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Subject: <nettime> Some delectable ironies here...
From: valis <valis@execpc.com>
Date: 23 Nov 1997 23:21:39 +0100

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====> I'm not sure what these people propose to do structurally,
but their comments _per se_ are interesting enough to see.
Yes, Donella Meadows, usually called "Dumbella" by right-wing
simians who have mastered typing, was part of the Meadows Group,
they of the ill-fated Limits To Growth book (1972).

valis
Occupied America


Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 17:21:18 -0800
Reply-To: "Ed Deak (by way of Caspar Davis)" <thinker@UNISERVE.COM>
Sender: The Other Economic Summit USA 1997 <TOES97@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
From: "Ed Deak (by way of Caspar Davis)" <thinker@UNISERVE.COM>
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@stw.org).

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



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