Are You Rich?

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

    (e.e. cummings) 

Last Sunday, sitting in my yard, I saw a Pileated Woodpecker, a beautiful Hooded Warbler, two Hermit Thrush. A Tufted Titmouse hopped around the stumps I use for side tables, then landed briefly on my head: a bucket list moment I didn't even plan.

A young friend asked me once, with incredible seriousness: are you rich?

It depends how you define rich, I answered.

By the standards of Main Line Pennsylvania, where I live, no, I’m not rich.

My husband and I are nowhere near the $450,000 that would put us in the top 1% of U.S. household income (or the $155,000 for the top 10%).

But apparently we have enough annual income to qualify in the global 1%: the cutoff for that is $52,000.

So yes, by most standards, except those of my immediate community, I am rich, rich in ways my great-grandparents would not have imagined.

A recent report described the sharply differing life expectancies for the wealthy and poor in America: 

for men born in 1920, there was a six-year difference in life expectancy between the top 10 percent of earners and the bottom 10 percent. For men born in 1950, that difference had more than doubled, to 14 years. For women, the gap grew to 13 years, from 4.7 years.

For most of the factors that contribute to that gap, including quality health care, clean air and water, access to a reasonably-priced healthy food supply, I fall on the side of the wealthy.

Yes, I’m rich.

But my wealth goes far beyond that: I have Internet access that puts the world at my fingertips, even in my green backyard, and allows communication with friends and family continents away.

I grew up in a state (New York) that believed in educating all its children well and provided funding for college for anyone who cared to go: I can read, write, think, analyze, dream in ways not available to those who grew up with inadequate education.

I am phenomenally wealthy in family and friends: I know people who know people. If I need help, advise, backup, resources, there are friends I can ask, family I can call.

Today is May Day: a day marked in many places with celebration of spring festivals and Maypoles.

It’s also International Workers Day, begun to commemorate and continue the effort of the Haymarket affair of May 4, 1886.   

 

Never heard of it?

You’re not the only one.

Hundreds of thousands of American workers went on strike on May 1, 1886 to demand “an eight hour day with no cut in pay.”

In Chicago, strikes and rallies continued in the following days. On May 4, a rally in support of the eight hour work day escalated into violence when a home-made pipe bomb was thrown into the path of heavily-armed police. Shots were fired wildly in the dark leaving seven police officers and four strikers dead.

Eight men were arrested. Five were sentenced to death. One man committed suicide in his cell; four were hanged. The remaining three were sentenced to life in prison, but pardoned just years later by a governor who described them as victims of  “hysteria, packed juries, and a biased judge.”

We don’t learn much in school about the workers’ movements that bubbled through American and international politics from the earliest days of the industrial revolution.

We forget the great hardship experienced by mill workers, men and women in production lines, coal miners, farm hands.

We often look disparagingly on unions: corrupt, coercive, unresponsive to workers’ needs.

But how much of our current wealth is the fruit of men and women who marched, rallied, stood in picket lines?

Not just wealth in money, but other benefits: eight hour work weeks, disability pay, minimum wage, safe working conditions.

If we knew our history better, we’d know that when workers are ignored, inequality grows. Desperation spurs agitation, which spins toward violence, until a course correction affirms the rights of workers and financial reward is shared more evenly.

That’s a ridiculously simplified version of a neglected piece of history.

And a nod to my immigrant grandfather, Carl Consensus Capra, who saw the damage done to unprotected workers and did what he could to run a union shop. 

I am wealthy, in part, because of the work of my grandfather and many more like him.

An Elizabeth Warren video clip went viral several years ago reminding us all that whatever wealth we have is a gift, no matter how much we claim credit: 

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
 You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
 Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Many of the roads I drive were once routes used by First Nation traders, pushed out of their Delaware homelands. Uwchlan Township, where I live, was founded by Welsh farmers, who bought the land from William Penn. The church where I worshipped this morning was born from a vision shared by a Rosemont pastor and a handful of Paoli families who met to worship in Paoli Inn.

