The Turmoil of Economic Inequality

Of all the potential dangers of economic inequality--slow growth, reduced upward mobility, and so on--social destabilization is the most worrisome.  This is when people say, "Enough.  We're not waiting for things to happen.  We're making them happen.  Our way."

The pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong were nominally over Chinese attempts to limit the freedom of Hong Kong's elections by vetting candidates.  Only pro-Beijing candidates need apply. But growing economic inequality in Hong Kong fueled the anger of the demonstrators.  Wealthy Chinese are buying up prime real estate in Hong Kong, pushing prices beyond the reach of the local middle class.  The wealthiest Hong Kong residents are, like the 1% elsewhere, growing disproportionately richer.  Job and other opportunities for many others are looking bleaker.  Middle class Hong Kong residents began to see less and less for themselves in the status quo.  They didn't take things quietly.

Democracy is a mechanism by which the 99% push back against the growing wealth and power of the 1%.  Without democracy, oligarchs and plutocrats flourish.  China has an authoritarian government, whose powerful members and their families are intertwined with China's economic elite.  The ordinary citizens of Hong Kong have no voice in the northern capital.  Public protest is only way for them to be heard.

Modern day mandarins in Beijing no doubt shivered when protest banners unfurled in Hong Kong.  Since the days of dynastic China, rebellions against the central government have usually ignited in southern China.  Far from the seat of power, the discontented more readily questioned claims to the Mandate of Heaven.  Indeed, both of the rebellions that unseated the last emperor, and then the Chinese Nationalist government (now a vestige on Taiwan), began south of the Yangtze River.  In recent weeks, Communist cadres have no doubt been taking more business trips to warmer climes.

Turmoil from economic inequality is not limited to Hong Kong.  In the city by the bay, middle and lower income San Franciscans have bristled at the invasion of the geeks from the Silicon Valley.  Young technocrats have driven up real estate prices and Yuppified neighborhoods that heretofore took pride in their eccentricity.  Charter buses used for commuting by the options-compensated have been attacked by the not-so-well compensated.  The so-called trickle-down theory isn't entirely benign.  Capitalism has losers, and the losers will push back.

America is a democratic nation, although increasingly dominated by Big Money as a result of U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down various limits on campaign contributions.  Democratic Party get-out-the-vote efforts in 2008 and 2012 have held the forces of wealth at bay for now.  But countries tend to work best when they have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  Economic inequality cannot continue to increase indefinitely; and consequently, it won't.  The only question will be how it ends.  Let's hope it doesn't end badly.