Most political commentators across the country now agree: the Obama Administration will eventually bow to Republican pressure and preserve the Bush tax cuts for all tax brackets for several years.
In addition to adding to the federal deficit, preserving tax cuts for the wealthy will further threaten the American middle class and the stability of our democratic institutions. Democracy is much more fragile than we generally think, and we seem to be nearing a tipping point for economic inequality.
This may seem counterintuitive. Most Americans have come to take democracy’s robustness for granted. We view the global spread of democracy as both inevitable and desirable. This is a uniquely modern conceit. For most of human history, experts believed that democratic institutions were unstable. Why? Rule of the majority is dangerous in societies where most individuals have everything to gain by engaging in class warfare. Large disparities of wealth in democratic societies empower demagogues. Simply put, political equality makes radical economic inequality difficult to maintain.
One need not be a Marxist to admit that modern liberal democracy only became possible with the rise of social mobility. Members of the emerging middle class were uniquely suited to democratic life. They were unprepared to accept the risks of political extremism, since they already had enough property to live comfortably.
Furthermore, they aspired to greater success without envying the wealthy. They had enough to fear its loss, but not so much that they were fully satisfied. This meant that they were both politically moderate and politically engaged. Since they were invested in the stability of their society’s economic institutions, they became defenders of property rights and free market exchange.
It should come as no surprise that to this day, tolerance and compromise remain middle class virtues. The middle class thrives on fair, predictable laws, and democracy flourishes when most citizens are self-sufficient. The health of one depends upon the health of the other. Perhaps just as importantly, a secure middle class reliably leads to strong local communities and economic growth. Democracy needs both.
Don’t believe me? Consider the fleeting fortunes of American radicalism. Current Republican attacks on President Obama to the contrary, American socialism flourished in the early 20th century, when the gap between rich and poor was at its widest. Socialist candidates for President garnered between two and six percent of the vote between 1900 and 1932. After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932, their vote total quickly dwindled to just over two thousand total votes in 1956.
Why? FDR’s economic policy paved the way for a more equitable distribution of the fruits of American capitalism. His policies saved American democracy from extremism and led to four decades of growth and stability for the American middle class.
As soon as Ronald Reagan began dismantling federal protections for the middle class, the gap between America’s richest and poorest began to grow again. Each successive administration continued his work, until their work culminated in our current economic troubles. With the weakening and diminishing of the middle class, our economy slowed down and eventually deflated entirely.
Consider: American middle class purchasing power has remained relatively static for nearly four decades, while American GDP has tripled. Consider: While the wealthiest one percent of Americans held less than 20 percent of the national wealth in the mid-1970s, by 2004 this number had grown to approximately 35 percent. Consider: With limits on campaign spending eroding, the relationship between wealth and outsize political power has never been tighter.
Our democracy depends upon a strong, robust middle class. Now is no time for the nation’s wealthiest to demand extraordinary tax cuts that bankrupt the country. If they refuse to consider the common national good, if they continue to leave the majority of the country behind as they enrich themselves, they may well be ushering in an unprecedented era of political radicalism. While we generally assume that American institutions are impervious to political extremism, we have rarely allowed this degree of economic disparity. If we do nothing to protect and resuscitate the backbone of our democracy — the middle class — we risk losing it entirely.
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