Concentrating wealth in fewer hands

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos shares a progressive economic plan. Here’s part of it:
* Individual wealth capped at $600 million.
* Annual income capped at $12 million.
* Inheritance capped at $60 million.
* $24K basic income for all Americans.
* Universal health care.
Huey Long, senator from Louisiana and potential candidate for president, created that plan in 1934 (numbers adjusted for inflation).

But Long wasn’t a socialist or communist – and in 1934 real socialists and communist were a factor in America. Long was a capitalist, one who understood both the benefits and harms of capitalism. Sumner wrote:

Long’s plan was just not within what we’ve allowed to become a very, very narrow view of capitalism that treats every alternative as a threat.

Alternatives are a threat to the supremacist goals of those currently at the top of the capitalism hierarchy.

The version of capitalism deployed across the western world in 2019, and the system impressed on up-and-coming economies everywhere, reflects only an extremely small portion of the possible spectrum. The ideas that the system promotes—about the value of the wealthy for “job creation,” about the value of investment vs. labor, about the brilliance of the unfettered “free market”—aren’t just untested … those ideas are proven failures.

Capitalism, as it exists in the United States and most of the world today, is an engine which has been exquisitely refined for the purpose of gathering wealth and concentrating it in fewer hands. Then it takes the wealth from those, and concentrates it into fewer still. Repeat until 600 billionaires have everything. Then keep repeating.

The astounding thing is that supporters of this system have sold this repeated failure so well, that many “serious people” now pretend that it’s not just right, but the *only* possible plan.

There was a time when what we have today was definitely not the plan. It was a time of genuine widening of the middle class and broad growth for all income levels.

Long believed there could be personal wealth, but not unlimited personal wealth. The economy could grow without giving more to those who already have a lot. We can have capitalism and democracy by getting rid of the parts of the system that do not work. We can build something better.

A capitalism that works for more people. A capitalism that inspires hope for more people. A capitalism that generates more entrepreneurs, more innovation, more advances, more genuine wealth … without putting that wealth in fewer hands.

The amount of genuine wealth available in the United States today is such that it could genuinely usher in a “post scarcity society.” The kind of society in which everyone has the ability to pursue dreams and innovations because chasing those dreams doesn’t mean putting their family in enormous risk. That the kind of society whose potential is almost incomprehensible.

I like Elizabeth Warren’s plans to tax the wealthy. But compared to the plans put forth by Huey Long, she’s rather timid.