Potholes

Potholes. They are, in fact, what is wrong with us right now. Well, not exactly the potholes themselves, but, rather, how we are dealing with them. Why, I ask, could this nation build tens...no...hundreds of thousands of miles of roads in the first thirty years (more or less) of the last century, but we have trouble filling the potholes in those roads today. I think I know the answer, and the answer is greed. In the  past forty years or so, we have institutionalized greed to a point where it is no longer considered one of the basic evils of this world.

"Gimme mine, and to hell with the rest of you." has become acceptable in our culture. It is, in fact, the mantra of the Republican party and their fellow travelers on the right edge of the political spectrum. Over the past 40 years, or so, this mindset has led to a massive imbalance in the distribution of wealth in this country. We have in fact become a two tier society with the middle class being squeezed to a point where it has shrunk to the smallest percentage of the population it has been in the last 100 years. In fact, today the top 1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90%. The implications of this fact are huge, and they do not bode well for the future of our democracy.

Think about it. The primary purpose of all that wealth is to acquire even more wealth. As more wealth is absorbed into that vast pool, two things become true: first, there is less wealth available to the rest of the population which means we are all scrabbling after a smaller and ever smaller piece of the pie. Second, the pool of wealth becomes even vaster and it accretes at an ever increasing rate. It is like a black hole which is growing ever larger, and our nation's wealth is disappearing into it.

And this brings me back to potholes. We are not filling the potholes on our nation's roads, much less building new roads, because the wealth necessary is no longer available to society. We are rapidly become like the vision portrayed in Blade Runner where the rich live in palatially sumptuous surroundings while the rest of us live in squalor.  However, this future is not inevitable. There is still time to reverse this process of wealth accretion. The first step is to increase the marginal tax rate on income above [pick a number-open for debate-for argument's sake, let's use $500,000/year] to at least 90%. The second step is to break up large fortunes by instituting a graduated estate tax that taxes estates over [pick a number-let's say...$10 million] at, again, at least 90%.  This recirculates wealth through society. It means that the government can pay down debt, and fund current operations without borrowing. It means more money is available for entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. It means the middle class becomes stronger. It means the growth of an aristocratic class slows and (hopefully) eventually reverses.

The time has come to challenge the Right Wing of the political spectrum before it become too powerful. Allow another generation of wealth accumulation, and it will be too late. Even now the super-rich nascent aristocracy will fight tooth and nail to protect every penny in their coffers. However, right now, we still have enough wealth and the numbers to return us to the true path of freedom in this country. There will always be this tension between the rich and the rest. The goal should be, not the elimination of either side, but, rather, a state of balance between them. Sure, there will be tilts where one side or the other gains ascendancy, and, when this happens, the goal should be to bring things back into balance.

The time is now. We dare not fail in this task.