Democracy

The world is going through some staggering changes.

As I write this, it looks as if Libya may be in for a long period of civil war, despite its seemingly being pummeled by every country in the world– including Qatar!— which has an air force.  Saudi Arabia has sent armed forces into Bahrain to help suppress dissent.  The government of Yemen seems shakier by the day.  Egypt has voted on a new constitution, and will elect a new president in June.  Tunisia is trying to establish a new democratic order.

And Syria!  Good lord, there are mass demonstrations in major Syrian cities!   Their entire government has resigned!  The president, who is the son of the previous president, has promised reforms!  The Emergency Law, which has been in existence since 1963, is being questioned!  People are tearing down pictures of the president!

I never thought this would happen in Syria, not for another generation anyway.  It’s a national security state, it’s a place where you can’t escape the security police and the Ba’ath party.   Syria’s record on human rights is among the worst in the world.  The last major revolt, by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, was suppressed by the military at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.   Arbitrary arrest, murder, and torture are widespread, not only in Syria but among Syrians living abroad and in Lebanon, a nation which Syria is doing its best to annex.  They support terror, and if pressed can bring in their Hizbullah clients to  help crush any rebellion.  Yet the demonstrations are getting bigger and bigger, and the government keeps retreating.

It’s too early to predict how any of this will turn out, but it’s clear that the region has turned a corner.  People who have known nothing in their lives but a corrupt, despotic government are now willing to become heroes in defiance of that government.  They’re looking for a more open society and a chance to live in dignity.  Though they’ve never lived under a democracy, they say that’s what they want.

And now they have a model for rebellions that are shown to work, a model developed in Serbia, of all places.  (Check Foreign Policy for a somewhat self-congratulatory article on that model.   The short form: Burma’s next.)

The rebels probably have a better idea of democracy than we think they do.  They see foreign films, television, and news reports.  Their telephones show them what’s available in a world beyond their immediate horizon, in a world where they don’t have to hide from the secret police, where their political activity isn’t monitored, and where they don’t have to pay off the government every time they want to start a business.

Whatever new government emerges, they’ll face incredible challenges.  Massive unemployment among the young.  Major increases in the prices of food and fuel.  Here in the US, we’re seeing the biggest rise in food prices in 36 years, and the situation is worse in the Third World.  Climate change has been savaging crops all over the planet— last year alone saw colossal damage in Australia, Russia, and Africa—  and the only way a lot of regimes can stay in business is to subsidize food for their masses— except that with a single-party state demanding payoffs and a huge expensive security apparatus sitting atop the productive economy, they can’t afford those subsidies.  Jordan attempted to take subsidies off food and fuel, and after riots the subsidies were reinstated.

Can a new democracy fare any better?

And democracies are . . . complicated.   If you’re a statesman or a businessman, say, there are certain advantages in dealing with an autocrat.  When the Big Man says yes, everyone else falls into line.  When the Big Man says no, he’s the only person you need to argue with.

Democracy is more sticky.  Democratic leaders are subject to more pressures, and even if they say yes, their courts or parliaments can say no.  And vice versa.  To evolve toward democracy is to evolve toward complexity.

In this country, ironically, we’re evolving in the opposite direction.  We’re becoming less democratic and more unequal.

Back in 1915, people were shocked to discover that the richest 1% of Americans took home 15% of its income.  This was, remember, the tail end of the Gilded Age, when robber barons like Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan were living in castles and employing thousands of servants and not paying any taxes at all.

Income equality increased following the Great Depression, when Roosevelt betrayed his class by making them pay taxes, and reached a high point in 1974, when the richest took home a mere 9% our nation’s wealth.

Right now, the top 1% of income earners take home 24% of the nation’s income, well past the figure that shocked America in 1915.  We have greater income inequality than Nicaragua and Guyana, which are not exactly known as bastions of equality.

There are banana republics that have greater equality than we do.  I don’t know about you, but I’m deeply ashamed about that.

Egypt, where they just had a revolution, has more income equality than the U.S.  So does Tunisia.  So does India.

Now admittedly we start at a higher plateau.  No poor person in the US would want to change places with a poor person from Nicaragua, even if the chances of getting ahead are greater.  The Champion of the People, Daniel Ortega, is just another third-world despot now, with a constitution that allows him to run indefinitely for president, a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions of collars, and a hand out for bribes.

But you have a better chance of being successful in Nicaragua than you do in America.  Just think about that for a moment.

In fact, the richest 400 American individuals— the folks who once upon a time would have filled Mrs. Astor’s ballroom— now have more money than the poorest 150 million.

These guys (397 of them are male) are richer than the pharaohs.   Any one of them has more money than any Roman emperor.   They could buy whole countries, except why bother?  Then they’d have to run them. It’s much easier and cheaper to buy all the politicians instead.

Now how did they manage that vast increase in income?  Lower taxes, for one thing— those 400 doubled their income under Bush.

But they took advantage of another trick.  The American worker is the most productive in the world.  American productivity has doubled in the last twenty years or so.

Wow!  You’d think the American worker would be stuffing his pockets with the money his labors have brought in, right?

Well, no.  Not at all.   Wages have been stagnant in the US for a long time, or declined.  (Wages for male Americans peaked in the 1970s.)  What happened was that the wealthiest tier took all the extra wealth their workers had created and paid it to themselves.

The richest people in this country used to make their money by owning things.  Now the richest people get their wealth as salary, and that’s because they award it to themselves.  Back in 1960, the highest level of pay among top executives was maybe 30 times the amount of money of their average employee.  In 2007, the ratio was 344 to  one.

Explain to me why any executive is worth that much.   Please.

(And yes, I know that these salaries have to be approved by corporate boards.  But name me any major corporate board that regularly refuses to award this kind of pay to top executives.)

Can we now declare trickle-down economics to be dead and buried?  We’ve waited thirty years for the money to trickle down and we haven’t seen it.

Oh, maybe in a few areas of the economy.  Luxury jets.  Manhattan penthouses.  Yachts.  But if we’re waiting for the rich to actually do something useful and productive with their money, it seems we’re going to wait a long time.

Corporate taxes used to constitute 33% of government’s income.  Now it’s down to 17%.    In fact, most American corporations don’t pay taxes at all.

Even conservatives like Francis Fukuyama are pondering the possibility that the US has become a plutocracy, run by and for the super-rich.

Can I just say at this point that the idea of revolution by guillotine seems more and more attractive?

What I can’t quite work out is why there isn’t more outrage over this.  Why aren’t we seeing ordinary people packing the Washington Mall the same way the Egyptians packed Tahrir Square?

But apparently we can’t talk about class politics in America.  We’re supposed to be classless, and anyone who points out that our entire economic and political establishment has been purchased by the ultra-rich will be viewed with suspicion and distaste, as if he farted in church.

But guess what?  We do have classes.  Class barriers are growing ever more rigid, more rigid than in places like Egypt and Nicaragua.

And there’s a class war going on.  It was declared by the rich against the rest of us some time ago.  It’s time we noticed.