Jack Burgess

Community contributor

Abraham Lincoln famously warned that our nation could not “long exist, half slave and half free.” Having abolished legal slavery, today’s question is how long our nation can continue with so many people having so little, and so few controlling so much — which results in economic slavery for many. Millions struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. The League of Women Voters’ Sharon Verhoff recently presented an eye-opening program showing how income inequality hurts people in Southern Ohio more than we may realize.

Verhoff showed, with charts and graphs, what we can otherwise barely imagine about the enormous imbalances of American income. As the Gazette reported, the wealth of just one multi-billionaire — Bill Gates’ $57 billion — could purchase expensive homes for everyone in Ross and surrounding counties, or Harvard educations for everyone in the area. We can’t show the charts here, but imagine, that if the owners of wealth were represented by living creatures, those of us with middle incomes — in the range of $60,000 or so — would be maybe the size we are or smaller, but the multi-millionaires would be the size of elephants. Billionaires might be represented as dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurs. Needless to say, Tyrannosaurs could go wherever they wanted and eat whatever, or whomever, they wanted. Unless, of course, the small and ordinary-sized organized for self-defense.

What can we do, faced with the economic dinosaurs who’ve somehow acquired a disproportionate share of everything, and continue to squeeze us for more? Their growing influence decides what jobs are available, and at what wages, what food we can find or afford in stores--and what news we get on TV, or even the internet. They also have a disproportionate say in politics, so they’ve cut their own taxes and our government services, further exacerbating wealth inequality. They’ve dragged our treasuries and our youth into foreign wars to control trade or resources. And they’ve turned the hands of our nation’s economic clock backward, away from the progressive policies of Republican Theodore Roosevelt and the liberal Democrats, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

If the Republicans of Teddy’s time were around, they might say we need more government regulation, not less. It was the progressives who passed laws creating the graduated income tax, basing taxation on the ability to pay. They also broke up the big oil companies when one of them seemed poised to control all oil and gas. Progressive Republicans and Democrats, responding to pressure from unions, marching women, and democratic socialists, created our free, public education system. Liberals of FDR’s era passed laws giving unions effective organizing rights —helping working people themselves push for increased wages — creating Social Security, the minimum wage, a 40 hour work week, unemployment compensation, and a jobs program for the unemployed, building America’s infrastructure and parks. All helping to reduce an income inequality very similar to our own time.

In LBJ’s time, liberal Democrats and reasonable Republicans passed laws creating Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start for kids, and further increases in the minimum wage, as well as improved pay for public employees, including public school teachers.

More recently, the moderate Barack Obama bailed us out of the disastrous economic crash brought on by the Bush tax cuts, unnecessary wars, banking deregulation, and bad trade deals — favored by the Bushes and the Clintons. His Affordable Care Act has helped stabilize health care costs, and his energy polices have kept oil prices low, but he has not been able to stem the rising inequality.

Now, in the 2016 election, Republican politicians advocate more tax cuts for the wealthy, more deregulation of corporations, and a dangerously pugnacious foreign policy coupled with increased military spending.

Secretary Hillary Clinton promises small changes, like help with college loans. Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling for a “political revolution,” including taxes on stock speculation and the super wealthy to make public colleges free, raising the minimum wage to $15, guaranteeing health care for all, and rebuilding our roads and bridges, because its needed and to create jobs.

It’s up to us. We still have the same mechanism that elected progressive leaders of the past — the vote. Let’s use it to reduce America’s massive income inequality.

Jack Burgess is a former teacher of American & Global Studies, and a member of the Gazette’s Board of Contributors.