I am blessed, daily, to enjoy the riches handed me by unknown others: roads, buildings, institutions.

I am able to vote because of generations of women who kept that dream alive: writing, marching, rallying, even facing prison time.

In worship this morning I was reminded: my greatest wealth is the grace I receive through Christ’s death and resurrection, mediated through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the testimony of faithful witnesses, the spiritual heritage of a prayerful grandmother. Even there, Elizabeth Warren's words apply: my faith is not something I made myself, earned myself, gave myself.

 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)

I’m sometimes troubled that I should enjoy such wealth when so many others have so little.

I don’t know why I’ve been blessed to live in a time and place where so much is taken for granted, or why I live in such comfort when so many live as refugees, driven from their homes by hunger, war, persecution. 

I do know that riches can vanish through folly, greed, or recurrent injustice.

Money can be misspent or swept away by fraudulent economies.

Democracy can be swallowed into tyranny.

Family, friends, even faith are fragile, easily damaged by deception or neglect.

The best safeguard I know for wealth of every kind is gratitude, generosity, and the grace that pays it forward: that remembers all we have is gift and looks for ways to make the gift available to others.

The one who supplies seed for planting and bread for eating will supply and multiply your seed and will increase your crop, which is righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous in every way. Such generosity produces thanksgiving to God through us.

So yes, I'm rich. And thankful.  

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e.e. cummings

Makers, Takers, and Immoral Wealth Transfer

We’ve been hearing for years now: “47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes.” Memes are hard to trace back, but this one seems to have started with a 2009 report by Tax Policy Center fellow Bob Williams, estimating that 47 % of “tax units” would pay no federal income tax in 2009. That number has shifted from year to year, but the 47% idea appears impervious to fact, and was solidified by launch of a "We are the 53%" Tumblr site: "Those of us who pay for those of you who whine about all of that . . . or that . . . or whatever."

We’ve also been hearing references to “makers and takers.” While this idea dates back as far as Ayn Rand (and probably far beyond that), it was affirmed and publicized by a 2008 book by Peter Schwizer called Makers and Takers: Why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic and envious, whine less . . . and even hug their children more than liberals.” (And yes, that's all part of the title.

A Fox News editorial in July energized the "maker taker" discussion once again:

"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'  Abe Lincoln used those words in 1858 to describe a country that was careening toward civil war. Now we’re a house divided again and another civil war is coming, with the 2012 election as its Gettysburg.
Call it America’s coming civil war between the Makers and the Takers. 

"On one side are those who create wealth, America’s private sector. . .

"On the other are the public employee unions; left-leaning intelligentsia who see the growth of government as index of progress; and the millions of Americans now dependent on government through a growing network of government transfer payments,  from Medicaid and Social Security to college loans and corporate bailouts and handouts (think GM and Solyndra).

"Over the past century America’s private sector has been the source of productivity, innovation, creativity, and growth–and gave us the iPhone and iPad. The public sector has been the engine of entitlement, stagnation, and decline -- and gave us Detroit and the South Bronx.   . . .

"That public sector . . . brought us to the point where 48% of Americans are now on some form of government handout."

New York Times, Business Daily, How Do the 47% Vote?

Arthur Herman’s comments were repeated, reposted, retweeted thousands of times, and the ideas he shared continue to surface in poltical speeches, both private and public. The takers, that lazy 47 or 48%, are ruining our economy, fueling our debt, dependent on government handouts.

Set aside, if you can, the damaging, deliberately divisive image of a coming civil war.

And set aside the misleading suggestion that those who don’t pay federal income taxes don’t pay taxes at all, and the reality that many pay state, local, social security and FICA taxes, and all except the most indigent pay sales taxes.

And set aside the mean-spirited idea that our retired, our young, our disabled, are simply “takers” because our contribution can be accurately measured by whether we pay federal income taxes.

And set aside the strange idea that somehow the “private sector” is always the good guy, and the “public sector” just gets in the way.

Or the mention of "handouts" to GM and Solindra, without honest acknowledgement of far larger handouts to fossil fuel, banks, agribusiness, and a host of other private sector enterprises never questioned by those decrying "the growth of government."

