuela is an example of what can happens when democracy is stifled to the point when self correction can't occur. When this happens the only way out is usually violent revolution. The US Constitution was constructed in an age before true egalitarian democracies. The electoral college is a remnant of that time which has skewed results twice in last 4 presidential elections. The Constitution also misallocates Senate and House seats among the states. The result is that our democracy's feedback mechanism is imperfect and severely hampers self correction. If Al Gore had won because of his popular vote majority the Supreme Court would not have veered right on election financing. If Hillary Clinton had won we would not be suffering from the destructive chaos now emanating from the White House and the Supreme Court would no longer be so right wing. A fairer allocation of Congressional seats by the Constitution would better reflect true voting majorities. Money has so much influence in our system because flaws in our Constitution make it possible.
12
Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 with 43% of the popular vote, less than the 46% of the popular vote that Trump received. So 1992 was even more skewed than 2000 or 2016. Why was there no objection to the Electoral College in 1992?
How would you address the misallocations in the Senate. Would Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont share a single Senator so that NY could have five?
2
ebmem - In 1992 there was NO candidate who received MORE votes than Bill Clinton.
Quelle Différence!!
3
Yes, this is the point. There can't be a 'self correcting mechanism' when both parties are dependent on billions of corporate megadonors to fund their run for office. Instead a feedback loop-- the more donations, more political power at the top. This, in what was once a democratic role model for the world.
Today other democracies use more public funding and free media time for elections, to guard against what's happened here. Thus they've long had health care for all, and for us it's a high mountain to climb.
Both parties have to now compete for big money for 2020. This shapes our politica center, relegating what benefits citizens as 'left wing'. It closes off input from the citizen majority to lawmakers.
The worst part is that our own revered S. Court called big money elections 'free speech' per 1st amendment. Then corporations label their profits in health care, education, etc as precious private enterprise freedoms. So our founding ideals and constitution is used against us. And our media stays safely away from challenging it.
A married couple is standing in their salon looking at a large illustration, a valuable one of the signing of The Declaration of Independence. This visiting American is not paying attention at the time, but remembers that a discussion was taking place over whether a sale of the above should take place.
Our Constitution is in peril of being sold down the river in these changing times, but perhaps if We care, perhaps if a raft of wise patriots would gather again, it might be the greatest and finest challenge that America has ever faced. A call to Wisdom to save Our Republic.
1
"But our Constitution has at least one radical feature: It isn’t designed for a society with economic inequality."
There are few societies today anywhere near as unequal as the plantation aristocracy that wrote the Constitution, and the upper class urban elite that helped them do it.
Everything needed to deal with inequality is right there in the Constitution. FDR and his wife Eleanor taught us that, with the Four Freedoms he set out to explain WW2, followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights she helped draft and promoted to carry on the win of WW2.
They were not the first to find economic justice and human rights in the Constitution, nor the last.
"It isn't there" is a right wing excuse, and just not true.
10
The Constitution is only as good as our ability to prevent its abuse. A society that the founders didn't foresee has allowed an accumulation of wealth and power to seize control of the constitution, turning it from a shield for the common people into a weapon that's used against them.
The primary abuse is that the expenditure of money is now equated to free speech. Your theoretical freedom of speech is useless you can be heard, which becomes almost impossible when you are drowned out be far wealthier opponents.
Then there's selective protection or otherwise, depending on who you are. There is supposed to be freedom of association, but somehow this doesn't seem to apply if you are trying to form a union in your workplace; but there's no similar restriction for trade associations or organizations like ALEC.
25
In today's world expenditure of money is free speech. This is especially so with political speech. Money buys time for TV commercials. But TV commercials don't guarantee a candidate will win. HRC outspent Trump by a huge margin. Maybe in her case she exercised too much free speech.
But the point is that if I want to spend $10 million to form my own PAC with my own money and spend it to support issues near and dear to me, that is my constitutional right.
3
Hillary spent three times as much money on her campaign as Trump, much of it dark money. And she lost. Her primary campaign was against a single opponent, while Trump faced 13. And he did not have a bank to buy super delegates as Hillary did, or a party that was supporting him to the exclusion of all other candidates. Trump did not have government unionized workers campaigning for him on taxpayer time. The DNC was rooting for Trump, as was the leftist media, because he was the one candidate Hillary could not lose to.
Trump did not have the support of the Republican establishment not of the libertarian Koch brothers or ALEC.
If money could buy an election, we would now be saluting Hillary.
3
You are forgetting that the networks and cable news organizations were so eager to exploit Trump's loony campaign that they would run a camera shot of the empty Trump podium rather than discuss Hillary's policy proposals. They focused on the faux scandal of emails rather than the real programs that Hillary put forth. In doing so they provided Trump with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of coverage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/08/25/studies-a...
5
Post-Revolutionary America had class-based strife that became armed rebellion: The Whiskey Rebellion, Shay's Rebellion and Fries's Rebellion.
