US alcohol-related deaths doubled between 1999 and 2017
Alcohol deaths in the United States have more than doubled over the past two decades, pointing to a devastating health emergency spurred on by the social and economic crisis, a new study finds. The greatest increases were among women and people middle-aged and older. Across racial and ethnic groups, non-Hispanic American Indians/Alaska Natives (NH AIAN) had the highest alcohol-related death rates in 2017.
The annual death toll from alcohol abuse has outpaced even deaths from opioids, which stood at 70,237 in 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only cigarettes are deadlier than alcohol, with smoking-related illnesses accounting for more than 480,000 deaths each year.
Based on data from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Health Statistics, the study was published Wednesday in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Researchers looked at death certificates from 1999 through 2017, as well as using alcohol-attributable fractions (AAFs), which specify the proportion of deaths from various causes that likely involved alcohol, based on previous research.
This data showed that deaths from alcohol rose from 35,914 in 1999 to 72,558 in 2017. Nearly 1 million (944,880) Americans died from alcohol-related causes during this period.
According to the study, 70.1 percent of the US population ages 18 and older, about 173.3 million people, consumed alcohol in 2017. This averages out to approximately 3.6 gallons of pure alcohol per drinker annually, or about 2.1 standard US drinks per day. Consumption rates for heavy drinkers are much higher.
“Alcohol is not a benign substance and there are many ways it can contribute to mortality,” said the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Director Dr. George F. Koob. “The current findings suggest that alcohol-related deaths involving injuries, overdoses, and chronic diseases are increasing across a wide swath of the population. The report is a wakeup call to the growing threat alcohol poses to public health.”
Counted in the deaths are those due to liver disease and other alcohol-related illnesses, as well as accidents such as falls and car crashes. The increase in alcohol-related deaths is consistent with reports of increases in alcohol-involved emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations during the period studied.
Between 2006 and 2014, rates of ED visits involving alcohol increased 47.3 percent among persons aged 12 and older, and the number of these visits increased from 3,080,214 to 4,976,136.
Chronic causes were responsible for the majority of alcohol-related deaths, 86.5 percent, including liver and cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and other conditions. Acute causes, such as falls and accidents, were responsible for 14.6 percent of these deaths.
In 2017, alcohol played a role in 2.6 percent of all deaths in the US, according to the study. Researchers say this figure is likely an underestimation, as alcohol is underreported as a cause of death in many cases. For example, alcohol was only listed as a contributing factor in one of six motor vehicle accidents, although the proportion is known to be considerably higher.
The increase in alcohol deaths—along with other “deaths of despair,” including from opioids and suicides—has contributed to a decrease in life expectancy in the US, which fell each year from 2015 to 2017, a streak unprecedented in modern times.
The increase in alcohol deaths also follows the 2008 financial crash and Great Recession, which plunged millions of working-class families into a dire economic situation and social distress. A study last year found that rising healthcare costs, along with lack of access to medical care, were a driving force in these “deaths of despair.”
The overall prevalence of drinking and binge drinking was largest for people age 50 and older, relative to younger age groups. Despite a faster increase in alcohol-related deaths among younger adults aged 25 to 34, the overall rates of alcohol-related deaths are more than four times higher among middle-aged and older adults, aged 45 to 74.
While long-term heavy drinking can be pointed to as the driving factor in alcohol-related deaths in seniors, social factors cannot be discounted. These include the financial strain of retirement and the axing of pensions, as well as the social isolation created by the lack of a social safety net for older Americans, who are often left isolated.
Medicare, the healthcare program relied upon by the vast majority of retirees, only covers a portion of medical expenses, placing treatment for substance abuse beyond the reach of many. Another factor is the disjointed nature of the US healthcare system, in which little time is allotted by healthcare professionals for treating mental health issues.
One of the most critical findings of the study is the increase in women’s alcohol consumption and alcohol-related death rates. While the overall prevalence of drinking and binge drinking did not change for men between 2000 and 2016, there was a 10.1 percent increase in drinking and a 23.3 percent increase in binge drinking among women over these years.
