The present text discusses the problem of economic inequality in the USA. According to the author, this problem represents a critical threat to the American democracy contradicting its fundamental principles. The author draws parallels between the economic equality and the political one stating that the latter is a powerful trigger of the former.
One of the critical problems that the author discusses is that of political inequality that he defines as one of the triggers of the crucial disparity in wealth that keeps growing as evidenced by the statistics he refers to. While the fact that the political factor plays a vital role in ensuring economic equality seems to be undoubted, the author’s thesis about the elite rule being the core cause of the economic stagnation is rather disputable. As such, the elite rule, in the text, is regarded as such form of politics making that contradicts the core principles of democracy. In the meantime, a different perspective on this problem suggests us that the elite rule, on the contrary, is an immediate outcome of the democratic governing.
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"Economic Inequality".
Thus, it seems to be rational to presume that as long as democracy is interpreted as a tool aimed at preventing the domination of the majority (or the so-called “tyranny of the mass” as John Adams described it), it is naturally turned into an instrument that gives rise to the tyranny of the minority in the long run. While the “tyranny” is used in a metaphoric sense, the key point is that the American political system has been pursuing a misleading objective placing the focus on the protection of the minorities remaining, meanwhile, insensitive to the needs of the majorities. Summarizing up, it might be proposed that the author makes a typical mistake trying to simplify the concept of the democratic philosophy.
Another important implication that shall be discussed is the alternatives that can potentially replace the elite rule. In this view, the author tries to lead us to the idea that the “elite” phenomenon should be completely elucidated and replaced with the common access to the politics making that every person should be eligible to. While this thesis sounds highly democratic from the ethical perspective, it appears to be rather problematic from the standpoint of its practical realization. In other words, it is unclear which instruments can be used to ensure the equality in people’s access to political decision making. Moreover, even if such instruments exist, the outcomes of this random, non-restricted access to governing are unpredictable. The question arises as to what objective democracy is initially expected to meet: attending people’s aspirations (what they say they want) or ensuring common benefit (ensuring that the made decisions are advantageous for the major part of the population). The key contradiction, in this view, resides in the fact that the “what they want” problem is often complicated by the “what they know” issue. In this view, the author argues that the decision-making capacity is inherent to the population. In other words, the author’s philosophy suggests that every American is capable of resolving any politics-related issue be it the national debt or the international trade agreements. This capacity is supposed to be underpinned by the intuition that helps to select the right option among all those proposed by the relevant experts. Meanwhile, the author fails to define the objective conditions that could underpin this capacity of choosing the most advantageous alternative. From this perspective, the basic benefit of the so-called “elite” is the specific knowledge about politics making its representatives are supposed to possess. In this view, the “elite” phenomenon in itself, is no way contradicting the core principles of democracy as long as everyone is technically eligible to receiving this specific knowledge. This leads us to another important question discussed in the text, i.e. the opportunities-conditions opposition.
As it has been mentioned in the last paragraph, another important problem discussed in the text is the two approaches to equality that are constantly opposed while discussing the pivot conceptual myth – the American Dream. In the frame of the first approach, this dream is built upon the equality of opportunity, while the second approach suggests that it rests on the equality of conditions. The author describes both approaches as different perspectives on the American Dream each of which can be justified in its own manner. To my view, the problem is more complicated. As such, it appears that the American Dream, that would initially entail the idea of the equality of opportunity, neglects the critical prerequisite of this equality which is the equality of conditions. In other words, equal opportunities appear only there and then when there is an equal start – the person that has the resources to start the education in a Harvard School enjoy different opportunities than that who goes to a local college and has to take a part-time job to pay for it (let us suppose they both are average students, which allows us excluding the prospects of getting a scholarship or a grant for the low-income student). Therefore, it seems to be irrational to state that the American Dream is losing its attraction for people. Instead, it has always been disappointing to its followers with the only clarification that the number of disappointed is fully determined by the current economic situation.
Finally, it is essential to note that the author seems to confuse the term “inequality” which has vivid negative connotations and implies implicit disapproval of either social or political institution’s functioning and “differences” which is a natural phenomenon inherent to every society notwithstanding the stage of its development. This is particularly well exemplified by his references to such “inequalities” as those in language or physical capacity.
