On Independence, wealth, and status

It’s Indepenence Day in the United States. As a nation, the United States seems less independent than at any time in our history.

In this post, I wanted to talk about how a country’s economic policies promote or removes freedoms. This post starts with a policy that swept America away: Trickle-down Economics. Trickle-down economics came into public discussion during the United States Presidency of Ronald Reagan. It promised that great wealth trickles down to the poor. Don’t saddle the wealthy or corporations with taxes. Give them more money and it will trickle down to the impoverished, the story went. It sounded good. For years, I believed it, too.

Here’s the thing: with this idea, when people become wealthy it’s because they have lived better, more industrious lives than the rest of society. They earned their status and they deserve their wealth. They’re the heros, because they are meritful. They have earned their prominence in society. On the other hand, the poor survive through their dependence and reliance on the beneficence of the rich. People who have fewer resources are dependent on the people who have more resources. Obvious right?

No. This idea leads to a destructive view of human worth, value, and connection. Worth becomes associated with status, and not with your contributions to cycles of life and community. Worth is dependent on your status in the economic machine, your wealth, not your poverty.

This idea of trickle-down economics is a template imposed on society, often by force, but sometimes slowly and imperceptibly. Though we revolted against our British dictators over two centuries ago, the wealthy have gradually raised the price of dependence on the less wealthy. That’s how it’s often been for polite Western societies The wealthy and corporations entangle you with increasing (usurous) interest, fees, and unexpected costs. YouTube is rife with videos of government officials dissing the poor. The worst of what is stolen is our attention: we are unaware of what is taken on a daily basis. The app slowly drains our money, time, and attention.

Some wealthy people believe their wealth was self-generated. They subscribe to their own hero narrative and success stories. You hear all about their hardscrabble past in their campaigns, social media posts, and interviews.

There is no reason to believe this trickle-down weatlh story. There is no empirical data to support trickle-down economics apart from anecdotal guesses. This is what Ronald Reagan campaigned on: the anecdote. In recent years, though, the data is very clear. There is no substantial downward transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, nothing like the transfer of wealth from poor to rich.

Also, our cherished beliefs in success based on our own traits and qualities - apart from luck - is also flawed. Every person who believes they earned their success fails to recognize the chances, encounters and events that altered the outcomes that brought them their wealth. Quite simply, they got lucky. Those who believe they earned it are delusional. Enjoy the Veritasium video below where hero narratives are shown for what they are: false.

We don’t have to subscribe to this trickle-down template. None of use got where we’re at because of our charm, brilliance, energy, leadership, or hard work. Nor should we believe our value is based on our bank balance, or the nature of our work in life. The truth is that we all need to adjust our self-appraisal. In fact, nature is constantly trying to teach us to adjust our self-appraisal. The wealthy become terminally ill and die just like the rest of us (despite the money they super rich boy-children funnel into life-extension schemes). We are all actively dying right now.

However, by living with courage, kindness, and refusing others definitions of ourselves, we change the status of society and ourselves.

It was after a long day of dignified but meaningful work that Rosa Parks broke a nations reckoning about what it means to have worth. She trampled on trickle-down theory in her own local space.

Tired by her long hours of work and frustrated by the continual degrading of African-Americans in society, she said, Enough. She refused to go to the back of the bus. She refused to be identified by the template of wealth, poverty, and dependence.

The worth of your life and of the work that you do today resides in the dignity, creativity, effort, and the courage with which approach your work. Feel free to say no to the structures of society that try to tell you who you are without your consent.

A friend told me about this great quote from Eleanor Roosevelt:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

When you choose to subscribe to the wealth of your own identity, you are truly independent. Despite America’s acceleratng descent into the horrors of totalitarianism and the waning of human dignity, there was a time when we celebrated Independence Day for good reasons. Whatever changes have come over us, whatever delusions we now believe, the founders whose ideas we have rejected were correct in their appraisal of human value:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -Preamble to the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

Whatever your status, take time to own these words for yourself. You don’t have to believe in a Creator to be endowed with these rights. You are born with them. So, on this Independence Day, claim your own worth.