The Poverty of the Anti-Poverty Movement

Posted 29 November 2012

It is an error to consider that the anti-poverty movement is opposed to wealth or economic inequality. It is highly doubtful that the movement even desires the end of poverty.

The word anti-poverty in itself does not suggest that wealth or inequality is wrong; it only intimates that income below a certain level is a problem and implies that poverty is the injustice or the evil in need of elimination. Those who refer to themselves as anti-poverty neglect to note that there is a lengthy tradition that posits for a variety of political, psychological, philosophical, moral and religious reasons that poverty is a virtue and a desired state. The conception of poverty as a good usually, although not invariably, distinguishes between poverty and destitution and makes no claim that the latter is laudable. The goodness of poverty could obviously be employed as an argument by those who reject the redistribution of income and wealth and therefore for the remainder of this article poverty refers to those who are involuntarily poor.

Anti-poverty activists and countless other Canadians, including many who are on the political left, say that they would like to see the termination of poverty but the depressing reality is that many Canadians want poverty to continue because poverty is beneficial for many persons. Many people, particularly on the left, declare that only corporations benefit from poverty and these individuals note that the presence of a pool of poor or unwaged persons tempers worker militancy and acts as a mechanism to keep wages stable. However, it is more accurate and honest to state that everyone who is not poor benefits indirectly or directly from the existence and continuation of poverty.

A famous sociological article (Herbert J. Gans, “The Positive Functions of Poverty,” American Journal of Sociology, September 1972) listed 15 positive economic, social, political and cultural functions of poverty. The contention that the non-poor may actually desire the poor to remain poor often meets with denial or incredulity, and therefore some of poverty’s functions listed by that author bear repeating. The poor ensure that there is a supply of people to perform low-paid, dangerous or menial work; the poor help produce jobs in numerous professions and institutions that serve the poor or protect the non-poor from the poor (including religious and philanthropic bodies devoted to the poor, pawnshops, used clothing stores and the police); the low wages of the poor often subsidize the lifestyles of the affluent; the poor help maintain the legitimacy of the dominant societal norms by their behavior (often stereotyped as lazy, spendthrift and dishonest); the poor guarantee the status of the non-poor (the middle and upper classes would not be aware of their higher status without the existence of the poor); the poor play a disproportionately minor part in politics which results in a skewed participation by the non-poor. The poor also provide the material for endless studies by academics, research institutions, advocacy groups and health care professionals; the poor help the affluent to feel altruistic and righteous by evoking pity, charity, and compassion.

It is necessary, as a counter to the above, to mention some of the negative consequences arising from the existence of poverty. The poor result in many non-poor feeling guilt and shame. The poor are often unused or underutilized economic resources; the poor suffer greatly from prolonged poverty; the poor are more likely than the non-poor to acquire serious ailments and are thus a disproportionate burden on the health-care system; the poor are a painful reminder of what may befall the non-poor if they are afflicted by long-term unemployment or illness; the poor result in higher expenditures for police and security measures; the desperation of the poor invokes fear and dread among the non-poor; the poor raise the specter of social unrest and political violence.

In Canadian society, the poor constitute between 15 and 20 per cent of the population and most Canadians who are non-poor consider that the advantages (to themselves) of the maintenance of poverty outweigh the drawbacks. Further, the non-poor recognize that the poor are too few, too disorganized and too demoralized to pose a serious threat to the social order.     

The phenomenon that many persons who benefit directly or indirectly from the continuation of poverty also state that they are anti-poverty suggests that such individuals may actually be ambivalent towards the extirpation of poverty. On the one hand, they state that they are against the negative aspects of poverty but is it not in their interests to maintain poverty because of its positive functions? The equivocation is revealed by their attitude towards the two types of poverty, absolute and relative. Absolute poverty, the form of poverty usually opposed by the anti-poverty movement, is income below the threshold of the absolute poverty level and often results in an inability to provide for basic needs. Relative poverty is a more a subjective condition and is the manner in which people evaluate their wealth in relation to that of others. It is often relative poverty, not absolute poverty, that tears societies asunder.

The wealth redistribution that would have to be effected in order to eliminate absolute poverty in Canada is insubstantial, although if it were done, it would barely lessen, if at all, relative poverty; if the poor were given more money to bring their incomes up to the absolute poverty line, the incomes of the middle and upper classes would undoubtedly be simultaneously increasing, and the gap between the poor and the non-poor would thus be essentially unaltered. In order to substantially decrease relative poverty, it would be vital to impose rigorous limits on the amount of wealth and income that people would be able to possess.

