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Why Economic Inequality Is the Biggest Threat to Democracy | Sally Kohn | TED
Why Economic Inequality Is the Biggest Threat to Democracy | Sally Kohn | TED
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자막 (298)
0:04
250 years ago,
0:09
just under a mile from here,
0:11
Thomas Jefferson wrote
0:13
one of the most consequential documents
0:16
in American history.
0:18
Now, the Declaration of Independence wasn't perfect,
0:23
just like the guy who wrote it,
0:24
and the country it created weren't perfect either.
0:28
But it set us on this path, right?
0:31
This beautiful, audacious, complicated path that's still evolving.
0:40
And the Declaration of Independence still gives me chills.
0:45
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,
0:49
that all are created equal,
0:52
that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights,
0:56
and that among these are life,
0:59
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
1:02
It's good, right?
1:04
(Laughter)
1:05
Did you get chills?
1:07
(Laughter)
1:09
I mean, yeah, I changed it a little, OK, from --
1:12
(Laughter)
1:13
"All men are created equal"
1:15
to "all are created equal"
1:17
because it makes it better, right?
1:19
Thank you.
1:21
(Applause)
1:23
And that's the point I want to talk with you about today,
1:27
that to live up to its promise,
1:29
we have evolved democracy in the past
1:33
and it needs to evolve again,
1:36
not only so that we can feel our votes count,
1:42
but so we can count democracy's real benefits
1:48
in our lives,
1:50
including in our wallets.
1:53
So a couple of years ago,
1:54
a philanthropic foundation in the United States
1:57
asked me to do some research
1:59
to find out why authoritarianism was gaining ground around the globe.
2:04
So I interviewed
2:06
civic leaders in West Africa and scholars in Eastern Europe
2:10
and democracy leaders in Latin America.
2:12
And I asked them,
2:14
What's authoritarianism getting so right?
2:17
These leaders that are pushing people and places away from democracy,
2:21
what are these authoritarians doing that's so effective?
2:27
And pretty much everyone I talked to said I was asking the wrong question --
2:31
that authoritarianism wasn’t surging because of anything it was doing right,
2:37
but because of what democracy was getting wrong.
2:42
That stopped me in my tracks.
2:45
The way they put it,
2:46
authoritarianism was like an opportunistic disease
2:49
that could only take root when democracy was weak.
2:54
And in case you haven't been paying attention --
2:56
(Laughter)
2:59
Democracy is kind of on life support.
3:01
So according to Freedom House,
3:04
only about 20 percent of the world's population
3:09
lives in a country currently that can be considered free.
3:13
And dissatisfaction with democracy is rising worldwide.
3:18
In the US, for instance,
3:21
about three out of five Americans say they are currently dissatisfied
3:25
with how democracy is working.
3:27
Why?
3:29
The answer came from a conversation I had with Kwasi Prempeh.
3:33
So Kwasi runs the Ghana Center for Democratic Development.
3:37
Now Ghana only won independence from colonial rule in 1957,
3:42
so not that long ago,
3:44
but long enough that most people in Ghana today
3:48
don't remember a time before democracy.
3:53
But what they do know
3:56
is that they're struggling economically right now under democracy.
4:04
And so, as Kwasi put it, they very understandably ask,
4:10
"What has democracy done for me lately?"
4:16
His point
4:18
is that democracies that do not deliver broad-based opportunity
4:23
are vulnerable to autocratic capture.
4:28
And research backs this up.
4:30
So Susan Stokes is a political science professor at the University of Chicago.
4:34
She has looked at variables for why democracy erodes in some countries,
4:40
but not others.
4:42
Income inequality
4:45
is the overwhelming variable in democratic backsliding,
4:51
so much so that Stokes said short of unplugging their computers,
4:54
they couldn't make it go away.
4:56
Now I want to be really clear about something.
4:58
In the richest country in the world,
5:02
a country that boasts about being a land of opportunity for all,
5:06
ensuring meaningful economic opportunity for all
5:11
is the right thing to do.
5:14
It is the moral thing to do,
5:17
and that is enough of a reason to do it.
5:21
And it's practical.
