VIDEO: Remembering Mario Cuomo

Here’s Why Late Liberal Legend Mario Cuomo’s Epic 1984 Speech On Economic Inequality Is More Important Than Ever

By Kerry-anne Mendoza

Mario Cuomo, the three-time Democratic Governor of New York, died just hours before his son Andrew was inaugurated for a second term as governor. The great man may have passed, but his words live on.

Cuomo, 82, died of heart failure overnight, after a long and distinguished political career during which he refused a number of proposals to seek the US presidency.

The New York Times described him as a “liberal beacon” who “commanded the attention of the country with a compelling public presence.” Nothing illustrates this more than his 1984 Convention Speech, in which he railed against Ronald Reagan’s ‘Shining City on a Hill’ version of the United States.

Reagan had recently lambasted Americans who were afraid for their financial futures:

“The President said that he didn’t understand that fear. He said, “Why, this country is a shining city on a hill.” And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.”

But Cuomo pointed to another America:

“Mr. President, you ought to know that this nation is more a ‘Tale of Two Cities’ than it is just a ‘Shining City on a Hill.'”

These two Americas still exist. America has not recovered from the rise in economic inequality ushered in by Reaganomics.

US income inequality is at its greatest for nearly a century and is rising, as the income gap between the bottom 90% and top 1% of Americans reaches its largest since 1928.

According to research by UC Berkeley, 1928 saw the top 1% of American’s receive 23.9% of all pre-tax income, and the bottom 90% get 50.7%. By 1944, the impacts of redistributive efforts such as Roosevelt’s New Deal, saw this gap close dramatically; the share of the top 1% fell to 11.3% and the bottom 90% saw their share of income grow to 67.5%. 

The gap continued to close until the late 1970’s, with the increasing gap since returning the US to 1928 levels this year.

So what changed?

Primarily, the ascendance of neoliberal economic policies put forward by the likes of US neoliberal economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School (and championed by Reagan), who considered redistributive policies, and other state interference in markets as a barrier to, not bringer of equality. Friedman once wrote:

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.… On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.[1]”

Friedman was wrong. Economic inequality matters, because inequality of income translates to inequality of outcome.

The UC Berkeley research supports the view that Friedman’s assertion was incorrect. This point is underscored by evidence of economic inequality produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). What is particularly useful about the OECD data, is that it compares countries before and after redistributive policies such as taxes are applied. 

In the case of the US, the gap in absolute income compares favorably with other developed countries – the US being 10^th most unequal. But after accounting for taxes and transfers, the US rose to the second most unequal society. Conversely, Ireland begins with the largest gap in incomes, yet applies redistributive policies to draw it down to 10^th most unequal. 

As Friedman argued that freedom was synonymous with equality of outcomes, not incomes – his point might still stand, except that inequality of incomes can be shown to equate to inequality of outcomes.

In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson (Professor of Epidemiology at Nottingham University, UK) charts data that proves societies that are more equal are healthier, happier societies. By comparing life expectancies, mortality rates and other health indicators, Wilkinson demonstrated a correlation between inequality of income and inequality of health outcomes.

Wilkinson’s paper, and a replication of his findings by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, characterized those outcomes as an inequality in life expectancy, rate of death and overall physical and mental health. 

Additional indicators of quality of life and social mobility, highlighted in both papers, were unequal outcomes in educational attainment, likelihood of conviction and incarceration for crimes, and an array of others, which might point to a causal link between income inequality and inequality of outcomes.

Proving such a causal link is notoriously fraught with complexities and uncertainties, however, several studies have sought to assess the independent impact of inequality on health and social problems. 

One such study (Lynch et al, 1998) suggested that loss of life as a direct result of the impacts of income inequality in the US during 1990 was equal to the combined loss of life due to lung cancer, diabetes, motor vehicle accidents, HIV-related causes, suicide and homicide. 

Economic inequality is also hereditary; a social inheritance passed from parent to child. Research by Gregory Clark of the University of California, found data to suggest that in the same time period that neoliberal economic policies expanded the economic inequality gap, the rate of social mobility (increased incomes and outcomes by successive generations) declined for the first time in 1000 years.

It is this reality that conservatives and neoliberals world over simply cannot face of their economic system. Mario Cuomo railed against these ivory tower advocates of the status quo in 1984, and his words ring true today:

“…if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe — Maybe…if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe…if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn’t afford to use.

President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.”

For Americans, and citizens across the world, outside the economic elite, rising economic inequality means rising inequality of health and well-being; and their inherited disadvantage is proving a barrier to improving not only their circumstances, but those of generations to come. True in 1984, true today – and it is truly sad that one of modern history’s most committed opponents to economic inequality is no more.

Watch the video of Cuomo’s speech from 1984: 

Kerry-AnneKerry-anne Mendoza is a writer and activist. After a career as a management consultant holding senior positions in Banking, Health and Local Government - she gave it all up to live in a tent at Occupy London and has been writing ever since. She is based in the UK.