BRAND NEW BEGINNINGS

 Beginnings are always messy. ~ John Galsworthy 

Greetings from the very near future – 1/21/21, only 21 days from now, and a world apart from yesterday.

Let me introduce myself. I’m Lefty Solomon, outside the newly-occupied White House, with Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (aka, Joe), in residence as our 46th president of the United States. Hooray! I’m loosely connected with several very liberal groups like Progressive Majority and People’s Action.

Actually, I came here yesterday, Jan. 20th, hoping to see #45 slunk southward to Palm Beach, but alas he must have cowardly used Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak and disappeared like a faux, manic King Lear. No surprise at all, really.

Because on last November 3rd we helped President Biden be able to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday, strongly Liberal Progressives (SLPs) want Joe to initiate big changes without delay. For example, it’s way beyond time for all of us to adopt pandemic-induced social re-arrangements and priorities to assist the oppressed.

Starting with SLPs, we will all adopt universal immigrant status. The president should mandate everyone to do so as well. We’re all immigrants; at some point in the recent or deeper past, everyone’s ancestors came from another country (even Native-Americans way, way, way long ago who likely came from Asia). Such immigrant-status is positively crucial (see this story) for all to adopt so we can better see the world as filled with prejudice that must be slayed ASAP.

Likewise, “privileged” and “elite” status should become woebegone negatives. If your background or foreground involves being connected with at least “upper middle-class”, this status should be tentative. Upper middle class includes people whose earned income roughly exceeds $107,000. Remember, over 80% of Americans have called themselves “middle class.” Upper middle-class folks are about 15% of the population. Privileged, elite status should be quickly discharged.

Is it time to cancel all facets of inequality? We certainly think so. I present 33 “flavors” of inequality below that NYTimesters and other compatriots in the media have identified. This list is not meant to be all-inclusive. These facets of inequality include the old standbys of income and wealth disparity, as well as the environmental inequality of wild fires, inequities faced by being left-handed and discriminated farmers of color.

Strongly Liberal Progressives believe former privileged folks must mythologize their past far more adeptly. Therapy may help. They should perhaps consider themselves as children of hard-working, underpaid single-mothers joining with newly-adopted immigrants to rectify our inequality-filled world. Feels totally different, right? That’s a step in the right (or is it left) direction.

Time is of the essence, which raises two questions. Where are our not already-tainted “non-elites,” that we soooo desperately need to run the nation in a totally equitable fashion? And how will we get to true Total Equality without their and others’ help?

Regarding the second question, as you may recall in early January President Biden finally acceded to our SLPs’ demand to “equalize our society, now.” He tentatively agreed to create a new White House Office of Equity (WHOE) after we SLPs lodged our 54th major objection to his wishy-washy cabinet-level appointees that, in our eyes are undecided supporters of Total Equality and justice for all. I mean, how come Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, President Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense, has yet to announce he will defund the Military Police Corps?

Diana Moon Glampers, D.E. (Doctor of Equity), the soon-to-be appointed Handicapper General will be running the WHOE. She will rally her team to rapidly achieve Total Equity. And no, the new president has decided this “cabinet-level” position doesn’t need Sour Mitch’s or the Senate’s approval. Whew.

Finding funding for the WHOE is a slightly different matter, that we’re sure the president can surmount. After all, he will immediately cancel all contracts to build The Wall.

Dr. Glampers will properly handicap each and every above-average person in our great nation and “revert them to the mean.” And what a mean that will be; remember Joe the Plumber; remember Harrison Bergeron?

Clearly, Dr. Glampers will have her work cut out for her. She will be guiding us to secure a lot more equality in the US. Each of President Biden’s cabinet members will be strained by overwhelming public expectations to achieve significant accomplishments in record time. The Senate Repubs will joust against them. Not only that; he and his cabinet will be expected to interact with key Congressional Repubs, of all people, to follow the president’s strong direction for “meaningful dialog” with the enemy members across the aisle.

Less economic inequity means the US Gini Index, a measure of income inequality, will need to fall. The Gini Index has steadily increased since the 1970’s, indicating more inequality. Recently the US Gini Index was 41.5, securing a rank of 51st worst (highest) in the world. Dr. Glampers will want to push our Gini way back into its bottle towards a value of 25.0, which is equal to Ukraine’s, the most income-equal nation.

Who would have guessed Ukraine as being the nation with most-equally-distributed income of the 159 listed by IndexMundi? Not me and not likely Hunter. Nevertheless, let me be clear; even with this accolade, I’m not yet ready to move to Kiev.

Getting the US anywhere within a proverbial block of Ukraine’s Gini will be a fully-burdened political expedition on unknown, hazardous trails. Why? Because it will involve significant amounts of take-away by the government for many formally-privileged, elite people. It will certainly serve the interests of reducing inequality, but even I realize I’d better hold my political breath as long as possible.

Dr. Glampers also will be kept very busy creating new, needed policies beyond income and wealth redistribution, to staunch the spread of many other facets of inequality. I expect it will be a thoroughly fraught, but needed journey.

I hope your New Year’s was happy Diana because your days will now be super stressful and surrounded by many upset folks. We SLPs hope Themis, the Greek god of fairness, will be close at your side. Still, we stand right behind you in wishing you all the luck you can find; you’ll need it. Onward to utopian Total Equality. Here below is my list of inequalities, before my last comments.  

LIST OF INEQUALITIES

Here are 33 inequalities that have been identified in the media.  

