Eight Centuries of Liberty

The Magna Carta, as Daniel Hannon appropriately notes in his WSJ article, "Eight Centuries of Liberty" (May 30-31, page C1), was the forerunner of  and inspiration for our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And yes, it introduced the overarching concept of "rule of law". However, his trope is misleading in several respects and puts a modern varnish over ancient flaws.
  The Magna Carta, indeed, was more about the protection of property of the landed gentry and the real estate rich clergy than it was about recognizing the individual rights of the common man. As Hannon concedes, the Magna Carta " conceived freedom and property as two expressions of the same principle." It did little or nothing to secure the individual freedom of those enslaved or landless.

  Our own founding documents were also deficient in their original form. While they proclaimed liberty and equality, they sanctioned slaveholding and the vesting of rights tied to the  ownership of property. It took decades and centuries, civil war and constitutional amendments to end slavery, enfranchise women and extend voting rights to the landless and people of color.  

  Too much is made by Hannon of the role of English-speakers in preserving democracy which, he allows, was birthed by ancient Greeks. It is ethnocentric to celebrate "the law of the land" as emanating from the land itself, as the common inheritance of the people living there. Tell that to the native inhabitants who were slaughtered or driven from their ancestral homes.

  Our Constitution has come a long way from the Magna Carta and its own initial shortcomings. Hopefully, its continued protections and relevance will not be thwarted by narrow-minded jurists who elevate old concepts and textual obeisance over the evolving challenges of the modern world.

 

A Modest Proposal

The great issue of our time has emerged as the monumental disproportion of income; an overwhelming part of our national wealth is taken by a relative handful, leaving the vast majority to struggle to meet the daily needs of families. The unchecked growth of this disparity poses an increasing threat to the fabric and serenity of our society.
 Many reasons have been assigned for the widening wealth gap including deregulation, tax rates favoring the rich, the weakening of unions, the court-sanctioned role of big money in politics, unfavorable trade pacts, development of labor-saving technology and the stagnation of minimum wage levels.
 A listing of these putative causes suggests the solutions which have been advanced; greater governmental regulation, higher tax rates for the wealthy, increased taxation on wealth transfer (estate taxes), enhanced protection of labor in trade agreements, a higher minimum wage, stronger unions and limits on the spending of deep-pocket political donors.
 While these proposed remedies are relevant and potentially useful, I wish to offer a modest proposal for leveling the playing field. The compensation of corporate managers has ballooned to obscene proportions, especially in the area of securities trading which, arguably, adds little to the common good. These oceanic rewards are treated as expenses by the corporate payers, thus shifting the burden to the government and the tax-paying public.
 The solution is to modify the tax code to limit the extent to which a company may claim as an expense the amounts paid to executives. Presumably the loss of tax advantage would incline corporations to spread their income more broadly by increasing the pay of middle managers and lower paid workers. This approach does not prevent corporations from continuing to pay outlandish compensation should they choose to do so; it simply removes the public's unwilling participation in funding such extravagance and, perhaps, serves to dissuade unbridled corporate largess.
 Yes, we are a nation of unfettered opportunity and of freedom to amass great wealth. This proposal would not denigrate that oft-repeated credo; it merely makes more realistic the opportunity for the many to achieve at least a modicum of comfort even as it strengthens the ties that keep our diverse society whole.

The Dangers Of Unrepresentation

THE DANGERS OF UNREPRESENTATION


In days of yore, the downtrodden mostly accepted their lowly status and simply toiled from cradle to grave without much more than a low, murmured grumbling. From time to time, however, their complacency crumbled and their long-suffered grievances erupted into revolutionary violence. The French elite, the Russian aristocracy and other ruling classes were made to pay with their lives to assuage, temporarily, the anguish of unfulfilled lives.


In modern times, even as the oppression by the wealthiest continued, albeit in commercial rather than regal guise, new outlets for diverting pent up lower-class anger were developed. Thus, the troubled birth of unions gave working people a degree of bargaining power never before possessed. The extension of voting rights to the non-propertied gave at least the semblance of representation to the hitherto powerless. As a consequence, the uprisings and bloodlettings of an earlier time faded, replaced by a less violent form of class warfare.


Regrettably, that positive development is now being reversed. Somehow, the rich have persuaded the poor that their interests are closely aligned and that both are benefitted by dismantling the leavening effects of government intervention and the bargaining power of unions. The process of reducing working class empowerment is furthered by the acceleration of racial bias and ethnic division aimed at splintering solidarity and setting worker against worker. Voting restrictions that target minority blocs are intended to, and have had the effect of, disenfranchising those likely to favor progressive reform.


Wealth continues to stream to the wealthiest and the differences in income and lifestyle between the haves and the have much less have grown to vast disproportion. But now, the means to seek redress and relief, to vent frustration and to obtain meaningful representation are being stifled. When government is no longer representative and unions are weakened or nonexistent, we will return to a time when rebellion is fostered and relief is sought by resort to force.




January 2, 2015