A growing number of us feel like the American dream is rapidly giving way to the multi-national corporations’ growing appetite for ever-escalating profits. Pundits argue this is good for the country, that the more money corporations make, the better for all of us. Are they right? Is it fair? If not, does it matter? History says it does.
Human nature is like that. We need this, want that, and while the objects of our desire change almost daily, that we need and want never does. They are as ubiquitous as Chicken McNuggetsTM, and more enduring than Hostess TwinkiesTM.
Needing and wanting makes us humans a covetous, contentious bunch. "Need," as Ayn Rand wrote, "is not a license to steal," but it makes a dandy excuse millions have used for thousands of years to justify everything from petty pilfering to pillaging and burning.
Obviously, this is why we have rules, laws, treaties and conventions. Assuring an orderly means of allocating stuff and status is foremost among the many purposes of civilization.
What history teaches is that if too much status and stuff gets concentrated into too few hands, most folks feel cheated. Doesn’t matter what appeals to idealism you make, whether socialism, capitalism, altruism, "a CEO’s job is to increase the company’s stock price and if that means laying off 40,000 people then he’s worth every million he gets," "God save the green" or anything in between, once the majority feel they’re not getting a fair shake, they’ll grumble and stomp, and if that’s not enough, generally raise hell until they get some satisfaction.
That’s just the way people are. Nothing will change that; all we can do to create a thriving society is channel all that needing and wanting into constructive, cooperative pursuits.
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls suggests the most effective means to this end is to define social justice in terms of fairness:
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The intuitive idea is that since everybody's well-being depends upon a scheme of
cooperation without which no one could have a satisfactory life, the division of
advantages should be such as to draw forth the willing cooperation of everyone
taking part in it, including those less well situated. - John Rawls, A Theory of Justice |
That is, institutions that minimize favoritism and maximize a sense of equitable distribution will endure; those that do not end in riots and revolution. Stability depends upon us being, if not actually contented, at least supportive of the existing regime (whatever it is). Moreover, a populous that vigorously supports the national agenda will, at least for a time, thrive.
Nazi Germany is a classic example of this. Climbing over the rubble of the crumbling Weimar Republic, Hitler evoked a militant nationalism that, in combination with other policies, so revitalized their economy that for a time many nations, including the U.S., didn’t know whether to abhor or admire him.
Nationalistic, though far less militaristic, a similar sense of purpose marked the decades immediately following World War II in many countries. Pent-up post-war demand, the return of battle weary war veterans into the ebullient embrace of domesticity, the conversion of war-time industries to mostly peaceful pursuits, the desire to rebuild war-torn lives and a myriad of other factors promoted not only tremendous social and economic renewal throughout the democratic industrialized nations, but, in the U.S., also a general sense of opportunity and the attitudes that led to the civil rights movements of the 60s, with their uncompromising demand for fairness to all.
In the 70s, this gave way to a more cynical view that "the System" or "the Man" dominated, the world wasn't fair, and to be happy and successful you had to look out for #1, win through intimidation, dress for success, and if it feels good then the me generation should do it. Welcome to the unethical eighties: junk bonds, investment bankers, corporate raiders, voo doo economics, drug culture chic, breast implants, nice guys finish last, whoever dies with the most toys wins. It was the binge of the babyboomers.
Every binge has a price, however. Two-income households produced "latchkey kids." Liberated "playboys" became deadbeat dads, the women they dumped joined the first wives club; liberated women became single moms, the men who got in their way, discarded dads. Flirtation became harassment, heterosexual sex became rape, rape became a rite of passage. Junk bonds precipitated the S&L crisis, drug chic (and the CIA) produced crack babies, the drive for ever higher profits and a plummeting sense of corporate social responsibility led to massive layoffs, burgeoning under-employment and loud-mouthed pundits on both sides of the political spectrum proclaiming how much better things had gotten since they came into power.
