Building Physical and Social Infrastructure
In July of 2012 President Barack Obama was campaigning for reelection. At a rally in Roanoke, Virginia, he advocated for government investment to grow the economy. Citing past investment that paved the way for new businesses to thrive, he said, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
His words “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that” were quickly taken out of context and used to imply that Obama did not give due credit to the people who applied their ideas and talent to create successful businesses. Obama’s full speech made clear that he was referring to physical infrastructure, and his speech included public education, government research, public services and a legal system in setting the stage for business creation.
Michael Sandel, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University Law School, applies the same observation to individual success in The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good? Success in procuring positions in both public and private sectors is linked to the applicant’s perceived merit. What one must achieve to be considered as having merit, however, is where Sandel finds serious inequality.
Equality of opportunity is offered as the moral response to provide everyone the chance to succeed. Of course, not everyone has the same starting point. Prenatal care, quality daycare and pre-kindergarten, excellent schools and scholastic counseling, and family knowledgeable in what is needed to prepare a child for self-sufficiency are unevenly distributed. And those are only the entry prerequisites for higher education, the crowning symbol of meritorious achievement.
But higher education only proliferates and enlarges the opportunity gap. Wealthier families have advantages for getting their children into colleges such as legacy relationships and test preparation counseling. The recent college admissions scandal “is an egregious instance of the broader, pervasive unfairness that prevents higher education from living up to the meritocratic principle it professes.”
Thinking that our fate reflects our merit ignores the effects of luck, circumstance, historical precedence, and chance. The privileges accorded families with higher incomes divide people. As Sandel states, “The more we view ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the less likely we are to care for the fate of those less fortunate than ourselves.”
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how dependent all citizens are on the labor of those considered essential workers. Yet these are some of our economy’s lowest paid workers. How pay levels are set, and what can be done to increase income equality, are addressed in You’re Paid What You’re Worth: And Other Myths of the Modern Economy, by Jake Rosenfeld. A professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, Rosenfeld noted several factors to explain why wages have gone down even when productivity has gone up: decline of unions, reclassification of workers as independent contractors, use of temp agency workers, outsourcing, as well as automation.
Rosenfeld cites examples of corporations such as Costco, whose employees have responded to increased pay with lower turnover, higher productivity and loyalty. He asserts, “A fair economy in which work actually pays and a privileged few don’t run off with outlandish shares of organizations’ revenues requires three major changes: raising the pay floor, expanding the middle, and lowering the ceiling.” He offers a number of recommendations.
He includes a $15 minimum wage, Earned Income Tax Credits, basic labor protections such as overtime pay, and strengthened unions to bring more workers into the middle class. He also proposes reversing the growing gap between executive and employee pay by reducing the share of organizational revenue going to executives and shareholders, raising top income tax rates, taxing capital gains as normal income, reducing stock buybacks, and ensuring worker representation on corporate boards. Rosenfeld cites numerous polls indicating strong voter support for such measures.
Rosenfeld concludes that living wages, robust benefits and safe working conditions “are what all workers deserve.”