What is ignored by this argument is that wealth and poverty in a country like the United States is relative. What is ignored by right-wingers is the rich-poor gap (which is increasing) and that the middle class is slipping into poverty.
The latter assertions must be relative too. Where I live, they’re anything but the case in any real sense. Sure, there is an increasing gap between those who have nothing but a house, a car and a modest 401K or a small independent business and the “super wealthy”; the Tyson’s, the Waltons, the O’Reilleys, etc. But that’s always going to be true if some people have more or less adequate means and some acquire excess wealth in an inflationary system. It doesn’t necessarily mean those on the bottom are any worse off, and in fact they might be much better off. That certainly is the case here. “Poor” people in my town own the houses that the middle and upper classes lived in half a century to a century ago, and they’re not run down either. The wealthier classes own considerably more than they did then, and relative to what the “poor” people have now. But that doesn’t mean the poor are worse off. They’re much better off.
Back when I was a kid, being “middle class” meant you owned the house you lived in, had a regular income, a car, a radio and enough money to buy a suit to go to church in on Sunday. You got to eat chicken for Sunday dinner. The “middle class” now is much more numerous and has a lot more stuff. Anybody who wants to can eat chicken every day of the week.
It seems likely to me that in a society in which disparities in wealth exist at all, there will inevitably be greater gaps between the “reallly wealthy”, the “sort of wealthy”, the “middle class”, the “sort of middle class” and, the “sort of poor” and the “pretty darn poor” whenever asset accumulation is reasonably possible, because the value of the asset accumulation of each is increasingly inflated over time. As each baseline moves, the gap widens. But it doesn’t mean any people in the chain are worse off.
The thing can be dynamic downward as well as upward. When I was a kid, a well to do man died and left his daughter a $100,000 trust fund. That was considered wealth then. Not long ago she came to me for a business matter, and, lo! her trust fund was worth $100,000; peanuts in today’s economy, because she had spent up the income all these years.
Having said all that, I think the greatest injustice being done now to people, particularly on the lower end of the spectrum, is the increasing difficulty in acquiring productive assets. I expect I’ll be called a right-winger for saying this, though I don’t consider myself a right winger (I just agree with the social encyclicals) but I think the government takes an inordinate (and increasing) amount of peoples’ labor at every level. It’s like the “corvees” of old where you had to work for the lord of the manor so many days out of the year. Right now, we’re very close to working half our lives for the “lords of the manor”. And there are a lot of hidden taxes too. Medicare and Medicaid get discounts (nothwithstanding that the profit margin for healthcare providers is around 40%; far greater than Exxon’s) There is no such thing as a “discount”, and certainly not in healthcare. It’s a subsidy paid by those who do not get discounts. It makes no difference if you are frugal and save your money to support yurself or if you’re profligate and expect someone else to support you bye and bye. You pay the “corvee” nearly the same, either way.
And, of course, in the near future we are promised that if, say, we manage to accumulate productive assets, we’re going to pay the same tax on that, or nearly so, as we would pay on wage labor.
That does not only affect the “wealthy”. That also affects the factory worker who buys a run down house and fixes it up with his own labor in the evenings and on weekends and resells it for a profit.
I’m no expert, but this resentment of wealth that is so popular right now gets under my skin in a big way. And I’m not a wealthy guy. I just want to accumulate some productive assets for my old age and for my family. For goodness sake, if people can’t accumulate productive assets without being taxed to death for it, I don’t see how the kind of family independence encouraged by Rerum Novarum and the other social encyclicals, can ever be achieved.
Sometimes it seems to me that we have two political parties, both of whom are intent on enriching themselves. The difference is that it doesn’t trouble one of them if others make some money on the way. The other one doesn’t seem to like it if we do.
