My 401k, and yours, took a giant hit yesterday after the UK voted to "Brexit' as it's being called. I'm frustrated with the outcome because I want to retire one day, but I think there's a larger lesson for citizens of the United States and our elected representatives. Large swaths of people are being left behind in the global economy and they don't like it. In the UK they expressed their frustration by voting to leave the European Union (EU). They didn't understand the consequences of their votes - although I think they're about to quickly find that out.
On this side of the pond over the past year or so I've seen some disturbing things as we march towards the 2016 Presidential election. I've seen Sanders supporters recycle old and debunked rumors to bash Hilary that were used back in the 90s to bash Bill. I've seen Sanders supporters and Trump supporters laugh at each other as if they were each so much smarter than their foe. "I know something you don't and you're supporting that guy so you must be an idiot." We're incredibly dismissive of the other, but there's a real reason each person thinks the way they do and its in our best interest to figure out why.
We talk about income inequality and a rigged system but the fundamentals of why that exists are mostly boring and hard to understand. The majority of people see a situation, draw their conclusions for better or for worse, and then take that as a working explanation as to why things are the way they are, they don't want to know about the devil in the details. Sometimes it's because they're frankly not interested and sometimes it's because the more they know the more obligated they feel to do something. A close family relative said to me that homeless people begging for money on the corner were pulling in $40k annually. Really? Someone had just told him that and he took it for the truth. Maybe they do, I don't know because I don't think anyone is capturing that information in any way so I don't think we have a clue. In order to pull in that amount though a person would have to take in $109 dollars every single day for a year. A survey I came across that was conducted in Canada back in 2001 found that homeless beggars in Toronto made only about $300 a month. Not quite $40k. However, this person didn't want to give money to a beggar and now he'd provided himself with the explanation for why he didn't have to. He was free to resent them as he went on his way to work and never have to ask another question as to why this situation exists. On the other hand, until I wrote this, I hadn't actively searched for any real data on how much homeless beggars on the street are pulling in. I just assumed that it can't be much and I think we ought to do something about the fact that we have homeless people. Yet we both dismissed each other as not really knowing what the other was talking about even though neither one of us had actual information.
None of us are immune to this way of thinking and I get it. The amount of problems we have facing us in this world can be overwhelming and sometimes we are powerless to change things or even feel that what we do changes things. We understand what's in our backyard, what we see and experience. It's much more difficult to understand global forces. We also don't get anyone telling us what's going on because we choose not to listen to those that do. Growing up we only had a few television channels and the news came on every single one of them at noon and again in the evening. We had the Fairness Doctrine so that an issue or person had a competing point of view on the same station. Today we don't have the Fairness Doctrine and we have so many television channels to choose from that we can find someone ranting and railing that thinks just like us so that we never once have to question our way of thinking. We validate our own opinions without any real facts to back them up. I'm an avid NPR listener and they mostly do an okay job of reporting the news, but a lot of people tune into a "Morning Drive" show on their way to work and have no interest in news. While at work they talk about work stuff. When they get home they have access to more entertainment and can entirely tune out news if they like, or tune into someone who validates their thoughts rather than exploring why people think a certain way. We all rest comfortably at night telling ourselves that we know the truth and that it's the others who are so lacking.
Which brings me back to Brexit and the US elections. We have large groups of people in the United States who are not happy with how things are going and they've been showing up at Sanders and Trump rallies on masse. They feel lost in the process and now they have a voice. No one has been listening to them for years. They've gotten a lot of lip service and few tangible results. Things might have been good a few years ago, but now we have illegal aliens, and refugees and gay marriage and women demanding equal pay.....All this change must be responsible for the fact that they're out of a job or hear so many people speaking Spanish. I heard several interviews with folks in England who said they felt like strangers in their own country. They said time and again, "England isn't England anymore". The majority of these people are older and less educated than the people who voted to stay in the European Union and so they were dismissed. I think that dismissive attitude will get us into trouble every time. Let's not forget, Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake" just before she had her head cut off.
Last night my parents and I were discussing all of this and my Dad said "What the hell is government supposed to do about it?!" I agreed with him at the time, what can government do? However, when I woke up this morning I thought, well for one thing, our elected representatives could listen to the people who voted for them. However they're so hung up with their big donors like banks, the NRA, big Oil and other special interests, that they don't. 90% of the American public wants something done about guns and the Congress can't make it happen. The environment is going downhill fast - there may be no stopping it - and we still have no clear strategy for switching to renewables. The American public wants us to do something about immigration and we can't get that done either. All of this lack of action in Congress is a direct result of our representatives receiving large amounts of cash from big donors who have their own best interests at heart but not necessarily that of the American people.
Let's be clear though, it's up to the American people to make things change. We clearly want change because look at how many people support Trump so that he has now become the Republican nominee for President. Look at how large a following Bernie Sanders still has even though Hilary is now the nominee. Right now the only thing we have control over is our vote. That was the only thing the folks in the UK had as well and in my opinion their elected officials failed to listen to those being left behind. If the American people really want to take their country back then the first thing we ought to do is band together to support public financing of campaigns. No more super pacs, no more millionaire donors, just the American people financing their representatives so that they're answerable to us again. Public financing won't fix everything, but it will help our elected members of Congress to focus on what's best for the American people instead of what's best for the NRA or Goldman Sachs at the expense of the people. That's not going to happen before November though.
So what do we do? We want change and I think we're about to get it, for better or for worse just like they did in the UK. We should be very careful about dismissing those who disagree with us. They have the power of their vote and they're about to exercise it.
Further reading on my theme: Glenn Greenwald on Brexit; Britons Who Voted to Brexit; Impact to the USA; Matt Taibbi on Brexit; Bill Moyers on Brexit; David Brooks OpEd on Revolt of the Masses
Well said.
ReplyDelete