A: JAY CORRIGAN | PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS
Slices of the economic pie are more lopsided than ever before. According to recent data, the richest 10 percent of American households earn just more than half of all U.S. income. That’s the highest fraction since the federal government started keeping these sorts of records 100 years ago. And the U.S. isn’t the only place where the gap between rich and poor is growing. During the last 40 years, the richest 10 percent gained ground in Canada, Germany and Japan.
So what explains this increase in income inequality across rich countries? Economists most often point to technological changes that have made the most talented workers ever more productive. As an example, consider that the only way to listen to professional musicians at the turn of the 20th century was to go to a live performance. The most talented performers played in the largest venues and, therefore, made more money than their less-talented peers, but the difference would have been relatively modest.
Today, most of us listen to recorded music. And because an iTunes download costs the same whether it’s recorded by the top artist in a genre or by someone less popular, the most-talented performers now capture a much larger share of our entertainment dollars. Thousands of musicians still are scratching out a living, but technology has increased the gap between the most-talented and the slightly less-talented. Something similar has happened in most industries.
To understand what, if anything, can be done to reduce income inequality, it helps to look back to the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, when income inequality actually decreased. That's because the supply of highly skilled workers increased more rapidly than the demand for their services, keeping their incomes — and income inequality — in check. This increase in supply was due to an increase in college graduates and women entering the workforce. Unfortunately, both of those trends have leveled off since about 1980.
If there’s one area where there’s still low-hanging fruit, it’s immigration. Immigrants create about half of all successful startups, but we make it hard for highly skilled immigrants to live and work in the U.S. Increasing the cap on the number of visas issued to highly skilled immigrants each year — or removing the cap entirely — would increase the supply of top talent, reducing income inequality.
COVID-19 began to spread in the U.S. as many states prepared to hold primary elections.
Some states, fearing the spread of disease at crowded polling places, made emergency changes regarding how their citizens would exercise the right to vote, alarming those who feared democracy to be in danger. Other states proceeded according to plan, potentially putting voters’ lives at risk. How can we safeguard both public health and the health of our democracy during a global pandemic?
In the United States, state law determines voting methods. Ohio, plus 15 other states and Puerto Rico, all pushed back their primaries or switched to mail-in voting. From a health perspective this was wise, but did it undermine the rule of law?
In Ohio, a judge rejected the governor’s request to postpone the election, arguing that a late change in the election process would set a “terrible precedent.” In response, the governor used administrative powers to close the polls as a matter of public health. Later, the legislature enacted a law to authorize extended mail-in voting. If changing the rules of the game at the last moment sets a worrisome precedent, obtaining legislative permission for the change, albeit post facto, restored the rule of law.
On balance, I think Ohio’s leaders served the interests of democracy. Although any decision to change the date and means of an election will affect which voters actually cast a vote and who they favor at the moment of casting their vote, the change in rules did not appear to bias the results to favor any candidate or party. The Ohio decision balanced public health and voters’ access to the ballot box in a way that seems to have maximized both.
In contrast, Wisconsin voters had to choose either health or civic duty. Their governor’s effort to administratively postpone the election was challenged by the other party. The case arrived in the U.S. Supreme Court, where a narrow majority refused to give voters an additional week to cast absentee ballots — which could have allowed more Wisconsin residents to vote by mail rather than stand in line and risk contagion. The Court stood against last-minute changes to the electoral rules of the game, noting that “this Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”
Democracy only works if everyone knows the rules, follows the rules and believes the rules are fair. Last-minute changes undermine those conditions, so the Court’s precedent makes excellent sense — except that there is nothing ordinary about life in a pandemic. Ohio’s leaders recognized this, while Wisconsin stuck with the formal rules of the game, even though the conditions under which voters would want to go to their local polling place had changed dramatically.
Particularly in extraordinary times, we need intransigence in our commitment to democratic principles. In a polarized era, we need especially to make a priority of the principle that “my side will accept the results if we lose.” The COVID-19 pandemic, however, makes clear that we will need to adapt our methods of political contestation and participation. The danger lies in a temptation to be flexible in our commitments to democratic principles, or narrowly inflexible in our insistence on keeping old rules.
Powers is an expert in comparative politics who focuses on immigration, global poverty and Latin American politics.