Wondering about Wealth

The Synchroblog topic this month is “extreme economic inequality”. Since I’m not an economist, don’t really like numbers, have other things I’d much rather write about, I was tempted to let this topic pass.

But I’m afraid, as I think and pray about it, that this may be one of the most important topics of this election cycle, this decade, maybe of my remaining lifetime.

Economic inequality isn’t a new thing. There have always been rich and poor.

But we seem to be in a new place. The income gap between rich and poor is the greatest it’s been in decades. There are plenty of statistics on this –Forbes, Reuters, the Economist. Choose your favorite financial source and take a look at the troubling graphs.

But the real issue, from what I can see, isn’t income, but wealth. Wealth - net worth - can be defined as financial assets (stocks, bonds, savings) plus real assets (primarily housing) minus debt. Credit Suisse, a multinational finance group, provides some interesting data in their 2011 Global Wealth Report: 

• The average net worth, globally, in 2011 was $51,000 USD (that’s US dollars).
• But the median net worth, globally, was $4,200. In other words, half of the world’s population has a net worth of $4,200 or less.
• The top 10%, globally, has net worth of $82,000 or more.
• The top 1% has net worth of  $712,000 or more.
• The richest 10% owns 84% of the world’s assets.
• The top 1% owns 44% of the world’s assets.
• The bottom half owns just 1% of the world’s assets. 

The report discusses “Ultra High Net Worth individuals”  (UHNW), noting, without explanation, that “to assemble details of the pattern of wealth holdings above USD 1 million requires a high degree of ingenuity. The usual sources of wealth data – official statistics and sample surveys – become increasingly incomplete and unreliable at high wealth levels.”  Is this because the very wealthy hide their assets and their earnings? Is it because their wealth is in off-shore tax havens, invisible to all eyes but their own?

For those with net worth from 50 million and upward, “very little is known about the global pattern of asset holdings.” What is known is that “the United States has by far the  greatest number of members of the top 1%  global wealth group, accounting for 41% of those with wealth exceeding USD 10 million and 32% of the world’s billionaires. The number of UHNW individuals with wealth above USD 50 million is six times that of the next country . . .Although comparable data on the past are sparse, it is almost certain that the number of UHNW individuals is considerably greater than a decade ago. . . [N]otwithstanding the credit crisis, the past decade has been especially conducive to the establishment of large fortunes.”

I’m not an accountant, economist, or historian. But what seems clear, in these terse financial statistics, is that a small handful of very wealthy Americans have been busily consolidating their wealth at the expense not only of their fellow Americans, but at the expense of the poor and struggling in nations around the globe.

In trying to understand this, I came across a Bill Moyer interview with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner Take All Politics, a recent book investigating this consolidation of wealth. Here’s just a hint of what the authors, and book, have to say:

JACOB HACHER: these large shifts in our economy had been propelled in part by what government has done, say deregulating the market, the financial markets, to allow wealthy people to gamble with their own and other peoples' money, and ways to put all of us at risk, but allow them to make huge fortunes.

And at the same time, when those risks have become apparent, there has been a studious effort on the part of political leaders to try to protect against government stepping in and regulating or changing the rules.

BILL MOYERS: You write, we have a government that's been promoting inequality, and at the same time, as you just said, failing to counteract it. This has been going on, you write, 30 years or more. And here's the key sentence: Step by step, and debate by debate, our public officials have rewritten the rules of the economy in ways that favor the few at the expense of the many.

The Price of Big Oil

As Hacker and Pierson make clear, as has been made clear by others before them, money equals influence equals power equals money, and as money, influence and power become more and more concentrated in the hands of the few, real democracy, real justice, real opportunity disappear.              

Picture a Monopoly game. Your opponent owns the utilities, the railroads, all the properties, and has two hotels on each property. He’s rewritten the rules so every time he passes GO he collects $20,000, while every time you pass GO you collect $20.  There’s no money left in the bank, so he’s written elaborate IOUs from the bank to himelf. Each time around the board he writes another IOU.

Are you having fun? Do you have a come-back plan? Are you ready to quit?

Profit comes from somewhere. Assets have some connection back to the material world.  What happens when foreign investors own the best farm land in Africa? What happens when foreign corporations determine what happens to mountains, forests, oil fields in small hungry nations?

Bolivia v. Bechtel

What happens when international financiers pressure desperate countries to open their markets to companies like Monsanto, or to sell their water supply to private corporations? What happens when debt-ridden communities sell their hospitals, airports, bridges, schools, prisons?

Are we really hoping the new owners and investors will, from the goodness of their hearts, subsidize these efforts to serve the common good? A short reading of the water wars of Bolivia might be instructive, and a growing body of research makes clear what should be obvious to all but the most determined libertarian: privatization of public resource yields unchecked profit for the investor, higher cost for the public, greater suffering for those already struggling to survive.