Who, really, are the “makers” and the “takers”?

And which direction is wealth being transferred?

This whole question of entitlements is at the heart of the upcoming election: aren’t we tired of the entitlements of the old, the sick, the poor? Aren’t we angry about grants for low income students, subsidized housing for low income families, nutrition assistance for those who don’t work hard enough to feed the children they brought into this world?

And isn’t it immoral to transfer wealth from one group to another?

There’s the question that interests me most: transfer of wealth. Isn’t that socialism?

We’ve been watching a transfer of wealth on a scale hard to imagine, made possible by globalization and the increasing mobility of the global elite.

Fueled and funded, in large part, by quiet shifts in rules that allow government handouts to those who need them least.

But the transfer isn’t the one “makers and takers” proponents have their spotlights on.

Just consider one small change: the capital-gains tax cut of 2003.

A May, 2003, the House Ways and Means committee reported: “In tax year 2003, the capital-gains tax cut which only covers eight months of the year is worth $30,700 to millionaires, but only $42 to households with incomes between $40,000 and $50,000.”

If the average millionaire saved $30,000 in 8 months, that’s $45,000 for the next full tax year. Not bad for a small tax sleight-of-hand.

Most of the “entitlements” so hotly denounced yield small amounts for the families in question: the average SNAP (nutrition assistance) benefit for a family of four is about $6,000. A maximum Pell Grant for a full-time college student is $5,550.  The maximum SSI (social security income) for a disable individual is about $8,400 a year.

Where’s the outcry for the $45,000 a year in wealth transfer accomplished through the capital gains tax cut?

And that’s for the average millionaire. For those in even higher brackets, the take is far, far greater.

Another wealth transfer to consider: mortgage deductions. Why does the government subsidize home ownership, and at what cost? Who benefits?

Full disclosure: my husband and I own a home. We deduct our mortgage – which gives us a tax break each year of at most $2,000.

If we owned a larger, more expensive home, the break would be bigger: according to a recent Pew Charitable Trust study, families in the highest income categories receive a tax subsidy on average of almost $18,000.

I’m happy to see some of my tax dollars help provide housing for those most in need of it. In fact, yes, I’d be willing to give up my own mortgage deduction to ensure adequate housing for families I know who are currently living in substandard, crowded rentals.

But I’m not happy to think that tax subsidies are incentivizing purchase of second homes, or wasteful McMansions. And puzzled that the same people who object to small contributions to the poor are so unconcerned about very large contributions to the rich.

Last year four thousand families with net earnings of over a million each paid no federal income taxes at all. That’s a wealth transfer of hundreds of thousands per each “tax unit.” Do we care?

The difficulty in all of this is a distaste for numbers, a dislike for taxes, and a willingness to believe that “they” are stealing “my” money.  But who are “they”? And what can I do about it?

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities works hard to make numbers visible: their contributions make clear that “the takers” are not always those struggling hardest to get by, and while there may be some “takers” at the low end of the economic ladder, the biggest takers, and the most dangerous to our economy, are at the other end:

Read that housing benefit chart carefully: last year, the goverment gave $105,000,000,000 - $105 billion - in tax benefits for mortgage deductions. Add all the other housing subsidies together, and the total is less than half that. Who are the takers? Where's the wealth transfer?

The current wealth transfer goes much deeper, though, than tax cuts for the wealthy. I’m still trying to understand: how did it become possible for CEOs to pay themselves hundreds of times more than their workers? Why do workers reap an increasingly small share of profit in companies with strong bottom lines? Why do almost one in three working families still struggle to make ends meet? Who benefits from pushing back worker protections, or holding the line on minimum wages?

Who are the takers: the Walmart employees who make $11.75 an hour, $20,000 per year, often paying a large percentage of their wages for health care benefits, often scheduled week to week, with shifting hours that make a second job impossible?

