For $1,000,000 a year, you'll find volunteers.
For $10,000,000 a year, almost any high-achieving corporate executive can find ways to rationalize the evil that his or her company commits, convincing himself or herself that the blame really lies with someone else.
For $100,000,000 a year, you can easily find people who will knowingly kill hundreds or thousands of people just to keep their own profits flowing.
A world in which CEO salaries were capped at 500,000 a year would be a much more moral world.
Inequality corrupts. It corrupts society at all levels. At the top, otherwise normal people will do morally despicable things if the payoff is high enough. A million dollars a year compensates for a lot of cognitive dissonance.
At the bottom, inequality also forces people to make choices they would never otherwise make. When people have stable, well-paying jobs with full health insurance, sick pay, and vacation time they are very unlikely to steal from other people.
They are very unlikely to deal drugs, mug people at gunpoint, or steal cars.
Even when inequality is low, there are corrupt politicians and depraved criminals. But when inequality is high the incentives at both ends of the spectrum become much stronger. Inequality doesn't make people behave badly, but it encourages people to behave badly.
There are lots of reasons to reverse America's enormous economic inequality. Economic justice alone demands that the rich not be so rich and the poor not be so poor.
Nonetheless, the morally corrupting influence of inequality is equally troubling.
Would you sell your soul for $10? Certainly not. But would you sell your soul for $10 million, or $10 billion? No one should be faced with that choice. In a low-inequality society, no one is.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
