Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology
Page 26
concluded that
society and laws which gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the
rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of
property and of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable
right, and for the profit of a few ambitious men henceforth subjected the
entire human race to labor, servitude, and misery.
A roughly similar point was made in the 1980s, by a black taxi driver in Los Angeles, who
was interviewed by a filmmaker about "democracy." The man laughed and said, "We have government by the dol ar, of the dol ar, for the dol ar."23
Surely we need to clear guilt from the air in the poorer districts of our cities (there are
enough impurities there already) by asking: Why shouldn't people in need be dependent on
the government, which presumably was set up exactly for the purpose of ensuring the wel -
being of its citizens? The words promote the general welfare do appear in the Preamble to
the Constitution, even if ignored in the rest of it.
Indeed, is there such a thing in this complicated society of the twentieth century as true
independence? Are we not al dependent on one another, and is that not a necessity of
modern life? We al depend on the government for schools, garbage col ection, protection
against fire and theft, and many other things. Welfare is only one kind of dependency.
Talent and Need
Playwright and social critic George Bernard Shaw, in his book The Intel igent Woman's
Guide to Socialism, after pointing out the evil effects of inequality in society (rebel ion, resentment, envy, and violent conflict) wrote in favor of a simple equality of wealth.24
Against him, there are those who argue that the poor have so little because they deserve so
little and that wealth fol ows talent. That claim goes something like this: "If you have the
right stuff, you'l be a success; if you don't have the stuff, you just won't make it, and that's
the way it should be."25
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The economist Milton Friedman argues like that. He insists that in a capitalist system like the United States "the market" sees to it that people are paid "in accordance with product,"
in other words, according to how much they produce.26 He seems to be living in a world of
his own creation, far removed from this one. In his world, everything works beautiful y by
the laws of the market, and people get more if they produce more, less if they produce less.
But how do you measure this thing cal ed product and decide who deserves more or less?
Here is the executive whose corporation produces nuclear bombs or deodorants or plastic
toys. Did he himself produce it or did a thousand workers produce it? How can you measure
his contribution to the final product? Indeed, in our complex modern society, where things
are produced by the participation of huge numbers of individuals, how can you measure the
contribution of each one to the product?
Furthermore, if one corporation produces cigarettes, which are bad for people's health, and
another produces antibiotics to cure people with infectious diseases, do you only care about
the quantity of production in deciding the rightness of reward or should you be concerned
with the kind of thing that is produced? Indeed, how can you measure contribution to
product when these products are so vastly different? Why does the producer of jeweled dog
col ars deserve a hundred times as much as the producer of a single poem?
The United States is ful of talented people, in many different fields, who have a difficult
time making enough money to keep alive. Is the skil ed machinist who is unemployed as a
result of a layoff any less skil ed than the one who is kept on? There are large numbers of
artists—painters, musicians, writers, and actors—who have loads of talent but, because our
government does not give out contracts to finance artistic performances as it gives out
contracts to finance the performance of nuclear submarines, they cannot make a living. (In
1979 the average published author earned about $4,775 from writing.)27
While there are some talented people who make money, there are others equal y talented
who do not. It must be clear to anyone living in this country that there are many people
with no talent—except the talent to make money—who are very rich. In short, there is no
logical relationship between talent and money.28
Surely, al human beings deserve the fundamental requirements for living—housing, food,
medical care, and education—regardless of their talents. Think of children, whose talents
are not yet evident: are they to get food and medical care on the basis of their parents'
talents? Is that fair?
And how are we to judge the monetary worth of this talent versus that other talent? Our
capitalist society has made its decision on the basis of the market, meaning on the basis of what sel s, not on the basis of logic or reason or morality. It has decided that the head of an
advertising agency deserves ten times as much money as a skil ed carpenter, and that a
man who juggles papers as vice president of an aerospace company deserves a hundred
times as much money as a gifted teacher of elementary school children.
The market has decided that housewives produce nothing; therefore, it pays them nothing.
The welfare mother taking care of her children is, in fact, working. The wife who stays home
with the children is giving her talent and energy to one of the most important jobs in
society. But she has no rights to a share of society's wealth on the basis of her work. The
market, and its supporters, have decided that.