I don’t hear our Christian leaders speaking out on this, but the Old Testament prophets had plenty to say about justice and injustice, and about those who become wealthy at the expense of the poor:

“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.”

“The plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?” 

“You do as you please, and exploit all your workers.”

 “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice."

“They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. “

“You take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from your neighbors.”

“The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice.”

Is this something we should be talking about, praying about?

WaterJustice.org

Should we be asking our representatives to explain their preferential treatment of the rich?

Should we be organizing as citizens to demand justice – not for ourselves – but for those being forced out of their homes, bankrupted by their hospital bills?

Should we be paying attention to the ultra high net worth individuals whose profits are maximized at the expense of child slavery, sweat shops, misuse of resources stolen from indigenous people who lack the power to stop them?

Should we be wondering where those graphs will end? Where the consolidation of income and power will lead? What happens when not just 44%, but 100%, of the assets are held in the hands of the wealthiest one percent?

In Isaiah 1 the prophet, himself a grandson, nephew, cousin of kings, one of Judah’s wealthy one percent, explains to his people that God is not convinced by their offerings, their spiritual words, their observance of feasts, their religious gatherings. According to Isaiah, here’s what God has to say. The words echo across thousands of years, timeless, clear, convicting:

Stop doing wrong: Learn to do right; seek justice.
   Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;
   plead the case of the widow.

I’m not sure yet how to do that, but, as Isaiah says, maybe it’s time to learn.

As always, your comments are welcome. Click on the ___comments link for the comment box to appear.

This post is part of Synchroblog, a group of Christian bloggers posting on a common topic. Other posts about extreme income inequality are listed below:

Marta Layton - Fear Leads to Anger. Anger Leads to hate …

Kathy Escobar - Pawn Shops, Empty Refrigerators, The Long Hill Up

Glenn Hager - Shrinking The Gap

Jeremy Myers - Wealth Distribution

Liz Dyer - The First Step Is Admitting There Is A Problem

Ellen Haroutunian -Economic Inequality: Coming Back To Our Senses 

K. W. Leslie -  Wealth, Christians, and Justice. 
Abbie Watters – My Confession

Steve Hayes - Notes from underground: Obscenity

Whose Seed? Whose Food?

In January, seed catalogues start arriving in my mailbox: Burpees, Gurney’s, Stark Bros, others. I like to page through, thinking about what I might plant, marveling at the varieties of tomatoes, squash, peppers.

This year, though, my thoughts have been turning in a different direction. Last weekend I helped a local group host a screening of The Corporation, a sobering film about the role of multinational corporations and their impact on food supply, energy policy, rights of workers, and a wide range of other important topics.

One segment of the movie describes global agribusiness Monsanto’s sale of Bt cotton to illiterate, traditional farmers in India. In 1998, the World Bank forced India to open its seed sector to multinational corporations like Monsanto. Monsanto promised that its patented, genetically modified cotton would yield huge increases in returns and allow a decrease in the amount of pesticide used. Farmers were provided loans to shift to the new seed. They quickly discovered that Bt cotton required far more pesticide than previous varieties, needed twice as much water as traditional cotton, and that they would be prosecuted if they tried to save seed to plant the following year. The harvest yields were not large enough to cover the increased costs. In fact, most farmers found their yields were smaller.

Farmers who believed Monsanto promotions found themselves deep in debt, without seed for the new year ahead and without funds to buy more seed. For Indian cotton farmers, the margin was always slim, with seed, crop, and climate held in fragile balance. Since the introduction of Monsanto’s seeds, that balance has disappeared. More than 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide under the weight of crushing debt. In 2010, the Indian National Crime Records Bureau estimated that 46 farmers were killing themselves each day – one suicide every 30 minutes.

Monsanto’s disruption of traditional farming methods, in India and countries around the globe, goes far beyond false advertising and terminator seeds (seeds genetically altered so that the next generation of seed is sterile). While buying up seed companies large and small, Monsanto has also been applying for patents of traditionally grown crops that have been selected over centuries for disease or pest resistance. At the same time, company enforcers have been suing farmers, in the US and other countries, whose farms show signs of pollination from Monsanto patented plants. Since pollen can be carried by bees, or travel on the wind, and since seed itself can drift, Monsanto patented variants can show up in neighboring fields. Hundreds of farmers have lost to Monsanto in court, with hundreds more settling out of court rather than face bankruptcy in the face of legal fees. As the company patents seed traditionally passed on from farmer to farmer, farmers around the world can now be sued for growing the same plants they’ve grown for years.

For over half a century,  Monsanto has been working to control markets, and has been marketing products with false promises. Monsanto produced and marketed Agent Orange –the herbicide used during the Vietnam War. While Monsanto said it was non-toxic and could be sprayed safely to deforest large tracts of jungle growth, the chemical killed and maimed hundreds of thousands and caused an epidemic of miscarriages, stillbirths, and horrifying birth defects among the people of Vietnam.

