What MLK Said About Inequality
Also: new Oxfam report finds the richest 1% accumulated nearly two-thirds of new wealth created in the past two years
“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children," MLK said in a 1961 speech. It’s a great line because it’s clear he doesn’t give a shit about what it’s called — call it democracy or socialism or whatever — what he cares about is redistributing the wealth.
Terminology trips people up, which a gifted rhetorician like King surely knew. People tend to agree at least in broad strokes on questions like, ‘Should everyone have healthcare?’ or ‘Should all children be guaranteed a school lunch?’ But call those things Bidenism or socialism or any other -ism and the support drops. None of this is to say MLK wasn’t hostile to capitalism: he clearly was. (“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism,” he once said.) But King’s uncanny ability to articulate a moral vision comprehensible across demographic lines and factional identities is a big part of the reason his message continues to resound today.
Speaking of inequality, the richest man on earth, Elon Musk, was in the news recently, thanks to yours truly. As I reported last week for The Intercept, within hours of Musk’s announcement of the rollout of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” feature, a Tesla on San Fransisco’s Bay Bridge abruptly stopped, resulting in an eight-vehicle crash that injured nine people including a 2-year-old child. (The driver told police he’d been using the full self-driving feature.) Highway surveillance footage, police records and photographs that I obtained under a California Public Records Act request revealed several things that weren’t previously known, most notably live footage of the accident that confirmed witness accounts. They also described injuries to the nine people which sadly included an abrasion to the 2-year-old child’s face.
The most haunting photograph to me was one of a stroller belonging to the 2-year-old sitting empty in front of all the twisted metal. It’s a ghastly reminder of what’s at stake in how we as a society choose to allow car manufacturers to introduce autonomous driving technology to public roads. As of this writing, there are no federal laws limiting testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads — one of several disturbing things I learned while writing this story, which I encourage you all to read.
Feel Like This Should Be a Bigger Story
Richest stay winning. A new report by Oxfam finds that the richest 1% of people accumulated nearly two-thirds of new wealth created in the past two years. The report’s release was cleverly timed to coincide with the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Resembling a real-life Bond villain lair, Davos takes place at a Ski resort in the Swiss Alps and brings elites together for an annual conference.
But her emails! Guccifer, the Romanian hacker who gave us George Bush’s sublimely inept paintings and news of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, was just released from prison and my colleague Sam Biddle scored an extraordinary interview with this enigmatic figure. As Biddle notes, this strange man may well have changed the outcome of the 2016 election — a nice reminder that history isn’t always material contingencies, sometimes it’s just dumb.
Saudi Collusion? A lawsuit has inadvertently revealed that the Saudi government directly owns 93% of LIV Golf, which has paid former President Donald Trump untold millions to host its golf tournaments on Trump resorts, according to a press release by DAWN. LIV Golf is rapidly supplanting the PGA Tour by poaching some of its top talent with lucrative agreements. LIV is largely owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF), whose chairman is Saudi’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, of murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi fame.
Larry Summers is wrong again. The latest jobs report shows that inflation is coming down — without the millions of layoffs former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said was necessary, as my colleague Jon Schwarz and I reported on here. This comes just days afters Summers said — speaking in front of a tropical resort-like backdrop that cannot be parodied — that “there’s going to need to be increases in unemployment to contain inflation.” He’s like a magic 8 ball with just one answer: more layoffs.
Finance elites say quiet part loud. The same job report did however find a slowdown in jobs growth, to the unbridled celebration of finance watchers. I’m not surprised they’re pleased that workers have it harder, but their openness about it is rather shocking. I detailed some of the uglier cases in a piece for The Intercept which you can read here.
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