There are two graphs that have held my theological moral imagination for the past few weeks:
First, a graph that documents the "Rise and Rise of the Top 0.1 Percent":
Second, a graph that demonstrates income growth for the bottom 90% compared to the top 10% as each group bounced back after great US recessions. Note how since the 1980s recoveries from recessions (bouncing back) have been disproportionately experienced by the top 10% with the bottom 90% bouncing back from recessions less and less, falling further and further behind:
I'm a theologian and ethicist who takes the Old Testament prophetic tradition seriously. So these graphs connect with my vision (and Jesus' vision!) of the Kingdom of God.
But not in the way conservatives might expect.
I haven't mentioned Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The book is a long and detailed historical analysis of capitalism, but the overarching conclusion and implication of the book are easy to summarize.
The overarching conclusion is this: Wealth grows faster than income. Phrased more precisely, capital grows faster than wages.
What this means is that over time capitalism creates increasing inequality between those who possess wealth versus those who earn wages. This is the mechanism -- the different growth rates of capital versus income -- that creates the "Main Street" (wages/income) and "Wall Street" (wealth/capital) divide.
The implication of this is also simple to summarize: These different growth rates create democratic instability. That is, the inequalities produced by capitalism put pressure and stress upon democracy. By creating economic inequality capitalism fuels class resentment placing increasing strain upon the social contract.
Now, perhaps the mechanisms described by Piketty are at work in the graphs above. Perhaps not. Piketty and his book have received a great deal of pushback and criticism. Regardless, and following the argument of Piketty, I think it safe to say that the graphs above do point to pressure and stress that our current economic arrangement is placing upon the poor, and upon our taking care of the poor.
As wealth grows and grows at an ever accelerating rate wages continue to remain stagnant. That divergence, if it continues, is not sustainable and will fray to the breaking point the social fabric. The middle-class is rapidly evaporating in America. And when the middle-class evaporates the democratic and social infrastructure that holds us together evaporates. I know this sounds dire. But I think it's true. When a segment of our social fabric is ripped from that fabric, you can expect that the fabric cannot be repaired to be what it has been meant to be.
So what do we do? Piketty asserts that democracy has to reassert itself. This can happen in a variety of ways, all of them controversial and political quagmires. But all have the same goal: Democratic redress of the inequalities produced by capitalism. Throughout its history America has had to do this work. And if Piketty is right that work never ends. It's time to do some more of it.
Now I'm sure politically conservative readers will have a range of negative reactions to everything I've just written. We'll just have to agree to disagree. What I'd like to do is end this post with some comments for my Christian readers looking forward to 2015.
2014 was the year I wrote a lot about issues related to race, gender and sexuality. I've had several conversation about what "checking privilege" looks like for Christians in the past year. And I think those conversations are important enough to continue.
But 2015, at least here, will be the year in which I write some theological pieces on class, labor, economic inequality and poverty.
Because, to be honest, I learned in Sociology 101 that class has so much to do with race in America. If we Christians are going to talk about racial reconciliation, it's time we devote a portion of that conversation to economic reconciliation, too. The issues in places like Ferguson have as much to do with economics as they have to do about race. I think it's vital that we check privilege and center voices at the intersections of oppression, but unless we deal with the structural economic issues our social media activism can devolve into to moral signaling and posturing.
I'm taking my cue here from Martin Luther King, Jr. In the wake of the historic Civil Rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1965 the plights of most black Americans remained largely unchanged. Thus the disillusionment post-1965 that grew among the black population and civil rights activists, fueling race riots and the rise of the Black Power movement. So much had changed with the demise of Jim Crow but in so many important ways nothing had changed at all. And King saw economic inequality as the root problem. Thus, after 1965 King increasingly focused upon economics as the key factor in race relations. King was assassinated in the midst of organizing the Poor People's Campaign.
As King saw more and more clearly, there can be no "racial reconciliation" without (economic) justice.
So many of we Christians are forgetting that lesson we were to learn from Dr King. In 2015 we need to listen to what Dr King was teaching in 1968. Let us remember the role of the charkha in the teachings of Gandhi. Let us go back to the socioeconomic origins of South American liberation theology. Thousands of words have been shared on progressive Christian social media about privilege, centering, diversity and reconciliation with very little associated conversation about economic justice.
And I'm not talking about the progressive idea of "tolerance" here. We cannot divorce economic justice from the biblical vision of justice. So I'm not worried one whit about "tolerance".
The conversation about class, privilege, wages, labor, economic inequality, poverty all boil down to one word from the prophets: Justice.
