Beyond checks and balances

The nation’s founders wanted a government of checks and balances. What we have now are checks with no balances. Deadlock.

The next to go, thanks to a small group of folks with a whole lot of money (and hence power), are the checks.

The super-rich are on a course to take over the country.

But what kind of unchecked country do they want? What kind of life do they want for themselves? And what will it mean for the rest of us?

Do they really want to live in private, guard-dog patrolled fortress-mansions? Do they aspire to endless jaunts on private golf links? Is the goal a yacht in every harbor? Is it fleets of lofty helicopters, Lear jets and armor-plated limousines? Is it endless pool-side hours with vats of sunscreen and margaritas at the ready?

Is it the assurance of luxury for their equally vain and selfish progeny?

And do they really want lives filled with paranoia about retribution from angry masses who have been evicted from their homes, left without jobs and deprived of health care and security?

Do they want a planet beset by drought and famine — a cinder in space, a barren globe awash in toxic, rising oceans?

Do they want a country of spreading ignorance caused by a crumbling school system? Do they seek endless wars abroad and blood in our streets?

Are the rich and powerful really willing to spread disease, suffering, ignorance and anarchy to feed their own private profligacy?

It would seem.

Nor are we blameless. We have bought into a value system of consumption and mass deception that now has produced a “checks and balances” government of, for and by the rich.

Soon, we will be forced to act beyond the bounds of checks and balances. I have no idea what the tipping-point actions will be (mass demonstrations? boycotts? riots? strikes? out-and-out insurrection?), but I do believe this tired, values-challenged, rigged game must end.

While we work on getting rid of it, we must plan for its replacement. It’s easy to imagine. It is committed to long-held universal values: peace, a sustainable planet, equality, education and knowledge, health, adequate food and shelter, honesty, and trust....

Such values should not be subjected to “checks and balances”; they must be established and defended as sovereign rights.

China, US: invite victims to human rights session

This week the US and China are to hold their annual meeting on human rights.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the session could be “more tense than usual.”

In a statement announcing the Beijing meeting, the American side said the talks will focus on “the recent negative trend of forced disappearances, extra legal-defections and the arrests and convictions.”

The rest of the article describes recent, deplorable human rights abuses in China. Abuses in this country are ignored in the story, as if they don't exist.

The Chinese might roll out a few American issues: “illegal” foreclosures, lack of enforcement of laws governing the financial industry, the largest prison population in the world, grotesque income inequities, a plutocratic political system, grossly deficient schools, an absurd, profit-driven health care system, and a defense budget that wastes public resources.

The list goes on.

Before the meeting takes place, the two sides should invite the victims of these abuses to join the government delegations at the table. The victims, from those without health insurance to the unemployed, to political prisoners, to the uneducated, would add reality-based tension to the so-called "tense" discussions.

The talking points shouldn't be hard to find. They were established by Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the United Nations in 1948.

Article 1 (of 30 articles in the Declaration) sets the tone:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Consider Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

And Article 23: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment....Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”

And Article 25: "Everyone has the right to a standard living adequate for the healthy and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social service, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age and other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Both China and the US signed the document more than 60 years ago. Citizens denied their human rights should insist next week that the two countries stop pointing fingers at each other and simply live up to the declaration.

Human Rights and Inequity

“Do you think everyone should be paid equally?” the young man across the restaurant table asked me.

He had read my blog about how, four years ago, in one year the top 1 percent on America’s economic ladder received an increase in income that far exceeded the entire earnings of the lower 20 percent.

I had called the inequity an “outrage.”

“I don’t share your outrage,” he said.

There followed a long lunch-time conversation about executive compensation, compensation committees, compensation consultants, conflicts of interest, shareholder activism (or passivity), the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the nature of the free market, long-term vs. short-term investment returns, the destruction of the planet and the general question “How much is enough?“

At the end of our lunch, he still wasn’t outraged.

As is often the case, I carried the conversation around in my head for several hours. Bits and pieces still rattle around as I write this.

Among the ponderous chunks is his initial question: “Do you think everyone should be paid equally.” At the time I had answered “no,” but could feel a fuzziness in where this Q&A was headed. I have written here on The Red Electric about and talked with him about CEOs’ being compensated at 400 times the rate of the average worker. That contributed to my expression of outrage at injustice.

He wasn’t bothered by the inequity. “If workers don’t like it, they can quit.” Let the market determine what executives are paid, he said. But is the market rigged? I asked. Where does the free market — if it even exists — lead us?

Subsequently I called him for his consent to my writing this post about our private conversation. We agreed it is worth extending and sharing with you.

It seems to me we need to ask ourselves the question at the other extreme from “Should we all be paid equally?” Let's ask whether we should allow the market to produce a society in which the top 1 percent live in extreme excess and the remaining 99 percent live in utter poverty?

Where is the balance between the extreme posed by the questions?

The answer to the problem of inequality rests with how it is approached.

Our conversation led me to cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted and proclaimed at the 1948 UN General Assembly. I couldn’t quote articles and subsections verbatim at lunch, but I can now as I have the declaration before me. The document is worth reading in its entirety. It isn’t long. It does suffer from language that today is seen as sexist — and I’ve altered the following to address the problem.

Several sections are directly relevant to our lunch-time discussion.

Consider:

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of (humanity).

Article 23 …(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring … an existence worthy of human dignity … (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his (or her) interests.

Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25 (a) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of (the individual and the family), including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in (uncontrollable) circumstances

Article 26 Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

To return to the beginning: Should everyone be paid equally? No. Indeed many wouldn’t want the wealth that the very rich bestow upon themselves. Many believe that to be part of such excess hastens the destruction of the planet.

But should we all have our basic needs met, as listed in Article 25? Indeed we should, and if that means the wealthy few are forced to sell their yachts, their private jets, $1000 bottles of wine or chalets in Aspen, if that means that we are compensated more equitably, so be it.