#	Inequality Type
1	Income. Ye old faithful granddaddy measure of inequality. See Chartbook of Economic Inequality for actual #s over time for the US and other nations.
2	Wealth. The grandmommy of inequalities; where the real $$ are. See Chartbook
3	Left-Handed discrimination. Tell me about it.
4	High-school grads. We provide way more monetary support to college students; not enough for just high-school grads, over 70% of whom don’t go to college.
5	Inequitable environmentalism. Is environmentalism just for rich people? So it appears for environmental justice warriors.
6	Unequal joints. Smaller, independent marijuana growers can’t compete with “corporate” producers’ lower prices, squandering legal weed’s promise of a more equitable society.
7	Kids in poor communities often lack opportunities to play, unlike richer-families, e.g., sing, run free, and immerse themselves in imaginary worlds.
8	Environmental inequality of wild fires. Richer folks move back in, poorer folks can’t/don’t.
9	Health care. Even with the ACA, and the Repubs’ serious continuing efforts to eliminate it, 9.1% of people had no care (30M people).
10	Inequities connected with care and access for disabled people
11	Data-driven medicine “threatens to make a crushingly unequal system even more so.”
12	Economic growth. Dems’ legislation, never-to-see-daylight (until 1/21/21?), that would mandate the govt to calculate a new measure of quarterly economic GDP growth for each income decile in the US.
13	Inequality made worse by K-12 long summer vacations. But of courses.
14	Berkeley makes its libraries more “egalitarian,” and poorer, by eliminating overdue late fees that were judged inequitably paid by lower-income users.
15	Parents’ benefits at hi-tech and other firms; they get more benefits than non-parents.
16	Student debt crisis as ever-more young people attend post-HS education (college) they do it by borrowing. Total student loan debt is $1.59T. Median BA-holder debt= $32k (in 2019). Not strictly “inequality”, but hey.
17	Nannies/Domestic workers/Babysitters. These folks virtually always get compensated in cash. Thus, their income doesn’t include payment of any employment taxes, like FICA.
18	Criminal Justice. Blacks are arrested and jailed disproportionately more than other races. Such Inequities in criminal justice system for people of color have been noted since before the 18th century.
19	Employment. More young people, Blacks and Hispanics are unemployed than others. Higher unemployment for people with less than HS education and just a HS education than a college education, as always.
20	Executive employment. A disproportionately small share of S&P500 firms’ Board members (as well as other firms’) are women.
21	Generational inequities. More millennials are living with their parents that’s not always a happy place for anyone. And more Boomers are retiring and/or being subject to employers’ ageist policies.
22	Gender discrimination. Women have forever had unequal access to public buildings’ bathrooms, just eyeball the queues for the loo at any event. Build more of ‘em, and they will come.
23	Dental inequality. We need better gum control. Medicaid does not offer dental care, which harms people’s health.
24	Cellphone gender gap. Women’s usage of cellphones in low- and middle-income nations lags behind that of men causing economic harm.
25	Property tax inequity. Hispanic and Black homeowners often face higher property tax assessment rates than White homeowners in the same tax jurisdiction.
26	Psychology of inequality. It had to be: it's human nature to compare ourselves to others. But that instinct can cause psychological stress. Where we think we stand on that ladder tells you a lot about a person's life and their life outcomes. Psychologists to the rescue? If only.
27	Farmers of color. Apparently young farmers and farmers of color have been “shut out” of govt ag aid programs.
28	Mobile inequality. Being able or unable to move from one location (say in a dense, urban, “super-star” city’s core) to another location is unequally available.
29	Vintage inequality. Income inequality has erased your chance to drink exalted wines.
30	Age discrimination. Age discrimination remains a significant and costly problem for workers, their families and our economy, says the EEOC.
31	Educational expenditures Community colleges and other non-“elite” colleges spend far less per student than other schools, exacerbating inequality.
32	Japanese skateboarders are nastily discriminated against. They dare not skate on the streets.
33	The covid-19 Pandemic’s unequal effects on people’s income, health, access to childcare and other aspects of modern life.

 

I admit, there’s a potential downside of identifying the many types of inequality that we SLPs and media stalwarts like the NYTimes continuingly add to. Honestly, I’m not at all sure that tallying ever-more specific examples of inequality will actually facilitate federal policies to be enacted that can remediate the consequences for victims.

Once there are dozens of inequality types to deal with, overall perspective maybe lost. Also, diminishing returns about the relative importance of each type will come into play as evermore types of inequality are found. Sort of like what’s now happening with allocating very scarce coronavirus vaccine to 330 million of us; where nearly everyone believes themselves to be essential.

When there are dozens of specific types of inequality, each with an identified group(s) of people who’ve suffered, the Biden administration may not be able to simply change income tax rates or inheritance taxes as a remedy. Even those policy changes will require huge amounts of political capital to enact. For us SLPs though, no matter how difficult it may be to increase income and inheritance taxes on privileged people, such changes should be very high on Diana’s and Joe’s list of things to do, no matter how many peachy victories we get next week on January 5.

Income and wealth inequality and their remedies have been kicked around by economists and politicians (mostly down the road) for a very long time. But still, it’s something that has a shred of clear corrective possibility at least theoretically. Now, with many newly-identified individual victim groups for many types of inequality, unique policy remedies will likely require specific remediations. Oh my. Such are the challenges in the future world of Strong Liberal Progressives.