While men accounted for 76.4 percent of alcohol-related deaths over the past two decades, a greater increase was observed among women—a 135.8 percent increase in numbers compared to a 92.9 percent increase for men. From 1999 to 2017, alcohol-related deaths numbered 721,587 for men and 223,293 for women, causing the ratio of male/female deaths to fall from 3.7:1 in 1999 to 3.0:1 in 2017. This can be traced to the increase in alcohol consumption by women during this period.
Women are also dying of alcohol-related causes at younger ages. In 1999, the highest rate of deaths for women was among ages 65 to 74, followed by ages 55 to 64. However, in 2017 this had shifted to women ages 55 to 64 having the highest death rates, followed by ages 45 to 54.
While non-Hispanic black males and females and Hispanic males saw an initial decline and then a leveling off of death rates from 1999 to 2011, this was followed by increases in alcohol-related mortality for these groups. The researchers say evidence suggests that alcohol consumption and binge drinking are increasing more among non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics than among non-Hispanic whites.
In 2017, death certificates recorded 10,596 deaths due to overdoses from a combination of alcohol and drugs and another 2,358 deaths from alcohol alone. As alcohol causes respiratory depression on its own, the risk of acute respiratory failure increases when alcohol is combined with other drugs with the same effect, such as opioids and benzodiazepines.
This shows that the pharmaceutical industries’ flooding of communities with opioids—particularly those affected by plant and mine closures and economic devastation—has intersected with the abuse of alcohol to deadly effect. Blame also rests with the alcoholic beverage industry, which is dominated by a small number of conglomerates that promote their products through pervasive advertisements while reaping billions of dollars in profits, with scant attention paid to the potential harms to public health.
Share market boom masks another
financial crisis in the making
TRUMPERNOMICS:
Billionaires’ wealth surged in 2019
28
December 2019
Bloomberg:
2019 a Good Year for Wealthy; Jeff Bezos Remains on Top Despite $9 Billion Loss
in Divorce
The Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt
Economists:
America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower
tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of
economists reveals.
The financial oligarchy go into the New
Year
celebrating their massive accumulation
of
wealth and the so-called mainstream
media
will continue to maintain the fiction
that the
US and, by extension, the global
economy,
remain sound. But the reality is that
the seeds
of another financial catastrophe have
not
only been planted but are rapidly
germinating.
Share market boom masks another
financial crisis in the making
Wall Street stock market indexes are set
to finish the year at or near record highs in marked contrast to the end of
2018 when they experienced their worst December since 1931 in the midst of the
Great Depression.
The rise and rise of stock prices over
the course of the year—the S&P 500 is up by more than 29 percent—has been the
principal factor in the further escalation of the wealth of the ultra-rich with
Bloomberg reporting that their net worth has risen by $1.25 trillion, or 25
percent.
The escalation of the financial
markets,
however, is not an expression of economic
health. Rather, the social disease of
ever-
rising inequality, coupled with
worsening
wages and living standards for millions,
is the
contradictory expression of a gathering
crisis
located at the very heart of the
financial
system itself.
The year 2019 will go
down in economic history as the great turnaround when the world’s major central
banks gave up on their attempt to return to “normal” monetary policy after
pumping trillions of dollars into the global financial system in response to
the crisis of 2008–9.
These extraordinary
actions, rewarding the very banks and financial institutions whose speculative
and in some cases outright criminal activities had sparked the crisis, were
justified on the basis that they were necessary to save the entire
system. When the crisis passed, it was maintained, such “unconventional”
monetary policies would cease and there would be a return to “normal.”
But it has become clear
over the course of the past decade that this day will never come because, like
a drug addict, the entire global financial system has become completely
dependent on the supply of ultra-cheap money for the accumulation of profit.
