No common good?
The common good is taking a beating. Economic inequality, to cite only the most important measure of social health, has accelerated dramatically in the U.S. since the early 1980s. One percent of the U.S. population holds between 34 and 39 percent of the nation's wealth; the top 5 percent hold between 66 and 72 percent of the wealth; and the bottom 50 percent hold 2 percent of the wealth. The share of America's income held by the top 1 percent of the population has more than doubled since 1980, while the bottom 90 percent has, since 1975, coped with flat wages and mounting debt.
How could a nation possessing a strong tradition of middle-class democracy allow the middle class to be eviscerated? How could a democratic electorate support policies that turned American society into a pyramid, devised lift-the-drawbridge municipal arrangements, decimated public schools and, until recently, been willing to leave 40 million Americans without health insurance? Faced with corporate flight to low-tax and cheap-labor markets, why would Americans support tax incentives for corporations to ship their jobs overseas?
These questions have been asked before. They were asked poignantly in 1985 by sociologist Robert Bellah and his colleagues Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton in the best-selling book Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. In the wake of Ronald Reagan's massive electoral victory in 1980 over Walter Mondale, a symbol of New Deal liberalism, the Bellah group challenged Reagan's campaign slogan that it was "morning in America."
