THE MAIN MARKER

What marks inequality, at least more so than any other factor? Some might say treatment before the law. Are the laws administered equally for everyone? Let me highlight an example. With the concerns over security we have today – it's been so long since 9/11 that our concerns in this area don't seem abnormal anymore – we all, upon entering the boarding areas of commercial airplanes, have to go through security scanners and whatnot. These are run by the government, the TSA. We, in an “equal before the law” regime, should all be treated the same. Yet the trend is to allow those with first class tickets or other pricier arrangements to short-circuit this requirement. Please read:

Air travel in the United States has never been a model of equality, but in the first years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there was at least a sense of shared sacrifice, as coach and first class passengers endured longer lines and heightened security together. The moment did not last, and today airport security is poised to become another front in America’s class war, a struggle between frequent fliers and not-so-frequent fliers.

We have all been there. While everyone who flies commercially is required to clear a TSA screening checkpoint before proceeding to the gate, first-class passengers and frequent fl[ers get a special queue, with expedited access to the screening process. Meanwhile, the rest of us wait in long lines – sometimes much longer lines – muttering discontentedly like so many budding Bolsheviks.¹

Now I can't personally vouch for this inequality. I haven't flown since '07 – our last trip was so disagreeable that my wife and I have not done it since then. But between this cited article and others I have read, apparently that source of inequality before the law has become more commonplace. But who is getting preferential treatment? Is it people who value the perks of first class so much that they are willing to fork over the extra dough? Or is it those for whom the value of the dollar is so low – due to the fact that they have so many of them – that they consider the extra cost as inconsequential? I believe the latter to be the case.

So, income and/or wealth, as illustrated by this example, is the basis of inequality, at least as experienced in this country. Some have so much money or access to money that getting on a Delta or American Airlines flight is not something they do. They hop on private jets that bypass all of this queuing and patting and screening that all the rest of us have to put up with if we want to fly. In other words, there is no escaping how inequality in one area – how much money one has – and another area – political rights – can be segregated. One affects the other and this simple airline example merely illustrates it. Another example? How about a judge who gives a lighter sentence to a teenager because the magistrate finds the boy a victim of “affluenza” – a sense of entitlement because his parents raised him under conditions of extreme wealth. Oh, by the way, the young man's drunken driving which led him into slamming his car into a stalled car resulted in the deaths of four people and the paralysis of another. Isolated case? There are forms of this inequality every day. Can someone earn, inherit, or otherwise acquire too much money? Too much for their own good and the good of others?

Here's a related question: what does the historical character – usually depicted as a ruthless financial, monopolist – J. Pierpoint Morgan, have in common with novelist George Orwell, the darling of conservatives, and the business guru, Peter F. Drucker ? They all believed that the ratio of income between the highest paid executive of a company and the lowest paid employee should be 20 to 1 or less. Yet in 2012, the ratio between these two among the S & P 500 index companies was 354 to 1. In 2013, the top 10 paid executives in the US each made over $100 million dollars. The average income per household that same year was $51,017.² That kind of disparity can buy a lot of affluenza or inequality within the market and before the law. This form of inequality is getting to be out of hand. We need to address it in a meaningful way. Or, as stated in a recent book:

“For a country founded on the idea that rights are inalienable and inherent from birth,” Taibbi writes, “we've developed a high tolerance for conditional rights and conditional citizenship. And the one condition, it turns out, is money. If you have a lot of it, the legal road you get to travel is well lit and beautifully maintained. If you don't, it's a dark alley and most Americans would be shocked to find out what's at the end of it.”³

My point, exactly.

1Cohen, R. and Vasvari, R. (2012). Wait, who gets to skip airport security? Slate, July 12, see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/07/airline_carriers_should_not_be_allowed_to_decide_who_gets_privileged_service_from_tsa_s_security_procedures_.html .

2Hargreaves, D. (2014). Can we close the pay gap? The New York Times, March 30, Sunday Review section, p. 3.

3Ulin, D. L. (2014). Matt Taibbi rips into America's growing income gap in 'The Divide.' The Los Angeles Times, Book Review, see http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-matt-taibbi-20140330,0,4516236.story#ixzz2yAa2VUyn . This review is of Matt Taibbi's recent book, Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.