To give the US Federal
Reserve its due it did make an attempt to at least restrict the supply. It
carried out four interest rates rises in 2018, on the back of a slight upturn
in the US and global economy and foreshadowed more of the same in 2019. It even
committed itself to start winding down its massive holdings of financial assets
which, as a result of quantitative easing, had expanded to more than $4
trillion from $800 billion in 2007.
The violent reaction of
Wall Street to these measures at the end of 2018, amid denunciations of the Fed
by President Trump, meant that even these limited measures were shelved. The underlying
weakness of the US economy and the fragility of the financial system, where
corporate debt has risen close to a record $10 trillion (equivalent to 47
percent of the total economy) and some 50 percent of corporate bonds are rated
at BBB (just above junk status), meant it could not sustain a base interest
rate above the historically low rate of 2.5 percent.
Fed chairman Powell
started the year by making clear there would be no rates rises and in July made
the first of what were to be three interest rate cuts for the year. The winding
down of asset holdings was halted. These actions have been duplicated by the
European Central Bank which has further cut its base interest this year and
resumed its asset purchases, adding to the €2.6 trillion stock it already
holds, while the Bank of Japan continues its quantitative easing program.
The Fed has not
officially resumed quantitative easing but it has intervened aggressively in
the short-term financial market following a spike in the overnight repo rate
last September. The repo market is crucial to the day-to-day functioning of the
financial system as financial institutions borrow money overnight to close
their books at the end of the trading day. Under normal conditions, the repo
interest rate tracks the Fed’s base rate. But in mid-September it spiked to as
high as 10 percent.
Since then the Fed has
intervened to the
tune of hundreds
of billions of dollars and
reversed more than half
the previous
reduction of its asset
portfolio.
One of the most significant
effects of central bank policy has been in the market for government bonds. It
has been said that 2019 was the year when bond market logic was turned on its
head. Bond markets have traditionally functioned as an arena for virtually
risk-free investment at a relatively low rate of return. Their operations have
formed the basis for investments by pension funds and insurance companies that
have to balance their long-term liabilities with secure assets.
But in the middle of
this year the mass of bonds yielding negative yields reached $17 trillion.
Since then the amount of bonds with negative yields has fallen to $12 trillion,
but this is still far beyond anything that has occurred in the past.
A negative yield occurs
when the price of a bond in the market has gone so high that if an investor
purchased it and held it to maturity they would make a loss. Of course, under
those conditions investors do not buy bonds in order to hold them to maturity.
They do so in anticipation that prices will rise even further and they will be
able to sell them and make a capital gain. And the converse applies. If
interest rates rise and the price of the bond falls (the two move in the
opposite direction) the investors will make a loss.
The emergence of
negative yields in bond markets as a result of central bank monetary policies
is the expression of a financial bubble in an area of the market that had
previously provided some stability.
In a recent comment on
Bloomberg entitled “When the ultimate refuge turns risky,” financial analyst
Satyaijit Das noted: “Until the financial crisis of 2008, government bonds were
the traditional haven for investors. More than a decade on, their nature has
fundamentally changed. In any future crisis, sovereign debt will be a
propagator of risk rather than a refuge.”
He warned that despite
record low interest rates and low inflation the risk on these supposedly safe
assets was increasing. Once they provided risk-free returns. Now, with yields
at record lows, they provide only return-free risks.
The danger is that
problems in the credit worthiness of government bonds of any country can
rapidly be transmitted throughout the financial system as losses on bond
holdings create selling pressure leading to rising debt costs. In a recent
report, the World Bank pointed to a “global debt wave” that had led to the
growth of debt in emerging market economies to a “towering” $55 trillion—the
largest in history. Emerging markets are not the only source of potential
instability. In the advanced economies government debt has risen to more than
100 percent of gross domestic product compared to 70 percent in 2007.