"Commoners" in Britain in that period were wealthy businessmen or landowners; ordinary people didn't even have the franchise, and if better-off and franchised their ballots (not secret) were effectively dictated by aristocrats who essentially owned seats in the House of Commons. Read Trollope to see how this worked up to about the 1860's.
Unless the writer has quantitative evidence of less economic inequality in that period, there is no basis for his conclusions.
6
Madison explained the nature of the republic to be established by our Constitution in this way: The government would be dependent on the people, that is the voters. In this way the government would be constrained to be attentive to the needs of all the people. Federalist Papers, No. 51 and 52. Since no one person would have more political power than any other the government would be, to repeat the eloquent phrase, "of the people, by the people and for the people."
But as the levers of political power have fallen into easy reach of those benefiting from economic inequality, the power of the individual vote has shrunk. Elected officials are less dependent on the voters and more dependent upon those who fund and support their campaigns. With this increased dependency on their funders, the attention of our government has turned away from the needs of every man and every woman and turned to the desires of the plutocrats. In a self reinforcing cycle, inequality of political power has lead to increasing economic inequality.
These developments are not necessarily the fault of our Constitution but on the strained interpretation that our Supreme Court has given to key provisions of the Constitution.
We need either a reversal of the Supreme Court decisions that have created this imbalance in the distribution of political power, or, as former Justice Stevens suggests, a constitutional amendment that restores the balance. I fear the consequences if we do neither.
66
So the answer is either a new Constitution to hobble the political power of the rich (not likely) or wealth redistribution. I have to say that I love the idea that taxation is the duty of a true, exceptional patriot who must soon arise to save our democracy; I picture Bernie and smile.
8
With a simple tax code, the wealthy would not be able to avoid paying their fair share. That is why the Democrats object.
1
ebmem - I doubt if many of us would agree with you as to what constitutes a "fair share."
2
Professor Sitaraman could broaden his analysis to cover the political institutions of any democratic republic, as he implicitly does at one point. Any such system rests on a sense of community that unites the different groups that comprise the society. The Constitution creates the institutions of government whose purpose is to manage the inevitable conflicts that afflict people from different economic, social, and cultural backgrounds.
For the system to work, however, the citizens must value the symbols and structure of government that unite them more than the interests which divide them. Extreme economic inequality obstructs this balance, because the suspicions bred by extreme differences in wealth cause rich and poor alike to seek to use political power to preserve or correct the imbalance. No one will accept defeat in an election if he fears the winners will use their authority to serve the interests of only one class.
It requires an extraordinary leader, like FDR, to pursue policies designed to reduce economic inequality while at the same time trying to preserve an economic system that profited the wealthy. And even he aroused hatred among many rich Americans who failed to grasp his longterm strategy. Still, the New Deal, aided by war, did save capitalism and also restored prosperity for both the middle and working classes.
So, despite the odds, a democratic republic can survive extreme inequality, but only if leaders emerge who can remedy the imbalance.
17
Income inequality is greatest in blue states and blue cities where progressives reside. Ironic, isn't it?
1
This opinion piece picks and chooses facts and then gets many of them wrong.
At the time of the Revolution there was incredible wealth concentrated in the hand of huge landowners. The concentration increased during the industrial revolution. But today we have a larger middle class than existed for most of US history.
Finally, much of the inequality is the result of a new wave of immigration. It brought a large number of poor people.
10
Over the years we've had waves of poor immigrants who by the next few generations became wealthier. So too with our newest immigrants - they struggle and open little shops, restaurants, offer services, and by the second or third generation they intermarry , becoming part of our country with many succeeding very well. My grandparents came from Europe with very little, but their children got a good public school education here in New York City, I was lucky to go to a city college which at that time was free for all New Yorkers. I became a public school teacher with a good union and my son now in CA 's Silicon Valley works in the computer business. His children live a far wealthier life than I did and so by the 4th generation they are living a comfortable middle class life. I guess we were lucky to be New Yorkers with such opportunities available.
6
Our constitution isn’t designed for a society with economic inequality? In 1787 there was little to economically characterize America (and all the world outside it) BUT inequality, despite Prof. Sitaraman’s desire to restrict the analysis only to the framers’ narrow economic class. Of COURSE the Constitution wasn’t written to address a state that had existed since we climbed down out of the trees and started making such nuisances of ourselves, one which just about everyone in those times regarded as the normal state of mankind that likely would endure until the stars burned out.
But despite that lack of foresight and independent of any constitutional goad to do right, we (and Britain) managed to spearhead the transformation of our economic reality to one that is more balanced than at any other time in human history. It may be that the oligarchs and plutocrats today still have the lion’s share of the lucre, but people don’t starve anymore for want of options, at least in countries WITH serious constitutions.
