LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Americans have been entirely disenfranchised. Although they will vote today, many will be unsure of what they are actually voting for, and they will cast votes for candidates that barely interest them. Many are participating out of a lingering sense of duty, but most have given up altogether.
No matter who wins, you lose.
This is a toxic development, one that has roots in the collapse of the old Soviet Union. The Cold War was a fearful time for both citizens and elites. Elites, in particular, had to worry about workers turning into communists. To prevent this, wages were kept adequate and generous welfare benefits, public spending, and infrastructure improvements were standard. These were financed by very high taxes on the richest Americans who could pay as much as a 90 percent marginal rate during the most extreme times of the last century. General prosperity made up the difference.
When the "Evil Empire" collapsed starting in 1989, the existential threat evaporated. Now, communism was proven bankrupt and even the hardest-pressed workers would be fools to court it. Without a natural enemy, capitalism went into overdrive like an invasive species on an island without predators.
In the subsequent 25 years since the collapse of communism, we have watched insatiable capitalism feed itself on the poor and the middle class, eventually eating itself in 2008. Despite the Great Recession, the wealthiest one percent of people now control over half of the world’s wealth.
In the United States, income inequality has become a household issue and more people are learning what it is, what it really costs, and why that’s bad. Americans are waking up and they don’t like what they see outside.
When our nation was founded, we were greatly blessed by the foresight of our founding fathers. They knew the needs and desires of people would change over time. Rather than create a rigid system that was resistant to change, they built in a process whereby a peaceful revolution could be staged every couple years. Within the span of two elections, Americans could change the course of their government entirely, should they wish it. There would be no more need of pitchforks and muskets.
Although this did not work as well as intended, failing with the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, the system has still managed to work for over two centuries and has become a model for the rest of the world.
Recently however, profits banked by the wealthy, thanks to the benefits of globalism and falling tax rates, have been reinvested in the American political process. Now politicians are purchased openly by corporations with unlimited monies. Within just a few years and a couple Supreme Court decisions, the American people have been bought out of the entire process, turning the nation into a genuine plutocracy.
Most Americans are yet to come to this conclusion; most will resist accepting the fact. However, the numbers don’t lie. Nearly $4 billion has been spent on the 2014 election, and at approximately $12 per man, woman, and child, that kind of money did not come from Main Street, but rather from Wall Street.
And it has only become worse since 2012.
These have been the most expensive midterm elections in history. Wall Street isn’t pouring money into the process because they care deeply about democracy. It’s an auction of political seats, and the winners get to make important economic decisions that are worth billions more. These decisions will impact you and me.
That’s the problem. The criteria for making economic decisions is profit, not people. The elites are more interested in spreadsheets and if this year’s number be bigger than the last.
There’s no morality in this system, it is piteously indifferent to human suffering.
It wasn’t always this way. The early Catholic Church governed financial exchanges, ensuring that people did not take advantage of one another. Usury was outlawed and Christians were strongly encouraged to help one another. The Church was generous with its charity and no Lord dared allow his subject to starve while he feasted.
Although popular myth teaches that the periods of history in which the Church reigned supreme were periods of darkness and misery, scholarship has shown otherwise. Instead of being downtrodden, people were largely healthy and happy. By the renaissance, a robust peasantry had ample opportunities to move up the social ladder, forming the backbone of the future middle class. In fact, not all peasants were poor, they just lacked noble blood.
Lords kept the same festivals as their subjects and attended Mass in the very same churches.
The differences between the wealthy and the poor weren’t’ as great as they are today. There was more a difference in privileges than anything else, a difference that was slowly eroded over time and finally collapsed in England and the United States.
Unfortunately, that inequality has returned to our society. Americans painfully know that our wealthy and celebrities face one form of justice, apart from that faced by the poor. It’s the classic sign of a plutocracy.
The Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church teaches that men are not made for markets, but rather the markets are made for man. The challenge for all Americans is to find a peaceful way to return to these Catholic principles and to restore the American Republic.
However, let us all be informed: any attempt at reform that does not have at its core, Catholic Social Doctrine, will be doomed to fail, even if it works in the short term. A system that puts people first, recognizing the importance of reason, justice, and human dignity can create a future that is better than any past the world has ever seen.
