Americans Want a More Equal Country

A recent study of Americans shows that 92 percent, including 90% of Republicans, would prefer to live in a more equal society. The table shows the actual percentage of the nation's total wealth owned by people in each quintile (the bottom 40% own effectively nothing), the average of Americans estimates of how wealth is divided, and the average numbers offered by Americans about the society they most want to live in.

This is something I discovered when I had a long conversation with a deep red Republican back in about 1999. To me, Republicans stand for free markets, union busting, and low taxes, which means ever greater inequality; whereas Democrats stand for higher taxes, stronger unions, and more regulation, which tend to produce a more equal society. But the woman I was arguing with was much more angry than I am about corruption on Wall Street and the selfish immorality of America's rich. She certainly wanted a more equal society. To her, though, these were moral issues, to which the only possible solution is more religion. I stood with Bill Clinton because I liked his economic policies and avoidance of war, but my interlocutor thought impeaching him was imperative because only by punishing high-flying philanderers can we restore the sort of morality that might rein in Wall Street speculators.

I think she was deeply naive, and that whatever Republicans say about morality what they do in office is promote the economic interests of the rich. But she did not, at all, want a world divided into billionaires and paupers, which is where I think truly free markets ultimately tend. She even disliked inherited wealth and supported estate taxes. But she voted Republican because to her the Democrats stand for secularism, which means immorality.

There ought to be a coalition in America for economic policies that favor the majority, but cross-cutting issues like race, abortion, gay rights, religion, and guns, as well as the huge difference between the outlooks of rural populist Christians and Occupy Wall Street, keep that coalition from coming together.