The significance of the
debt bubble in government bonds emerges in clearer focus when it is viewed in
the context of the financial crises of the past three decades. The stock market
crash of October 1987, when Wall Street experienced its largest one day fall in
history, was the result of a share price bubble. Then came the Asian crisis of
1997–98, set off by an emerging market bubble. It was followed by the collapse
of the tech bubble in the early 2000s and then the financial crash of 2008–9,
sparked by a bubble in the housing market which resulted in a crisis with the
onset of recessionary trends at the end of 2007.
Now there is a bubble
in the market for government bonds, which in previous periods has functioned as
the bedrock of the financial system. Moreover, the world’s major central banks
are directly involved because of their purchases of government bonds over the
past decade. As Das noted: “It is ironic that actions taken to preserve the
system and a key instrument—government bonds—now pose a key threat to financial
stability.”
The financial oligarchy go into the New
Year
celebrating their massive accumulation
of
wealth and the so-called mainstream
media
will continue to maintain the fiction
that the
US and, by extension, the global
economy,
remain sound. But the reality is that
the seeds
of another financial catastrophe have
not
only been planted but are rapidly
germinating.
TRUMPERNOMICS:
Billionaires’ wealth surged in 2019
28
December 2019
As the second decade of
the 21st century comes to a close, its most salient feature—the plundering of
humanity by a global financial oligarchy—continues unabated.
Amidst trade war and
the growth of militarism and authoritarianism on the one side, and an eruption
of international strikes and protests by the working class against social
inequality on the other, the stock market is hitting record highs and the
fortunes of the world’s billionaires are continuing to surge.
On Friday, one day
after all three major US stock indexes set new records, Bloomberg issued its
end-of-year survey of the world’s 500 richest people. The Bloomberg Billionaires
Index reported that the oligarchs’ fortunes increased by a combined total of
$1.2 trillion, a 25 percent rise over 2018. Their collective net worth now
comes to $5.9 trillion.
To place this figure in
some perspective, these 500 individuals control more wealth than the gross
domestic product of the United States at the end of the third quarter of 2019,
which was $5.4 trillion.
The year’s biggest
gains went to France’s Bernard Arnault, who added $36.5 billion to his fortune,
bringing it above the rarified $100 billion level to $105 billion. He knocked
speculator Warren Buffett, at $89.3 billion, down to fourth place. Amazon boss
Jeff Bezos lost nearly $9 billion due to a divorce settlement, but maintained
the top position, with a net worth of $116 billion. Microsoft founder Bill
Gates gained $22.7 billion for the year and held on to second place at $113
billion.
The 172 American
billionaires on the Bloomberg list added $500 billion, with Facebook’s Mark
Zuckerberg recording the year’s biggest US gain at $27.3 billion, placing him
in fifth place worldwide with a net worth of $79.3 billion.
It is difficult to
comprehend the true significance of such stratospheric sums. In his 2016
book Global Inequality, economist Branko Milanovic wrote:
"A billion dollars
is so far outside the usual experience of practically everyone on earth that
the very quantity it implies is not easily understood… Suppose now that you
inherited either $1 million or $1 billion, and that you spent $1,000 every day.
It would take you less than three years to run through your inheritance in the
first case, and more than 2,700 years (that is, the time that separates us from
Homer’s Iliad) to blow your inheritance in the second case."
The vast redistribution
of wealth from the bottom to the top of society is the outcome of a
decades-long process, which was accelerated following the 2008 Wall Street
crash. It is not the result of impersonal and simply self-activating processes.
Rather, the policies of capitalist governments and parties around the world,
nominally “left” as well as right, have been dedicated to the ever greater
impoverishment of the working class and enrichment of the ruling elite.
In the US, the top one
percent has captured all of the increase in national income over the past two decades,
and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
The main mechanism for
this transfer of wealth has been the stock market, and the policies of the US
Federal Reserve and central banks internationally have been geared to providing
cheap money to drive up stock prices. The cost of this massive subsidy to the
financial markets and the oligarchs has been paid by the working class, in the
form of social cuts, mass layoffs, the destruction of pensions and health
benefits, and the replacement of relatively secure and decent-paying jobs with
part-time, temporary and contingent “gig” positions.
