I have some relatives that live in the DC area (Montgomery County). They are very smart, have good hearts and vote solid Democrat every time. One cousin has put in hundreds of hours volunteering for her Democratic Congressional candidates. I love them all and we have a blast every time we get together.
But they lack a particular aspect of self awareness. I find that they don’t understand the extraordinary bubble of wealth that they live in there. Our conversations about wealth inequality don’t go anywhere. I get a “deer in the headlights” response a lot. Of course they know about OWS. Yet they don’t seem to be very familiar with anyone who has written about this over the last decade or so. I bought my cousin a gift subscription to Mother Jones. I tried to find ways to illustrate for them that growing wealth inequality and its effects are more than abstract statistics. I told them they were lucky to be living where they could join so many worthwhile organizations in protests at the Capital without having to sacrifice too much time or money. Maybe they’ll come around a bit more on the issue.
A look at the Beltway Bubble.
So today one of our fellow Kossacks who seems to post something from WaPo on a semi-weekly basis pointed out a pattern he sees about Dem primary returns in some counties of northern Virginia. It made me think, “Hmmmm. Why do those place names look familiar to me?”
Oh yeah, 7 of the 15 counties at the top of high-income households are in the DC metro area.
7 of 15.
Could it be that one of Sanders most emphasized issues about the horrific and dangerous state of US wealth inequality doesn’t resonate so well with rich people who make a buck off of revolving doors and government contracts?
The cost of living doesn’t account for these statistics either. The median household salary is 75% higher in Montgomery County, MD than in my home county but the cost of living is only 10% higher.
47%
Almost half of the highest earning counties in the US are in the DC metro area:
I don’t believe in blanket condemnation of any information source for any reason. But I believe in the adage, “Follow the money.” I also believe an activist has to have eyes open for conflicts of interest. That is just common sense. So what I’m asking about WaPo’s opinion page is, “What do they understand about wealth inequality and what might remedy that? Do they realize that 6 hours away by car is a poor county where the male life expectancy is 18 years less than Fairfax County, VA?
McDowell county is only slightly ahead of Haiti, Ghana and Papua New Guinea when it comes to life expectancy for males: according to WHO life expectancy for males is 62 in those three countries.
Someone recently tried to dismiss that by telling me that "a [huge] amount of that isn’t because of poverty, it’s because of black lung disease caused by — are you sitting down? — all those coal mining jobs that brought in good money that are now going bye-bye thanks to the switch to renewal power.”
Do you see the problem with that? Poverty and disease go hand in hand and the same imbalance of power is creating both. It’s corporate power in arms with corrupt government that is bypassing the legal protections coal miners are supposed to have by law . Preventable disease and preventable accidents are happening way too often. And it is the same predictable characters that block the area from developing broader types of jobs for a healthy, sustainable economic base. The point is what are we going to do about it? Poverty and the lack of power that accompanies it, is killing people 18 years early compared to Americans who have it all. Wealth inequality is not merely one issue. It is a spreading symptom that has power to destabilize society and it’s causes are multiple.
So I take the WaPo opinion page with a shaker of salt and a bit of scrutiny. And I’ll also refer to the news section of the Washington Post in this case (from 2013) for background on the bubble of prosperity that is Washington DC:
So much money to be had if you know where to look.
The avalanche of cash that made Washington rich in the last decade has transformed the culture of a once staid capital and created a new wave of well-heeled insiders.
The winners in the new Washington are not just the former senators, party consiglieri and four-star generals who have always profited from their connections. Now they are also the former bureaucrats, accountants and staff officers for whom unimagined riches are suddenly possible. They are the entrepreneurs attracted to the capital by its aura of prosperity and its super-educated workforce. They are the lawyers, lobbyists and executives who work for companies that barely had a presence in Washington before the boom.
During the past decade, the region added 21,000 households in the nation’s top 1 percent. No other metro area came close.
That entire article is well worth reading. While most areas of the country have been struggling to recover from the Great Recession, metropolitan DC has been doing just fine. I can’t help but tie these economic facts to my opinion that many WaPo columnists may have selective hearing when it comes to the growing wealth inequality. That’s a helluva bubble they’ve got there.
Pivoting back to wealth inequality now...
Here is Robert Reich 6 years ago, on wealth inequality:
What we get from widening inequality is not only a more fragile economy but also an angrier politics. When virtually all the gains from growth go to a small minority at the top – and the broad middle class can no longer pretend it’s richer than it is by using homes as collateral for deepening indebtedness – the result is deep-seated anxiety and frustration. This is an open invitation to demagogues who misconnect the dots and direct the anger toward immigrants, the poor, foreign nations, big government, “socialists,” “intellectual elites,” or even big business and Wall Street. The major fault line in American politics is no longer between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, but between the “establishment” and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to “take back America” from it.
He nailed the biggest dynamic of the 2016 election 6 years in advance. Read more of Reich’s thoughts on social turmoil brought on by inequality in his book Aftershock. And if you thought income inequality was a uni-dimensional issue that only affected domestic policy, consider this thought from Stiglitz:
Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that...With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain.
In the long run, if wealth inequality continues this trend our social fabric will continue to rip and our politics will become angrier. How will that erupt, if and when it does? Will there be a movement strong enough to direct the anger into productive channels and secure economic and social justice? Or will we see the scapegoating, authoritarian leader emerge that Upton Sinclair warned us about. Or will Americans continue to believe in the broken politics that got us to this mess as we sink deeper into the shit.
Eugene Robinson is a good writer.
But his individual pieces are not always so good. Eugene Robinson, in his WaPo editorial , doesn’t take the long view into account. He’s really irked about fallout from one event near the end of a long, close contest for pledged delegates and dismissing something that will drastically change in less than 3 weeks. As of now, Sanders has not yet been mathematically eliminated from the pledged delegate contest. On June 7, baring invasion from Planet X, Clinton will reach a majority of pledged delegates. That is a significant landmark event in the timeline of this Democratic primary. The majority of Sanders supporters will recognize this point or even wait for one more week so that all votes are completed after DC votes. I think the best for anyone from any perspective at this point is to untwist their underwear a bit and wait. Gardening is nice and it’s planting time in many parts of the country. (Of course for a few at DK, it’s going to continue to be open season with the distortions, inflammatory taunts and putting-fingers-in-the-ears-repeating-nah-nah-nah-I-can’t-hear-you.)
I think Robinson is also missing other vital context from the long view. Robinson says Sanders is playing a dangerous game. Well politics can be dangerous I suppose, but I have yet to see Robinson acknowledge the dangerous game the Dem leadership have been playing. Wealth inequality is at an all time, multi-decade high. Universal healthcare is a real need. The multiple trends of data make it clear that Americans are fed up with politics as usual and meanwhile both presumptive candidates have negative net approval ratings. If the Dem leadership wants politics as usual, I think they’re trapped in the past and have not comprehended the times they live in. I also think most beltway pundits do not understand the times.
A lot of Americans are angry. Sanders didn’t whip them up into anger. He gave them inspiration for empowering themselves and hope that one day the increasing wealth inequality could be reversed and the demands of social justice would be met. Sanders with his experience and vision helped channel the angry energy into something productive and clarfied our expectation of what economic and social justice look like. He showed us there was no inherent conflict between asserting the requirements of economic and social justice while concurrently working on small pieces of progress that would help until we achieved the bigger goals.