As our economy continues to recover and more Americans are getting back on their feet, many families are still struggling and worried about the future. Income inequality, poverty and hunger continue to be among the greatest challenges we face today and for too many families, these are holding them back from achieving their dreams.
With the visit of Pope Francis to Washington this week, I hope my fellow members of Congress will be inspired by his call to tackle these issues. Americans are eager for bold leadership and big ideas. Francis’ address to Congress is an opportunity for us to put politics aside and come together to build an economy where everyone has the opportunity to succeed and no one is forgotten.
Read my full op-ed by clicking here.
thebaker says
I’m not sure I like the idea of the pope in the open like that. He should be incased in bullet proof glass.
whoaitsjoe says
He self-identifies as a Congressman http://mcgovern.house.gov/
SomervilleTom says
I like your piece. I agree that the visit of Pope Francis invites us to “think big again”.
I remind you, and BMG, that Pope Francis is speaking of WEALTH inequality in these words:
“Poverty” is the absence of WEALTH, not income. Hunger is symptom of poverty, not an absence of income. Income — even a large income — that is less than the necessary costs of housing, transportation to and from work, and healthcare does not cure poverty or hunger.
I agree that income inequality is a symptom of a dysfunctional economy. It is a symptom, rather than cause.
In my view, the “great challenge” facing our generation is what to do about an economy where labor itself is increasingly obsolete. Consider the nine wealthiest people in Massachusetts, according to Forbes:
Those EIGHT individuals have a combined net worth of THIRTY SEVEN BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION dollars. At today’s Massachusetts minimum wage of $9/hour (and 2,000 hours per year), that is the same as the gross annual income of more than TWO MILLION minimum wage workers in Massachusetts. A worker grossing $18,000/year or a family grossing $36,000/year in Massachusetts is living in poverty — no matter what the federal guidelines say.
The combined wealth of the nine wealthiest people in Massachusetts comes at the expense of more than TWO MILLION of our minimum-wage workers. How many of our poorest residents are unemployed, disabled, or otherwise unable to earn even minimum wage?
We have a wealth, not income, concentration problem.
Only two people of that top-9 totem-poll derive their wealth from labor (Jim Davis and Paul Fireman, both selling running shoes). Nearly all of the wealth of those two comes from Asian workers (the “Made in USA” label from New Balance has as much content as the “All Natural” label on grocery-store foods). Those two, together comprise only $2.6 B of the $37.2 B total — about seven percent.
NINETY THREE PERCENT of the wealth of the wealthiest nine people in Massachusetts is generated from business entities that have little or no “labor” involved in the wealth creation. None of those other seven “work” in anything like the sense that we mean when we talk about minimum wage workers.
In short, talking about “income inequality” (no matter how passionately) misses the elephant in the room — the staggering difference in WEALTH that separates the top from the bottom of the wealth pyramid in Massachusetts.
Addressing this wealth inequality is the great challenge facing us today. Surely it is time we start talking about it.
topper says
And how much of this $37.2B are you suggesting they forfeit? What’s your cut? Do you have a formula for these things?
centralmassdad says
It is called the estate tax. A hike in the estate tax could fund a significant tax cut in the low to middle tax brackets.
johntmay says
“All property except that needed by individuals for survival is the Property of the public , who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition.” Ben Franklin
johntmay says
“A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.” Smith said: “There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death.”
SomervilleTom says
As CMD observes below, my preference is to collect all of it — beyond some reasonable threshold like $1 M in non-household wealth, perhaps $2-3M if it includes the value of a personal residence — in an estate tax.
On an on-going basis, I lean towards finding a “catch-and-release” mechanism for recapturing pretty much all gains in net worth during a given year. I’m perfectly ok with allowing a carry-forward of losses from year to year, similar to how capital gains and depreciation are handled today.
Regarding “how much” — I like the idea of using the GINI coefficient as a benchmark. My answer is “as much as needed to maintain the annual GINI at 30.0 or less”.
Unless you are one of them (which I doubt), why do you care?
johntmay says
” Unless you are one of them (which I doubt), why do you care?”
Labor class and poor Republicans are convinced that if we do not coddle the wealthy, they will leave and take the jobs with them.
thebaker says
I know! You’d think it would be easy pitting the 99% against the 1% – How hard could that be? Yet every time I try the divide and conquer technique I find myself asking the very same question you ask … “Why do you care?”
SomervilleTom says
The 99% — including me — should care because we are being strangled by this obscene wealth concentration.
The divide-and-conquer technique has been practiced by the GOP for years. It is the 1% who are pitting the rest of us at each other, while they plunder more and more of our wealth.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of it.
johntmay says
Divorce, teenage pregnancy, crime, all rise when wealth disparity widens. Mental, physical health both decline and life spans shorten for all as wealth disparity widens. Not for just the poor, or or labor, but for all of us, even the wealthy.
topper says
Well, I guess it beats working. You folks are losing some steam on your fastballs? Confiscation without penalty? Comrades, to the barricades!
jconway says
‘If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance”
methuenprogressive says
I had to check to see if this was an Onion piece.