An arsonist is not a firefighter

When I do my grocery run at about 3:00, which I did yesterday, I sometimes listen to Stateside on Michigan Radio. The program delves into what is happening in Michigan. While many NPR interviews are 5-10 minutes, on Stateside they’re more like 15-20 minutes. I listened to one interview on the way home, even sat in the car while in the garage for a couple minutes, and knew I wanted to share it with you. So today I listened to it again online and took notes.

Darrell West wrote the book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust. He is also vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He was a guest on Stateside and talked to Laura Weber Davis. This one is 18 minutes and was first heard last July.

As the segment got towards the end I realized I wasn’t getting the examples and quotes I remembered from yesterday. So I went back to the Stateside website and looked more closely. They were discussing billionaires all week and what I listened to above was from Tuesday. I found the Wednesday episode and the segment I expected.

I decided this second episode was better. Because both guests were asked similar questions I felt I didn’t need to present the same thing twice. So here is the second one with a few comments from the first.

*Stateside* host Laura Weber Davis was in conversation with Anand Giridharadas, a former New York Times columnist and author of Winner Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. It originally aired last December. 18 minutes.

University of Michigan got a $400 million gift from Stephen Ross, big enough that there is the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the university. Cuts to education funding make universities desperate. But a school must be careful that the money doesn’t violate their core principles or provide moral cleansing. Ross benefits from the politics of austerity, of not taxing his wealth, even though that leaves government services underfunded. It leaves the school turning to the people who caused the cuts. For the rich it’s a great bargain. They evaded $1B in taxes and for $100M they get the glow of a hero with fealty from faculty and big writeups in the media. The school needs to set standards for gifts from people who have a stated interest in undermining what the university stands for.

The current inequality means slower overall growth. The middle class doesn’t have the money to pay for education, health care, and to buy the first home.

How frequently do we see billionaires who rescue schools and cities that have fallen short and then craft them in their image? This happens a lot. But let’s examine the assumptions under the question. Cities have fallen short because of a campaign by these same billionaires over 30-40 years. They push for tax cuts. They push to cut regulations that protect workers. And they got those cuts. So the question shouldn’t be in a passive voice. Those cuts and shortfalls were made to happen, someone did that. It is morally complicated if an arsonist represents themselves as a firefighter. The wealthy step in to solve a problem they helped cause. Because cities have been starved for resources they are more inclined to accept the strings that come attached to big gifts. And cities grow dependent on them.

Is there a role for billionaires in crafting a modern, successful city? Yes, but billionaires should think not about how to do more good, but how to do less harm. So before choosing a pet project a wealthy person should audit their own complicity in creating the problem. How much taxes do you pay? Do you donate to a charity for the tax benefit? Do you pay your workers enough? What are you lobbying for? Are you fueling the problem? Are you choosing projects as a way to force your solutions on the masses?

When a rich person lobbies for something they get it for themselves, but also get it for other rich people. A budget amendment might save a rich person $10M, but with all the other people who now save $10M the state has lost $1B in income.

A lot of fundamentally decent people uphold an indecent system. They do this because of a lack of information. They don’t know anyone outside their circle of wealthy people. The seceded from the society. They have their own communities and their own schools. They have segregated themselves by not only race, but income and education as well. And each type of community has its own opportunities not available elsewhere.

Jamie Dimon asked to talk to him. Dimon is CEO of JPMorgan Chase and the head of the Business Roundtable, a group of the biggest CEOs of America. When challenged on CEOs exploiting workers. Dimon said he doesn’t and those other CEOs are very nice guys. Besides a lot of people in this country just don’t like to work. Yup, he has no clue what actual poor people are going through. So why is he saying that? Is he mean? Maybe. But that’s the kind of thing people say when they don’t have any information. They are too sequestered.

But they aren’t just rich. We’ve handed them great deal of influence over public and political life. Why do we decide people like the DeVos family, because they are rich, get to decide things about public education?

Should billionaires exist? We’ve tried for a while having a country in which billionaires exist and haven’t gotten good results. Let’s try a country in which billionaires don’t exist. If, after a generation, we don’t like it, we can go back to having billionaires. We should have a tax code that prevents that much wealth before the basic needs of everyone else are met. If no one was hungry, if everyone had a home, if everyone had access to high quality education, if pensions were secure, then perhaps we can allow billionaires.

That kind of wealth concentration is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. If a person has $50 billion it is hard to make sure they don’t have political influence beyond their one vote. It’s a lot easier to not have those fortunes develop in the first place and to have it paid out in wages to regular workers.