5:26
Economic justice is how we save democracy.
5:31
(Applause)
5:38
So I'm feeling like this might be as much of a revelation to you
5:43
as it was to me,
5:45
or at least it was maybe more of a revelation to me
5:47
than it was to you,
5:48
because we were used to, we have, for our 250 years,
5:53
thought of democracy and economic opportunity
5:56
as distinct and separate.
5:58
I mean, obviously interrelated,
6:00
and for many of us equally important,
6:02
but separate.
6:04
They're not.
6:06
They're two sides of the same coin.
6:10
Because if democracy doesn't deliver
6:14
meaningful economic opportunity,
6:17
democracy starts to feel meaningless.
6:22
And that makes authoritarianism and other forms of government more attractive,
6:26
not in and of themselves,
6:29
but by default,
6:31
because democracy is defaulting on its promise.
6:37
So I said before that we've evolved democracy in the past,
6:41
and it needs to evolve again.
6:42
I want us to think about democracy in phases.
6:46
Democracy 1.0 is that initial idea
6:50
that the people
6:53
should have the power in a political system,
6:56
not kings,
6:58
not empires,
6:59
not corporations,
7:01
the people.
7:03
It was a radical idea for its time.
7:06
Honestly, it's still really radical.
7:09
But as we know, that was just the beginning.
7:11
Democracy 2.0
7:16
is the phase where we expand
7:18
who is included in democracy, who gets to participate,
7:23
who counts as the people.
7:27
In the United States,
7:29
that process has been long.
7:32
It has taken generations of struggle --
7:35
abolition, suffrage, civil rights --
7:38
to make democracy more inclusive,
7:40
to say that everyone gets an equal vote
7:45
because everyone matters equally.
7:50
The brilliant scholar Isabel Wilkerson argues that, in fact,
7:53
the US wasn't even really a democracy until 1965,
7:57
when the Voting Rights Act became law.
7:59
And ever since then there has been an aggressive movement
8:04
to roll back that progress.
8:06
While we should be making more progress on democracy 2.0,
8:12
far-right extremists,
8:13
aided and abetted by the Supreme Court,
8:17
have dismantled the Voting Rights Act
8:20
and are trying to take us backwards.
8:24
So realistically,
8:27
while it makes sense to question
8:29
whether we even have a democracy right now in the United States,
8:33
either way,
8:35
we still tend to focus more
8:40
on democracy as a process
8:44
and not enough on what democracy produces.
8:50
On democratic outcomes.
8:53
We think and argue and talk a lot
8:55
about who gets to be included in democracy,
8:59
but not enough about why.
9:03
Why do we have a democracy in the first place?
9:08
Answering that question --
9:10
defining the goal of democracy --
9:15
that's democracy 3.0.
9:20
Democracy 3.0 says
9:26
that if all of us were truly created equal,
9:32
and if all of us truly get
9:35
to participate equally,
9:39
then the outcomes of our democracy
9:42
should be more equitable, too, right?
9:47
More widely shared and benefiting everyone.
9:53
(Applause)
9:59
But --
10:01
(Laughter)
10:02
Did you hear it coming?
10:03
(Laughter)
10:04
'Cause there's a but.
10:07
In the US today, your zip code predicts your life expectancy,
10:11
your race, your wealth.
10:13
And your parents’ income predicts your future.
10:16
That ain't democratic.
10:19
And it's getting worse.
10:20
The top one percent of Americans control as much wealth
10:25
as the entire bottom 90 percent of the country combined.
10:33
And according to one source,
10:35
CEOs now make 281 times more
10:42
than average workers.
10:45
281 times more?
10:49
What the hell is wrong with us?
10:53
Are CEOs 281 times more talented?
10:58
Are they 281 times more deserving?
11:02
Are they 281 times harder-working than the rest of us?
11:07
Look, we can use the word democracy all we like, but let's be clear.
11:11
We've really got more of an oligarchy or a kleptocracy.
11:19
Or maybe a monarchy where the kings are billionaires
11:22
and reality TV stars, or sometimes both.
