Sharing the Wealth

IT AINT NO FUN BEING POOR, as most graduate students can attest. Those Spam sandwiches and water in double occupancy dorm rooms only go so far. And what's even worse, according to a well known college basketball coach, is when you are born poor, grow up poor, suddenly get rich by playing college sports at a high level, then, too infused with a desire to show off one's welath, end up poor again, through mismanagement and overspending. But the rich don't always win. When I moved to Aspen, Colorado and joined an exclusive tennis slub, it being the only game in town, I brought a mean game of tennis, honed on public courts among salty players, and fit in quite well. It turned out I was the only member who was not a millionaire. Hell, I was barely a hundredaire, trying to hold down three jobs while playing good tennis after work. I recall the day when my doubles partner informed me that our opponents were worth a combined thrity million dollars. or something north of that. I didn't give a damn. "Then let's go beat the rich guys", I said, and we did. I even turned pro for a day. My partner and I lost a mixed doubles final, but got thirty dollar second place gift certificates for our trouble...My education, intelligence, and high level of tennis ensured my popularity, even though I could barely rub two dimes together. The rich don't always win..."The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph Ovr Plutocracy That Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970", by Sam Pizzigati, published in 2012, explains how and why, and it has nothing to do with tennis. Anyone familiar with basic American history is familiar with the "robber baron" era of the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries, when the Rockefellers, Carnegie, and the Vanderbilts used their accumulated wealth to forge corporate industrial monopolies, hoarding most of the wealth of America. Aware of the growing disparity between rich and poor, and the resulting shrinking consumer base, anti-Trust Acts, the Sherman in 1890 and the Clayton in 1914, were implemented to remedy the situation, which, to a certain extent, they did. "Combinations in restraint of trade are illegal"... Labor Unions fought tooth and nail against corporate goons and thugs to come into existence. Wages were raised barely enough to give hourly workers something better than the slave labor label that had been affixed to them. The creation of the income tax in 1913, and the restructuring of the tax code associated with World War Two which placed a far greater burden on the nation's wealthy, succeeeded in ameliorating the situation somewhat, and by the end of the war the playing field had levelled...somewhat. The period between 1945 and 1975 is now considered the most prosperous in American history. The United States had become a middle class country, the most shining example in world histry, in which a working man could feed a family of four. Now, we are back where we were a hundred years ago. Beginning with Kennedy, and continuing with Reagan, reductions in taxes on the wealthy, the decline of labor unions, and unbridled spending on military procurement have combined to replace the former "robber barons" with our "one percent". It is not enough to recall that once we the people enjoyed a halcyon era of reasonably distributed wealth. Concentrated wealth destroys the middle class, drives down demand, and suppresses production. Demand, and supply. It is time to bring about another golden era of shared prosperity, and Sam Pizzigati, in his seminal monograph, offers an interesting prescription for doing precisely that.