Spreading the Wealth

This last Friday, I watched in utter amaDuring the 2008 presidential election, Obama spoke with a man on the street, later to be known as “Joe the Plumber.“ Joe asked Obama how his tax plan would he, as a small businessman, would be affected.  After explaining his graduated tax plan, Obama philosophized that we are all better off if we help the lowest-income people do better.  This elevated Joe the plumber to star status and exhibit one in McCain’s strategy to scare voters away from the “socialist” Obama who was going to redistribute their income.

Eight years later, it appears that income redistribution is under serious consideration.  Doubling the minimum wage to $12-$15/hr is being talked about (and enacted in places like Seattle!), never mind that it would be over $20/hr if the minimum wage of 1970 was in place and increased for inflation. Even corporate CEO’s are beginning to connect the lethargic condition of our consumer-driven economy with a paucity of spending power.

Leaving aside, for the time being, the advisability of having an economy that is based on how much stuff we all buy, I’d like to explore some other benefits of wealth redistribution, not just money wealth, but resources, knowledge, and power.  
We are facing crises from multiple fronts.  Even deniers of human-induced climate change are having a hard time denying the increasing severity of droughts and floods.  Resource depletion is readily apparent.  Ignorance, poverty, disease, and political instability are obvious to all.  Regardless of whether or not you agree that we now live in the Anthropocene Era, an era in which humanity has become the predominant influence on the planet, you would still have to agree that the only means we have to address the world crises we are facing today is human planning and action (or inaction as the case may be).  That makes human beings our most valuable asset, and it happens to be an asset that we have in spades: 7 billion and counting.  

It should be obvious that our top priority investment should be the health, well-being, and education of all those humans, so that they have the tools and motivation to be the solution rather than the problem.  So, when we think of the poor as shiftless and lazy and undeserving of our help, we are just shooting ourselves in the foot.  Not investing in those assets will surely make them liabilities that the world cannot afford to carry.
 
But if we raise the standard of living of all those humans, won’t we then see our population explode?  Not necessarily.  The lowest birthrates in the world are mostly in the developed countries.  In many cases, those birthrates are negative! High birth rate may be triggered by stress.   If you see a tree that has an unusual amount of seed, it often is stressed.   I’m going to speculate that low birth rates for humans are at least partially attributable to general health and wellbeing,  and the status and education of women.  With a world average of 1.2 births per capita, South Sudan, a country with terrible poverty, ignorance, and strife has the third highest rate at 4.3.  The highest and second highest rates in the world are Oman with 9.1(!) with Qatar close behind at 7.  Ironically, these are some of the wealthiest countries in the world.  These, and some of the other small, prosperous Arab states, are high perhaps because women are virtually powerless in that culture.  Most of the remaining high rates are in Africa where poverty and ignorance, in addition to the status of women, could be the predominant causes.  Some of the lowest rates such as in China or Japan reflect more of a cultural or political stance than a reflection on the status of women.  In general, it seems clear that general health and wellbeing, and relative status and education of women in particular, might bring the birthrate down dramatically.  Eradicating poverty and ignorance, and demanding the empowerment of women as soon as possible may be some of the smartest investments we could make.

Free college education, an idea that is being bantered about in the presidential campaigns, would be another very good investment.  The powers that be would rather see innovation occurring in a controlled fashion in their own research centers rather than in thousands of garages across the planet, but they will have to share the profits of innovation because we simply can’t afford to waste all that brainpower.  

Part of the education we need to impart to every human is an awareness and reverence for the natural world.  So much better to have all people acting cooperatively and intelligently out of knowledge and concern rather than being coerced by statutes and fines.  So-called “primitive” indigenous cultures do this so well.

Although spreading the wealth does make sense in a consumer society, spreading the consumer society does not.  We humans are now a scourge and will be relieved of duty in short order unless we get with the program.  Let’s use our wealth to spread wellbeing. education and empowerment so that we can all become part of the solution.  Concentrated wealth is wealth that is squandered, not the other way around.

Comments?   terry@vashonloop.com