The word community sounds egalitarian to most people. And gated? No word has a fairer proportion of safety to airy openness in the image it conveys to the mind.
Gated community near Orlando, Florida.
Florida is a land flowing with gates and communities. It is a Promised Land of sun, leisure, warm pools, and exclusivity. For the past month Bevy Mae and me have been vacationing inside this paradise at a house at one such community near Naples, Florida. It took three references, photo ID, and all cash up front to get us in here.
We are grateful for our good fortune. And we are in a really safe place. But when thinking about the state of affairs which has excluded as many as 94% of all Americans from the possibility of living here — if only for a few weeks — it makes me sick to my stomach. And of course, if you don’t live here you can’t be here — not even to drive through.
The compound we live in is huge. While biking in it the other day I was amazed to stumble on anothergated community inside ours. It has a lake and huge houses. The gated occupants of our community aren’t allowed in their community even though their community is inside our community. Apparently, there are layers of gated communities. I never knew that.
As a teenager, I lived for two years in Key West, Florida. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was totally segregated down there. The only black person I ever saw was our maid. She was an articulate thirty-year-old woman and really beautiful. I liked her a lot and talked with her every chance I got, usually about politics. From her I learned how difficult life was for black people in Key West at that time — and maybe just as importantly, that a lot of black people actually lived in Key West.
She said she supported the incumbent Democrat for Congress who was then running against an upstart Republican — a young guy always on the radio always complaining about how rich his opponent was. She liked the Democrat, she said, because he once bought park benches for her neighborhood.
At Key West High School the powers-that-be were considering the admission of a black kid from a “good” family. His dad was an officer in the U.S. Navy, I think. In the school cafeteria over lunch I made the mistake of saying I saw nothing wrong with going to school with “Negroes” (as they were then called by polite people).
“What!” some kid yelled. “You want to eat with niggers?” Soon a crowd gathered. I stood my ground, and no one beat me up. The South was changing, but only a little.
One thing Key West didn’t have back then — no town did in those days — was gated communities. We had a military base that was gated — I lived on it — but the gates were for security against the hated Communists. We didn’t have terrorists or any other sort of enemies of the state. All that was to come later.
After World War II, the South and some parts of the North enforced segregation with a civilian militia called the Ku Klux Klan. It was a quasi-religious/military-style organization self-tasked with extra-judicial punishments of Negroes who violated the unwritten codes of the South.
If a black family bought a house in a white neighborhood, the militia would burn it down. Sometimes, so as not to smoke-damage nearby homes, the KKK would bomb the house; or if young white children lived nearby they might burn a cross in the front yard to frighten the occupants into leaving.
Lynchings — common after the First World War — were, by the 1950s, less common.
After dozens of documented actions against Negroes — and perhaps hundreds or thousands of undocumented ones — white neighborhoods did not need gates, or walls, or fences to remain segregated.
Eventually, after years of separation, the white people who lived in these communities came to believe — many of them — that black people chose not to live next to them, because they preferred “their own kind.”
Terrorism? It didn’t exist in the United States of America in those days. The first time I heard the term was in college. Terrorism, then, was always directed against Israel, for some reason, almost always by Palestinians. The reasons why were never clear.
I don’t know what white people say today is the reason black people don’t live in the gated communities of Florida. I haven’t lived here long enough to learn.
I would bet that in some town somewhere in this huge state a black family lives in a gated community. Maybe more than one. I can imagine people pointing to that family as proof of my being uncharitable to the good people of Florida and to people everywhere who live in these spaces.
But it seems plain to me — fifty years after Congress, the President and the Supreme Court declared segregated housing illegal — black people don’t live in these desirable communities. Why is that?
I don’t know. I met a black man down here the other day. He told me he had been a Marine who helped liberate Kuwait during the first Gulf War.
Pele’ with Bobby Kennedy in Rio, 1965. Pele’ died 29 Dec 2022 of complications from colon cancer. He was 82.
Our gross national product…counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear away…carnage. It counts…locks…and jails…. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets….
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials…. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
Bobby Kennedy 1968
Capitalism is a system of wealth creation characterized by private ownership of the means of production (land, buildings, factories, labor, patents, intellectual property, etc.), where products are made and sold in unregulated markets to generate the revenues that sustain production and provide profits for the owners to use as they see fit.
Capitalism works best in a stable legal environment, where laws protect owners sufficiently that their ability to produce products is unimpeded.