Those individuals who say they are opposed to poverty but who are not opposed to wealth do not want to significantly reduce relative poverty. It is only those who are anti-wealth who want to dramatically lessen or even eradicate relative poverty. Those who say that they are anti-poverty, by which they normally mean absolute poverty, usually confine themselves to advocating higher welfare rates and wages, greater respect or social inclusion. It would be wrong to completely belittle these proposals and to state that their attainment would be of no benefit whatsoever for the poor. But the funds often proposed to be given to the poor are seldom sufficient to raise their income to that of the absolute poverty level, and those recommendations basically ignore relative poverty.

Any attempt to eradicate poverty and to prevent its reoccurrence has to have some explanation as to the cause of the poverty. The view of the early left was that the primary reason for poverty was wealth; some people had too little because some others had too much. This explanation was complemented, and often supplanted, by that of capitalism as the culprit. However, the blaming of capitalism fails to explain the existence of poverty before the advent of capitalism and the persistence of poverty in post-capitalist societies. Today’s left and the anti-poverty movement rarely assert that wealth is responsible for poverty, and instead more often attribute it to a lack of opportunity, inadequate education, abdication of personal responsibilities and meager income. But most poverty is caused by wealth, and to be against poverty but not wealth is analogous to being against slavery but believing in the right to own slaves. Canada does not have a problem of poverty; Canada has a problem of wealth. Many Canadians possess more income or wealth than they need. A meaningful redistribution of wealth and income within Canada, and between Canada and the poorer nations, requires separating these persons from their superfluous income and wealth. It necessitates making many Canadians poorer, not richer.

The poverty of the anti-poverty movement is that it regards poverty as the affliction to be uprooted, but poverty is only the symptom of the real problem. The anti-poverty movement often states that it wants to make poverty history but what it really wants to do is make wealth eternal.

             

 

 

 

Why Does Canada Still Have Food Banks?

 

Posted 28 November 2012
 

Foods banks, which first appeared in Canada in the early 1980’s accompanied by the expectation that they would be temporary, have persisted and are now pervasive features of Canadian society. Food Banks Canada contends that there are nearly 900,000 Canadians who use food banks.  Why has their usage persisted and intensified?

It is a truism to state that people, working or nonworking, utilize food banks because those individuals have insufficient money to feed themselves. It is necessary, instead, to focus on the reasons why the users possess inadequate income, either from welfare, employment insurance or paid employment. Those who avail themselves of food books are overwhelmingly from the lower social classes.

Food is a fundamental human right and belongs to the category of human rights that are termed economic and social rights; this group also includes the rights to adequate levels of housing and income. Economic and social rights are legally enshrined within the 1966 United Nations Covenant on Economic and Social Rights (ICESCR), which Canada ratified in 1976. However, Canadian society has always attached a far greater importance to civil and political rights, such as the rights to freedom of speech and assembly, which are among those listed within the 1966 United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Moreover, there is insufficient awareness in Canada about the existence of economic and social rights. There remains in Canada, despite the ICESCR, a lingering but unfounded uncertainty over whether economic and social rights are justiciable rights, i.e., rights that the courts can interpret and which can be the subject of litigation. However, social and economic rights are indeed justiciable rights, and state action is implied if these rights are judged to be unrealized.  

The government’s abdication of its obligation to ensure that none of its citizens lacks food has resulted in efforts by the private sector to supply food to those who are unable to purchase enough food.  However, one of the private sector’s responses, food banks, needs to be recognized as an unsuccessful attempt to compensate for government inaction. Food banks are unable to cope with the demand for food, and the food they do provide frequently does not meet caloric or nutritional requirements. Food banks have not eradicated hunger in Canada.

The rise of food banks has been accompanied by their bureaucratization, and food banks employ salaried staff. Many other people donate food to food banks or serve with them as volunteers. There has been an increasing corporate involvement in the sponsorship of food banks. The donors and volunteers do not benefit financially from the existence of food banks but those people do derive non-monetary benefits; food banks provide them with an opportunity to show to themselves and others that they are caring and altruistic, and a chance to obtain the emotional well-being and satisfaction often associated with volunteer work. The paid staff and volunteers with food banks occasionally assert that they desire the termination of food banks, but considering the advantages they obtain from the existence of food banks, they may be ambivalent about ending the food banks. Furthermore, the staff and volunteers are usually certain of the righteousness of their actions and rarely seem to question whether food banks do more harm than good.

