The Injustice of Luck

"How Lucky They Are" is the headline of an article written by Greg Breining of the Startribune.  He writes that a University of Minnesota professor has concluded that "Mostly, extreme wealth comes from luck."  He continues: "In a capitalistic society, extreme concentration of wealth does not arise from extreme differences in work ethic, skills, investment smarts or other virtues.  Nor does it come from connections, cronyism or crookedness."

Carried to its logical end, Joseph Fargione, lead author of the study, states "...the inevitable outcome of unfettered capitalism is oligarchy."  In short, "luck" has significantly created an unequal caste system of division between the rich, middle, and poor, with power resting with a small, wealthy elite.

Fargione quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1837 warned that the American industrial class is "one of the harshest that ever existed, [which could create] permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy."  Fargione supports de Tocqueville's analysis by referring to Kevin Phillips' book, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, which reads: "[By 2000] the United States was not only the world's wealthiest nation and leading economic power, but also the Western industrial nation with the greatest percentage of the world's rich and greatest gap between rich and poor."

Breining quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who observed, "We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."

The top 1% of Americans control about 40% of the nation's wealth.  In a recent article in the New York Times, the author reviewed the Social Justice Index study of the 31 participating countries of the OECD. The social justice categories include: poverty prevention, overall poverty rate, child poverty rate, senior citizen poverty rate, income inequality, pre-primary education, health rating, and intergenerational justice rating.  In the "Overall Social Justice Rating", the United States came in 27th, just ahead of Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey.

Unfettered, unregulated capitalism, coupled with a growing separation between the rich and poor, protected by a justice system that protects the powerful, governed by a political system that is irresponsive to the growing economic divide, and controlled by a corporate elite that cares more for profit than people, is crushing the United States and much of the world.  The result is the decline of the West.

If this disparity is primarily because of "luck" as Fargione concludes, the world is truly out of control and the end is dire.  Correction then is to do the opposite of the above analysis: to balance serendipitous LUCK with responsible LAWS, with the goal to provide opportunity and enough for all people, to create a system that allows for wealth and opportunity to be spread around.  Luck is not enough to provide these outcomes.  Actions should include: 1) institute a more just and equitable tax code, expecting all to pay an appropriate amount, yet expecting the more well-to-do to pay more, enacting a transaction tax or "Robin Hood" tax on all Wall Street investments, and eliminating appropriate tax loop-holes; 2) make Medicaid and Medicare available to all people, cutting payments to physicians and making payments dependent on healthy outcomes rather than number of treatments, working with drug companies to control expenses; 3) make appropriate adjustments to Social Security, such as eliminating the contributory ceiling on contributions, and instituting a means test;  4) cut defense spending by eliminating "cost plus" weapons programs, bringing troops home from Europe, Afghanistan, and most of over 700 global bases; 5) create ways to get the odious effects of money out of elections and Washington politics, starting with the repeal of the Citizens United decision; 6) make public education affordable and available to all by eliminating the voucher system and privatization.

Justice ought not be dependent upon luck.  God did not create a world that feeds upon luck for righteousness.  Justice and righteousness have their roots in love, compassion, equality, and opportunity.
Let luck be a by-product of these virtues.  Luck ought to be the cherry on the top rather than the uncertain, occasional, win the lottery, main course.

Peace!
Ron