Point of View: Long May He Rave

I had finished reading of the last linotype machine operator at The New York Times, who’d quietly taken his leave last week at the age of 78, declining to be interviewed on his way out, and dreamed of the days when unions held some sway.

Of course those were the days of the middle class, when one wage earner per household sufficed. There was some balance then between the plebes and patricians. It’s no longer the case, which is why, I suppose, I’ve been standing up and cheering when Bernie Sanders speaks. Long may he rave.

I’ve belonged to a union only once, yet have always been a fan. For three weeks one summer, I was a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — a period during which, from 3 to 11 p.m., I watched, with rubber gloves on, pipes endlessly descend into and out of a sherardizing bath in a plant in Ambridge, Pa., for which tedium (interrupted every now and then by union-assured breaks) I was handsomely paid — probably better-paid in real terms than ever since. Those were the days when a union could shut you down. 

Since then, inequality has crept on and on and on on little cat feet, to the point where most of the money is in a very few hands. Ben Franklin famously (at least to me) said that when one had amassed enough, the excess should be repatriated. Instead, nowadays, lucre is expatriated, to Panama or Switzerland. It’s treasonous, frankly. 

So, let’s redistribute the excess — a bit of it, anyway — through fiscal policy primarily. Also limit executive pay to a certain percentage of what the lowest-paid worker makes. Readjust the scales. 

I think people would remain ambitious, I don’t think raising taxes on the rich would sap our national resolve, our preternatural inventiveness. As was the case in the old days, when upper incomes were taxed a lot more than today, and milk and diapers were delivered to your door, the more you made the more you got to keep. I’m not an out-and-out leveler, I just think, as Bernie Sanders has said, that we can do better. We can be a fairer, less greedy, I’ve-got-mine society.

Of course that brings us to the inconvenient truth that Bernie Sanders, despite his marvelous, invigorating campaign, will not be the next president, nor probably even the next vice president. Presumably his voice will continue to be heard in the land — it seems that it’s that way we’re tending, toward a more united rather than divided society.

After all, freedom’s just another word for too much stuff to lose.