Radical Redistribution Right Rnow

The fourteenth amendment guarantees the protection of the liberty and property of all persons. And yet, the property of many of the nation’s working class is casually stolen by their employer. When you’re earning much less than you ought to, you don’t have the same liberty as a stock trader. According a recent study by Bivens, while the incomes of the top percent have increased over the past few the decades, the income of the nation’s poorest workers has remained stagnant. (Bivens, “Raising America’s Pay”) Minimum wage workers take home thousands less than what’s necessary to survive comfortably in modern America. These minimum wage jobs are increasingly concentrated in the fast food sector, because of the increasing automation and expert of middle income jobs — 1.8 million jobs lost last year. Meanwhile, the fast food industry continues adding more low wage jobs — 1 million last year. And so, now 83% of fast food workers are not high school students but adults, sometimes forced to provide for their family with these precarious wages. However, even in the states where higher minimum wages have been recently set, that extra cash hardly makes it to the workers. Rather, shrewd managers opt to not raise their employees’ wages, knowing that the state doesn’t care to investigate small wage theft. As such, 90% of fast food workers nationwide report wage theft and thus haven’t benefitted much from well-intended attempts, such as with Seattle’s $15 minimum wage, to better their station. (Hanauer, “Minimum Wage”) Worse yet, we might not have enough time to refine these minimum wage laws, because robots continue to supplant American workers and are increase in proficiency — between 2050 and 2150, robots are predicted to be capable of writing novels and scientific investigation. (Alexander, “Technological”) Soon all workers may be left without a job, without any chance of attaining liberty and property.

The causes are manifold, however they all stem from the same source. Corporations seized control of American values and legislature. Our congress now judges each new piece of legislation foremost with the concern over how it will affect the national debt. If a potential law that would strengthen and broaden the social safety net were proposed it would be shot down for not its tax on the national GDP. If regulations on Wall Street banks to prevent a recession like in 2008 or regulations to mandate fast food companies allow their workers join unions were put forward, they would both be rejected for harming businesses. (Conaway, “The Riddle”) It’s this primacy of the economic over the moral that lead to the death of unions. After the Great Depression, union membership peaked at 35% of the total workforce but has been on a steady decline to 6.6% as of 2014. When corporations, thanks to Citizens United have the power to install politicians and lobby for legislation they will eject profit-harming organizations like unions. However, for how much profits unions take away, they undoubtedly increase the living standards of their members enough to offset that concern. As of 2014, black women working with a union earned 34% more than their nonunionized cohort, and Hispanic men earned 44% more than their cohort. (Leyden, “Aligning”) Unions have increasingly been demonized by mass media and prohibited from recruiting workers by employers over the last few decades, as a result most of the nation’s lowest wage workers have no leverage in fighting for better conditions or pay. Without a strong counter-balance, profit-focused corporations have continued to exploit workers without abatement.

Deprived of a livable wage, the lowest wage workers in America find themselves exploited emotionally as well as materially. Shenita Simon, a fast food worker in Brooklyn, can’t properly feed her family with her minimum wage check and the hours demanded by her situation exclude her from seeking higher education or job training. Further, thanks to cuts to welfare programs like Food Stamps, she has to all day in a line to reapply for government aid, however she can hardly find time and the workers that run the program have such a tight budget that they will reject applications for slight imperfections. Nationally, substance abuse among fast food workers are among the highest of any jobs, due to the stress burden of inconsistent hours and demanding customers and employers. (Levine, “Behind the minimum wage fight”) All this amounts to workers that are desperate to keep their job and so will consent to growing worse work conditions. If you know that your employer skims money from your checks, you can hardly sue them for wage theft if you want to keep your job. Our modes of making sense of the world and our national values have shifted also. Low wages and long hours compared to America’s counterparts in the rest of the developed world have come to be assumed normal. Voters consent to politicians not strengthening the safety net for fear of increasing the national deficit while spending magnitudes more than any other nation on our military and cutting taxes on the rich. (Dubner, “Income Inequality”) As a result of the abandonment of workers’ rights, America has shifted towards oligarchy and left our laborers increasingly strained and hopeless.

A few potential solutions have been proposed, some old, some new. In California, the Democratic platform for the midterms includes promises for a government job guarantee. Some states like Washington have pass laws increasing the state minimum wage. Some libertarian Silicon Valley billionaires have ramped up support for something the socialist Martin Luther King Jr. proposed: a universal basic income. Others suggest a resurrection of the unions.