Or the six heirs to the Walmart fortune, who now have a net worth of 89.5 billion, equal to the bottom 41.5 percent of US families combined.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1904, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” Who benefits from the argument against raising taxes in the upper brackets? Which loopholes are our politicians willing to close, and at what cost, what benefit?

Another Supreme Court justice,  Louis Brandeis, wrote in 1897, “we may have a democracy or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” That's even more true when that great wealth can be used, without limit, to influence elections, platforms, policies.

The Apostle James, two thousand years ago, wrote:

“Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong? If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.”

Givers? There are many ways to give. Money is only one measure of our contribution.

Takers? We all take, some of us humbly, and with gratitude. Some of us on a far greater scale, with a far greater sense of entitlement, and far greater harm to those we take from.

Immoral wealth transfer?  The divide continues to grow. The question James asked the church has never been more relevant: “Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? . . . Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?”


Join the conversation.  Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments.  

This is part of an continuing series about faith and politics: What's Your Platform?

Chocolate Dreams

noukorama,Flickr Creative Commons

I love chocolate. Let me repeat – I LOVE chocolate. In all forms: candy bars, cocoa, cake, frosting.

Over the past fifty years I have bought a LOT of chocolate. I’m fairly sure my first personal purchase was a chocolate cupcake, at the bakery at Four Corners, our neighborhood shopping mecca. Every postcard I sent home from camp was smeared in chocolate – most likely the chocolate coating from the ice cream bars I bought every afternoon in the little camp canteen. My first gift from a boy was a whole box of Reeses miniature peanut butter cups –bought in that same camp store.

In all my purchases of chocolate – bagfuls to throw at youth retreats, bowlfuls to pass at planning seminars or youth group leaders’ meetings – I missed the memo about cocoa sourcing. I didn’t realize – until just last week – that most of our US chocolate is sourced from West African plantations where child labor is the norm, and child slavery is common.

I’m still a little stunned, I confess. I’ve been aware of human trafficking. I’ve been a strong supporter of Fair Trade. I’ve been buying my coffee from farmer’s cooperatives for years – and somehow missed the chocolate story.

In 2001, news reports in the US and UK called attention to child slavery on cocoa farms in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire . Downward pressure on cocoa prices had made it impossible for cocoa farmers to pay their employees; as a result, desperate farmers were using children to harvest crops. Children as young as six were being kidnapped, or sold, or lured into service with the unfulfilled promise that they would be given money at the end of their time of service.

Dark Side of Chocolate 2010

Under pressure from consumers, the major chocolate manufacturers agreed to the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a non-binding document that acknowledged the problem and outlined a plan to address it. The companies agreed that by 2002 they would create enforceable international standards and an independent monitoring system, and would provide funds for a foundation to research and share best practices. They also agreed that by 2005 there would be industry-wide standards of certification ensuring an end to child slavery and abuse of child labor.

A decade later, the protocol deadlines have passed, the cocoa producing regions of the world are even poorer than before, and child slavery has expanded. Last spring, ten years after the signing of the protocol, a study by Tulane University found that more than 1.8 million children in West Africa are involved in cultivating and harvesting cocoa. Estimates are that at a significant percentage of those are actual slaves – numbers range from 100 to 200 thousand. Few attend school. Most are involved in high risk activities, applying dangerous pesticides, carrying heavy loads that leave scarred backs, beaten with bicycle chains or coca branches when they fall behind..

The two largest US firms involved in slave-trade chocolate: Mars and Hersheys.

You know Mars: makers of M&M's, Snickers, Dove, Milky Way, Kudos, and a wide range of other foods and candies. Mars is still owned by the Mars family --  chairman John Franklyn Mars, VP Jacqueline Badger Mars, and former CEO Forrest Mars Jr. Together the Mars siblings are worth forty billion dollars, making their family one of the wealthiest in the world. How much of that wealth was at the expense of children working twelve or more hours a day, with no shoes, no school, little food, no pay?

