Workingman's Constitution - NYTimes.com: "The distributive tradition has evolved, but its gist is simple and durable: you can’t have a republican government, and certainly not a constitutional democracy, amid gross material inequality.
That’s because gross economic inequality produces an oligarchy in which the wealthy rule. Insofar as it produces a lack of basic social goods at the bottom, gross inequality also destroys the material independence and security that democratic citizens require to participate on a roughly equal footing in political and social life. And access to such goods is essential to standing and respect in one’s own eyes and those of the community.
In the face of the court’s new constitutional offerings to the assault on the welfare and regulatory state, liberals must remind Americans of the constitutional promises and commitments that led us to create that state in the first place. They must remind lawmakers that there are constitutional stakes in attending to the economic needs and aspirations of ordinary Americans, their dread of poverty and their worries that mounting inequalities are eroding our democracy and its promises of fairness and opportunity."
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