Bill Moyers Journal; 307; The New Equality: How Much and for Whom?

BILL MOYERS' JOURNAL

"The New Equality: How Much and for Whom?"

Executive Producer Editor-In-Chief

February 29,1976

MAN: Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.

VIVIAN HENDERSON: Aristotle. I think the great blemish on the nations' history has been the persistent and, in a sense, a great failure to provide equality between the races.

MAN: Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. Plato.

NATHAN BLAZER: I think equality is, in one sense, a very great ideal. And in another sense can be misapplied, misused to appeal to the basest instincts of man.

MAN: Equality is at once, the most natural and most chimerical thing in the world. Natural when it is limited to rights; unnatural when it attempts to level goods and power. Voltaire.

FRANCES PIVIN: I would argue that so long as we have sharp economic inequality, we will never have political equality.

MAN: Those who attempt to level never equalize. Edmund Burke.

MILTON FRIEDMAN: We want a society in which individuals have a maximum opportunity to develop their own capacities. And that means we don't really want equality.

MAN: I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and when a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. Alexis de Tocqueville.

BILL MOYERS: The more we talk about equality, a British economist said, the more confused I get. Well, the more we Americans pursue it, the more it taunts us. Equality is part of the dream, and it won't let go. Neither will all the inequality around us. So the debate goes on as we'll see tonight. I'm Bill Moyers.

MOYERS: The notion of equality took hold in the very beginning. We can't know what went through Thomas Jefferson's mind as he wrote these words, or through the minds of the men who signed their names to the Declaration. In those days, it could only have been said to be true of white, male, mostly Protestant property owners--except perhaps in a metaphysical sense.

MOYERS: Whatever they meant, no one has ever been able to put back in the bottle the egalitarian genie they let loose among us.

MOYERS: Most of our journey since has been a struggle, in one way or another, to put flesh on the spirit of equality. There was about it the mystique of a religion or fairy tale with visions of a promised land across the sea, and rainbows that fell on so many pots of gold every man would be his own Midas. Enough struck it rich to stoke the dream and they came. For millions the dream was beyond the grasp. The only equality have about 5 percent of the total, and the top 20 per cent have a little over 40 per cent of the total. The bottom 25 percent of the American population has absolutely zero wealth, and the top 20 percent of the population has 80 percent of the pie. Now the basic argument is, you got to decide is that fair or unfair? And if you decide that it's unfair, then the question is how you do something about it in a sensible way.

ROSE: What is the goal of the kind of equality that you'd like to see?

THUROW: Well, I think the goal is to some more fairly share economic resources across the population. Not to have equal economic resources for everybody but to limit the degree of inequality. We're fond of recommending that to other people. We want land reform in Vietnam when we were involved in Vietnam. That's just redistribution of wealth. And we always advocate redistribution of wealth for everybody else's problems but we never advocate it for our own. And so I think we need to look in on it ourselves, and apply some of the things we preach to others to ourselves.

ROSE: One of the basic arguments that the people who oppose equality result make is that it has a cost in terms of efficiency and in that to develop equality of result you're going to have to create an enormous government bureaucracy, which is an encroachment on human liberty.

THUROW: Well, if you think about negative income tax things, that clearly doesn't require any bureaucracy at all, any more than we now have in the Internal Revenue Service. Because you could institute a negative income tax without hiring one individual. You would simply have them integrated with the taxes that we now collect, and the same people could do it. So I don't think that requires any bureaucracy. If you think about the pro- blem of a guaranteed job, then I think you have to think about what is a bureaucracy. I mean it's quite right that any large organization has bureaucracies. General Motors has bureaucracies; A. T. and T. has bureaucracies; the federal government has a bureaucracy. And so I think people kind of worry about government because they see it out there as a monolith, when anybody who's had any experience with government knows that the Defense Department and HEW are at each other's throats all the time, and to think of them as monoliths who are going to do things to you in concert just doesn't make sense 'cause that's not the way they work.

MOYERS: This is Robert Nisbet, who holds the Albert Schweitzer chair in the Humani ties at Columbia University. His latest book is Twilight of Authority.

