Economic Inequality Revealed Through Quotes and Numbers

DAVID RALPH MACKERETH

“The pandemic [Covid-19] is very quickly teaching us what’s important: love, food, a safe and comfortable home, creativity and learning, connectedness, and being able to get out into nature. Shouldn’t those things be the pillars around which our societies are organized?” resilience.org

At Wikipedia.org we find, “The separation of church and state is a philosophic and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the nation state.” (Separation of Church and State) Since business has become the dominant force supporting and influencing most, if not all, governments, possibly it is time to move to the next step – separation of church, state and business. The Church can provide an outlet for spiritual needs, the State can provide for welfare needs and set laws, and Business can provide for physical and recreational needs. The separation of church and state works on the premise the state sets the laws on how a society will operate, leaving the people to believe in whatever suits their fancy spiritually – of course, while still respecting state laws. Now, just adjusting the needle one more notch, we can allow the business community to operate as they wish (just like spiritual folks), and of course operating within the laws of the state. Robert B. Reich, in ‘Saving Capitalism’ (2015), keeps us focused: “There can be no ‘free market’ without government.” And from A. C. Grayling we are advised: “[…] the biggest single flaw in recent economic orthodoxy is the mantric belief that regulation interferes with the supposed innate self-adjusting wisdom of markets.” (1) There will need to be serious thought from the ‘People – The 99%’ on how to keep companies, and very wealthy people, from having more than a One Person / One Vote effect on state laws (currently an intolerable situation in many countries).

Clearly depicted by David M. Walker as comptroller general of the United States in 2007; “There’s something civil servants have that the private sector doesn’t. And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good – the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interest of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country.” Furthermore, if we leave the control of our countries to the business folks, who may not address Climate Change from a humanity perspective: we could find the entire

Planet fiscally bankrupt, as David Wallace-Wells adroitly comments; “3.7 degrees of warming would produce $551 trillion in damages, research suggests; total worldwide wealth is today $280 trillion.” (5) Naomi Klein, in her ‘On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal’ (2019), encourages us to start to consider new ways forward with, “The climate crisis was hatched at a moment in history when political and social conditions were uniquely hostile to a problem of this nature and magnitude.” Possibly the Earth’s Climate Problem will act as the necessary catalyst to get humanity equitably organized!

“When you compare the economic policies of Shiite Iran, Sunni Arabia, Jewish Israel, Hindu India, and Christian America, you just don’t see that much of a difference. … There is just no such thing as ‘Christian economics,’ Muslim economics,’ or ‘Hindu economics.’” Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century (2018)

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

In the 2014 ‘Human Universe’, Brian Cox advocates for change as he points out, “It seems to me; however, that a small planet such as Earth cannot continue to support an expanding and flourishing civilization without a major change in the way we view ourselves. […] Our civilization is complex, our global political system is inadequate, our internal differences of opinion are deep-seated.” We need people who are gifted, educated, trained and have a proclivity for managing our governmental bodies, in charge. Leaving great flexibility for those who are gifted in business to excel and generate as much legal profit as is possible, while providing the necessary employment opportunities and the all-important tax base from employee governmental deductions. Business profits should not be taxed directly – the tax contribution, the Government needs from business, to administer its jurisdiction, should be a factor of top-line revenue. Thereby, all businesses would be treated equally, with the best of breed keeping more of the benefits of their success (True Capitalism).

“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed”, judiciously stated by the father of ‘cyberspace’ William Gibson, in 1993.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)

“I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything.” “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)

“Einstein would never have invented general relativity had he restricted himself to reasoning within the language of Newtonian physics.” Lee Smolin, Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution (2019)

“Homo sapiens, the truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us […] soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.” E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) (1) The Challenge of Things: Thinking Through Trouble Times, by A. C. Grayling (2015) (5) The Uninhabitable Earth – Life After Warming, by David Wallace-Wells (2019)