4
By whatever means, efforts always were taken by the rich and powerful to protect their interests – just as serious efforts have been taken for the past eighty years and more to take from Peter to better support a host of Pauls; and still are. But this transparent argument to more generally distribute the production of society through a more confiscative taxation ignores the fact that our wealthiest pay about as much in taxes as they did at the height of taxation’s golden age. This has been caused by repeal of deductions and exemptions that earlier generations enjoyed, as well as the inexorable rise of state and local taxes. This is really an argument for ignoring the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution in order to re-frame society in the professor’s sense of the ideal, DESPITE those freedoms.
The Constitution doesn’t seek to level society and man. Therefore, let’s minimize a constitution that sought merely to establish a framework of laws within which interests could conduct their ancient battles confident that individuals had rights and that government, which appropriates the interests of the collective, is limited in its power.
We always have had battles among interests in America, and during times when Americans were far less equal than they are today. And our Republic is still here.
4
I disagree with Mr. Luettgen. Our republic is long gone, if it ever really existed in the soft focus positive portrayals we receive as children in school. Excellent studies have shown that if you're not in the top 10% of income Congress really couldn't care less about what you want. I regret being so cynical, and I'm not trying to say that elections don't have consequences (the last one is a great example), but unless and until we get private money out of politics we are, in fact if not in trappings, living in an oligarchy.
4
Right. For a constitution which directly addressed inequality, see the 1936 Soviet Union Constitution which enshrined the right to work. (many job openings in Siberia)
1
The big mistake was made at the end of the Nineteen Century when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people. After the Supreme Court was forced to decide the Presidential election of 2000 several additional conservatives were appointed and the Court ruled that Corporations were more important than people when a business could deny contraceptions to their employees so that the an individual was second in importance to a corporation.
71
True. Except you are referring to the end of the twentieth century. We live in the twenty-first.
8
Let's look back please 30 years. 25 years. Not only today.
When the Supreme Court ruled in. earlier years that corporations did not have to continue any health insurance benefit after retirement as projected. This was around 2001 thus leaving many who lost jobs due to mergers unemployed and without insurance. This affected a large sector not unionized .
. Let's not look only at this moment that is what this paper should not do. A lot has been done since eighties in the pursuit of extraordinary wealth in all aspects and affecting all citizens at all stages of their life. Due to unstoppable mergers an acquisitions and greed.
Let's not forget how many people lost their homes in particular retired elderly unable to keep up with taxes. And today linger or die in subsidized places where many make profits of their misery
Let's not forget the inequality of tax laws.
2
chick is correct about when corporations became legal persons: in the 1886 case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific – 118 U.S. 394 (1886), corporations became persons for certain purposes. It was the Citizens United decision that acknowledged the right of corporations, as persons, to engage in unlimited spending in support of candidates and policies, which in turn was an extension of the idea that money is a form of political "speech:" Buckley v. Valeo, 424 US 1 (1976).
4
I certainly agree our constitution is out of date and needs major revision if not replacement. But, the complaints in this article totally miss the point and hardly addresses the problems we face. The only point I would agree on is that in 1787 we had local economies, so that Delaware as an economic unit made sense. Now we have a national (in fact, international) economy, and the economic regulatory powers left to the states need to be removed and assumed by the federal government. Relying on an infinitely elastic "interstate commerce" clause will not do.
13
The infinitely elastic commerce clause needs to be pulled back to issues related to interstate commerce. A national health insurance one-size-fits-all does not qualify.
2
ebmem - If the health industry is not interstate commerce, pray tell, what is?
2
The constitutionalist in me says we must pull back and respect the actual constitution. The realist in me says that ship has sailed. But yes, calling healthcare interstate commerce is absurd.
“The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest,” Gouverneur Morris observed in 1787. “They always did. They always will.”
The above makes me realize we're past the point of no return. By quoting founders like Hamilton, Professor Sitaraman shows how great wealth (Trump) could so easily manipulate the passions of lower classes to both win and subjugate them?
Donald Trump isn't some unique phenomenon, just the natural extension of what happens when wealth becomes the most defining factor of a society.
Just a few days ago, it dawned on me how flawed our constitution is because its writers could never picture a man like Trump gaining power. It was beyond their wildest imaginations that a president could be so totally bereft of common decency, integrity, civic responsibility, and basic ethics.
How could they devise checks against Trump's basest behaviors--self-enrichment, nepotism, abuse of power, mendacity, obstruction of justice, and a desire to subvert constitutional protections such as freedom of speech--when they couldn't imagine anyone so willing to throw away the results of a hard fought revolution against foreign tyranny?
I guess my biggest question is: is this truly it? Have we reached the end or just at the beginning of a long, dark death spiral?
203
"It was beyond their wildest imaginations that a president could be so totally bereft of common decency, [etc etc]."
With respect, these were highly educated men who had studied history. They imagined all this and more. They just took a gamble and trusted in the collective wisdom of the American people not to let it happen. Obviously their trust was misplaced.