Since Trump was
inaugurated in January of 2017, pledging to slash corporate taxes, lift
regulations on big business and dramatically increase the military budget, the
Dow has surged by 9,000 points. This year, Trump and the financial markets
applied massive pressure on the Fed to reverse its efforts to “normalize”
interest rates. The Fed complied, carrying out three rate cuts and repeatedly
assuring the markets it had no plans to raise rates in 2020.
This windfall for the
banks and hedge funds was supported by the Democrats no less than the
Republicans. In fact, Trump’s economic policy has been given de facto support
by the Democratic Party all down the line—from his tax cuts for corporations
and the rich to his attack on virtually all regulations on business. Even in
the midst of impeachment—carried out entirely on the grounds of “national
security” and Trump’s supposed “softness” toward Russia—the Democrats have
voted by wide margins for Trump’s budget, his anti-Chinese US-Mexico-Canada
trade pact and his record $738 billion Pentagon war budget.
This has included
giving Trump all the money he wants to build his border wall and carry out the
mass incarceration and persecution of immigrants.
Trump’s pro-corporate
policies are an extension and expansion of those pursued by the Obama
administration. It allocated trillions in taxpayer money to bail out the banks
and flooded the financial markets with cheap credit, driving up stock prices,
while imposing a 50 percent across-the-board cut in pay for newly hired
autoworkers in its bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. Obama oversaw the
closure of thousands of schools and the layoff of hundreds of thousands of teachers,
and enacted austerity budgets that slashed social programs.
Two of those running
for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are billionaires—Tom Steyer and
Michael Bloomberg. The latter, with a net worth of $56 billion, is the ninth
richest person in the US. He entered the race as the spokesman for oligarchs
outraged over talk from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren of token tax
increases on the super-rich.
The oligarchs are not
frightened by Sanders and Warren—two longstanding defenders of the American
ruling class, who seek to mask their subservience to capital with talk of
making the oligarchs pay “their fair share,” a euphemism for defending their
right to pillage the population. The billionaires are frightened by the growth
of mass opposition to capitalism that finds a distorted expression in support
for the phony “progressives” in the Democratic fold.
Between them, Bloomberg
and Steyer have already spent $200 million of their own money in an effort to
buy the election outright.
The impact of the
policy of social plunder is seen in the deepening of a malignant social crisis
in country after country. In the US, society is marching backwards, as the
crying need for schools, hospitals, affordable housing, pensions, the
rebuilding of decrepit roads, bridges, transportation, flood control, water and
sewage, fire control and electricity grids is met with the official response:
“There is no money.”
The result? Three
straight years of declining life expectancy, record addiction and suicide
rates, devastating wildfires and floods, electricity cut-offs by profiteering
utility companies. And a climate crisis that cannot be addressed within the
framework of a system dominated by a money-mad plutocracy.
Not a single serious
social problem can be addressed under conditions where the ruling elite—through
its bribed parties and politicians, aided by its pro-capitalist trade unions
and backed up by its courts, police and troops—diverts resources from society
to the accumulation of ever more luxurious yachts, mansions, private islands
and personal jets.
The watchword must
be—in opposition to the Corbyns, the Sanders, the Tsiprases and their
pseudo-left promoters—“Expropriate the super-rich!”
Bloomberg:
2019 a Good Year for Wealthy; Jeff Bezos Remains on Top Despite $9 Billion Loss
in Divorce
For the already wealthy and those
who struck gold for the first time, 2019 was a good year for the rich.
Bloomberg News’ billionaire index
is reporting on the money
made this past year, including Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff
Bezos remaining on the top of the heap despite a divorce settlement with his
ex-wife that led to a $9 billion decrease in his portfolio:
The leveraging of a giant
social-media presence, a catchy tune about a family of sharks and a burgeoning
collection of junkyards are just a few of the curious ways that helped make
2019 a fertile year for fortunes to blossom around the world.
