Why the Inequality Debate Just Goes ’Round and ’Round

“And here, perhaps lies the problem: the single tax’s indiscriminate generosity is its undoing. You cannot offer both sides what they want without dissolving the distinction between them.”

“What goes up must come down
Spinnin’ wheel got to go ’round
Talkin’ ’bout your troubles it’s a cryin’ sin
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin’ wheel spin”

– Shirley Bassey in “Spinning Wheel”

According to Richard Burcik in his recent Merion West essay, he and Matt McManus have been debating inequality now for some time. One point on which they agree is that the central issue concerns capitalism and the relation between labour and capital, which are in permanent conflict.

Burcik looks at inequality through the lens of income and sees nothing. But he does not ask if income is the driver of inequality. McManus looks at inequality through the lens of capitalism, but he does not ask what kind of “capital” is driving inequality. He seeks no guidance from the centuries long struggle to preserve the Commons.

Thus, the inequality debate goes ’round and ’round. No hint is given of a third source of value for society to draw upon. The labor-capital oppositorum is a fixed constellation in our cosmology. Two-party, two philosophy politics is the expression of that cosmology. There is no conceptual space for the third element. Even the most eminent of economists will not be heard when they mention it. From the Left:

“I think most readers of Thomas Piketty’s book (Capital in the Twenty-First Century) get the impression that the accumulation of wealth—savings—is responsible for the rise in inequality…— the accumulation of capital…A closer look at what has gone on suggests that a large fraction of the increase in wealth is an increase in the value of land, not in the amount of capital goods.”– Joseph Stiglitz in a December, 2014 interview with AlterNet