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In 1980, the top 1 percent of earners in the country controlled about 8 percent of the total economic pie. Twenty-six years later, the top 1 percent now controls almost a quarter of the nation's total economic pie.
War and exploitation by the powerful, unfurled an immoral distribution, which reformers would prefer to correct so as to build society on a more moral basis. Proposals are wide-ranging on how a society should redistribute resources as are the proposals to ensure present and future generations at least equal access to a specified standard of living or opportunity. Here moderates overlap with liberals and conservatives, who believe in the primacy of freedom but with a small amount of redistribution to ensure that all children get a fair start in life.
Defining fairness, however, brings to the fore the issues of what standards and policies and justifications are appropriate. If you depart from such intricacies you can assert that capitalism is morally flawed at its core – say, from its motivational or ethical underpinnings. The most popular criticism leveled against capitalism is the unethical or selfish material pursuit of wealth and riches. You see the ethical scarcity of social values or excess of those values that are assumed to characterize the capitalist world: competition and profit seeking and excessive individualism. We should prefer collective action over individual action, or at least individual action that is supportive of group rather than personal or selfish values. Nonetheless, most shy away from espousing an anti-materialist philosophy: most support the pursuit of wealth but only when created by and for the working class.
Regardless of the moral problem of perpetual unequal distributions, we have an optimistic vision of what we can be – perhaps not what we are now, but of what we are capable of once society is reformed.
In the broadest, presently popularly accepted term the modern liberal accepts rights against the person and rights to entitlements such as health care and education. Modern liberals assert the primacy of minorities and even individuals to partake freely in the democratic processes and political dialogues, or whose emphasis on equality demands an active and interventionist state. Justice is the essential motif of liberalism and that the state's duty is to ensure a just and fair opportunity for all to compete and flourish in a civil society.
Aristotle's ethical argument that for a person to pursue the good life, he requires a certain standard of living. Poverty is not conducive to pursuing the good life, hence many modern liberals are attracted to redistributive or welfare policies. Liberals agree that the government has a strict duty towards impartiality and hence to treating people equally, and that it should also be neutral in its evaluation of what the good life is. This neutrality is criticized by non-liberals who claim that the assumed neutrality is in fact a reflection of a specific vision of human nature or progress, and although critics disagree what that vision may entail, their claim prompts liberals to justify the underlying assumption that promotes them to accept such issues as: equal treatment by the law and by the state; liberty to pursue one's life as one sees fit; the right to private property, and so on. Nonetheless, broad liberalism accepts and emphasizes that people ought to be tolerant towards their fellow men and women.
But what is more important is that the liberal doctrine of toleration permits the acceptance of errors – that in pursuing the ethical good life and hence the appropriate political life, people may make mistakes and should be permitted to learn and adapt as they see fit; or, alternatively, that people have a right to live in ignorance or to pursue knowledge as they think best. This is held in common with political conservatives who are somewhat more pessimistic and skeptical of our abilities than most liberals. Liberals do unite in expressing skepticism towards experts knowing what is in the best interest of others, and thus liberals tend to reject any interference in people's lives as unjustifiable and counter-productive. Life, for the liberal, should be led from the inside (self-oriented) rather than outside (other- imposed); liberals add that individuals ought to be provided with the resources to ensure that they can live the good life as they see fit.
For modern liberals this implies the potential for forging appropriate conditions for any individual to gain a proper education and opportunities. Liberals applaud those institutions that reason sustains as being conducive to human freedoms: institutions that protect the negative freedoms (rights against aggression and theft) and the positive freedoms (rights to a certain standard of living). If an institution is lacking according to a critical and rational analysis – failing in its duty to uphold a certain liberal value – then it is to be reorganized for the empowerment of humanity. Most liberals ascribe to a general form of utilitarianism in which social institutions are to be reorganized along lines of benefiting the greatest number. This attracts criticism from conservatives – according to what ends? - according to whose analysis? – comprising which people? and so on. The proper society and hence political institutions should generate those rules and institutions that are right in themselves, regardless of the particular presumed ends we are seeking.
Liberals lean toward a more interventionist government, and as such they place more emphasis on the ability of the state to produce the right political sphere for humanity and thusly emphasize reform projects more than conservatives. Once the beneficial liberal framework is created, the state and political institutions ought to remain ethically neutral and impartial: the state is to be separated from imposing itself on or subsidizing any belief system, cultural rites, forms of behavior or consumption (so long as they do not interfere in the lives of others).
The liberal seeks the best form of government which will permit the individual to pursue life as he or she sees fit within a neutral framework, and it is the possibility of a neutral framework that critics challenge the liberal ideal.
Conservatism plays down the unifying implications of liberalism and its unifying rationalism and thus accords institutions or modes of behavior that have weathered the centuries a greater respect than liberals. Conservatives are cautious in tampering with forms of political behavior and institutions and they are especially skeptical of whole scale reforms. For conservatives, the value of institutions cannot always be examined according to the rational analysis of the present generation. This imposes a demand on conservatism to explain or justify the rationale of supporting historical institutions. Liberalism turns to reason, which is broadly accepted as the unifying element to human societies, but conservatives believe that reason can be highly overestimated for it belongs to single individuals and hence to their own political motives, errors, prejudices and so on. In contrast to many liberals, conservatives decry the notion of a social contract – or even its possibility in a modern context.
Conservatives thus do not reject reform but are thoroughly skeptical of any present generation's or present person's ability to understand and hence to reshape the vast edifices of behavior and institutions that have evolved with the wisdom of thousands of generations. They are thus skeptical of large scale planning, whether it be constitutional or economical or cultural. Some conservatives argue that a modicum of redistribution is required. Liberals justify redistribution on the grounds of providing an initial basis for human development. The lesson has not been lost on modern conservative thinkers who claim that the state has certain obligations to the poor – including perhaps the provision of education and health facilities, or at least the means to secure them. Conservatives generally prefer to emphasize local and delegated redistribution schemes rather than central, state directed schemes.
These opinions lay the foundation for what I call Morality based Economics and Liberal Conservatism. I believe it is morally wrong to be unethical and selfish in the pursuit of material wealth. Any person or institution which ignores the moral implications of their actions, also ignores the economic implications. A case in point is the current state of the auto industry in America. After the 1974 oil embargo, it was shown that it would be sound economic sense to re-tool the industry and start producing energy efficient and alternative energy vehicles. Why was this not done? Global warming brought on the emissions standards, where-by vehicles were to adopt an ever increasing efficiency. Why were these standards not up-held?
The answers are plain and simple. An unethical and selfish pursuit of wealth. The morally economic direction to follow would have been, although short term losses would have been incurred, to institute a plan with the future economic well being in mind. Instead, business as usual took precedence. And 35 years later, the bell has tolled.
Another example is the health care industry in this country. In 1993, we were faced with a choice once again. The rising cost of health care was becoming an increasing strain on individuals and businesses alike. But somehow the future was ignored. And 16 years later, the bell has tolled again.
Time and time again, the argument, "We are sacrificing our childrens' childrens future", has been offered as a reason not to break the path we are on. Business as usual takes over every time, and it is the citizens of this country left to hope that 'things will change'. If you study the beginning of this article, you will realize that very little separates the philosophies of the two major parties running this country. The petty bickering that has brought us to this point in our history has got to take a back seat to what must be done to restore the well being of the people of this country.
We are again at a point in our history where the economy is asking us " In what course do you wish to proceed?" If 'business as usual' rules the day, we will be looking back 10, 15, 20 years from now saying, " If only we had made changes".