Kylie Jenner became the youngest
self-made billionaire this year after her company, Kylie Cosmetics, signed an
exclusive partnership with Ulta Beauty Inc. She then sold a 51% stake for $600
million.
It has been almost two months since
the Washington Nationals captured their first World Series championship, but
people around the world are still singing along to the baseball team’s adopted
rallying cry: “Baby Shark, doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo.” The Korean family that
helped popularize the viral earworm are now worth about $125 million.
The new wealthy includes Willis
Johnson of Oklahoma who has amassed a $1.9 billion fortune from building a
network of junkyards that sell damaged automobiles, according to Bloomberg
News.
Bloomberg reported that the 500
wealthiest people around the world added $1.2 trillion to their wealth,
“boosting their collective net worth 25 percent to $5.9 trillion.”
“Leading the 2019 gains was France’s
Bernard Arnault, who added $36.5 billion as he rose on the Bloomberg index to
become the world’s third-richest person and one of three centibillionaires —
those with a net worth of at least $100 billion,” Bloomberg reported.
Ironically, Bezos was one of 52
people who had a decline in their fortune, in his case because of a divorce
settlement with MacKenzie Bezos who is now on the billionaires list ranking No.
25 with a net worth of $27.5 billion.
Bloomberg reported on the winners:
- The 172 American billionaires on the
Bloomberg ranking added $500 billion, with Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg
up $27.3 billion and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates up $22.7
billion.
- Representation from China continued to
grow, with the nation’s contingent rising to 54, second only to the U.S.
He Xiangjian, founder of China’s biggest air-conditioner exporter, was the
standout performer as his wealth surged 79 percent to $23.3 billion.
- Russia’s richest added $51 billion, a
collective increase of 21 percent, as emerging-market assets from
currencies to stocks and bonds rebounded in 2019 after posting big losses
a year earlier.
And “losers”:
- Rupert Murdoch’s personal fortune
dropped by about $10 billion after proceeds from Walt Disney Co.’s
purchase of Fox assets were distributed to his six children, making them
billionaires in their own right.
- Interactive Brokers Group Inc.’s Thomas
Peterffy saw his wealth slump by $2.1 billion as investors weighed a
reshaped competitive landscape for brokerage businesses after rival
Charles Schwab Corp. eliminated commissions and agreed to buy TD
Ameritrade Holding Corp.
- WeWork’s Adam Neumann saw his fortune
implode — at least on paper — as the struggling office-sharing company’s
valuation dropped to $8 billion in October from an estimated $47 billion
at the start of the year. Still, SoftBank Group Corp.’s rescue package
left Neumann’s status as a billionaire intact.
And the new billionaires:
- White Claw, the “hard seltzer” that was
the hit of the summer among U.S. millennials, helped boost Anthony von
Mandl’s net worth to $3.6 billion.
- Mastering the art of fast-food
deliveries proved rewarding for Jitse Groen, whose
soaring Takeaway.com NV lifted his wealth to $1.5 billion.
- The popularity of soy milk gave eight
members of Hong Kong’s Lo family a combined $1.5 billion.
A new Gilded Age
has emerged in America — a 21st century version.
The
wealth of the top 1% of Americans has grown dramatically in the past four decades, squeezing both
the middle class and the poor. This is in sharp contrast to Europe and Asia, where
the wealth of the 1% has grown at a more constrained pace.
The Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt
To get out of our Second Gilded Age, look no
further than how we got out of the first one.
We’ve been rocked by
scandals over the past year involving the nation’s most wealthy and powerful.
We’ve learned that a twisted multimillionaire allegedly procured and raped
girls in his Manhattan mansion and on his private Caribbean Island; entitled
celebrities and corporate plutocrats paid millions of dollars in bribes to get
their kids into elite universities; pillars of the Hollywood and media
establishments have used their stature to sexually prey upon underlings; and,
yes, our president was caught lying about possibly violating campaign finance
laws with hush money payoffs to a porn star and Playboy bunny.
