Getting to the root cause of inequality

Re Globalization must change, Worth Repeating Nov. 19 Thomas Piketty is exactly right when he writes that the main cause of the surprising U.S. election result is the inequality between the rich and the average, which has developed over the past 25 years. There is resentment that none of the bankers whose greed and law-breaking caused the economic upheaval of 2008 have suffered any pain at all.

U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz has been trying to bring all this into general view for some years, and there was a moment when it seemed to surface, “Occupy Wall Street!” But that movement faded away completely.

However, inequality was not an issue discussed much during the campaign, possibly because both candidates were members of the 1 per cent (the rich) and preferred not to advertise it. The only thing close was the mutterings about Hillary Clinton being “too close to Wall Street,” but they seemed to focus more on high fees for speeches than anything important.

My point is that I am afraid that all the people who supported Donald Trump, thinking he would address inequality, will be sadly disappointed: he represents the 1 per cent fair and square, and as Piketty writes, will only strengthen the trend toward inequality.

Bernie Sanders is not a member of the 1 per cent, but let us not imagine that he, as a Democratic Party outsider, could have implemented any of his proposed policies if had been elected president.

My second point is that Piketty misses the mark completely when he writes that inequality can and should be addressed by changing trade treaties or “fundamentally re-orienting globalism.” The issue of inequality, which is extremely corrosive to U.S. society, and should not be ignored in Canada either, is basically intra-national not international, and can only be addressed effectively by severe measures to reduce and spread the wealth of the 1 per cent — which I don’t expect to see with the Republican Party (the party of the rich and their dupes) in power. Peter Jepson, Belleville