“Let them Eat Cake,” Part II

The adjacent picture seems to reflect those unwealthy American voters who support the rather dramatic hand-over of true power – focused on the wallet – from most of us to very, very few of us. While the UK’s prestigious The Economist now labels the United States as a “flawed democracy,” where voters are hardly accorded equal votes, I think it’s time for us to drop that “democracy” word altogether. There is a different word for what we have become.

“Plutocracy (Greek: πλοῦτος, ploutos, 'wealth' + κράτος, kratos, 'rule') or plutarchy, is a form of oligarchy and defines a society ruled or controlled by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens. The first known use of the term was in 1631. Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy. The concept of plutocracy may be advocated by the wealthy classes of a society in an indirect or surreptitious fashion, though the term itself is almost always used in a pejorative sense.” Wikipedia.

According to Inequality.org, “Income disparities have become so pronounced that America’s top 10 percent now average more than nine times as much income as the bottom 90 percent. Americans in the top 1 percent tower stunningly higher. They average over 40 times more income than the bottom 90 percent. But that gap pales in comparison to the divide between the nation’s top 0.1 percent and everyone else. Americans at this lofty level are taking in over 198 times the income of the bottom 90 percent.

“The top 1 percent of America’s income earners have more than doubled their share of the nation’s income since the middle of the 20th century. American top 1 percent incomes peaked in the late 1920s, right before the onset of the Great Depression.

“Inequality in America is growing, even at the top. The nation’s highest 0.1 percent of income-earners have, over recent decades, seen their incomes rise much faster than the rest of the top 1 percent. Incomes in this top 0.1 percent increased 7.5 times between 1973 and 2007, from 0.8 percent to an all-time high of 6 percent. The Great Recession in 2008 did dampen this top 0.1 percent share, but only momentarily. The upward surge of the top 0.1 percent has resumed. 

That lovely pending federal “tax reform” package and the associated cuts or promised cuts to programs like Medicare, Social Security and healthcare that are “needed” to pay for the tax cuts – 100% sponsored by Republicans and 0% supported by elected Democrats – overwhelmingly benefit the richest members of our nation, that cherished layer at the top of our economic ladder that owns or receives most of our assets and income … at the expense of everybody else. As they implement automation driven by artificial intelligence, they will further succeed to the income that used to be earned by the workers they displace. These is no “rising tide to raise all boats” in any of these proposals… if you believe neutral economists and even the non-partisan Congressional agencies charged with economic review. A big deficit, yes… one we will all pay for.

Republicans have tilted the playing field monumentally towards that richest corporate segment, giving them a greater voice in influencing elections (bolstered by the Supreme Court’s taking spending caps out of political contributions in the 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling), giving them (their companies) a special tax rate not enjoyed by the rest of us, removing regulations that protect consumers, worker safety and the air they breathe and the water they drink to save corporate costs… and then arguing that a ”free market” should determine our nation’s direction. What “free market”? 

Nothing brings this home like the machinations of Ajit Pai, Trump-appointed Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who has presented a 210 page report in favor of eliminating the net neutrality mandates of the prior administration. Net neutrality effectively prohibits Internet service providers (ISPs) from favoring one content provider over another (usually because they pay more or are part of the same corporate conglomerate as the ISP), or allowing these ISPs from slowing down consumers’ download/upload speeds (absent higher fees), often based on the content providers they choose, for the same reasons. The FCC is now GOP-majority-controlled.

Mr. Pai, apparently unwilling to acknowledge that many of these ISPs are so huge, often dominating an entire marketplace, that consumers truly have no real choice in their markets. He thinks that these ISPs need an incentive to innovate in a world where they already trip all over themselves to innovate. And then there is that exceptionally flawed “free market” argument.

The December 6^th FastCompany.com explains: “Beyond reams of esoteric legalese in the 210-page proposal by chairman Ajit Pai are its free-market economic arguments. Chief among them is that competition obviates the need for regulation. If one ISP messes with your free access to the net, you can just go to another. Competition for customers will keep ISPs on good behavior. But that depends on competition actually existing, on one ISP not becoming way more powerful than others.

“Deep in the document, on page 71, are figures on how much choice Americans currently have for different levels of landline broadband service (based on data the FCC last collected from ISPs in December 2016). The figures are oracle-like, though; the answer changes depending on who is reading the tea leaves and what qualifies as sufficient broadband. How many Americans have two or more choices of broadband providers? It could be 79.7%, or it could be 51.1%. How many live under a one-provider monopoly, or have no broadband access at all? It could be 20.2%, or 48.9%. 

“These discrepancies depend on each interpreter’s interpretation of ‘broadband.’ The optimistic views say that broadband could be as slow as 3 megabits per second downstream and a curiously precise 0.768 Mbps upstream—just enough to stream a video at DVD quality, according to Netflix.

“The pessimistic assessments assume that ‘broadband’ has to achieve at least 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up to qualify as real broadband access—enough for streaming five HD videos or at least one Ultra HD/4K video… It seems hard to imagine that a sub-par experience with Netflix, which  accounts for over a third of all landline internet traffic in North America, (according to Sandvine) counts as real “broadband.” And Cisco reckons that video in general, beyond only Netflix, made up 73% of consumer internet traffic in 2016 and will reach 82% by 2021. However, not many people are currently streaming video in 4K, so the 25Mbps threshold for broadband may be a bit high. 

“Splitting the difference, at 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, the FCC reckons that still 26.3% of Americans have only one landline provider, and 5.9% have none… That’s only for landline internet access, though.

“Wireless internet covers most of the country, the FCC’s new order notes. In fact, 99% of Americans have access to at least two 4G/LTE providers, and 88.6% have four or more options, based on an FCC report from September. Average 4G download speeds in the U.S. are 22.69 Mbps, according to data collected by Ookla Speedtest. 5G service, which is expected to begin rolling out to the U.S. in 2018, aims to start out around 1,000 Mbps. 5G is also expected to be used for “fixed wireless”–beaming broadband directly to homes and maybe obviating the need for landlines… 

“But does fast wireless make up for lousy landlines today? The FCC said no in its 2016 Broadband Progress Report, published a year before Donald Trump took office… In its new proposal to scrap net neutrality regulations, the FCC touts the rise of ‘unlimited’ wireless data plans from all the big carriers (an argument also made by ISPs). But they are not really unlimited, typically throttling bandwidth after people use around 20-30 GB per month. Landline broadband caps, when they exist, are often around a terabyte–up to 50 times greater.” Voting along partisan lines, on December 14^th, the FCC repealed the Net Neutrality Rule, an act that will be challenged in the courts, perhaps in Congress and, if this repeal is still in effect should a Democrat take the Presidency, reinstated.

Here’s the bottom line: this country is being run by the elite rich, not by the majority of voters. Through the miracle of mendacious slogans, trading off of right wing white evangelical social values with no hard dollar costs attached, and promises that can never be kept, that elite – the powerful donors and lobbyists behind these consistent Republican efforts to favor the richest in the land (benefits that clearly attach to the Trump corporate empire) – has enlisted Trump’s base to effect its economic coup d’état.  They have pretty much taken over control of the federal government and most of its institutions… at the expense of everybody else. America is the biggest loser. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is unfortunate that these members of the elite have chosen not to read their history books, which would let them know that such efforts inevitably destroy the nations that tried to sustain this level of inequality.