...we are in charge of the country and the economy. And we can make that economy reward whatever it is we want to reward.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
The economy is an
emergent property(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence).
It is the result of vast numbers of humans and their needs and desires, and vast (but limited) quantities of goods, all interacting with each other.
It is not something you control with a single steering wheel, or a box full of votes.
Now, that's not to suggest that an economy is uncoordinated or unplanned.
Prices are what coordinate an economy. Each person gets to decide what they are willing to pay, or substitute, or eschew altogether, based on the price demanded of them. And because each person decides, each person gets their own
tiny measure of control. It is democracy in action.
The result is that the economy ends up in a place that no one could have predicted, but everyone ends up healthier, wealthier, and freer because they are able to
self-determine, and to reward the things they want to see more of.
Capitalism rewards capital. It rewards owning things.
Tell that to Jeff Bezos circa 1999. Or the two engineers that started Google. Or to young James Cash Penney, who barely had a penny to his name.
Or, tell that to A&P, who dominated the retail grocery market until the 1950s, at which point they continuously failed to keep pace with changing consumer wants. Their dominance was shattered inside of a decade, and they shuttered their last store a few years ago.
Effective use of capital is one way to be rewarded in the free market, but it is by no means the only way. And it is certainly NOT a guarantee of success.
Giving people what they want better, cheaper, and faster than your competitors is the only way.
(Also let's not conflate the "free market" with "capitalism" - they are not the same thing).
I just got a rent check yesterday. I did not work for that money. I worked for the money to buy the property, but I think that's neither here nor there. Should I even be allowed to own that land? Do I have a legitimate claim? The government says I do. But only because we organized together and decided that should be the case.
If you don't believe in property rights, then you also must believe that theft isn't a crime. After all, if you don't have a legitimate claim to the stuff in your house, then I should be able to just come and take it from you. And burn your house down too.
We could take this line of thinking one step further. Let's say you don't have ownership over your own body. If you do not get to decide what happens to your own body (i.e. if you do not have ownership of it) then the crimes of assault, rape, and murder are nullified.
This is ridiculous.
Property rights are the most fundamental of rights. They are a philosophical issue far older than the United States. Without property rights, any behaviour is permissible, and civilization fails.
But you don't really believe this, so let's not go there.
We can simply choose to make another decision yet again. That human life is inherently valuable. To reward people just for drawing breath instead of how many widgets they produced that day, or how much in dividends grandpa's old stocks paid them. We don't need to box ourselves in by how things have been done in the past.
I get it. It sucks that some people in our country have it rough. A few have it REALLY rough. Most people have it pretty good. A small number of people have it incredibly good.
But even the worst-off among us today have it better than the best-off people had it 50 years ago. Climate control, digital media players, and wifi can be found in almost every lower-middle-class or lower-class house. Even wealthy people didn't have these things not long ago.
Modern-day homeless people have touchscreen smart phones - something that
no one had only 20 years ago.
There will always be inequality in the universe. This will not change, no matter how noble and well-intentioned we are.Things will never be fair, if only because what constitutes "fair" is ever-changing. Human ingenuity creates some cool new thing that only the wealthy can afford (at first), and everyone else cries and declares it unfair. There's no end to that treadmill.
Instead of trying to steer something which cannot be steered (that is, the needs and desires of some 320 million people), let each person decide how they will run their life. Let each person reduce their own consumption, streamline their own lives, and plan happier lives for themselves without twisting their arms and forcing them to subsidize others who are too lazy to do the same.