But how could food banks do harm? Food banks depoliticize the causes of hunger and undermine the legal fact that access to food is a human right. Food banks prompt the poor to express gratitude to those providing them with food and dilute the anger that the poor might have towards the government. The defenders of food banks claim that the immediate end of food banks would deprive the poor of an essential source of food, but neglect to add that hungry people do not passively accept their wretched circumstances. Food banks contribute to the pacification of the poor.

The food banks in Canada have transformed food security into a concern for the charities, but charity is a feeble substitute for justice. The food banks, often portrayed by their supporters as noble examples of mutual aid and solidarity, are often nevertheless, to those who use them, a degrading, humiliating and institutionalized form of begging. Consequently, many hungry Canadians refuse to resort to food banks.  

The unwillingness of Canadian municipal, provincial and federal governments to ensure that all Canadians have adequate access to food is partially due to the preoccupations of those governments with maintaining the rights and privileges of the middle class. Canada’s major political parties all focus on the middle class and have only a secondary interest in those in the lower classes. The main parties are not worried about the political repercussions of paying only minimal attention to the poor, and are not apprehensive about any threat of social unrest posed by those whose economic and social rights are violated. Consequently, none of the major parties is willing to advocate the necessary economic redistribution, which would affect their cherished middle and upper classes, that would obviate the need for food banks.

The increasing and laudable calls to close food banks face numerous systemic obstacles.

The Inauthentic Concern Over Inequality

Posted 28 November 2012

In the last decade there has been considerable concern expressed over the economic inequality in Canadian society. This unease has been primarily expounded by those who regard themselves as belonging to the political progressive or left community, and to a lesser extent by those who position themselves in the political centre or right. It is necessary to question the authenticity of this professed concern with economic inequality.

Canada has always had immense economic inequalities, even if they were inferior to the current levels, and the persistence of dramatic inequality raises the question of why so many people who now speak out against economic inequality have remained silent on this issue for so long. Furthermore, those who now decry the economic inequality frequently dwell on its negative consequences, and seem to fancy that they are uttering novel pronouncements on these effects. However, the deleterious effects of marked economic inequality have been known for a long time, and most of the current arguments for a reduction in economic inequality have a lengthy history. It is now widely maintained, for example, that pronounced economic inequalities are adversely affecting health outcomes; these comments, although accurate, have been stated by countless others for over a hundred years.

The main reason why Canadians should be sceptical about the intentions of those who castigate economic inequality is that the overwhelming majority of individuals, organizations, political parties and social movements in Canada engaging in such criticism do not usually indicate to what extent they want the level of inequality to be reduced, and on the occasions that they do, their proposed decreases in inequality would still leave society marked by huge economic inequalities. A call for a reduction in economic inequality without specifying the desired amount is meaningless and almost invariably implies only a cosmetic alteration to inequality. Those who do quantify their remarks habitually state that a very small percentage of society, frequently 1 or 2 percent and rarely 5 or 10 percent, should be taxed at a slightly greater rate. These recommendations, which are based on the assumption that only a minority has excessive income, are essentially symbolic attacks on inequality and would not make any significant dent in the degree of economic inequality. 

There is a thinly disguised self-interest behind much of the outrage over economic inequality. The prominent denunciators of Canada’s economic inequality are mostly member of the middle and upper middle classes. Their common tactic is to designate the rich, or those whom they deem responsible for the economic inequality, as a miniscule group in order to ensure that members of their class will be excluded from that category; these critics of inequality believe that their class will thus be shielded from any possible suggestions that it too possesses gratuitous income. 

It is important not to equate the criticism of economic inequality with the advocacy of economic equality. The vast majority of Canadians expressing alarm over economic inequality do not want economic equality, or anything even resembling that condition. Their displeasure over economic inequality is often only political posturing. Those who declare themselves opposed to economic inequality, but who only want minor modifications to that inequality, are eager to give the appearance that they are fighting inequality and promoting equality and social justice.   

The American academic Stanley fish aptly noted that “despite their polemical differences, the left and the right are jointly committed to the perpetuation of inequality.” His insight also applies to Canada, as behind the veil of expressed concern over inequality by Canadians of all political persuasions, there lies the ugly reality of a pervasive longing for obscene economic inequalities, with the nuance that the Canadian left seeks a slightly less unequal society than the Canadian right.  

