"Responsible Wealth"????

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Date:         Sat, 8 Nov 1997 17:21:18 -0800
Reply-To: "Ed Deak (by way of Caspar Davis)" <thinker@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: The Other Economic Summit USA 1997 <TOES97@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Ed Deak (by way of Caspar Davis)" <thinker@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:      column from The Global Citizen that will interest you

Dear Friends,

This came via another listserv, and I thought you might want to see it.

Caspar

 The Global Citizen
 November 6, 1997

 Donella H. Meadows
 P.O. Box 58
 Plainfield NH 03781
 603-675-2230 (home -- answering machine)
 603-646-1233 (work -- secretary)
 603-646-1682 or 675-6305 (FAX)


 PEOPLE OF WEALTH STAND UP FOR GREATER EQUALITY

 The other day a friend sent me a brochure put out by an organization
 called Responsible Wealth.  I could hardly believe the name.  Reading on, I
 could hardly believe what it stands for.

 "We are business leaders and wealthy individuals, among the top five
 percent of income earners and asset holders in the US," the brochure leads off.
 "We are concerned about the rise in power of large corporations and the
 growing gap between the rich and everyone else."

 Twenty years ago, says the brochure, the richest one percent of the
 U.S. population owned 19 percent of all private wealth.  Now the top one
 percent owns almost 40 percent -- more than the bottom 92 percent of us
 combined.

 The Reagan regime of the 1980s cut the taxes of corporations and the
 wealthy and promised that their gains would trickle down into investments and
 jobs. The money trickled up instead, says Responsible Wealth, in speculative
 stock market winnings, obscene compensation to corporate executives, and
 political contributions that increased further the privileges of the wealthy.

 Between 1983 and 1989 the assets of the richest 500 families in
 America rose from $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion.  If they had paid just
one-third of
 that gain in taxes, they still would have gotten richer and there would
 have been NO government deficit -- a deficit that is now being resolved by
cutting
 benefits to the poor and middle class.

 The folks behind Responsible Wealth see themselves as beneficiaries of
 a game with unfair rules.  "We recognize that assets play an essential role
 in building wealth and prosperity.  However, we believe there is an
 overemphasis on the rights and rewards of private capital.  Those of us
with large
 amounts of capital are able to pass on fortunes from generation to generation
 and multiply our wealth through passive investing, while around us one in
 four children are born into poverty, and many have little hope of improving
 their financial situation."

 "We believe that in a healthy economy workers should earn fair
 compensation and all citizens should have the opportunity to earn, save, and be
 economically secure.  We believe that civil rights and economic rights are
 inseparable; we will never have one without the other."

 "We believe that economic inequality and the scapegoating of welfare
 recipients and immigrants are dividing our nation and undermining our
collective
 sense of community.  By continuing to separate ourselves economically, we are
 contributing to a society in which people at one end of the spectrum
 are walled off in gated communities, while many at the other end are behind
 bars."

 What does Responsible Wealth propose to do?  In essence, lobby for
 policies that we who are not rich never expect to hear the rich promote.

 The burden of responsibility for the deficit, says the brochure,
 should be placed on the wealthiest, who benefited most from the policy changes
 that created it.  That means -- what an amazing idea! -- tax increases for
 the rich.

 We need dramatic campaign finance reform, it says, to return control
 of our democracy to the voters, not the campaign contributors.

 The media should say more about the harm to our society and the damage
 to our economy caused by widening inequality, Responsible Wealth believes.
 So the organization is creating teams of speakers and educators and starting
 letter-writing campaigns, print ads, and meetings with government and
 corporate officials.

 Are these folks for real? I wondered, so I called them up.  They're
 not yet willing to have their names released to the public, but when they do,
 you will recognize some of them.  Responsible Wealth has over 130 members and
 is going for 250 by the end of this year.  Next month they're having their
 first national conference in New York.

 "As people with wealth," says their first newsletter, "we feel a
 responsibility to speak out against the rules that have been written to
benefit us
 and to speak in favor of policies that benefit the long-term common good of
 all." They quote Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Philanthropy is commendable, but
 it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic
 injustice that make philanthropy necessary."

 I'd guess that most non-rich Americans, which means most Americans,
 are not interested in absolute equality.  We accept that some of us are born
 into, luck into, or manage to earn wealth and others are born into or fall into
 poverty. Our financial circumstances may or may not reflect our fault or merit.
 We don't want to demean or envy or fear each other because of them.  We
 do want to hold each other responsible not for what we've been given, but for
 what we do with it.  And we want a game with unbiased rules, with no child born
 into utter hopelessness.

 It's wonderful to know that some of the most privileged are on our side.

 If you'd like more information about Responsible Wealth, you can contact
United for a Fair Economy, 37 Temple Place, Fifth Floor, Boston MA 02111
(617-423-2148 or rw@xxxxxxx).

 (Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at
Dartmouth College.)



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