The L-Curve

By David Chandler

(Published in the Porterville Recorder )

The growing gap between rich and the poor in this country is truly outrageous, but quoting the numbers rarely seems to hit home. The best way to understand numbers is to make a graph. Fig. 1 begins a graph of the income distribution of the United States. The height of the graph at each point is the height of a stack of $100 bills equaling that person’s income. The graph slopes from zero on the left to less than 2 inches high at the 50 yard line ($39,000), to about 4 inches high at the 95 yard line ($132,000). The top 1% reaches into the millions and billions. $1 Million is 40 inches high. $1 Billion is a stack of $100 bills 1-kilometer high!

The top of the "L-Curve," shown in Fig. 2 reaches to the edge of space. Bill Gates' income was at least $50 billion last year: a pile of $100 bills 50 km high. He is not alone on the vertical spike. Over 144,000 IRS returns for 1997 showed adjusted gross incomes over $1 Million, and the number of billionaires is in the hundreds. The top 1% of the population owns nearly 40% of the wealth of the country. There is a lot of money in that vertical spike!

All of us have produced the wealth of this country. The fact that it ends up in so few hands says something is terribly wrong. The average pay for CEOs in this country is over $3 Million, over 100 times the salary of the typical worker. Is there any valid reason why executives should earn 100’s of times what productive workers earn, except that they have the power to take it? The economy has been booming, but the rules of the game have been rigged to funnel the lion’s share of the wealth into the vertical spike, while the workers who actually produced the wealth are downsized and their jobs are shipped overseas. Can this be considered "prosperity"? Do we really want to gear up our national policies to repeat this performance?

Maldistribution of income destroys democracy. Overwhelming economic power, concentrated into a few hands, translates into tremendous political power. The horizontal spike has the votes, but those on the vertical spike have created a media monopoly that controls public perception of the issues. As long as we stayed glued to our TV sets they have a direct pipeline into our brains. They invent "wedge issues" that divide the rest of us, they control the selection of candidates, and through pressure and outright corruption they influence the actions of the office holders once they are elected. Both major parties are financed by the very rich and serve the interests of the very rich. This is not a Democrats vs. Republicans issue: it is the whole system. We are not a democracy if a privileged class within society has the real power.

Power in the vertical spike is highly concentrated and easily mobilized. The horizontal spike also has power, but only when we are united. Alone we are powerless; we need each other. Divisions between the middle class and the poor keep us from acting effectively. Welfare for the poor is not the issue: corporate welfare is what keeps us all poor. We must find ways to talk face-to-face, to accept our differences, and build a sense of community. Only in this way can the politics of people prevail over the politics of money.

[This article ended with an invitation to participate in a community dialogue session based on a technique known to some as "Quaker Dialogue." I recommend this technique as a way to bring people together, give everyone a voice, and induce actual listening.]