ROSE: What is it about equality of result, though, that concerns you?

NISBET: Well it's the machinery, it's the the set of laws, agencies, regulations that, in my judgment, would be required in order to affect this equality of result. bother me very much, indeed.

I know a number of the new equalitarians very well, indeed. Like them, I respect them highly. I think that where we differ is they believe that it would be possible to embark upon a major program of redistribution of property and income in this country without touching the vital, political, legal liberties that we have, without affecting the small, intimate contexts of creativity. And I in all deference, believe that a program of redistribution of that sort would almost inevitably impact upon them.

ROSE: Specifically, what is the threat that you see from big government?

NISBET: It's the kind of power that comes into existence in the great bureaus, the great agencies. Congress, at the behest of some lobby or perhaps at the behest of a popular groundswell of opinion, passes a law that has a certain social or economic objective. In order to give it effect an agency, a bureau, has to be brought into existence.

MOYERS: Milton Friedman is one of America's best known economists. He's professor of economics at the University of Chicago, a former president of the American Economic Association, a past and present advisor to U.S. Presidents, and his books include: Capitalism and Freedom; A Program for Monetary Stability, and Dollars and Deficits. What do you say? Can we take pride as a nation in providing equality to our citizens?

FRIEDMAN: I think, on the whole, we can. I think the greatest achievement that the U.S. can boast of in its 200 years' history is its absorbing millions of penniless people from the rest of the world, enabling them to have lives of dignity and to provide greater opportunity for their children than they themselves had. Now this is far from saying that our record is perfect or without blemish. I have no quarrel with what Vivian Henderson says. I think in that area we are we have in the area of race relationships there is much to be improved. But taken as a whole, there is no country in the history of this world which has been able to achieve what the United States has been able to achieve. And those of us here participating in this program, I suspect, are living witnesses to the success in this area. I think if any one of us if our parents, my parents had had to stay in Europe where they originally were born I would, today, not be a free man who has been able to achieve what I've achieved. I suspect that's equally true of the rest of us. So I think we ought to not denigrate the achievements of the past. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, and this is an area where we have much to be proud of.

HENDERSON: I think what we have to recognize here, Milton, is that you can't take 30 million Americans and set 'em aside as though they didn't exist.

FRIEDMAN: I agree with you.

HENDERSON: The fact is that that America has not done its job in the most obvious area of generating equality. And that is between the races.

FRIEDMAN: Yes, I would agree...

HENDERSON: In the most obvious area. Now I can't argue against your point that this country has provided vehicles for mobility for those segments of the population that did come here penniless. But we created more artificial impediments to the achieve- ment of equality, particularly between the races, between sexes, and it seems like to me, that we're still fighting that battle.

GLAZER: I think one of the real issues in dealing with inequality between races, particularly the black-white issue as being the sharpest, the most you know, in terms of scale, the the largest is the question of how to interpret that inequality how to deal with that inequality? I mean if one could deal with it às in terms of--and you used a large term "artificial impediments". I think that's pretty good 'cause it it covers a good deal. But if it's thought of in terms of discrimination let us say, in its simplest form, then it's I think that on that area there's been, you know, enormous change. At least certainly in the political sphere. I would argue in the economics sphere. And and the issues in the economics sphere have become rather complex in terms of how to proceed further let's say, beyond the elimination of discrimination.

HENDERSON: Well, let me just take on...

GLAZER: Yes. For-

HENDERSON: ...one case in point. Let's just take the distribution of income. get about race for the moment. Now if my memory serves me correctly there's been very little change in the distribution of income in this country in the last generation. The top 5 per cent still gets about 25 or 30 percent of the income. The lower 20 percent perpetuate this skewedness in the distribution of income? Because the opposite of the distribution of benefits from the society the opposite of that is the distribution of burdens. And the inequity in the distribution of burdens in the society is the thrust of inequality. And it's that part that I'm really concerned about.

MOYERS: Why do you prefer equality to inequality?