Monsanto was also responsible for marketing and manufacturing DDT, promising the chemical was completely harmless to humans and other creatures. DDT was eventually banned in the US, but not before the bald eagle and osprey were almost extinct.

Roundup is another popular Monsanto product, the most widely used herbicide in the United States.  About 100 million pounds are applied to U.S. farms and lawns every year. According to Monsanto, Roundup is bio-degradeable, non-toxic, and completely safe for birds and animals. According to independent researchers in a variety of countries, Roundup’s combination of ingredients can cause cancer, tumors, and birth defects. 

Another Monsanto invention –recombinant bovine growth hormone – rGBH (also called rBST, or Prosilic), is marketed to dairy farmers to increase milk production. The testing period in the US was only ninety days. According to Monsanto, “there’s nothing to worry about.” When a team of investigative reporters found that there were, in fact, health implications to consider, Monsanto bullied Fox News into killing that report. Canada, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and other countries have banned rGBH. In the US, Monsanto fought consumer requests to have rGBH milk labeled, even pushing laws banning organic dairy farmers from advertising or labeling “no rGBH” milk.

Monsanto has a reputation for saying “this is harmless,” without doing the necessary research to be sure that’s true. Untested Monsanto products have left a wide swath of misery in countries around the world.

Which brings me back to my seed catalogs. As Monsanto buys up smaller seed companies and introduces unlabeled genetically modified seed, how do I know what I’m growing? The Monsanto seed monopoly is hard to track, but food activists believe the company now controls 97% of the world’s maize market, and 95% of the global cottonseed supply. Seed prices are skyrocketing, as Monsanto exercises control over the supply.

Trying to sort out the implications of the Monsanto seed monopolies and the introduction of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), here’s what I’ve discovered:  

  

• Genetically engineered foods can contain genes derived from bacteria, viruses, insects, fish, animals, or unrelated, sometimes toxic, plants.
• 93 percent of US soy, cotton, and canola seed planted in the US in 2010 was genetically engineered.
• 86 percent of field corn and, according to Monsanto, half of the sweet corn planted in the US this past season was genetically modified.
• 70 to 80 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves–from soda to soup, crackers to condiments–contain genetically engineered ingredients.
• Any American meat not labeled “certified organic” or “non-GMO” carries traces of GMOs, since corn and soy are the primary feed grains.
• Some strawberries, citrus, bananas and papayas, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet peppers, yellow squash, and zucchini are genetically modified. They aren't labeled. 
• “Natural” foods are not regulated. They usually contain less, or no, artificial flavors, colors or sweeteners, but can contain GMOs. 

I’ve been wondering, for years now, why there are so many mystery illnesses that didn’t seem to exist when I was younger, or which occurred with much less frequency: autism, Alzheimer’s, asthma, food allergies of every kind, chronic fatigue, persistent acne, unexplained digestive disorders. Biologists and physicians around the globe are tying these to the untested, undisclosed additives and alterations in our food.

GMOs have been flooding the market in the US for the past fifteen years and the upswing in most of these ailments, along with increases in some kinds of cancers and tumors, tracks almost exactly with the increase in GMOs. As a result of proliferating health concerns, and ongoing research, almost fifty countries now insist that any genetically modified food be labeled; some nations ban all GMOs, including honey from bees in countries like ours where GMOs are permitted.

“Nonsense,” says Monsanto. “Nothing to worry about.”

At what point does this become my concern? Should I care about what happens to cotton farmers in India? Rice farmers in China? Corn farmers in Haiti?

Should I sign on in support of organic farmers here in the US, facing Monsanto in court this week in the opening hearing of a lawsuit, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto, challenging Monsanto’s abusive seed patenting practices and struggling to keep the organic food movement alive?

Should I join the many health and food democracy groups begging the FDA to require that GMOs be labeled, so those afflicted with mystery illnesses can shop with greater confidence and protect themselves from the harm of altered foods??

In 2 Corinthians, Paul urged the Corinthian Christians to express their support of their struggling brothers and sisters in Macedonia. He reminded them that as they reached out with generosity and concern: “he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.”

In all the talk about seeds, GMOs, farmers, I find myself thinking about the amazing gift of seed, the dangers of selling tampered seed without years of careful research, and the disaster waiting for all of us if Monsanto and its agribusiness colleagues are allowed to continue putting profit before human health and sustainable farm practices.

The tipping point in all this will be an informed American public speaking out, not only on behalf of our own safe food supply, but on behalf of small farmers here and around the world.

Want some action points?

Express support for the organic farmers in their hearing this week against Monsanto:   Add your voice

Ask the FDA to require GMOs to be labeled:  Just Label It

Download a non-GMO shopping guide as an ebook, iPhone app, or pdf file, and vote with your dollars for GMO-free food.  Shopping guide.

As always, your thoughts, suggestions and comments are welcome.