This
moral corruption is accompanied by the regressive government policies of a
scandal-stained administration. President Donald Trump is rolling back programs
that protect consumers, voting rights, the environment, and competitive
commerce faster than Congress can issue subpoenas. His cabinet includes
17 millionaires, two centimillionaires, and one billionaire with a combined
worth of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes. He presides over the most
corrupt administration in American history, one marked by nepotism and
self-dealing. His so-called “A Team” of senior officials has undergone a record
75 percent turnover since he took office—most of whom
resigned under pressure, often caught up in
scandal.
Commerce
Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose net worth is estimated at $600 million, reflected the arrogance and empathy
deficit that typifies the Trump White House during last winter’s record-long
government shutdown. He suggested that federal workers just take out loans
until they got paid.
But
nobody tops the swamp king, Trump himself. Forget the sleaze, forget the
obstruction of justice, forget the constant dissing of Congress. His defying
the Constitution’s emoluments clause alone would, in a normally functioning
American democracy, make him the subject of impeachment. Instead, he flouts the
rules as if they don’t apply to him. If he gets his way and hosts next year’s
G-7 summit at Mar-a-Lago, we may as well send the Constitution to the shredder.
And yet, as more recent controversies have shown us, including the Varsity
Blues college admissions scandal and Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking racket,
this kind of indifference to moral values is not confined to government
grandees.
So,
what gives? Is America drowning in a marsh of unchecked corruption and
entitlement brought on by latter-day Louis XVI’s and Marie Antoinettes? Are the
uber-wealthy out of control? There’s something rotten in America and, if we
don’t fix it soon, we invite a new wave of national decline and social
disintegration.
The
good news is that we have faced similar challenges before. Some prescriptions
from a previous era may provide a lodestar for a future Democratic president to
steer the country in the right direction. As Mark Twain, who coined the term
“the Gilded Age,” once said, “The external glitter of wealth conceals a corrupt
political core that reflects the growing gap between the very few rich and the
very many poor.” He was talking about the original Gilded Age, but that
diagnosis could just as easily apply to our current American condition.
The
first Gilded Age was marked by rapid economic growth, massive immigration,
political corruption, and a high concentration of wealth in which the richest
one percent owned 51 percent of property, while the bottom 44 percent had a
mere one percent. The oligarchs at the top were popularly known as “robber
barons.”
Theodore
Roosevelt, who was president at the time, understood that economic inequality
itself becomes a driver of a dysfunctional political system that benefits the
wealthy but few others. As he once famously warned, “There can be no real political democracy unless there is
something approaching economic democracy.”
His
response to the inequities of his times, which came to define the Progressive
Era, have much to teach us now about how to sensibly tackle economic
inequality. It’s worthwhile to closely examine the Rooseveltian playbook. For
instance, his “Square Deal” made bold changes in the American workplace,
government regulation of industry, and consumer protection. These reforms
included mandating safer conditions for miners and eliminating the spoils
system in federal hiring; bringing forty-four antitrust suits against big
business, resulting in the breakup of the largest railroad monopoly, and
regulation of the nation’s largest oil company; and passing the Meat Inspection
Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, which created the FDA. He prosecuted more than twice as many antitrust suits
against monopolistic businesses than his three predecessors combined, curbing
the robber barons’ power. And he relentlessly cleaned up corruption in the
federal government. One-hundred-forty-six indictments were brought against a
bribery ring involving public timberlands, culminating in the conviction and
imprisonment of a U.S. senator, and forty-four Postal Department employees were
charged with fraud and bribery.
Now,
we are in a Second Gilded Age, facing many of the same problems, and, in some
ways, to an even greater degree. The gap between the rich and everyone else is
even greater than it was during the late 19th Century, when the richest two
percent of Americans owned more than a third of the nation’s wealth. Today, the
top one percent owns almost 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, or more than the
bottom 90 percent combined, according to the
nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research. The first Gilded Age saw the
rise of hyper-rich dynastic families, such as the Rockefellers, Mellons,
Carnegies, and DuPonts. Today, three individuals—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and
Warren Buffett—own more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined.