Let's have that conversation in 2015.
First, a graph that documents the "Rise and Rise of the Top 0.1 Percent":
Second, a graph that demonstrates income growth for the bottom 90% compared to the top 10% as each group bounced back after great US recessions. Note how since the 1980s recoveries from recessions (bouncing back) have been disproportionately experienced by the top 10% with the bottom 90% bouncing back from recessions less and less, falling further and further behind:
I'm a theologian and ethicist who takes the Old Testament prophetic tradition seriously. So these graphs connect with my vision (and Jesus' vision!) of the Kingdom of God.
But not in the way conservatives might expect.
I haven't mentioned Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The book is a long and detailed historical analysis of capitalism, but the overarching conclusion and implication of the book are easy to summarize.
The overarching conclusion is this: Wealth grows faster than income. Phrased more precisely, capital grows faster than wages.
What this means is that over time capitalism creates increasing inequality between those who possess wealth versus those who earn wages. This is the mechanism -- the different growth rates of capital versus income -- that creates the "Main Street" (wages/income) and "Wall Street" (wealth/capital) divide.
The implication of this is also simple to summarize: These different growth rates create democratic instability. That is, the inequalities produced by capitalism put pressure and stress upon democracy. By creating economic inequality capitalism fuels class resentment placing increasing strain upon the social contract.
Now, perhaps the mechanisms described by Piketty are at work in the graphs above. Perhaps not. Piketty and his book have received a great deal of pushback and criticism. Regardless, and following the argument of Piketty, I think it safe to say that the graphs above do point to pressure and stress that our current economic arrangement is placing upon the poor, and upon our taking care of the poor.
As wealth grows and grows at an ever accelerating rate wages continue to remain stagnant. That divergence, if it continues, is not sustainable and will fray to the breaking point the social fabric. The middle-class is rapidly evaporating in America. And when the middle-class evaporates the democratic and social infrastructure that holds us together evaporates. I know this sounds dire. But I think it's true. When a segment of our social fabric is ripped from that fabric, you can expect that the fabric cannot be repaired to be what it has been meant to be.
So what do we do? Piketty asserts that democracy has to reassert itself. This can happen in a variety of ways, all of them controversial and political quagmires. But all have the same goal: Democratic redress of the inequalities produced by capitalism. Throughout its history America has had to do this work. And if Piketty is right that work never ends. It's time to do some more of it.
Now I'm sure politically conservative readers will have a range of negative reactions to everything I've just written. We'll just have to agree to disagree. What I'd like to do is end this post with some comments for my Christian readers looking forward to 2015.
2014 was the year I wrote a lot about issues related to race, gender and sexuality. I've had several conversation about what "checking privilege" looks like for Christians in the past year. And I think those conversations are important enough to continue.
But 2015, at least here, will be the year in which I write some theological pieces on class, labor, economic inequality and poverty.
Because, to be honest, I learned in Sociology 101 that class has so much to do with race in America. If we Christians are going to talk about racial reconciliation, it's time we devote a portion of that conversation to economic reconciliation, too. The issues in places like Ferguson have as much to do with economics as they have to do about race. I think it's vital that we check privilege and center voices at the intersections of oppression, but unless we deal with the structural economic issues our social media activism can devolve into to moral signaling and posturing.
I'm taking my cue here from Martin Luther King, Jr. In the wake of the historic Civil Rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1965 the plights of most black Americans remained largely unchanged. Thus the disillusionment post-1965 that grew among the black population and civil rights activists, fueling race riots and the rise of the Black Power movement. So much had changed with the demise of Jim Crow but in so many important ways nothing had changed at all. And King saw economic inequality as the root problem. Thus, after 1965 King increasingly focused upon economics as the key factor in race relations. King was assassinated in the midst of organizing the Poor People's Campaign.
As King saw more and more clearly, there can be no "racial reconciliation" without (economic) justice.
So many of we Christians are forgetting that lesson we were to learn from Dr King. In 2015 we need to listen to what Dr King was teaching in 1968. Let us remember the role of the charkha in the teachings of Gandhi. Let us go back to the socioeconomic origins of South American liberation theology. Thousands of words have been shared on progressive Christian social media about privilege, centering, diversity and reconciliation with very little associated conversation about economic justice.
And I'm not talking about the progressive idea of "tolerance" here. We cannot divorce economic justice from the biblical vision of justice. So I'm not worried one whit about "tolerance".
The conversation about class, privilege, wages, labor, economic inequality, poverty all boil down to one word from the prophets: Justice.
Let's have that conversation in 2015.