Under this definition, Capitalism differs little from Slavery until the legal environment secures certain rights to labor.
In the USA, the legal environment takes the form of a constitutional republic undergirded by a bill of rights. The bill-of-rights secures certain safeguards to labor in the arenas of religion, speech, arms, assembly, petitions and so on. The constitutional republic secures representative government, which enables labor to choose its political leaders.
The owners of businesses make up a small percentage of the population and would be insignificant players in the parts of the legal environment where voting majorities determine the operation of government if they were not protected by privileges which, as a practical matter, are not enjoyed by labor.
In the United States the powers of government are divided into the three branches to provide checks on usurpation of powers. Further checks on government power are provided by business owners—specifically those individuals who own media and entertainment; individuals who direct cartels in certain industries like defense, medicine, agriculture, transportation, information technology, and pharmaceuticals; and those individuals who own and operate private militias.
It is understood and admitted by independent economists and historians (those who don’t work for the cartels) that without intervention by government, Capitalism tends to concentrate wealth in the hands of business owners—even in those rare circumstances when owners show little interest in manipulating the system to maximize their advantages.
The inability of Capitalism to generate a vigorous and sustainable middle class creates problems of poverty and is one reason why economists tend to advocate for government programs to redistribute wealth to the lower-earning labor sector.
An important historical example followed the aftermath of World War Two. Millions of GIs returned home to the United States after defeating Germany and Japan. Business owners tied to the war profited well and wanted to give something extra to the families of soldiers who fought to protect them.
Because the tax code at that time limited how much revenue owners could keep, they looked for ways to dump windfalls into worthy causes. They worked with government to fashion programs for low-cost education, home loans, and other perks for returning GIs. Windfalls permitted the USA to build highway systems and inexpensive cars for ordinary people to enjoy. Within a few years of the start of these initiatives America built a middle class.
So, what eventually happened?
In the years after 1980 a new generation of business-owners took power and convinced Congress and the president that taxes on large incomes should be reduced from 92% to 28%. These capitalists were sons and grandsons, for the most part, of the same men who helped build the middle class in the first place.
What is the effect of these tax rate changes? What do tax changes mean for society and labor, where most Americans live?
And let’s be clear. The 92% tax rate on earnings above $250,000 during the Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy-Nixon-Carter years was a de-facto cap on high-incomes. Workarounds did exist for those lucky few who had access to stockbrokers — men mostly who opened doors to low tax rates for privileged elites — but all non-stock market income was capped.
One good example is the medical profession. After 1980 the dramatic reduction of top tax-rates eliminated what had been a practical limit on incomes. Doctors — many operated as business owners — learned that income limits were gone; minus a small tax fee, they could keep as much money as they could collect.
What happened?
Doctors increased fees at a frenetic pace.
Medical care costs became prohibitive for the majority of workers. As a result, some migrated into programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Others found themselves locked into jobs they disliked because quitting meant losing insurance. Today medical care is so expensive that Congress felt compelled to pass the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to avert systemic collapse of public access to healthcare.
With limits on incomes now gone, doctors, some of them, seem to be overcharging government healthcare programs for services; a few have been arrested for committing crimes to maximize their incomes. The temptations of unlimited Benjamins have ignited a frenzy for dollars that shows no signs of abating.
In the USA, chasing after unlimited wealth seems to have overtaken every profession and institution. Businesses and public institutions are being looted by the professionals who run them.
Owners drive down wages because they can keep the difference for themselves. Operators drive businesses nearly into bankruptcy to skim as much money as they can in as short a time as possible—so they can retire to a private island, perhaps. Who knows?
Concentration of wealth can be a bad thing because it influences what society produces to the disadvantage of labor and the poor. Expensive luxury items (like $500M homes) are built to satisfy the appetites of the wealthy while products and services like schools, clean water, and nutritious food needed by labor are neglected.
These trends (and anyone could list dozens more) are not new. Every civilization that has allowed unreasonable concentrations of wealth has come to a bad end. Ordinary citizens are demoralized, excesses are committed, cynicism and cruelty increase.
An example is gated neighborhoods. It is humiliating to be ostracized by the privileged. Humiliation of citizens without redress breeds despair, which leads to pathologies destructive to society.
Segregation is an impulse strongly felt by a slave state with a long history of income inequality. It behooves those of us who live in the USA—a country with the reputation for promoting the cruelest form of slavery—to guard against trends (like gated-living) that reek of segregation and slavery.
