Zorhan Mamdani proclaims to be a Democratic Socialist. What exactly does that mean? Well, as mayor he wants to provide taxpayer-supported public transit, so people can get around. He wants to provide publicly funded child care, so parents can get to work. He wants to provide public grocery stores, so people can eat. He wants to promote affordable housing, so people have a decent place to live. In short, he wants the government to respond to the needs of the people. My god, he’s terrible! We, the citizens of Jamestown know first hand, the value of public services that put the needs of the people first.

I recently read that one man, Elon Musk, will earn more than every elementary school teacher in the country, combined. I have one question, “What kind of screwed up society produces these results?” A society that has warped capitalism to be not just a means of the efficient distribution of goods and services but has corrupted capitalism to create a plutocratic government to serve the current wants of the wealthy, not the current and future needs of the people. We have allowed the billionaires to take control over us. They direct our political “representatives” to do their bidding. They control the media that filters what information we have available. They control the financial system that we depend on. They ‘manage’ our healthcare systems and food supply. Their control is primarily for their benefit and secondarily, if at all, for ours. The result is a society with extreme income inequality.

Almost 2500 years ago, Aristotle warned that, “A polity with too great a difference between rich and poor inevitably becomes a city not of free men but of slaves and masters.” He argued that a strong middle class is essential for stability, since extremes of wealth create factional conflict. In Politics, he says that democracies collapse when the poor feel exploited; oligarchies collapse when the rich fear the poor.

Plato wrote in The Republic that wealth and poverty are both dangerous, and a city should avoid letting citizens become either extremely rich or extremely poor. “There should be neither extreme poverty nor excessive wealth in a state, for both lead to great evil.”

Over the past 2,000 years, many societies with very high inequality have often become unstable, and a single shock was the spark that caused collapse. Across many periods and places, large gaps between rich and poor make societies more fragile, creating grievances, eroding legitimacy, and making it easier for demagogues to recruit supporters. All it takes is a fiscal crisis, military defeat, or famine to produce collapse or revolution.

Adam Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, wrote: “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” He also wrote: “It is not unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” Smith, the ‘father of capitalism’ supported: public education and infrastructure, progressive taxation, limited welfare for those unable to work, and regulations preventing the rich from manipulating policy. (He also was opposed to tariffs.) This suggests that mayor-elect Mamdani might be closer to a true capitalist than a socialist.

Addressing this imbalance will not be easy, but we have done it before. I propose that we return to a time when America, though far from perfect, truly was great. It was made great by a government that used the dynamism of capitalism to produce necessary goods but regulated it to also meet the needs of the people. From 1935 to 1970, America bolted out of the Great Depression, conquered Nazi Germany and Japan, sent astronauts to the moon, then won the Cold War against the Soviet Union. We did this while implementing a whole range of social programs like Social Security, building a national highway network, electrifying most of the country, while implementing banking reform, and creating government agencies to clean up the natural environment.

The Revenue Act of 1940 increased both individual and corporate tax rates in the United States. The corporate tax rate was raised from 19% to 39% and the individual income tax rate went from a low of 4% to a maximum of 79%. By 1950, the maximum personal rate had risen to 91%. The effective rate paid by the ultrarich was, of course, much lower due to financial manipulation, but the result was that there were many fewer of them. Thomas Piketty and Richard Saez show that income inequality in the US during the 20th Century follows a U-shaped pattern; high inequality in the 1910s and 1980s while low from the 1930s to 1970s. In 1928, the top 1% of earners received about 23.9% of all pre-tax income. By 1944, that share had dropped to 11.3%. Since the 1970s, income inequality has steadily risen, again reaching near 23% by 2020.

The 1940s through the 1970s were America’s “Post-War Boom” years. Jobs were plentiful and well-paid, houses and college were affordable. It was the time of the “Greatest Generation.” Tariffs, tax cuts for the billionaires, and cryptocurrency ‘deals’ will only increase inequality and make us weaker. If you truly want to Make America Great Again, do like Mayor Mamdani plans to do; address the real needs of the people and tax the rich.

Tom Meara is a Jamestown resident.