The gap between the have-mores and -lesses is increasing and, according to a recent article in the Washington Post National Weekly, Americans are less concerned about others and increasingly anxious about domestic issues:
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American voters are looking sharply inward again this year, according to a new
Washington Post poll, with an agenda of deeply personal concerns that begin with
the problems they face in their families, confront on their streets and observe in
their communities. - Mario A. Brossard and Richard Morin Washington Post National Weekly, September 23-29, 1996 |
Our society is failing at fairness, precipitating an attitude David Kirk Hart describes as "lifeboat nationalism." The sense that the ship of state is sinking and we need to cling to whatever we can.
A nation cannot survive for long under such conditions. Either we determine to take action now, ascertain what is equitable and renew our commitment to standards of fairness, or we procrastinate until circumstances force change upon us.
If you work hard, live frugally and save scrupulously, it would be unfair for the rest of us to prevent you from passing that on to your children, even if it gives them an unearned advantage and prevents a level playing field.
How can we justify that? Rawls suggests what has worked in the past -- with greater privileges come greater responsibilities:
There is a reason why this makes sense. Society is a web of relationships. Relationships are based on agreements. Agreements impose responsibilities, and arise from our values and the virtues that express and fulfill them. We agree, in the example above, to uphold the privilege of passing wealth from one generation to the next so long as that privilege ultimately benefits us all. All of us have the right to do this (or not), and it does not overtly harm anyone else. (No using the money to finance Murder, Inc.)
- First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
- Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everybody's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Similarly, we agree that it’s okay for corporations to earn profits...as long as there are safeguards to assure those profits are obtained fairly. No ganging up to fix prices, break promises, advertise falsely, brutalize employees or destroy the environment.
Except now, increasingly profitable employers are threatening to export jobs to other countries where a little brutalization here and a little radioactive or chemical waste there is better than the conditions workers there are used to. Go along, or we will hire them to do it and you can go hungry.
In a controversial Philadelphia Inquirer series titled "America: Who stole the dream?" Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele point out that during the past twenty-plus years, the middle class has shrunk from 57% to 47% of workers, while the working poor have increased from 39% to 45% and the most affluent class has increased from 4% to 8%. Members of the upper and upper-middle class have more, while the bottom is falling out from under the rest of us.
How many Americans, as a consequence, are concocting wild schemes to blow up more buildings and airplanes? How many white guys are thinking about what kind of weapons they can slip past security on their way to confront their fate in the Family Court system? How many of the dispossessed in the innercities are prime for another, more virulent plague of riots?
Pundits like Rush Limbaugh argue that it hardly matters how much richer the rich are than the rest of us if everyone benefits, and they're right. If Bill Gates had virtually all the money in the world, we could laugh with him all the way to the bank if his wealth benefited us all. But the fact is that an increasing number of the wealthy are getting that way at our expense.
So what? The world isn't fair. That's what it takes to make America's businesses competitive in the "world class" markets. Besides, we don't "own" those jobs; employers don't owe us work any more than parents owe their children an allowance. If the kids don't like it, they can go out and get a job just the same as, if we don't like it, we can go out, start our own businesses, and join the ranks of the very rich.
Or can we? The software industry is known for turning hungry hackers into newly enriched nerds. Take the guys over at Netscape for example...Bill Gates is trying to. Every time somebody invents a better mousetrap for the PC, Microsoft flexes its billion dollar muscles. The barriers to entry are low, but between you and success stands a not-so-jolly green giant. The same can be said for many other industries. That’s not right. Duke it out fairly; there’s no honor in being a bully.
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It is people, not products or profits, who create meaning. - Michelle M. Ducharme, Newsweek, September 9, 1996 |
We may not own the jobs companies are sending overseas, but unlike the penurious parents above, the corporations do not own their home. We do. Ross Perot is right when he says we own the country. We pay the taxes that underwrite the commonwealth that grants limited liability to the corporations, we pay for the infrastructure, we subsidize the Universities, and, in a world of unrest, terrorism and war, we make the country safe for the sprawling corporate campuses. We are the foundation upon which the multinationals are mounted.
Business may be about making money, but money is meaningless without people. Corporate executives need to relearn this for their own good. If American citizens become as mercenary about supporting them as the corporate executives have been about supporting the American worker, how long will it be before the great corporations collapse? How long can they survive without us?
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