2
Here's a factor. The founders wanted states rights and weak federal govt as a counter to strong central govts ruled by monarchs they rebelled from. It was the age of monarchy. But just getting rid of a king isn't enough.
In our times, states rights turned out to be weak protection against exploitation by corporations---our dukes and earls --- and the widening inequality that contradicts our professed ideals.
Trump used this inequality and insecurity to make reality-TV type promises, and arouse racial/ethnic competition and resentment. He won.
The economic equality and protections we lack would work to tamp down latent racism and let minorities have more security. The protection against another Trump is more govt protections for all working people. See post war politics for role model, which created our middle class.
Under Gop Pres Eisenhower, the marginal tax rate for highest incomes was 91%. Corporate CEOs acknowedged the rights of workers, customers and the public. See David Leonhardt's column on this.
But, then, politicians weren't dependent on mega donors to run for office like now.
Where are some op eds devoted to campaign finance reform, NYT?
Of course, the Electoral College was supposed to be the last bulwark against a demagogue or a total incompetent being elected president. Only a handful of electors in 2016 recognized the historical moment they were living in.
A few things that will help:
End Gerrymandering.
Proportional Electoral College for all states.
Open primaries.
Reverse Citizen's United.
End voter suppression.
Register everyone to vote and make voting mandatory.
I realize most and maybe none of these will ever get done.
In the meantime, I am looking to Europe to retire.
397
While you're at it, reverse the legislation from the judicial bench that corporations are people.
And get serious about our constitutional guarantees of equal protection of the law. All Lives Matter--but all are not equally endangered.
10
I recommend retiring in Costa Rica. That's where I'd retire if I could bring my Medicare with me. However New York is also a great place to retire - The state doesn't tax my pension, my social security works fine (I've worked all my life) and my community has lots of free activities for seniors in the libraries and clubs. And I enjoy living in a place with four seasons. I might add that we have excellent doctors here - all accept Medicare.
1
In order to change the electoral college, or reverse Citizens United, you will need Constitutional Amendments.
I'm interested to know how you are going to phrase the Constitutional Amendment that prevents the Citizens United corporation from expressing a political opinion without also preventing the NYT corporation from expressing a political opinion.
1
Succinctly, the question is how much 'socialism' our capitalists, who like to cast themselves as 'libertarians', will endure for the sake of democracy - the libertarians have to choose between pure, unregulated, dog eat dog capitalism, or democracy.
Their 'socialism' is what the rest of us call speed limits, progressive taxation, regulation of markets and free enterprise, solid public education, and healthcare appropriate for residents of the richest nation ever known; commonly called Western Civilization.
We vote for democracy, with well-regulated capitalism and progressive taxation to re-seed that capitalism.
435
You create a false dilemma by asserting that one must choose between no regulation and democracy. That is not the position of libertarians. That is the position of anarchists. Regulation that is created as the result of the legislature passing bills that are signed into law by the executive represent regulation that is accepted by libertarians, although they may lobby against and speak out against laws that tend to be ineffective and inefficient.
What libertarians object to is an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy creating regulations that are not supported by legislation. the "pen and cell phone" rule of Obama, for example.
Progressives and leftists loved the fact that Obama had the bureaucracy create laws regulating CO2 despite the fact that Congress had not passed any legislation authorizing it. And the regulations cobbled together by the EPA violated the Clean Air Act, so have been on hold before implementation. What Obama and the EPA did was the opposite of democracy.
The IRS declined to approve or deny applications for non-profit status to TEA Party, Patriot, Constitution, True the vote organizations despite the fact that their activities were no more political than moveon.org or OFA or ACORN for that matter before it went bankrupt. They did not deny left leaning organizations, but did object to organization that were advocating in favor of a smaller federal government or distributing copies of the Constitution or Declaration of independence.
50
There has been a confluence of ideas and change, both social and economic, that has led us to this point. Big money in politics, particularly the ability to buy high quality PR that's very effective at manipulating public opinion, has played a role.
I'm 73 and I can testify that people think differently now than they did back in the 1950s. I keep wondering when the pendulum will swing back to the center, but it seems to keep pulling us right.
The idea that free markets are the solution to everything is an important part of the mindset that leads us to where we are. It's dangerous to have wealth and power concentrated in a small group, but how do we effect the change we want and need?
12
ebmem - As stated, we're specifically speaking of the capitalists who cast themselves as libertarians, hiding behind a label more to their liking than the anarcho-capitalist label they actually fall under.
Such people don't like such labels, but their handmaidens and paid hacks give away the store when they make it into the West Wing by virtue of their connections to moneyed contributors, and are on record as saying "I'm a Leninist", and "Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-trumps-top-guy-told-me-he-was-...
You are correct this is anarchism, even though it is often couched as just 'disruption'.
9
Campaign contributions, lobbying, the revolving door of industry insiders working in government, interest group influence over regulators and even think tanks — all of these features of our current political system skew policy making to favor the wealthy and entrenched economic interests. “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest,” Gouverneur Morris observed in 1787. “They always did. They always will.”