CNN Chocolate Child Slaves 2010

While Mars has made only small moves toward monitoring cocoa sources for the chocolate they sell in the European Union (but not in the US), the Hershey company has done even less. Hershey is the largest supplier of chocolate in the US - Resse’s. Kisses. Nutrageous. 5th Avenue. Almond Joy. Caramello. Heath. Kit Kat. Mounds. Mr. Goodbar. Rolo. Symphony. Take5. York. Whatchamacallit. The list goes on and on. 


According to a 2011 report by the International Labor Rights Forum, Green America and Global Exchange, “Hershey remains a laggard in its industry on the important issue of child labor. Consumers, businesses, and legislators are increasingly embracing greater transparency and the reduction of labor abuses in supply chains. The most iconic chocolate company in the US … is the lone holdout.” 

Fortunately for chocolate lovers everywhere, there are alternatives, and from now on, I’ll be seeking them out. Equal Exchange has been working with small farmer cooperatives since 1986, and has moved increasingly into cocoa and chocolate production in the past ten years. Equal Exchange is itself worker owned and run, and encourages democratic decision making and shared best practices at every level of their supply chain.

Divine Chocolate is another bright spot in the world of chocolate. The company partners with Kuapa Kokoo, a cooperative of cocoa farmers from Ghana. All cocoa comes from the cooperative, ensuring the farmers fair prices, protection from price volatility, and a say in how the cocoa is produced and marketed.

There are other ethical chocolate companies working hard to treat farmers well and ensure fair wages and education for child workers while providing delicious chocolate. Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and any fair trade or natural food store will offer a selection.

But think for a minute: if you had forty billion dollars (the collective wealth of the Mars siblings), what would it take to change the lives of the children in your supply chain? In a country where a living wage is less than $2 a day, and annual salary is less than $700, it would take $70,000,000 to pay 100,000 children a generous wage. Add some schooling, throw in some shoes, and you won’t even notice it’s missing.  

Green America Chocolate Scorecard

All the big chocolate companies have made gestures toward addressing this problem. International watchdog groups say not nearly enough. The agreement was to have slave trade in chocolate solved years ago. The most recent Tulane report, overseen by the State Department, was that less than 3% of cocoa farmers in West Africa had any awareness at all of a move to address child labor.

Sometimes it feels like it takes too much work to live as an ethical consumer in a profit-mad world. Why should I have to research my chocolate before I eat it? Why should I need to debate pros and cons before I order a cup of hot cocoa? Does it matter where Wegman’s gets the cocoa in their chocolate cakes? What about the chocolate in brownie mix? Just thinking about it exhausts me.

But then I stop to think of the exhaustion of small children, lugging huge bags of cocoa pods on their backs. Of young boys, scaling trees with machetes, swinging tired arms, too often missing and hitting legs instead. Of hungry pre-teen girls, chopping away, day after day, at mountains of cocoa pods.

On the Slave Free Chocolate site, I came across this:

In Conclusion: Circumspectus Orbit. Look around you. If you accept that which you are aware is intrinsically wrong and have influence over, have you not contributed to its existence? You are what you do. . . Willful blindness will not buy divine absolution. That which is ignored will not cease to exist.  Closing one’s eyes serves only to feed the rabid, gaping maw of indifferent, self-serving greed, the continued existence of harsh injustice and the exponential growth of dehumanizing inequality; and in the process . . . makes us responsible accomplices.

That which is ignored will not cease to exist.

So, while I dream of a day when large corporations do the right thing, because they can, because people count more than profit, I’ll act in full knowledge that I do have influence, no matter how small, and I’ll use it on behalf of those children who have none.

I’ll sign the online petitions and campaigns.




I’ll look for Fair Trade chocolate (and cocoa, and brownie mix, and ice cream).

I'll try some creative ideas - like a Valentine's Day greeting on manufacturers' facebook pages,  reminding them that I can't eat their chocolate until they address their cocoa sourcing and pay cocoa farmers a fairer price.



And I’ll pray – for conviction where needed, for courage where needed, for freedom for the oppressed,  justice for the poor, fair prices for the farmer, slave-free delicious chocolate for us all. 


As always, comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome. Click on the _comments line below for the comment box to appear.

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