Fortunately, it is possible to discern the authenticity of the criticism of economic inequality. If the critic merely proposes an unspecified reduction in the inequality or prescribes a minor tax increase on a tiny minority, then these exhortations can usually be dismissed as inauthentic as they would maintain the status quo and tremendous class differences. An authentic criticism of economic inequality occurs not when the critic advocates absolute economic equality, as this is unattainable and probably even undesirable, but when the critic unambiguously envisages a society with minimal economic inequalities. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, clearly demonstrated his desire for approximative equality when he stated that he wanted a society in which “no citizen shall be rich enough to buy another and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself.” An authentic concern over economic inequality also occurs when the critic states that there should be strict limits on permissible differences in income and wealth. Plato, for example, stated that nobody’s wealth should be more than four times that of another’s.

       

          

  

The Canadian Left Needs a New Party

 

Posted 28 November 2012

The Canadian left needs a new party because although the NDP has done many beneficial things for Canadian society, the NDP is no longer a party of the left. The party’s transformation is largely due to its repudiation of two salient values of the left, namely, economic equality and a predominant role for the state in economic affairs.

It is unrealistic, if not absurd or irrational, to contend that a contemporary leftwing political party should blindly adhere to the prescriptions advocated by leftwing theoreticians and writers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, or that it should slavishly imitate the attempts that occurred in the 20^th century to implement leftist ideas. Nevertheless, a party that considers itself leftwing needs to have some continuity with earlier leftwing thought. The NDP has extremely little in common with the early left. The beliefs in the desirability of extensive state intervention, nationalizations and some form of employee control of the workplace, which were commonly held by the old left and members of the NDP’s forerunner, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), have now a only a modest or minimal adherence within the NDP. The NDP’s conception of the state’s role in economic affairs is not significantly different from that which is advocated by the other major political parties. The party now contends that the market is essentially ethical and only requires a greater regulation in order to decrease the frequency of future recessions; the notion that there is something inherently unjust, if not wicked, about the market is now almost never proclaimed by any NDP politician or political candidate. There is, to be fair to the NDP, also a widespread view on the global left that the former radical solutions favoured by the left cannot be replicated in today’s societies. Further, the left, despite its incessant utterance that another world is possible, cannot convincingly articulate how any significant change to the current wretched economic system is to be attained.

However, it is the second political value that has often been used to define the left, economic equality, that is the focus here. The early Canadian left believed that large economic inequalities were immoral and the CCF initially wanted economic equality, but this desire gradually faded and the retreat from economic equality has continued under the NDP. It is the NDP’s disavowal of economic equality as a goal, and the party’s acceptance of immense differences in income and wealth within Canada and between Canada and the poorer nations, that compromises the party’s claim to be leftwing. It is difficult to see how a party opposed to economic equality, or at least some approximation thereof, has a legitimate claim to be regarded as leftwing.

Nevertheless, there remains a widespread Canadian political misconception that the NDP is a socialist party devoted to significant economic redistribution and economic equality. The NDP is a social democratic party of the centre consecrated to the maintenance of huge economic inequalities. The evidence clearly supports that claim. No provincial NDP government has ever ensured that everyone, employed and unemployed, has had a basic income at least equal to the absolute poverty threshold, or has implemented rigorous maximum limits on income or wealth. The economic inequalities under NDP governments have been almost identical to those under provincial governments led by other parties.

Although NDP governments have in practice essentially maintained the economic inequalities that they inherited when they took power, there was a current in NDP thought that still longed for some form of economic equality. Ed Schreyer, as NDP premier of Manitoba, said that ideally no person’s income should be more than 2.5 times that of the average of the industrial composite wage. But even this egalitarian ideal has almost completely vanished from the NDP. There are those within the party who advocate that a very small percentage of the rich should be taxed at a slightly higher rate, but such a proposal would leave the grotesque economic inequalities virtually intact. The NDP now adheres to the view that there are rights to be rich and to own and earn more than one needs, yet many leftists formerly regarded these alleged rights as pernicious and reactionary. A dominant value of Canadian society is the rejection of meaningful limits to income, wealth, production or consumption; the NDP’s attachment to that value reveals that the party has reconciled itself to the selfishness, the acquisitiveness, the individualism, the hoarding and the possessiveness that the other major parties and so many Canadians display. The NDP now states, similarly to other parties, that it is simply responding to the wishes of the majority of Canadians who reject economic equality and is therefore reflecting Canadian values, conveniently omitting to ask whether those values deserve allegiance.