'It has always been thus, and thus it will always be.'
A survey of the history of most nations, past and present, shows that governments will be hijacked or taken over by the wealthy few and used to serve their own interests. in the USA useless wars, gaming the markets and crashing the economy, consolidating industries into monopolies are a few examples. The republicans are busy restricting access to legislative reform through gerrymandering and voter suppression. This is just a basic outline.
Like climate change, government subversion and co-option into a tool for the wealthy is well under way.
68
Our government has been overtaken by the unelected, unaccountable executive branch bureaucracies that are creating regulations absent laws passed by Congress.
The autocracy of Obama, and the unwillingness of Democrats in Congress to constrain him were the greatest threats to democracy in several generations.
If Trump were to attempt to follow in Obama's path, the Republicans would join with Democrats in constraining him. The same would not be true if Hillary had been elected.
1
Our constitution was written by a bunch of mostly wealthy, mostly slave-owning, mostly religious white men (though not all of the same denominations), well-educated who were as thoughtful as they could be for the times.
While their imaginations and minds were far more open than many of the very rigid literal politicians and jurists we have today, there is no mistaking that wealth, earned on the backs of others, was at the foundation of the document they created and while they left ample room for it to be revised by future generations, they did not specifically preclude, in the language of our founding document, the state we are now experiencing: widespread, legalized corruption and oligarchy.
That our supreme court was able to find for money as speech and corporate personhood goes to show how without an engaged, well-educated populace, we are as vulnerable as any fledgling nation to give into the pitfalls of corruption. Both major parties are too beholden to corporate interests to move back to a place where the people truly have a say.
No constitution is built to withstand the kind of rot we are now experiencing. Most of it conducted under the cover of darkness in the offices of the executive branch. The media needs to shine a much brighter light if we are to pull back without another bloody national fight.
---
What Trump's Minions Are Doing
https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/08/26/while-trump-tweets-away-democracys-...
152
No constitution can withstand the kinds of machinations the Kochs and their paid enablers have wreaked on this nation, from the grassroots level on up. No constitution can withstand both major parties blocking candidates who reflect their communities' values from coming up through the ranks. No constitution can withstand the kind of disgust millions have been displaying for the low point our politics have fallen to. No constitution can rekindle the kind of passion a people need to stay the course while they retake control over their politics.
We are experiencing both a deficit of political leadership at the top and a wealth of emerging leadership at the bottom, just waiting to burst onto the scene, if the establishment allows, and if voters come out en-masse.
Neoliberalism is a term that applies across a much wider swath of our politics than most people apply the term to. We are used to the term in connection with the politics of the 1990's. President Trump, with his behavior during the last two weeks, has prompted the media to bring the term back.
https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/09/04/triangulation-when-neoliberalism-is...
12
Rima Regas, with due respect, this cowardly American would rather see 'IT' on Main Street than opening this web on what Trump's Minions are doing.
1
"Our founding charter doesn’t have structural checks and balances between economic classes: "
I thought that the Senate and the House of Representitives were exactly that. I've been wrong before so...?
3
No, they are both rich men's clubs.
10
And yet the Supreme Court has been systematically rolling back the very reforms of the late 19th century you referred to. From rulings on corporate speech, narrowing the grounds on which a politician can be charged with bribery, campaign finance, and rolling back consumer protections against corporate power conservatives have been indirectly fanning the flames of inequality. In ancient times wealth and power where directly held b individuals and families. Today, they are held by "corporations". Behind the veil of the corporation entity individuals are concentrating our nation's wealth and political power. Until we have significant reform in the structure of corporate governance and declare that corporations are NOT people, and hold the people who run corporations fully legally and criminally liable for corporate crimes the trends described her will continue.
99
Perhaps one way to defuse Citizens United is to carry the 'corporations are people' dictum to it's absurd conclusion...if corporations are people, then when laws are broken, they should be punished like people: fines AND jail time, not just fines. Who to jail? The entire board of directors. They represent the corp.
4
Madison's Federalist Paper No. 51 addressed the problem of factions. Madison foresaw that majority factions could establish a tyranny f the majority. So he called for various mechanisms that would protect the minority. Among the minority interests groups which need protection are the poor. By requiring supermajorities in the Senate and by .balancing the influence of all three branches of government, Madison sought to protect minorities. While Federalist Paper No. 51 does not explicitly address the poor, they are clearly a minority in need of protection. So I would say that the Constitution does indeed contemplate protecting disenfranchised minorities.
9
Madison never envisioned a 60 vote supermajorities. Both he and Hamilton expected a majority vote only.
3
Too often, the oligarchs with their libertarian propaganda use minority rights to mean the oligarchs shouldn't have to pay taxes. Seriously.