Though the most popular, a fifteen-dollar minimum wage has proven difficult to implement. Firstly, according to Emily Oster of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, cities with heightened minimum wages do often have lower rates of joblessness and healthier economies but that’s only because these cities already were already strong in those respects. (Conaway, “The Riddle of Minimum Wage”) The increased minimum wage only served to further strengthen these cities economies, so if a fifteen-dollar minimum wage were implemented federally it wouldn’t necessarily save impoverished cities like Buffalo, New York. However, a higher minimum wage does reduce sexual harassment among fast food workers substantially. Even a two dollar increase for instance has reduced harassment in California by magnitudes compared to New York where the minimum wage remains low. Ideally, the federal minimum wage or at least the minimum wage in cities needs to be increased, however, in states where that has been legislated, mass wage theft prevents workers from getting their due wages. Although 90% of fast food workers report wage theft — their employer pays them less than they’ve earned — state labor departments fail to employ enough investigators to settle most of these cases. In California, only 17% of those who won wage theft lawsuits against their employers got their backpay. However, in some states like Florida, where the state labor department was dissolved, the state doesn’t employ any labor investigators, so no employees in the state receive backpay; employers are free to skim as much as they please. (Levine, “Behind the Minimum wage fight”) Even the federal Department of Labor employs a measly one thousand investigators to handle all the employer abuse cases coming from the one hundred sixty million workers of America. (Dubner, “Income Inequality”) Minimum wage workers in Seattle however seem to have been receiving their increased pay, as following the state’s minimum wage hike, jobs were cut, and hours slashed, just as conservative commentators predicted. Yet, with what’s at stake — the livelihood of America’s increasingly adult and numerous fast food workers and working class at large — the fifteen-dollar minimum wage can’t be abandoned outright. Proponents of the federal job guarantee suppose that they have the answer.

Championed by the California democrats, the federal job guarantee promises to supply a comfortable job to every American. That is, a job with full medical benefits and a fifteen dollar an hour wage. The last great push to expand America’s infrastructure was almost a century ago, as a result many of our roads and bridges have fallen into disrepair. Under the job guarantee, Americans could find employ refurbishing our failing infrastructure and caring for the growing elderly population. These fields combined, America’s approximately thirteen million unemployed able-bodied workers could find productive work. Not only would this elimination of the unemployed eliminate the state’s burden of unemployment insurance, but it would also ameliorate the other ails that accompany mass unemployment: food stamps, policing, mass incarceration, and drug treatment. Moreover, this mass of newly employed workers would pass the IRS a good deal in income taxes, and thereby help offset the federal cost of employing millions. If the federal job guarantee were enacted in full, the total cost would be about 1.3–2.4% of the national GDP. (Hanauer, “Minimum Wage”) To offset that cost, as well as collecting this new base of income tax, the federal government could also reverse recent cuts to corporate taxes and increase the estate tax. The cost burden thereby returned to the upper classes as it was in the last century, American workers could again find broad productive employment. However, this supposes that corporations will passively accept more taxation and that jobs won’t be broadly taken by robots in the coming century. Universal Basic Income provides a similar safety net for what’s perhaps a more realistic future.

Within a century, nearly all jobs are predicted to be automated. If this comes true, then the American populace will need something other than a wage to survive. Some Universal Basic Income proponents suggest providing amenities similar to the federal job guarantee to every adult American citizen. Massive an undertaking as this is, there are a few test trials currently underway. For instance, in Stockton, California, a dozen families from the city’s working class will be given five hundred dollars a month for eighteen months. If the families ultimately show no signs of being discouraged from working and don’t abuse the cash, the mayor plans to expand the program to the rest of the city’s residents and increase the monthly payment. In an interview with NPR’s Ari Shapiro, mayor Tubbs says he’s modelling the program after a basic income program operated by the state of Alaska for the past few decades. Each Alaskan receives about a thousand dollars a month from the dividends of a state investment account. (Shapiro, “California”) However, U.N. economist Jeff Sachs argues that these basic income programs shouldn’t be made universal or made to replace income, because it’s too large an investment and ultimately unsustainable. Rather, he recommends investing in the institutions that have the biggest impact on a person’s quality of life: healthcare, education. Ultimately, Sachs says, when all jobs are replaced by robots, we ought to come together as a community to ensure a good, dignified life for each other rather than continuing to rely on cash. (Dubner, “Income Inequality”) Perhaps, if universal basic income were implemented, the accompanying social institutions that the government funds would be gouged to compensate, and indeed community institutions rather than just cash wealth are necessary for a good life. Sachs vision of the future can hold as an ultimate goal for our society with universal basic income only as the system by which wages are distributed in the interim. However, like the federal job guarantee the cost of a comfortable universal basic income would undoubtedly be massive — much more than the job guarantee as this would go towards every adult American citizen not just the unemployed. The solution to this cost chasm — as well, as a supplement for paying for a federal job guarantee — lies in Modern Monetary Theory.