HENDERSON: I prefer equality because it says to me that the people in this society based upon skills, the marketplace, government policy, motivation, all sorts of things, that we've minimized the artificial impediments that we have given people the opportunity and people share in the society both the benefits and burdens on a comparable basis.

FRIEDMAN: But comparable basis is not equality. I agree completely that we want to eliminate the impediments. But for a moment, suppose eliminating the impediments, and let's suppose then we have two people, one of whom chooses to til a small farm and not engage in much activity. Another one of whom chooses to engage in active work of a different kind. You and I would agree that they ought to be unequally compensated.

HENDERSON: But you see, here's the point you fail to m you catch on my

point. That freedom of choice and so forth and so on is good. All I'm sayin' is, if the law of large numbers operates and if the market place operates as you say it does, Milton, then there would be just as many on this side of the street tillin' the farm.. as would be on this side.

FRIEDMAN: I agree...

HENDERSON: ..that's the equality I'm lookin' for.

FRIEDMAN: I agree with you, and that's the equality we all want.

GLAZER: What is asked of us in terms of producing more equality? Now we've talked about jobs, but the interesting thing is if you look at that distribution of income you talked about, you know the top 20 per cent have 40 percent of the income, the bottom 20 percent have 5 per cent. Something like that. And that's true, the bottom 20 percent have 5 percent of the income, roughly. And it hasn't changed for 20 or 30 years and so forth. There are two interesting features about the bottom 20 per cent or the group that we'd have to raise in terms of these measures of equality. One of them is, an awful lot of them don't work. They are either old people who've retired and living on Social Security System living on old age stuff and so on. They are female headed fami- lies. If they are working they're working partially and they are working under difficult circumstances and so on. They are very often, they might be young people. An awful lot of them, their condition will not be improved by doing anything about work. thing is that their condition is already undergone remarkable improvement, even if that 5 per cent figure hasn't been changed in ways that Frances has written about and knows about, the enormous increase in welfare payments in the period of the sixties and early seventies, and in the period of the seventies enormous increase in food stamps. So that we do sort of now sort of direct and then a third thing, you might say, it hasn't been such a great benefit to them but it's awfully expensive, Medicaid free medical care. We are directing 40 billion dollars to that bottom 20 percent or 30 billion or something like that that we didn't used to...even 10 years ago. Why don't we feel it's made a difference?

PIVEN: It has made a difference and I think that we don't have a kind of humane and intimate enough view of the lives of these people to recognize the difference that it has made for a female-headed family who has no skills and no training and six children. fortunes than the free grant of of TV stations. If we sold off the TV stations, got government out of the business of controlling TV, got rid of the FCC by selling off N stations, we would both reduce inequality and promote freedom. We can go down the line. And why isn't it a more effective method? This is a method by which America has really progressed...

MOYERS: I'll tell you why I think it is...

FRIEDMAN: ...over the past 200 years.

MOYERS: Let me tell you what the critics say why it isn't more effective, and it goes back to the fundamental dilemma. Democracy proclaims equal political rights. That's the tradition we live by..the memory we live by. By the free enterprise system-- freedom as you say it--guarantees unequal economic results...

FRIEDMAN: Not at all, doesn't guarantee...

MOYERS: It has, historically.

FRIEDMAN: I beg your pardon. The free system has produced greater equality of results than any governmental system.

MOYERS: I didn't say greater or lesser, I said the economic system assures unequal economic results. Doesn't it?

FRIEDMAN: No, it permits unequal economic results in accordance with the productivity of the people involved. It doesn't assure it.

MOYERS: But don't people who compete in the free economy, don't some of them make more money than others?

FRIEDMAN: Of course they do.

MOYERS: All right, then don't some of those make the more money use that wealth to buy political rights that others can't afford?

FRIEDMAN: That depends on the political structure. I would

say that there was a negligible amount of that...I would say in the United States until about the last 50 or 60 years.

PIVEN: I think that there's been a substantial amount of that from the very beginning..