4
Throughout the history of mankind, the wealthy have done their very best to suppress and economically neuter the 99%. It eventually fails though millions needlessly die and billions of others have suffered needlessly.
The author references the first Gilded Age in the 1920's but failed to mention how that ended. Will we have another Great Depression which wipes out the robber barons and their eager and greedy aspirants? Count on it!
The Constitution is first and foremost an aspirational document; it does little to correct, curtail or punish the deviants or errants who endeavour to circumvent the intent and clear meaning of an extraordinary document. The Second Amendment is but one example. The overt politicization of Supreme Court justices is yet another.
Trump, McConnell, Ryan and most Republican politicians should be behind bars for running roughshod over the Constitution. Their greatest sin is putting party before country. They deprived a president from his Constitutionally guaranteed right to appoint a Supreme Court justice and were awarded for doing so. I cannot imagine that any Founding Father believed that abuse of the Constitution could lead to an autocratic, one party controlled government. But that is where we are today.
405
The Guilded Age was not the 1920s. it was the period between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the ratification of the Constitutional amendment establishing income tax in 1913.
3
Gilded Age in the 1890s...
All the world is democracy or patronage. An authentic democracy belongs solely to the middle classes. The poor and the rich, when either becomes too predominant, both ruin it.
But the middle classes, in the sense of the Aristotelian hoi mesoi, are much more than the social strata lying between the rich and the poor. An authentic, politically significant middle class which creates and preserves democracy also embodies the middling virtues which are derivative of modest economic station - modesty, industry, and equity. These virtues are established by custom, not law, and take generations to develop. No charter of government can create or preserve the middling virtues in the face of extreme social stratification, where wealth becomes the principal virtue in a society. Without the middling virtues, ambition and greed breach every legal crack and loophole, and government is reduced to playing a great game of whack a mole against corrupt plutocrats.
We (The Institute for Anacyclosis) have been studying these issues for quite a while, poring through quite a few political and historical texts, and have concluded that the character of government is essentially a time-lag reflection of the prevailing socioeconomic configuration of society. A state or people may declare themselves a republic or democracy, but constitutions and laws are simply powerless to suppress, except despotically, the aggregate social and mental responses to the diffusion or concentration of wealth.
4
Tim,
Very well stated. Some of us are lucky enough to watch all this unfold. Quebec in 1948 was a power share between Theocracy and Plutocracy. We were as you describe a middle-class ancient Greek style democracy and if you were lucky enough to attend schools like mine you received an incredible education.
We had what we call a quiet revolution.
We now have developing what America had in 1965 a real middle-class democracy.
Jefferson warned about plutocracy and sure enough after Goldwater's total defeat democracy suffered the death of a thousand cuts.
Canada has enjoyed forty years of middle class democracy and it has served most of us very well. You know you are living in a middle-class democracy when almost everybody has four things. Good food, proper shelter, access to the best education you can absorb and preventative and healing healthcare.
10
And Canada started universal health care in the 1960s. Why was that possible, while the US can't do it in 2017?
I also read that Canada maintained it's sensible banking regulations which prevented it from having a US style Crash in 2008. This must have maintained the financial solvency of Canadians vs Americans who still haven't recovered from the Crash.
5
"It isn’t designed for a society with economic inequality."
The either change society or change the constitution.
2
A lot of us are working to change society.
You are welcome to join us.
2
For all its resilience and longevity, our Constitution doesn’t have structural checks built into it to prevent oligarchy or populist demagogues.
Provision for amendments to the constitution fit the bill. Life is about stepping up and assuming responsibility.
3
But who runs the show and is empowered to bring forward or stop proposals for change? The rich guys, of course.
13
230 years ago we were a fledgling nation trying to get kick started with a bunch of rebellious Patriots drawing up a document they hoped and prayed would guide the country to greatness. It worked.
Today we are 300 million plus strong and the most powerful economic Democracy in the world by far.
There have been human and economic inequalities throughout our history. From slavery in the 17 and 18 hundreds, the robber barons of the late 18 and early 19 hundreds. And now the late 1900's and early 2000's with big business and a new version of the robber barons.
I trust that it's time for a correction. Both left and right see the inequality, it's just that they see it through a different prism. Sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can rise again.
I strongly believe we hit bottom with this President and will see to it in the upcoming elections that the voters will say, "never again". That's my hope.
18
You may hate Trump with every fiber in your being -- but he would not be President if the left and Democrats had not driven the voters to absolute desperation.
And you cannot blame 30 years of growing economic inequality on a man who was elected 10 months ago and not sworn into office until 8 months ago.
1
Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions, enshrined the use of unlimited money as a form of speech, thereby corrupting the political discourse and debasing the very foundation of an open and fair electoral process.
528
Indeed! the Dred Scott decision of the 21st century.
5
Paul D----Yes, Citizens United--what a name. It really means Corporations United increasing their power and influence, with average citizens disunited and weakened. All the political/economic problems the NYT op ed page discusses are worsened by big money distorting our elections, yet the Times and TV news never makes the connection. It's like CU never happened.
