This week, the United Nations issued a new
report telling us that runaway income inequality,
both in the United States and in other countries
across the planet, has a destabilizing effect
on democracies and in fact, if inequality
continues to grow in the way that it is, you
can pretty much go ahead and kiss your democracy
good-bye.
Here is how they explain it for here in the
United States.
The top 1% of households have roughly doubled
their share of the nation's wealth since 1980
leaving less behind for everyone else.
The 400 richest Americans now have significantly
more money than the 150 million Americans
in the bottom 60% of the distribution.
Now, this is not new news right there.
Those are things that have been widely available
for quite some time.
It is something Bernie Sanders mentions constantly
on the campaign trail.
In fact, it's almost as if Bernie Sanders
himself wrote that.
But now we have the UN warning us that, hey,
here is how bad the problem is.
But again, we knew about how bad the problem
is.
So go ahead, UN, tell us, tell us what happens
when this runaway inequality gets worse.
Well, they do that too.
When the rich shape a country's institutions
in their own image and to their own benefit,
it's little wonder that trust in those institutions
declines as it has in the United States.
That lack of trust creates a vacuum for authoritarian
and nativist regimes to take root, according
to the United Nations.
The central message of populous movements
has historically been that the common people
are being exploited by a privileged elite,
and that radical institutional change is required
to avoid such exploitation.
That part is a direct quote from this UN report.
So if we continue on this path, if we continue
with business as usual, we can look forward
to a faux populist taking power here in the
United States and then reshaping our institutions
only to their personal benefit.
So if you ask me, I think this United Nations
report is about four years too late because
that is exactly what already happened here
in the United States.
We've seen it, we're living it.
We're in year four of it.
Donald Trump ran his campaign as a phony populist.
Went out there and told people working 60
hours a week working their fingers to the
bone, said, I have so much in common with
you.
I'm just like you and your plight, wow, this
is horrible.
I want to make your life better.
Of course, he had no intention of making their
lives better.
All he really did was tell them who to blame,
which he blamed it on Mexicans, even though
that's not true at all.
But he did campaign as a populist.
Then he gets to Washington DC and what does
he do?
Well, he cuts taxes for the wealthy elite
and that includes himself.
He spends the government's money, our tax
dollars, at his own businesses, so he gets
to put that money back in his pocket.
He skirts the rule of law.
He breaks the law multiple different times
and is never held accountable for doing so.
And he has reshaped the government, used his
own personal campaign, all of it to his financial
benefit, while not one single time ever passing
a policy to benefit average working class
people here in the United States.
We got hoodwinked and as a result, inequality
grew.
Inequality has been growing ever since those
tax cuts were put in place because our wages
are stagnant, but the top 1% are doing better
than ever.
But the UN report also comes with another
warning and this one's not to the government.
This is actually a warning to the wealthy
elite themselves because the UN warns that
if you create enough inequality, if the wages
for those at the bottom continue to stagnate,
then guess what?
Guess what they're not going to do?
They're not going to be able to buy your apps.
They're not even going to be able to buy your
iPhones.
They're not going to be able to buy your TVs
or your pharmaceuticals or afford your gasoline
and then eventually, rich people, everything
you have been hoarding for decades is going
to disappear.
This isn't just an issue for those of us sitting
at the bottom.
This is an issue for everyone at the top as
well.
We've already been through hard parts.
We're already suffering from this and the
UN is trying to tell the wealthy elite that
if you don't change, if you don't do something
about this, if you don't work on redistributing
the wealth, you're going to come crashing
down too.