A call for a reduction in disparities in income and wealth is simultaneously a plea for a decrease in class differences, but the word class has almost become a dirty word within the NDP. The issue of class, which formerly preoccupied and often obsessed the left, is now only one of the myriad competing concerns within the NDP. The party now maintains that huge class disparities are unavoidable. The party, insofar as it still has an interest in class, is now focused on maintaining the rights and privileges of the middle class.

It is a mistake to consider the NDP’s support for, or sympathy with, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement as indicative of the party’s commitment to economic equality. The OWS movement does not want economic equality or any approximation thereof; it wants, at most, an unspecified reduction in income of a tiny minority, and its claim that only the top 1 percent has excessive income is self-serving and reactionary because those who have unnecessary income constitute vastly more than 1 percent. The OWS movement, although often referred to as progressive or leftwing, is more accurately described as populism.

It is almost the entire Canadian left, not merely the NDP, that opposes economic equality. The Canadian left has adopted the ideology formerly employed mainly by the right to sanctify wealth. The views that there is a right to be rich, that wide disparities in income are essential to stimulate risk-taking and innovation, that limitations on income and wealth would require authoritarian or even totalitarian measures that would destroy personal freedom, that high income is an appropriate reward for talent and industriousness, that economic equality would result in an unacceptable level of economic inefficiency and that economic equality is impossible to implement have now few challengers among the Canadian left. The traditional arguments utilized by the left to promote economic equality are rarely enunciated by today’s leftists. The belief that there are rights to own and earn more than one needs is now so pervasive in all strata of society that the defense of that view rarely needs to be stated. The wealthy are often portrayed as models worthy of emulation and as possessing positive personal traits that enabled them to be rich. The manufacture of the desires to acquire and consume, the transformation of luxury items into alleged necessities, the failure to distinguish between needs and wants, and the status bestowed by wealth have all contributed to a rejection by many on the left of the idea of limits to income and wealth. A new leftwing party will have to undermine the ideological stranglehold that the sanctity of wealth maintains on Canadians.

The transformation of the NDP into a party that desires economic equality is improbable. There is no sizeable movement or faction within the party advocating economic egalitarianism that could theoretically attain majority status. The belief that there is a right to be rich is now so deeply entrenched in the party that it is unimaginable how the egalitarian idea could ever acquire pre-eminence. It is implausible that the shift towards the right in the NDP that has been occurring since its inception could be miraculously reversed. The metamorphosis of the NDP, from a reform party to an establishment party, has also occurred in other social democratic parties. The European social democratic parties have become parties of the centre, centre-right or even the right. It is sometimes advanced on the Canadian left that, although Canadian social democracy rejects economic equality, the Scandinavian forms are more egalitarian and worthy of emulation. However, the Scandinavian social democrats have also bowed down before the altar of wealth and reject any notion of rigorous limits to income and wealth within and between countries. The movement towards the right within social democratic parties has been elaborated in books such as In the Name of Social Democracy: The Great Transformation, 1945 to the Present (Gerassimos Maschonas, 2002), The Death of Social Democracy: Political Consequences in the 21^st Century (Ashley Lavelle, 2008), and Social Democracy After the Cold War (Bryan Evans and Ingo Schmidt, 2012).

The party’s advocacy of enhanced regulation of the market fails to acknowledge that such a proposal will not diminish the hideous economic inequalities within the market. The moralization of the market, if it is even possible, would require, at a minimum, that the state imposes income limits within the private and public sectors (the ratio of four to one is proposed by some leftists – no person’s income would exceed four times that of another’s), but even the attempt to humanize the market by economic egalitarianism is rejected by the NDP.

A new party is needed because the retreat from economic equality has also occurred on the leftwing parties and organizations outside the NDP. These groups have also surrendered to the conservative ideas that wealth is legitimate and that there is a right to be rich; they engage in a ritualistic attack on the wealth of CEO’s in the public and private sectors but as CEO’s make up only a minute portion of the rich, those who have superfluous income or wealth, this criticism is basically symbolic. These leftwing organizations, like the NDP, reject the notion that many Canadians, perhaps even a majority, have gratuitous income and wealth from which they should be separated for the benefit of the poor in Canada and abroad. Further, both the NDP and much of the left outside the party desire economic growth, which will primarily benefit the middle and upper classes and will only increase economic inequality within Canada and between Canada and the poorer countries.

