What's missing in the debate over income inequality?

Now there's an oldie but a goody. Today we would replace the robber barons on top with behemoth Wall Street banks, leviathan military contractors, mammoth pharma, colossus health insurance, and a gargantuan gun industry.

What is missing from the discussion over wealth inequality? Where are the moderates and the more centrist Republicans who lean right? Why aren't they on board? They certainly don't support the one percent. It turns out, there is a problem with the way we have been framing the whole debate. We are leaving them out.

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” ~Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice to the United States Supreme Court, 1916-1939.

Louis Brandeis was a liberal firebrand-- pretty much the Bernie Sanders of his day. But it was Republican Herbert Hoover who agreed that speculation on Wall Street was prolonging a financial recovery from the Depression and preventing prosperity.

And that idea of preventing prosperity lies at the heart of Republican ideals-- our free market system. Because of the massive inequality, Americans are no longer able to take part in free enterprise, the very cornerstone of our capitalist system.

"...it hampers the freedom of the individual. The only way we are going to work out our problems in this country is to have the individual free, not free to do unlicensed things, but free to work and to trade without the fear of some gigantic power threatening to engulf him every moment. . . " ~Louis Brandeis

We need to heed our history and take a page from our predecessor. We need to speak to the moderates and right-leaning Republicans. We need to frame the discussion in a way that includes them and helps them to understand how wealth inequality hurts them too.

The financial reforms following the Depression made it harder to become a billionaire. Not impossible, but harder. In the decades following those reforms, the number of billionaires was reduced by half. But there was a record number of millionaires. And all it took was some simple regulation of Wall Street banks and how they do business. It didn't kill them, and it made our middle class grow so anyone could start a business and join the ranks of the millionaires.

We need to invite more people to join us.

~The Liberal Malcontent is both a liberal and a malcontent.

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