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As for incentives, talented people are not productive on the basis of money incentives.
Indeed, when money determines what they do, their art may be distorted by what the
market requires; the artists wil draw what the lingerie company wants, not what he or she
desires to do; the writer wil produce advertising copy rather than a poem. Talented people
exercise their talents for the pleasure of it and wil be able to do this if only they can have
their basic economic needs taken care of. Their incentive wil not be money, but the
satisfaction of doing what they are impel ed to do and the respect of others for what they
have done.
George Bernard Shaw discussed the issue of merit and talent:
Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the
distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are
everything. Instead of al the workers being level ed down to low wage
standards and al the rich level ed up to fashionable income standards,
everybody under a system of equal incomes would find her and his own
natural level. There would be great people and ordinary people and little
people; but the great would always be those who had done great things, and
never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left
them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of smal
minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a
chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their
only chance of eminence), and the real y great in favor of equality.29
Shaw was arguing for equal incomes for al . This, of course, is a quite radical proposal. Like
other radical proposals, it need not
be taken literal y; no one expects a program of exactly
equal incomes to be put into effect even by the most revolutionary of governments. But the
idea is shocking to us because we have been brought up in a society of such vastly different
incomes that we cannot comprehend a different situation. There is a tendency to think that
what we grew up with, what we have seen al our lives, is natural and inevitable. That any
other way would be against human nature.
But we have very simple examples of where human beings have adjusted quickly to the
idea of equal incomes. The family is the most obvious example: the members of the family
get food, clothing, shelter, and medical care not on the basis of their work, their talent, or
their contribution, but simply because they have the same basic needs. And no one would
think of questioning that equality.
One might argue that a society of strangers is much different than a family. But we have
the example of the Israeli kibbutz. People who have joined the kibbutz, even people who
come from very competitive capitalist countries, yes, Americans, have adjusted quickly to
the equality of the kibbutz, where people do different kinds of work, but al get the same
benefits, their basic needs taken care of in the same way.
And while it may be thought that the jump from a family to a kibbutz is one thing, but the
next jump to a nation makes the idea of egalitarianism impossible, one should consider the
old factor of patriotism. Think of what power there is in patriotism and how that power has
often been used for terrible purposes. Yet at the very time it was being used to carry on
murderous wars, it revealed its power to unite the people of the country in egalitarian
sacrifice.
During World War II, people left high-paying jobs to do civilian jobs that were necessary for
the war. Or to go into the armed forces. If we put aside the class distinctions of officers and
enlisted men, we can see that men, imbued with the idea they were fighting in a great
moral cause, did not perform on the basis of their pay, but gave what they could, even their
lives, for that cause.
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In short, the capacity of human beings to give their talents, their energies, and their al , not on the basis of monetary reward, but on the basis of some larger col ective purpose, has
been demonstrated again and again. That fact is encouraging to the idea of an equal
distribution of wealth.30
How Should Wealth Be Distributed?
There are variations on the theme of equal income. The Marxian idea was not to give
everyone the same, but distribute the wealth of society according to need, because there
are large families and smal families, sick people and healthy people, children and old
people, al with different needs to enjoy life. Marx did not see the possibility of doing this in
the early stages of a socialist society, because production would not be developed enough,
there would not be enough to go around. But:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of
individuals under division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between
mental and physical labor, has vanished … after the productive forces have
also increased with the al -round development of the individual, and al the
springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the
narrow horizon of bourgeois right be ful y left behind and society inscribe on
its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs!31
The argument has been made that the "needs" formula is not good for everything. Michael
Walzer agrees that the formula is good for medical care and other things. But, he says,
"Marx's slogan doesn't help at al with regard to the distribution of political power, honor
and fame, leisure time, rare books, and sailboats." And so he argues that there can be no
one principle of distribution. "Equality requires a diversity of principles, which mirrors the diversity both of mankind and of social goods."32
This makes sense. But we don't have to get into complicated arguments about exactly how
al things wil be distributed. It would be an enormous accomplishment to get agreement
that the fundamental requirements of existence—food, housing, medical care, education,
and work—be distributed according to need. It is shocking, it is irrational, it is unjust, that in
a country as wealthy as the United States, any human being living within its borders should
not have these basic things.