And three families—the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars—have enjoyed a nearly
6,000 percent rise in wealth since Ronald Reagan took the oath as president,
while median U.S. household wealth over the same period has declined by three percent.
The
consequences of this wealth gap are dire. Steve Brill explains in his book Tailspin that, by
manipulating the tax and legal systems to their benefit, America’s most
educated elite, the so-called meritocracy, have built a moat that excludes the
working poor, limiting their upward mobility and increasing their sense of
alienation, which then gives rise to the populist streak that allowed
politicians like Trump to captivate enough of the American electorate.
Similarly,
psychologist Dacher Keltner’s research shows that power in and of itself is a
corrupting force. As he documents in The Power Paradox, powerful people
lie more, drive more aggressively, are more likely to cheat on their spouses,
act abusively toward subordinates, and even take candy from children. Too
often, they simply do not respect the rules.
For
example, in monitoring an urban traffic intersection, Keltner found that
drivers of the least expensive vehicles virtually always yielded
to pedestrians, whereas drivers of luxury cars yielded only about half of the
time. He cites surveys covering 27
countries that show that rich people are more likely to admit that it’s
acceptable to engage in unethical behavior, such as accepting bribes or
cheating on taxes.“The experience of power might be thought of as having
someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to
empathy and socially appropriate behavior,” says Keltner.
That’s
why we need to reform our political system if we are to survive the rampant
amorality and lawlessness of the Second Gilded Age. Simply put, so very few
should not wield so much sway over so many.
One
of the first priorities of an incoming administration should be to narrow the
wealth and income gap. French economist Thomas Picketty favors a progressive
annual wealth tax of up to two percent, along with a progressive income tax as
high as 80 percent on the biggest earners to reduce inequality and avoid reverting
to “patrimonial capitalism” in which inherited wealth controls much of
the economy and could lead essentially to oligarchy.
The
leading 2020 Democratic candidates favor raising taxes, as well. Elizabeth
Warren has proposed something commensurate to Picketty’s two percent wealth tax
for those worth more than $50 million, and a three percent annual tax on
individuals with a net worth higher than $1 billion. She has also proposed
closing corporate tax loopholes. Joe Biden wants to restore the top individual
income tax rate to a pre-Trump 39.6 percent and raise capital gains taxes.
Bernie Sanders has proposed an estate tax on the wealth of the top 0.2 percent
of Americans.
Following
Theodore Roosevelt’s example, we need to aggressively root out the tangle of
corruption brought on by Trump and his minions. This has already begun with
multiple and expanding investigations led by House Democrats into the metastasizing
malfeasance within the Trump administration. Trump’s successor, however, should
work with Congress to appoint a bipartisan anti-corruption task force to
oversee prosecutions and draw up reform legislation to prevent future abuses.
“Of
all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny
of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy,” Roosevelt once warned. The free
market has made America the great success it is today. But history has shown
that unconstrained capitalism and a growing wealth gap leads to an unhealthy
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. When the gap between the haves
and the have-nots goes unchecked, populism takes hold, leading to the election
of dangerous demagogues like Trump, and the disastrous politics they bring with
them. It is not too late to reverse course. But first, we need to re-learn the
lessons from our first Gilded Age if we are going to get out of the current
one.
Economists:
America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower
tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of
economists reveals.
For the first time on record, the
wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax rate than all of the income
groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from
University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman finds.
The analysis concludes that the
country’s top economic elite are paying lower federal, state, and local tax
rates than the nation’s working and middle class. Overall, these top 400
wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which the Times‘ op-ed
columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than
one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23 percent tax rate for the
rich means their rate has been slashed by 47 percentage points since 1950 when
their tax rate was 70 percent.
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