"Canada s economy today generates one-and-a-half times more wealth in per capita and constant dollar terms than it did back in the early l970s when there was no question about our ability to afford the welfare state." It all boils down to unfair distribution. By Ed Finn.

When Mahatma Gandhi, more than half a century ago, remarked that "the world holds enough to satisfy everyone s need, but not everyone s greed," he was clearly identifying the main cause of most of the world s social and economic problems. And he was also pointing to their obvious solution.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, preventable disease, polluted air and water, and most of the other ills that beset humanity have one root cause: the inequitable distribution of the planet s wealth and resources.

People who have enough money no matter where they may live are not poor, do not go hungry, do not lack shelter or a good education, and have access to quality health care. 

Famines don t break out in posh residential districts. Business executives don t visit food banks or sleep under bridges. The rich can afford to stay healthy and live longer than the poor. 

These simple truths are obvious. They underscore the equally obvious fact that the answer to most human misery and injustice is to allocate the worlds wealth on an equitable basis. 

Unfortunately, the economic system that now predominates in most parts of the world laissez-faire capitalism promotes, defends, and even extols an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth. Its three ideological principles are greed, individualism and competition, all of which militate against economic and social justice.

So we have a system in which the three top executives of Microsoft control more wealth than all the people in the world s poorest 50 countries. We have 300 billionaires with more wealth than the poorest two-and-half billion people. And the proponents of this grossly inequitable system see nothing wrong with it. They would presumably not object if eventually 500 billionaires accumulated more wealth than 90% of the rest of humankind. That s what a free market is all about, they would tell us. In a system based on survival of the financially fittest, the financially unfit don't survive and don t deserve to. This application of the law of the jungle to human society is not new. It reigned supreme in the 1800s when the "robber barons" of business were free to exploit the world s resources and workers for their own enrichment and that of their shareholders. Poverty, hunger, and homelessness were rampant then, too, among the general population.

The first three-quarters of the 20th century, however, saw the emergence of governments and unions committed to the alleviation of poverty and hunger, and thus to a less inequitable distribution of income. Gradually, through most of the century, the lives of workers and their families at least in the industrialized nations were improved by the implementation of a wide range of social programs. And these programs were funded largely by taking larger and larger amounts from the coffers of the most affluent individuals and companies. 

The lesson this redistributive approach taught us was that it was not necessary to get rid of capitalism or replace it with democratic socialism (as preferable as that change might be). It was possible to offset its inherently unfair distribution of income through socially progressive legislation, a fair tax system, and strong, government-supported unions. (In such a system, if it prevailed today, Bill Gates would still be free to amass $100 billion, but he d be taxed at a rate of 99.5%. That would still leave Gates with $500 million on which to eke out a living, while freeing $99.5 billion for an effective attack on world poverty, ill-health, and illiteracy.)

It seemed for a while, especially in the first three decades after World War II, that corporate leaders and investors were resigned to the post-war constraints on their greed. But in fact they always resented them, and were determined to break loose of them whenever they could. That opportunity came in the mid_ 70s with the simultaneous promotion of globalized "free" trade and the development of the new computer and communication technologies. Corporations were able to escape from national limits and boundaries and from any compulsion to keep sharing their profits with society s less fortunate.

With their enormous increase in wealth came more power and influence, including the power to buy and control most politicians. From being agents of wealth distribution, governments were transformed into the legislative arms of big business, devoted to helping the rich become richer at the expense of everyone else. The labour movement was not subverted, but, denied government backing and facing employers now willing and able to relocate to low-wage regions, most unions were weakened. Some still manage to extract more in wages than a company is willing to concede, but the redistribute role of organized labour has been reduced, and certainly cannot compensate for the massive withdrawal of governments from this important responsibility.

The free marketers try to argue that there just isn't enough money any more to finance social security. In fact, looking at the Canadian situation, this country s economy today generates one-and-a-half times more wealth in per capita terms and in constant dollars than it did in the early 1970s, when there was no question about our ability to afford the welfare state. All that s different today is that most of the extra money is being concentrated in fewer and fewer bank accounts. The upshot is that the function of redistributing has mainly taken the form of charity. Thousands of charitable organizations now beg the corporations and the high and middle income earners to share some of their income with the needy. Appeals for charitable donations clog the mails, the airwaves, and the telephone lines. Motorists driving on city streets encounter schoolchildren at busy intersections begging for loonies to help save school programs threatened by government cutbacks. 

All of the causes championed by charities are worthwhile. All of the hungry and destitute they help are deserving. But their growing dependence on hand_ outs has two major flaws: it perpetuates (perhaps even institutionalizes) a system built on avarice and inequity; and it ensures that the problems of poverty and hunger will persist and even get worse because the proceeds of charity alone will never be enough to eliminate them.

In the euphoric aftermath of the "battle of Seattle," the victors in civil society may feel they have the hard-line free marketers on the run. But their success in preventing the rich and powerful from agreeing on how they can become even more rich and powerful as laudable as it undeniably is still leaves an already brutal and barbaric system intact.

It s important, as we fight these battles, always to keep the nature of both the problem and the solution in mind. The problem is an unfair distribution of wealth, and the solution however it may be achieved is a fair distribution of wealth. Any proposals or discussions that ignore that simple truth waste our time, squander our resources, and undermine our efforts to create a better world.

The CCPA Monitor