As of 1986, 37 mil ion adults and children had no medical insurance. About 88 percent of
these were working people or their families. Most of them did not earn enough to pay the
high cost of individual medical insurance and many of them were not eligible for Medicaid
(state medical payments for the poor) because they made just enough money to put them
over the eligibility line.
For instance, a forty-one-year-old nurse's assistant who had injured herself lifting a patient
and couldn't work was receiving $500 a month in workmen's compensation, not enough to
pay for her own insurance and too much to qualify for Medicaid. Her medical bil s piled up
unpaid and she was being treated for depression at a community health clinic.33
In 1989 the American Cancer Institute presented the results of a study that showed that
lack of money results in higher rates of cancer, because it goes undetected for longer
periods of time, and poor people do not get as good treatment as the rich.
The philosopher Robert Nozick has argued that entitlement should be the key to the way
wealth is distributed. If, he says, someone has "holdings" (wealth, land, resources, and
skil s) that he has acquired "by legitimate means," no one should take them away for any
purpose, however desperate the need.
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Does he mean that if I have a mil ion dol ars, which I got by legitimate means, then the government has no right to tax any of that to raise money to build homes for homeless
people, or to provide medical insurance for the aged?
What does legitimate mean? Does it mean legal? Then the money accumulated by
corporations through tax breaks obtained by paying lobbyists to get the right laws passed or
paying accountants to make the best use of those laws is legitimate and government has no
right to tax that to pay for Medicare. If legitimate means moral, we could argue that none of the great fortunes came about moral y, certainly not without the exploitation of labor. Then,
using Nozick's principle, the way would be wide open, to distribute those fortunes in
whatever way they would be useful to people in need.34
If we traced the holdings of the rich back in history (Rockefel er, Morgan, Vanderbilt,
Carnegie, Mel on, Astor, and Frick) we would encounter shrewdness, managerial ability,
luck, ruthlessness, and violence. In Carl Sandburg's poem "The People, Yes" we find the fol owing exchange:
"Get off this estate."
"What for?"
"Because it's mine."
"Where did you get it?"
"From my father."
"Where did he get it?"
"From his father."
"And where did he get it?"
"He fought for it."
"Wel , I'l fight you for it."35
Truth is it shouldn't matter how the rich got that way. If people have fundamental needs
&n
bsp; that are matters of life and death, why should we not, by taxation, take from people who
wil not suffer as a result of the taking, to meet those needs?
There seems to be no reasonable relationship between how hard someone works and that
person's income. There are people who do no work and are poor, and people who do no
work and are rich. There are hard workers among people who earn $100,000 a year and
hard workers among people who earn $15,000 a year. How is one to measure the work
done by a cleaning woman and the work done by the corporate executive whose office she
cleans? In our culture, by definition, someone who makes a lot of money is working hard.
That's a nice circular definition—it saves us the job of real y examining what people do.
Farmers work hard and the market pays them so little they desperately need government
help to survive. Housewives work hard and the market pays them nothing. Students can
work hard too, but because we measure work by money earned, that doesn't count at al .
The thought that people get paid according to their contribution to society does not stand up
to more than a moment of examination. Among the lowest paid of workers are teachers,
social workers, and nurses. Among the highest paid are the executives of corporations that
make weapons.
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I once put a question to a class of about 400 students: On what basis do people get paid in American society? What determines their income? Is it intel igence, hard work, or
contribution to society? There was a lively, argumentative discussion, in which some
students pointed to their parents as proof that hard work or contribution to society or
special talent had resulted in prosperity—and others were skeptical. Final y, I asked for a
show of hands of those who would claim that, in general, leaving room for exceptions,
Americans got paid according to their intel igence. Three or four hands were raised. Hard
work? A similar response. Contribution to society? Again, just a few hands raised. Then I
asked who believed it was "none of the above." Almost everyone raised his hand. It took
only a little reflection, apparently, for these young people to see that the way income is
distributed today does not fol ow any rational or just principle.
Coercion
Those who oppose distributing wealth on the basis of need often say they do not want the