FRIEDMAN: ...there was nothing to buy. In the 19th century when the United States had little government interference, when the federal government was spending in total an amount of money which corresponded to 3 per cent of the national income. 3 percent of the national income. That included the armed forces and everything else. There wasn't anything much to buy privilege for.

PIVEN: Oh, that's not a good way of measuring political influence. The political influence of colonial elites succeeded in establishing a government structure that would guarantee their ability to do business, and guarantee that repayment of the debts that had been incurred by the Continental Congress. That wasn't the use of influence to get money, but it was the use of influence to insure that they could make money. And even in the 19th century when federal expenditures remained small, those small expenditures did from time to time permit the use of federal troops against striking workers. Now that was the use of political influence.

FRIEDMAN: The main thing it does is not to impose barriers to equality, and not to impose special privileges. The tragedy of this situation is that well-meaning people like Frances who want to use the government for good purposes will always end up being front men for interests they would never knowingly represent. You speak of the influence of the corporations on the government: it's too great. How did it come about?

How is it that the Interstate Commerce Commission was the first run by the railroads and then by the truckers? It was established by well-meaning people like you to protect consumers. But you get started in there, do-good reformers establish the ICC to protect consumers. As soon as it's established the corporations come and take it over, and the railroads take it over and the truckers take it over. And so the problem is...

PIVEN: I agree there are very large problems

FRIEDMAN: ...that the only way..

PIVEN: ...in implementing my model.

FRIEDMAN: Right, there certainly are.

MOYERS: Is the role of government just to provide a minimum level of a standard of living? What do people have the right to expect, and what is government's role?

FRIEDMAN: Government can't provide a minimum.

PIVEN: At this point in our society--we are not in the 19th century, and we do not exist in a laissez faire society...which may come somewhat closer to what is, I think, Milton's unrealistic model--just as he thinks that I am not taking into account the practicalities involved in implementing my welfare state. But at this point in our society we have vast inequalities, not only in income by any means, but in the control of the apparatus that makes an economy run, in the control of wealth. We have come to a point where these very large concentrations of power and wealth exist; they're here. Now we do not eliminate them by evoking the image of a society where people had more or less an equal chance, were more or less able to make choices. We do not eliminate them by wishing them away; they exist. How can we weaken their power? And they have great power, not only in economic life but in political life. What are instruments for doing so? It seems to me that we have few instruments beyond the mobilization of whatever political resources we have as a people to pressure government to try to curb the role that corporate power has played in our society.

FRIEDMAN: I agree with you but how? And the way to do it, the way you should do it in order to achieve your objectives is not by making these governmental agencies still bigger and subject to still more powerful control by outside, but by reducing their power, by getting rid of government regulation, by eliminating ICC, by eliminating the FCC, by getting the income tax, which is a maze and a disaster reformed into a much simpler, a more understandable form. Everywhere down the line, if we can only cut down this mammoth, gargantuan leviathan that we've been building we would promote your objec- tives and mine.

HENDERSON: I think when you talk about political freedom and economic freedom and recognize the tremendous role that economic inequality plays in determining political freedoms, I think it's unrealistic. People who vote, who send people to the Congress, who send people to the legislatures, they vote according to their needs. And if they're on the short end of the totem pole they're going to send people up there who're going to try to correct it.

MOYERS: You're saying then that the inevitable trend in a democratic society that depends upon the popular vote is toward more equality.

FRIEDMAN: The amazing thing to me is the extent to which people will recognize the defects with the past programs but think, somehow or other, the next one we pass will be all right. Somehow I've come to the point of saying, I define an American modern liberal as a person who thinks all past social welfare programs have worked badly but all future ones will work good. Now oughtn't we to learn from experience, Frances?

PIVEN: Very clever but it doesn't tell us what to do, Milton.

FRIEDMAN: ...that those have worked badly.

GLAZER: Would you give up the pursuit of equality, Milton?

FRIEDMAN: Give up the pursuit of equality?

GLAZER: Yes.

FRIEDMAN: I would not give up the pursuit of equality of opportunity, I would give up the pursuit of equality of results, yes. I do not believe we really pursue it.