2
I'd like to see this explained. "Corrupting the political discourse"? In what way?
If our electorate is so downright stupid that a significant number of us will change our votes when told to do so by a blatantly tendentious TV advertisement that happens to play in front of our dumb faces -- then the "corruption" goes right to the core of our system of government.
In that case, we really should tear up the constitution and make a new system, one that ensures a less stupid electorate. Government of the stupid, by the careless, and for the uninformed is destined for disaster.
1
The founders put in a method to update the constitution, so how about those that want it to be different use it? I want term limits and the federal government's programs that are constitutional under "common good" to require 2/3 majorities and periodic re votes.
5
Term limits have been found to merely give lobbyists more power, and the requirement to renew programs (spending on average people, for the most part) puts them repeatedly at the mercy of rich politicians who with one vote could destroy something good that people have worked hard to build and improve for decades. Baaaad idea!
18
and i want a law that requires everyone to become a 10% better person every year for the next 10 years. if you rob 10 little old ladies every year? rob nine next year. if you perform 100 hours of community service each year? perform 110 hours next year. pretty soon we will all be living in paradise.
2
Considering Brexit it appears that forms of government designed to accommodate class don’t always work either. Inequality by itself isn’t the problem, we've always had it, instead it seems to be the lack of economic mobility. At one time many people with a high school education or less could prosper with hard work and perhaps a bit of luck as manufacturing could accommodate a wide range of skills and provide a decent living. Fewer jobs these days do the same, instead the mantra is everyone is supposed to get a college degree. Not gonna happen. Wealth inequality is much worse than income inequality.
A problem is that something like a Constitution obviously has a national jurisdiction, while much of our economy is global in nature. There isn’t much cooperation between different nations on addressing inequality since some countries derive a lot of revenue from it. Instead we need to rely upon what is acceptable socially, which is unfortunate in some respects as the upper classes run the media, entertainment, educational institutions, companies, etc., and in many ways determine what is desirable, and to a lesser degree what is acceptable.
The Constitution provides a way for the people in this country to get the government that they want, but as citizens we fall short and only get the government that we deserve. It is a reflection of how we choose to maintain our society, how willing we are to work together for what we want.
16
Today's stark and growing income inequality poses dire consequences for the republic, as more and more Americans are disenfranchised and excluded from avenues to economic security. But the framers did recognize disparate class interests: senators representing interests of the states were, until the 17th amendment in 1913, elected by state legislatures; only the members of the house of representatives are elected directly by the people.
11
And by limiting globalization and insisting on making what we consume we can get a lot more opportunities for our citizens, not to mention deporting illegals.
5
The Constitution was written for a different time and a different country (13 fiercely independent former colonies) in a world far different from today. It's saving grace is the flexibility to amend the original ideas to accommodate the current reality.
That flexibility has survived the end of slavery and the arrival of female suffrage. It was not the fault of the Constitution that these changes were poorly received and still present problematic situations. That fault is in the people who have resisted and blocked these modern ideas.
The rise of an Oligarchy in the Gilded Age was dealt with by wise men led by a President with vision, personal courage and real concern for the American ideal.
What happens now to resolve the economic, race and gender issues of our times is more dependent on the minds and hearts of our citizens and our leaders than on the Constitution.
Let us resolve together to further the ideals that brought forth a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal. With thanks to Abraham Lincoln for pointing the way in the darkest of times.
87
I agree with your thoughts, Maureen, but I wouldn't be waiting on leadership from the top, our needs have diverged. Most Politicians are tied to $, the rich don't care about the rest of us, Politicians need them more than us. WE, are who we've been waiting for. Pitch in where you can, think of your light and beauty, as Pixie Dust! Spread it as you wish!
2
Maureen, you make a very good point. However, the question remains: by what means (other than Revolution or violence) can a populace change the workings of the system when nearly all levers of power (Congress, Executive, Courts and state legislatures) are held in the thrall of one Party and that Party is itself in thrall to Big Money because of SCOTUS decisions that make their MONEY speak more loudly than that of individual voters? Only a mass change of heart and mind among Republicans can move the needle away from the government by authoritarians. Don't hold your breath.
3
This is written without a true knowledge of economic history. It is a myth that most Americans were "middle class" throughout its history. In fact in America, in all of human history, up until about the late 1930s or so, maybe a little earlier, the vast majority of people were poor. Most Americans were subsistence farmers or very low paid workers with no benefits. It was not until the Industrial Revolution that most people made it into what we call the middle class. Indeed, the distance between rich people and the rest of the people in the 18th and 19th Centuries was much greater than today. The average person today cannot afford a private jet, but he has a steady supply of food, shelter, isn't worrying about starving to death if the crop doesn't come in. The concept that things were so much better for the little guy vs. the big guy in the year 1783 is not true.