Another problem with unlimited wealth is that it tempts those who have it to buy hi-tech weapons. Many wealthy individuals have created militias to enhance their power.
Everyone knows about the Mafia but respected individuals with good public relations have established private militias as well. A family in Michigan owns an air force and drones plus soldiers who work under contract with the US military to fill in gaps overseas.
A concentration of wealth combined with military power in the hands of an entitled few can become a clear and present danger to the liberty and way of life of ordinary citizens.
Now… a few sentences about Ayn Rand who, more than any other public figure I know, provided the moral justification for the rapid sequestration of wealth by our elites.
I met this squat, chain-smoking, thick-accented Russian woman 50 years ago after having read every book and newsletter she had published at the time. She wrote with seductive logic that appealed to me and I suppose other average people and probably a lot of billionaires as well. The utopian vision described in her book The Virtue of Selfishness undergirds extremist groups like the Tea Party and their spin-offs.
Like most utopian thinkers, her logic was flawless yet led to ridiculous conclusions false on their face. As fantasy her fiction has a certain appeal but to advocate for turning a country over to its richest citizens to do as they please is folly and counter to every form of democracy and free society.
Consider these questions. Who spies more—government or the companies we work for? Who looks at social media sites, credit ratings, where we live, or what our hobbies are—government or the companies we work for?
Who discourages us from speaking our minds? Who stops ordinary people from discussing religion and politics? Who intimidates folks from protesting social injustice? Who blacklists professionals when they “go-rogue” ? Who controls how much money anyone makes?
Clearly, private companies exercise these powers.
What about government?
It collects taxes and arrests bad people who commit crimes.
Companies? They control our lives.
Think about it.
What are we? Slaves?
The answer is, yes, kind-a.
Under Capitalism business owners are an existential threat to people’s freedom. But we have a representative government, don’t we?
In theory at least, folks can use the government to their advantage—not only to limit the powers of business owners over their personal lives but to limit the incomes and estate sizes of private individuals through appropriate tax policies.
And they can forbid the acquisition of military-style powers by civilian elites. It’s important. Read the Second Amendment to convince yourself that it’s true. Outside of the limits of a well-regulated militia, gun-runners are anathema to freedom. Limiting military powers to well regulated militias is the reasonable prerogative of free people in democratic republics like the United States.
How do we preserve the best elements of Capitalism—a proven wealth generator—while eliminating threats it can impose on our liberties and, for most people, their standard of living?
My proposal is this: pass a maximum-income law. This law would set the maximum income from all sources as a multiple of the minimum wage.
Let’s say the multiple is set to 1,000. When the minimum wage is set to $20,000 per year, the maximum income from all sources would be pegged at 1,000 times that—$20 million.
In the same way, the maximum size of estates could be set at some multiple of the maximum income. The multiple might be set by Congress at 20, for example. Then the maximum size of an estate would be 20 times $20M—a $400M maximum.
Now these multiples are simply one example. It might be that folks decide a multiple of 1,000 is too high or too low; they might decide to set the multiple at something lower—say 100 or 50—like it was during the 1950s and 60s. Then again, folks might agree that a figure of $400M isn’t enough for high achievers in the modern age and set maximums higher.
What’s important is to set maximum incomes high enough to preserve incentives to create wealth while at the same time reducing the incentive to loot that unlimited incomes encourage. Unreasonable profits which might end up in owners’ pockets would then more likely be distributed inside companies to workers or to the existential needs of the companies themselves.
Wealth not distributed inside companies could be given to charity or society (e.g. through the mechanism of taxes) to be spent on programs beneficial to labor.
Of course, concentrations of wealth are necessary for economic development. This need for capital is where well-regulated public corporations and public banks come into play.
I hope to write an essay about the role of corporations in society sometime in the future. Hopefully, someone else will write the essay before I get around to it. For now let me suggest that the United States might be better off if corporations and financial institutions were made truly public and regulated like public utilities.
A challenge presented by this proposal is to apply these income and estate-size limits internationally to prevent individuals and cartels overseas from gaining advantages that would threaten our country and its citizens.
Another challenge worth mentioning is that although this proposal puts limits on only a few thousand, or perhaps a few tens-of-thousands of individuals and their families, these are the folks who actually control governments by the power of their concentrations of wealth. It might be problematic, at least at first, to convince the truly wealthy to go along.