All these potential solutions have been proposed with the suggestion that funding come partly from broad implementation of Modern Monetary Theory, a turn of the millennium economic theory that asserts at its core that the government can not default through a large deficit. That’s because whereas observers have assumed that government spending follows taxation — that government programs are payed for through taxation and that we must minimize the national debt — in actuality, spending precedes taxation. The traditional perspective would make an observer aghast if the federal government decides to purchase, say, twenty tomahawk missiles to fire blithely into Damascus. At a little over a million each, that would be a big burden on American taxpayers. Similarly, congressman would be wary to increase the deficit by a trillion by lowering taxes on the rich. However, our congressmen spend so liberally because a large deficit isn’t worth fearing. Because the government prints its own currency, it affords these missiles by printing off enough cash and then only taxing the populace enough to control inflation. (Leyden, “Aligning”) And so, proponents of Modern Monetary Theory argue that if the federal government chose to deepen the deficit through financing a robust safety net consisting of, say, universal basic income or the federal job guarantee instead of excess more missiles, we could sustainably fund much needed welfare programs.

I propose a combination of these solutions. America should implement a federal job guarantee and transition into a universal basic income as more jobs are automated, because it provides a safety net while adapting to the changing nature of work. The short-term phase of this plan to allow lowest wage workers to live with dignity is comprised of an immediate adoption of a federal job guarantee. Under this, every American citizen would be offered a fifteen dollar an hour job working in upcoming sectors like infrastructure and elder care. Because of this emergence of a decently paid job opportunity with full benefits, minimum wage private sector jobs would be forced to compete to not hemorrhage workers. Currently spartan jobs like fast food preparation would need to provide a comparable wage and benefits if not more to keep employees from quitting. In the short term, this would empower workers with their newfound financial security and potentially lead to a reinvigoration of unions to cajole corporations into improving the conditions of lagging jobs. This will be paid for in part by a five percent tax increase on those making over $200,000 per year. Once the federal job guarantee is implemented and given that the popular reception is popular, the populace would be more receptive to increasing wealth redistribution such as a universal basic income.

As human labor is rendered obsolete by robot labor within the next century, the state would ease a universal basic income program nationwide. At first, only paying out a small wage like the five hundred a month in the current test trials. Meanwhile, encourage the populace to work less hours and rely more on the money. This way the populace can ease into living without a structured work schedule and adapt to living based off intrinsic motivation — choosing freely what to do with the day. Otherwise, if hundreds of millions of people are abruptly relieved of their jobs and left with no structure, depression and apathy will overtake the masses. If the government rather slowly transitions from a wage-based culture to a largely free culture, the populace can redefine what their approaches to life are. Additionally, we ought to implement Jeff Sachs’ proposal to ensure that community institutions grow strong enough to handle a freely moving and associating populace.

On the path towards this future, we first ought to implement repeal Citizens United, empower unions, rebuild state labor departments, and mandate a federal fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage. Only by eliminating Citizens United and thereby barring moneyed interests from financing elections and steering politics can the safety net be allowed to grow as much as is needed. Still, we ought to empower unions through protective legislation so union membership can grow again and fight for worker rights at a city level. Unions for now could watch over the many small businesses and corporate franchises that state labor departments don’t yet have the resources to manage. Yet, states ought to hire enough labor abuse investigators to supplement unions’ work in ensuring that the full fifteen-dollar wage is being payed out.

The market will need to take some time to correct to this shift to humane practices. Those running on thin margins, like fast food and some small businesses will shut down and the deficit will likely increase at the outset of each of these propositions. Isn’t that blip a price worth paying for America to begin to realize the values and laws it boasts of — our right to property and liberty? As well as a five percent estate and income tax on those who make over $200,000 a year, this would be financed by an optimal use of Modern Monetary Theory. Former Chief Economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, suggests this use of Modern Monetary Theory for broad social programs. Moreover, in her time working with senators she noted the stark primacy of economic concerns over moral ones. If America produces the most wealth of any organization ever known, why do we allow our poorest and lowest paid workers to struggle, even if it would require some wealth redistribution from the richest? And as a largely untested and nascent economic theory, MMT does not provide safe plans for policy implementation but the best models do predict deficit increase. Money is an abstract concept, but each human does have an obligation to help one another, especially those in one’s tribe. Conservatively that tribe should at least be spread far enough to contain the entire social strata in one’s country. Kelton argues that the economy would hold if we focused our efforts as a nation on providing for our needy and doing what is most moral before what most has proven to maintain stability. Any gaps or lack of specification in implementing these programs ought to be ignored because their passage would eliminate a massive amount unnecessary misery. In fact, according to recent polls by Data for Progress, the job guarantee and fifteen-dollar minimum wage are supported by most Americans in nearly every state — red and blue. (Leyden, “Aligning”) If something has broad popular support, is the most moral option, and is prescribed by the constitution, congress can hardly rationally argue against these propositions.