HENDERSON: You don't think we should pursue equality of outcomes and results?

FRIEDMAN: We should pursue equality of opportunity.

MOYERS: Do you think we should pursue equality of outcomes?

HENDERSON: I think we definitely should pursue equality of outcomes and results. I'm not talking about any equality of one to one that's not my...

MOYERS: Well, what do you mean by an equality of outcomes?

HENDERSON: I'm still saying that there ought to be comparable economic profiles among groups.

MOYERS: Now tell me, I'm sitting out in Texas listening to that.

Tell me...

HENDERSON: I'm going to the obvious one and that's black and white. Now is there any reason that black folks as a group, since there are 30 million of them and it's so obvious, should not have a comparable economic profile to white folks?

FRIEDMAN:

None at all.

HENDERSON: Well, that's what I mean by equality.

FRIEDMAN: No, no, I agree with you 100 percent.

HENDERSON: That's what I mean by equality.

GLAZER: I agree that when you talk of the general economic profiles of two groups in a society in which they are integrated or hopefully becoming integrated, and one society affecting in it, that that there should be some some equivalence of profile. I mean I wouldn't make any insistence on absolute similarity. I think one of the arguments...

HENDERSON: I'm not going to try to make more money than my neighbor. That doesn't mean all our problems by a long shot, in fact all we do is get into an endless number of other problems. But it's those that I prefer to think about rather than equality or inequality globally.

MOYERS: Do you think that we're coming to the end of the pursuit of equality in this country?

HENDERSON: I don't think so, and I believe it's because the people who are most depressed in this society have had a taste of what democracy's all about, and a taste of what things are about above them, and they're not going to rest with where they are. And so the pursuit will continue.

MOYERS: Where do you think the pursuit of equality is leading us in this country? And does that scare you or encourage you?

FRIEDMAN: I think equality in the sense in which you can talk about the pursuit of equality is a false god. And I think it has been erected into a religion, it is a reli- gion that is accepted unthinkingly, that if people think about it seriously and carefully they won't like it. But if we pursue that false god of equality we will end up being poor, miserable and losing our freedom.

MOYERS: Why? Because if you really seek to pursue

FRIEDMAN: We'll end up being tyrannized. equality, you can only do it with troops and guns, with force, by taking away from some and giving to others, and by destroying the basic springs of human action. The great achievements of mankind have come from the attempts of individuals to make them- selves unequal, to distinguish themselves from their neighbor. If you say we are going to cut off ambition at its root, that any tree that grows taller than its neighbor is going to be cut down to its neighbor. If you are going to say there is going to be no opportunity to express your desire for distinction, you're going to destroy everything that has made society great.

MOYERS: Where do you think the pursuit of equality is taking us in the next 25 years in this country, and does that frighten you or does it encourage you?

PIVEN: Well, to the extent that it is, indeed, the pursuit of equality and not the use of that ideal to conceal special privilege, of course it does not frighten me. I think, as I said earlier, that extreme inequality is a violation of human nature, destroys the circumstances, it destroys a proper context for human beings to develop, and to develop in a degree of comradeship. That extremes of inequality isolate some people, denigrate them and cast upon other people a glow of privilege which makes them different from their fellow men and women. I think an unequal society, rather than having the greatness and grandeur that Milton just attributed to it, has from the perspective of ordinary people always been a brutal and oppressive one. So that the pursuit of equality does not frighten me at all. What does frighten me and does worry me is that what I think are the natural impulses of American people to believe, at least to a degree, in equality and to want to see and to want to support the kinds of programs which they think will minimize inequality, that those beliefs will be twisted, that they will be twisted by the special interests, by the government bureaucracies with whom the special interests are in league, so that, yes, I am, in a way, afraid. I'm afraid that we will continue to allow those impulses that the American people do, indeed, have to be twisted and distorted because we have not yet in this country developed the political capacity to force the kinds of programs that would, indeed, over the long run and consistently, improve equality. And equal chances are not different from equal results among Americans. enlarge the vision and meaning of America for all of us. He made a difference.