It means taking care of the poor, ending homelessness to the extent possible and insuring that we have general economic security for all.
It does not mean that everyone gets the same paycheck. It does not destroy merit pay or the incentives to work. It means that everyone can afford the education that is right for them, the health care that is right for them, a roof over their head. Equality is not all the same, but all having access to the basic necessities in life.
We have a terrific problem with homelessness. We have a terrific problem with student debt. We have a problem with inadequate housing for many families. Economic inequality is the root of all these problems.
We aren't going to all own the same amount of property. But in a country in which the protection of ownership of private property is the basis of much of our law and social structure, we are headed for trouble, that is a conflict between the reality of most citizens and the values of the legal system, when only very few people can own property of any significance. This is what economic inequality is about. The severe economic inequality that already exists and is growing in our country is leading to a critical fissure between the reality of the lives of the majority of the people and the property-based laws that we have.
What interest does a person who earns minimum wage and can't pay his bills -- cannot realistically pay his bills -- have in enforcing or maintaining laws that require him to pay his bills? This is the kind of quandary and social fissure that our current gross inequality causes.
Very wealthy people don't even think about this. If you own two or three houses, and your tenants pay rent, you figure that the tenants probably won't take care of the houses as well as you would if you as the owner lived in them. We take care of things when we feel we have an ownership interest in them. The crash of 2008 and that in 1929 were horrific because they resulted in large numbers of Americans losing not just their property interests but because they went into bankruptcy, the ability to buy or obtain a mortgage on property for quite a number of years.
The tendency in recent years especially since 2008 has been to consolidate ownership of property in the hands of the relatively few. That is not going to work well in a society based on responsible ownership of property. That is the problem that needs to be dealt with. So far, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are the only potential candidates who seem to recognize this fundamental issue in our society.
How do we remain a society that is responsible for our physical and economic environment if we become a society in which the majority of people have little or no ownership interest in that environment and thus don't care that much about it? What happens in a nation in which increasing numbers of people are left with nothing to do but beg?
Republicans blame the people they view as the beggars. But they miss the core of the problem. A small number of people will beg because that is what they want to do. Most people want to work. They do not want to beg. Most people want to own property. Most people want to be responsible members of society.
This is what economic equality is about. I'm sorry I am not explaining it really well, but I hope you will understand my view on this. It is a core issue for me. (Maybe because as a child I wore hand-me-downs all the time and shared a room with my older sister. I know what it is to feel that nothing belongs to you and that you cannot make decisions about your environment.) If people are to take care of things, to live peacefully and productively, they need to feel that they have incentives to behave constructively and to contribute. In a society in which material comfort is denied to large numbers of people or in which luxury is the reward of every fewer people and misery defines the lives of large numbers and increasing numbers of people, there will be no respect for order or law or justice, just cynical grabbing.
I think there is an indefinable, uncertain balance that must exist between extreme wealth and the sharing of the wealth in order to have a healthy, lawful society.
The excessive violence in our society suggests that we are out of balance. The amount of violence in our society is more like that in underdeveloped countries than in a country with the sophisticated technology we enjoy.
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