Looking back on the great wealth redistribution attempts of the past century, many conservative commentators rebuke these propositions as authoritarian and counterproductive. Conservative academic Thomas Sowell takes for example Cubans that immigrated to Florida to escape Fidel Castro’s socialist policies and found private wealth and success under capitalism. He supposes that taking wealth from the most economically productive discourages them from producing so much and encourages emigration. (Sowell, “Fallacy”) However, the nations he cites — Cuba and Soviet Russia — never attained anywhere near the immense wealth of modern America, where the proposed taxation on the wealthy wouldn’t be as injurious as in these smaller, weaker economies. However, infamous polemicist Christopher Hitchens contends that mid-century Israeli socialists disbanded their communes because they had grown too close, too familial, and that individuals ought to be free to live and amass wealth without relying on the community. (Wattenberg, “The Future of Socialism”) Indeed, that is liberty and in the interstitial period between now and mass automation that should still be allowed. However, once nearly all jobs have been automated, one would find it hard to find opportunities to amass wealth. Anyhow, that sort of ambitious would be stymied in time, as great wealth isn’t a prerequisite for happiness. Through cultural natural selection, capitalist ambition would go extinct as it becomes inviable. Thus implemented, the great wealth redistribution projects of the future would be neither authoritarian nor counterproductive.

Fast food workers got it tough. Objectivists shipped more middle-income jobs overseas on one hand and the impending robot horde threatens to take even fast food jobs away too. For now, they will either continue this ramping path of exploitation and marginalization or be swept up by the amassing American socialist wave. Since, the dot-com bust at the turn of the century, young businesses have begun to question the primacy of economics over morality. TOMS shoes’ one for one shoe donation premise proved a decade ago that a corporation can seek profits and the welfare of humanity at the same time. Again, following the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, the nation’s young adults deepened their mistrust of the standard economic model, and this frustration emerged as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and renewed class consciousness with the mantra: We Are the 99%. With the most recent liminal period, the 2016 presidential race, again America’s youth was pushed further left. Fearing the ascension of a Trump presidency and provided Bernie Sanders’ proud identification as a socialist, American leftist sympathies are at the highest point they have been in decades and is only growing. If America’s lowest wage workers will ever get their due it will be in our time. According to Sachs, we’ve solved Keynes “economic problem,” scarcity. To provide for our most marginalized would take almost lifting a finger, because “we’re so rich, our technologies are so smart.” Should we as a nation not take this opportunity to clinch the welfare of our working class, nearly all of us will fall far beneath even their standard of living. Mass automation can not be avoided, whether it comes in a century or the next. And if, we haven’t secured a universal basic income or other way of providing a livelihood for an almost entirely unemployed populace, those who own the corporations — the non-working uppermost class — will reap the capital produced by their automated corporations. The wonderful abundance of the future monopolized by a small elite, the throngs of unfortunates — comprised of those from the upper middle class to the abject poor — will either die or suffer, forgotten, beneath Mount Olympus.

Works Cited

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Bivens, Josh, et al. Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge. Economic Policy Institute, 2014, pp. 5–7, Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge.

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Levine, Marianne. “Behind the minimum wage fight, a sweeping failure to enforce the law.” POLITICO, Capital News, 18 Feb. 2018, www.politico.com/story/2018/02/18/minimum-wage-not-enforced-investigation-409644.

Leyden, Pete. “Aligning Our Policies with Where the Economy Is Going, Instead of Where It Is.” Reinvent, Reinvent, 15 Jan. 2018, reinvent.net/events/event/aligning-our-policies-with-where-the-economy-is-going-instead-of-where-it-is/.

Shapiro, Ari. “In California, Stockton experiments with Guaranteed Basic Income.” NPR, 29 Jan 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/01/29/581674763/in-california-stockton-experiments-with-guaranteed-basic-income

Sowell, Thomas. “The Fallacy of Redistribution.” Townhall, Salem Media Group, 20 Sept. 2012, townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/09/20/the-fallacy-of-redistribution-n829911

“The Future of Socialism.” Wattenberg, Ben. Think Tank, PBS, 7 July 2005, http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1193.html