But we should try. They are tens-of-thousands. We are billions. Think about it. The grandfathers of the current generation of the wealthy shared their wealth to benefit ordinary people. I don’t believe that any billionaire thinks that their sharing after World War II hurt any of them in any way that counts for anything.
Billy Lee
Click Watch on YouTube link below to view Michael Moore’s award winning movie,Capitalism: A Love Story.
Postscript added 3 December 2022: During the past two years of pandemic, oligarchs increased their wealth by five trillion dollars. The gap between wealthy and poor, in both resources and power, increased dramatically worldwide. The predicament of ordinary people changed. To help readers understand, the Editors agreed to include the following video, which we hope everyone will watch and absorb.
This month marks the 43rd anniversary of the birth of Joint Issue, a publication my friends and me produced, which became the Newspaper of Record for the anti-Vietnam War movement and counterculture “happenings” in East Lansing, Michigan during the years 1971-1973.
Hippie Rescues Drowning Child. Michigan legend, Denny Preston, illustrated this famous cover from the Underground Press.
Other papers like the Red Apple News, The Paper and the Bogue Street Bridge were around before and after Joint Issue. But none covered the anti-war movement and the counterculture like Joint Issue. None commanded the large readership, the community support, — including substantial advertising by local merchants — or the attention from police and other protectors of public morals.
Every local “radical” of consequence passed through our doors at one time or another. Every Lansing-area revolutionary and revolutionary wannabe read our paper and tried to know us.
Even the MSU police paid a visit from time to time. At 3AM one morning we found them in our Student Services office rummaging through our stuff. No warrants required, of course.
During the past months I have reread many of the old issues that me and my friends Ken, Davy, Patti and others once proudly worked to publish. It’s amazing how prescient we were, how many of our “wild” ideas caught hold and became mainstream. But there are disappointments too. Some causes, like gay rights, are still being fought. Editors Note:In June 2003, the Supreme Court legalized gay relationships; on 26 June 2015 all gay marriages became legal and constitutionally protected in the United States.
I included below a photo of each page of our first issue for folks to read. Some will be relieved to learn that many issues of the original Joint Issue are protected at libraries with a complete collection in very good condition in the archives of the MSU library.
Historian Ken Wachsberger covers some of the history of Joint Issue in his book Insider Histories, available on Amazon.com
The history of the underground press in general and of Joint Issue in particular remains largely untold by mainstream media. It is good that Kenny Wachsberger stepped up to preserve much of this history in his important and thorough Insider Histories — available through Amazon.com. The section on Joint Issue begins on page 195. It is a must read for anyone who wants to know what was really going on during this transformational era in US history.
Other important books by Ken Wachsberger can be found at this link.
The photos below are of a newspaper that is showing its age after forty-three years sitting in a library’s cardboard collection box or on the back shelf of a closet.
Back in the day, we published Joint Issue on clean white Demy-sized sheets folded in half to make the individual pages. We often used colored sheets — pink, blue, orange, green and yellow were our favorites — to give the Joint Issue a fresher look. Sometimes we used colored ink to highlight important stories.
Impco Graphics of Mason was our printer. Denny Preston, the local artist and musician who created the LugNuts logo, designed ours.
Joint Issue began publishing during the year Hewlett-Packard marketed the first hand-held calculators to the public. Like the HP calculator — able only to multiply and divide — Joint Issue faced technical hurdles of its own. Personal computers hadn’t yet been invented, so each page had to be painstakingly laid out by hand.
We typed up the copy on paper sheets with an actual Smith-Corona typewriter (remember those?), cut the typewritten sheets into usable bite-size pieces with scissors or exacto-knives, slopped on the glue with brushes or fingers, and carefully tweezered the pieces into location onto white cardboard layout sheets hanging on clotheslines in our basement office.
We pasted cool graphics (pictures) we scissored (if we had to) from books and magazines (expensive!) or we got them from our volunteers and donors. Sometimes a picture or piece of text would fall off the copy-sheet before it made it to Impco Graphics in Mason to be published. Someone might shove a piece of text into an inappropriate location. Shit happened.
But that was its charm and our purpose. We weren’t supposed to be a polished publication put out by an aristocracy trying to sell poisons to the public. Joint Issue was a people’s paper published by common people without an internet, Facebook, or Instagram.
Our first issues, like the one featured below, were crude. But over time the sophistication of Joint Issue grew and its reputation as a reliable chronicler of what was happening in the street became established.
Billy Lee
Note: tomagnify photos for reading, click on individual photo. Some pages are out of sequence.