11:26
(Laughter)
11:32
Democracy means
11:35
that the kids of house cleaners and mechanics
11:39
have the same opportunities in life
11:43
as the kids of lawyers and tech execs.
11:46
Democracy means that if you work hard,
11:49
you can feed your family and afford a place to live.
11:52
Democracy means
11:54
that power and profit
11:58
are distributed democratically.
12:00
That is democracy 3.0.
12:05
(Applause)
12:11
So for those who maybe didn't clap --
12:13
(Laughter)
12:18
This may be the part in the talk
12:21
where some of y'all are getting a little bit nervous.
12:23
You hear "economic democracy"
12:25
and you think it means enforced sameness.
12:29
It does not.
12:31
Democracy 3.0 doesn't mean everybody gets an equal house
12:36
and an equal income and equal outcomes.
12:40
Democracy 3.0 simply means
12:45
that everyone gets an equal chance
12:48
at the American dream.
12:51
Are you with me?
12:53
(Applause)
12:57
OK, so how do we actually get to democracy 3.0?
13:01
Well, the first thing is a shift in mindset.
13:04
To start seeing political democracy
13:06
and economic democracy as mutually intertwined,
13:10
which means we need to advance economic justice
13:14
not only for basic fairness, right?
13:19
But because that’s the way we strengthen democracy.
13:22
And on a practical level,
13:23
it means that, yeah, to strengthen democracy,
13:26
we need to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act,
13:32
but also we need to raise wages,
13:37
and we need to get money out of politics,
13:40
and we need to tax wealth more fairly.
13:42
(Applause)
13:44
And --
13:46
(Applause)
13:47
And democracy 3.0 means
13:52
that just like voters should have equal voice and power,
13:56
workers should have equal voice and power,
14:00
and democracy at work means unions.
14:04
(Applause and cheers)
14:07
In fact, the first wisp of democracy 3.0 was at the last turn of the century,
14:13
the last time our country got fed up with extreme wealth and extreme poverty.
14:19
That's why we created unions, which helped create the middle class.
14:23
And then we created a social safety net,
14:26
things like Social Security and eventually Medicare.
14:29
Taxing wealth to pay for programs
14:32
that would prevent extreme poverty and suffering.
14:36
We just need to do it again --
14:39
plus do more --
14:41
things like universal health care for all.
14:45
(Applause)
14:47
And more democratic ways of owning businesses,
14:52
like employee ownership.
14:55
And we need to make sure
14:57
that new technologies actually improve our lives
15:02
instead of undermining them.
15:05
(Cheers and applause)
15:10
Look.
15:12
The threat to end our democracy
15:17
also contains within it
15:20
an invitation to make it better.
15:22
But our vision cannot be
15:25
just to go back to the way things were a few elections ago.
15:30
We have a moral and practical imperative
15:34
to future-proof democracy by helping each other.
15:41
By delivering real political voice
15:46
and real economic power
15:50
to we, the people,
15:53
all of us.
15:55
Because if we don't,
15:59
if democracy doesn't deliver broad-based opportunity,
16:02
people will eventually trade it for something they think will.
16:06
And history shows us what happens next.
16:09
It's not good for any of us.
16:12
Democracy contains within it the tools for its own demise,
16:17
but also its renewal.
16:21
But if we want a better country, a fairer country,
16:26
we're going to have to fight for it.
16:28
We, the people, demand
16:33
that our politics and our economy work way better
16:39
for us and everyone around us,
16:43
because democracy can be more
16:47
than something we do every couple of years in a voting booth,
16:52
but something we can eat
16:54
and something we can live in
16:57
and something we can put in our pockets
17:00
every single day.
17:02
That is the only way we are going to save ourselves,
17:09
our country,
17:11
and the ideals we hold so dear.
17:16
Democracy 1.0 gives life to a radical idea.
17:22
Democracy 2.0 expands liberty to more and more of us.
17:30
Democracy 3.0 can make the pursuit of happiness
17:36
possible for all.
17:41
Thank you.
17:42
(Cheers and applause)
Why Economic Inequality Is the Biggest Threat to Democracy | Sally Kohn | TED - Video học tiếng Anh