48
Alan the only thing that changed was definition. The middle-class was considered the class between the oligarchy, plutocracy, kleptocracy or aristocracy and average.. Most NYT readers my age remember Monty Python and known the middle-class in Britain is those in the top 10% who are not the aristocracy. It was the second decade of the twentieth century when poverty started to be something other than normal. The Industrial Revolution turned the class of tradesmen and artisans into peasants and it is this class that who demanded liberal democracy.
America's real history needs to be known. The Boston Tea Party was about a large multinational corporation writing tax law to give it a competitive advantage. The ship that was boarded in Boston Harbour flew the flag of the East India company. The men who threw the tea overboard were independent merchants and the tea thrown overboard was tax exempt.
It is déjà vu all over again.
11
I don't think Sitaraman is saying that most people were "middle class" when our nation adopted the Constitution. It's a very different thing to posit that there was less economic inequality than to say most people were middle class.
It's also important that there were regional differences. Those differences became more pronounced after the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
3
Moe: Re the Industrial Revolution, yes it changed the status of a lot of people. But the government helped that along by "enclosures." These had occurred in fits and starts with commonage being reduced, and in the end, they turned the yeoman farmer class into day laborers. Churchill thought that the Brit govt tried to do that to Irish farmers, but they resisted. China announced a plan to move 250 million people off the land and into cities... dependent laborers easily controlled.
Our government was designed before nationwide corporations existed or were even possible in the modern sense, since they require quick communication between parts. Our biggest and most essential commercial entity was the post office, and it was made a federal government monopoly to assure that no private interest could use it as the foundation of an economic empire. As nationwide corporations arise, they were chartered by states (which allowed them to shop for favorable legal environments) and given (by creative legal interpretations rather than explicit laws) some of the rights of humans; both of these developments turned out to have serious negative consequences.
Nationwide corporations can and do play the states against each other; only a national government can deal with them as equals. The national government can have overweening power, but in fact is usually captured by them and winds up serving them.
The struggle between rich and poor, capital and labor, is entering uncharted territory with increasing automation. The work of workers is increasingly not needed, and their competition reduces their power, but their consumption is still needed to provide the ultimate impetus for the economic system. If Henry Ford had kept his workers poor or replaced them with machines, he would have throttled the mass market he needed to build his huge company. Automation contains the seeds of its own destruction, and the rich cannot prevent this without helping the poor.
206
Automation is the only source of universal gain in living standards--but only when the fruits of automation are widely available.
Without automation of an earlier generation, we would almost all be subsistence farmers. Without the invention of unions, the generations of the first half of the 20th century might well have stayed impoverished.
Without modern automation, there would be no cell phones or the easy access to information (and lies) that enable a comments section for instant communications around the world.
One of the keys to American exceptionalism was a huge labor shortage. There was always far more work to be done than hands to do it. Read Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast" for a description of early 19th century automation that made American seafaring and sailors the best in the world--driven more by labor shortage as by reducing the sailors needed to move a ton of cargo.
We still have a significant labor shortage in STEM positions. STEM requires a many year study of the basics, and a year or two apprenticeship in current tools. (Sailors only needed a few years to be considered "seamen".) One difference from Dana's day--and up through the 1960's---is the current refusal of companies to provide paid training. (GE, in the 1960's offered a multi-year training called "A,B, C" for engineers that provided "PhD equivalency" on GE's dollar.) Now we pillage the world for pre-trained hires.
Our path is not sustainable.
26
Other countries also have automation and tech advances. But they also have unions on their boards. They show respect for citizens by subsidized education, retraining or offering a soft landing with financial support for early retirees in industries that have lay offs. Germany is 1 example.
This means govt is operating more in the people's interests instead of for elites.
And this is reflected in other democracies using more public funding for elections instead of turning them over to corporations and the rich. Our Dems are already fund raising big money. Not exactly what the US founders intended.
Are Americans aware that most EU nations ban privately paid campaign ads which are our biggest campaign expense, needing billionaires to fund?
No coincidence they've long had health care for all, as centrist policy.
4
Here is a view on automation (robots) that is contrary to the usual perception:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/04/29/dont-blame-the-robo...
For example:
"Yet the evidence suggests there is essentially no relationship between the change in manufacturing employment and robot use. Despite the installation of far more robots between 1993 and 2007, Germany lost just 19 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 1996 and 2012 compared to a 33 percent drop in the United States. (We introduce a three-year time lag to allow for robots to influence the labor market and continued with the most recent data, 2012). Korea, France, and Italy also lost fewer manufacturing jobs than the United States even as they introduced more industrial robots. On the other hand, countries like the United Kingdom and Australia invested less in robots but saw faster declines in their manufacturing sectors."
4
Not right for our elections
Our guns are no exceptions
Kowtow to Slave owners,
Oh what a crime,
Set Civil War in motion
Had not the faintest notion,
A President could wallow
In deep slime.
73
Bravo! That's exactly it.