Shades of green

The United States of America's God is money. Money talks in this society more than it should. I'm thinking today of 50 Shades of whatever and its "box office success." I haven't read the book or seen the movie, so I won't disparage it here. However, I must say that the proverb "nothing succeeds like success" is a very American idea.

The great thing about the USA is it isn't solely about money. It is also a democratic republic that aims at equality of opportunity and supports freedom of speech and freedom of belief. We are a text-based nation -- based on a founding set of democratic values, balanced with minority rights, embedded in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights -- as opposed to one based on common ancestry, monarchy, or ethnicity. This means we ought to be a country of critical thinkers and readers. We can also take credit for the First Amendment.

The US Supreme Court's recent decision that money is speech (Citizens United) makes a travesty of any pretension to truly representative democracy in this country. We are now essentially an oligarchy run by a few wealthy families. Pres. Obama and the Clintons may have true rags-to-riches stories, but they are not poor now by any measure. Congress is disproportionately filled with millionaires. The Bushes seem to have a sense that they are entitled to the Presidency, and the Koch brothers seem determined to give it to them. Pres. Obama's first campaign may be the last one based on small donors.

Wealth inequality has steadily worsened over the past 40 years. I blame Pres. Reagan in part for this. The federal deficit began on his watch, while the tax burden on the wealthiest was lowered during his tenure as part of a tax deal with Democrats in Congress. The GDP gains of the 1980s, 1990s, and even the past few years have yet to "trickle down" to the rest of us. Median family income has been stagnant despite the rising tide of the economy. Social Security and Medicare are unlikely to survive the retirement of the baby boomers -- a strain on the system that is only beginning to be felt. Without getting too political here, I think it's high time the extremely rich started paying something close to their fair share. I like the Buffett Rule as a standard -- no CEO should pay less proportionately in taxes than his secretary.

Come to think of it, is it truly fair that CEOs get paid 1000s of times more than their lowest-paid employees? Shouldn't it be more like 100s of times at most? As much as Bill Gates may have innovated to make Microsoft a dominant software business, did he truly deserve to make more money in a year than he could possibly spend in a few lifetimes? It's an absurdity.  Maybe we should talk to the US military and adopt their pay scales as the limit on CEO pay. After all, human lives are more valuable than computers, aren't they?