The result of the NDP’s opposition to economic equality is the impoverishment of the Canadian political process. The widespread disinterest in politics, the meagre voter turnout and the frequently heard lament that the ideological differences between the major parties are minimal are, to some extent, a result of the NDP’s refusal to adopt a leftwing platform that would clearly differentiate it from the other parties. The Canadian electorate, with respect to the crucial political question of “who gets what” is not presented with any meaningful choice, and the parties in Parliament resemble different factions within a single party.

The challenge confronting a new leftwing party would certainly be formidable, namely, how to ensure that such a party would not degenerate into a holier-than-thou, sectarian cult. But the intolerable economic inequalities require the creation of a new leftwing party in Canada.

The Myth of the 1 Percent

Posted 28 November 2012

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement began on 17 September 2011 with the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City. The movement continues but has faded from the public spotlight. There is an aspect of the movement that has retained a popular appeal, namely, the movement’s contention that 1 percent of the population is rich and has excessive income.

But why 1 percent? Why not 20, 30 or 50 percent? The claim that only 1 percent has gratuitous income is a myth because the accurate number is vastly more. The myth is based on the OWS movement’s conception of who constitutes the rich. The movement has failed to provide any adequate definition of the rich. The movement’s assertions that the top 1 percent holds far more than 1 percent of all income and that the wealth of the 1 percent provides its members with disproportionate political influence are accurate. However, it does not follow from those claims that the rich are confined to 1 percent.

What if the rich were defined as all those having more income or wealth than they require? If the possession of unnecessary income were to be the criterion employed to designate the rich, then not merely 1 percent of the population, but a far greater percentage, would be classified as wealthy.

Why do so many people, particularly those who regard themselves as leftists or progressives, continue to utilize the figure of 1 percent to refer to the wealthy and refuse to challenge or even question this premise of the OWS movement?

First, the depiction of the rich as the 1 percent is self-serving. It conveniently avoids scrutiny of everyone’s income and confines the examination to that of a minute minority.  This portrayal of the rich as the top 1 percent enables the vast majority of the population to regard themselves as devoid of superfluous wealth and income, with the implication that they are not part of the problem of inequality. It gives the impression that only a small minority should be targeted for tax increases, not those in the middle and upper middle classes.

Second, most people, including leftists and progressives, refuse to consider themselves as rich because this would produce guilt and embarrassment. Moreover, the OWS movement states that those belonging to the 1 percent feel entitled to their income but neglects to add that so does almost everybody else. The overwhelming majority of wage earners do not believe they are entitled to earn only what they need; they believe they are earning, or should be earning, to what they are entitled, and they do not regard entitlement as synonymous with need. 

Third, many progressives and leftists have a view of the world that is derived from 19^th century works of non-fiction such as Karl Marx’s Capital, or fiction such as Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. These books justifiably portrayed society as comprised of an oppressing corporate elite and an impoverished, oppressed majority. In Canada and other highly industrialized societies, this picture is no longer accurate. Despite the wickedness of capitalism, it is dishonest and absurd to contend that it bestows extravagant income only upon corporations and that the majority of Canadians are economically disadvantaged. The affluenza of Canadian society is not relegated to a coterie of immensely wealthy CEO’s. Nevertheless, progressives and leftists focus, often obsessively, on corporate greed and the discrepancies in income between employers and employees, and largely ignore the problem of non-corporate greed and the differences in income between employees.

Fourth, there has been a renunciation among many progressives and leftists of the belief that economic equality is desirable.  They support the OWS movement because its notion of economic justice also rejects economic equality, or anything even resembling that state. The movement has refused to state the degree of economic inequality it would find as acceptable. The movement has made no demands for rigorous ceilings on permissible income and wealth or for the imposition of limits to wage differentials (such as 4:1 in which no person’s income would be more than four times that of another). The anti-egalitarian movement does not contest the purported right of people to own and earn more than they need.

The OWS movement is often portrayed as an attack on wealth, but as the great majority of wealthy people do not belong to the 1 percent, it is more correct to regard the movement as a defense of wealth. The movement’s claim that that only 1 percent of the population has excessive income is not leftwing or even progressive; it is conservative populism.