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| Leading the income inequity workshop |
Income Inequality: the Growing Chasm
I'd like to begin with a reading from scripture. My key passage is :
Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.
And the whole passage is:
Luke 16: 19-31
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.[a] The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.[b] 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Okay….so what does income inequality feel like?
II. What does it feel like?
Images:
1 When I was a grad student and went to baseball games at old Yankee Stadium, the tickets were:
$4 for the most expensive tickets and-$1 for the Bleacher seats.
'
When thy built the new stadium in 2008, the lower bleachers were now "Outfield boxes." The cheapest obstructed view seats were now$5- and the seats behind home plate now $2500 We had moved from4 to 1 to
500 to1. Which is about the same as the change in CEO compensation over the same years. And now there is a concrete moat around most expensive seats so that no non-wealthy people can enter even when there are empty seats.
2. Airplane restroom. Or how about you're on an airplane and you really have to go and the closest restroom is two rows ahead and the other one is 30 rows back with a waiting line of six or more but you are not allowed to use the closest restroom because it is for first class only...
3 . Our church wants to build a church owned residential building with both
market rate and
affordable units. But the affordable people would have to enter through
another door, a so-called
"Poor door.” I am so glad we never actually faced that decision.
So now, What images come to
your mind?
The workshop members came up with images that came mainly from realms of
health care, housing and
gentrification
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| workshop paticipants hard at work |
II. The Reality
From Chuck Collins author of
Born on 3rd Base (in American baseball, almost home…) writes:
Extreme inequality of wealth, income,
and opportunity is warping everything we care
about. It takes away the sense that we’re all in the same boat. It screws up communities. You can see it in the housing market, where wealthy buyers bid up prices, making homes unaffordable from everyone else. It creates economic volatility even
for the rich, which is one reason why the wealthy cling to their wealth. We live in a society where even people who don’t appear to be at risk can lose it all, and the fear of that happening makes them greedy and shortsighted.
Inequality rips communities apart. U.S. Census data show that, over the last four decades, high and
low-income families have become increasingly unlikely to live near one another.
neighborhoods are becoming rarer. As we divide into affluent and poor enclaves,
people’s sense that they share a common destiny withers, replaced by fear, misunderstanding,
and class and racial antagonisms. Public investments in health infrastructure and social
opportunity often decline.
Political scientists are finding that too much inequality is bad for democracy. It disenfranchises
voters and warps lawmakers’ priorities. A polarized economy creates polarized politics, which
makes it hard to get any movement on climate change, infrastructure repair, healthcare, and an
already weakened social safety net.
PHIL TOM is a Presbyterian Pastor and former Obama administration staff member who now chairs the national Presbyterian urban network. Phil recently wrote:
Our cities are becoming a tale of two cities – one for the low and middle income, the other for the financially well to do. The absurdity of the New York City’s housing market ...a studio apartment near Grand Central Station for $3,005 a month.[1] For someone making the minimum wage of $11 in New York City, the yearly payment for the studio apartment of $36,060 would greatly exceed his/her annual income of $22,880. California is also experiencing a severe affordable housing shortage. “Gentrification is taking more and more once-affordable rental units off the Los Angeles market, and restrictive zoning laws along with high construction costs and anti-development sentiment make new affordable units hard to build. Over the last six years, the rent for a studio apartment in Los Angeles has climbed 92%, according to UCLA law professor emeritus Gary Blasi, so that even people who have jobs can find themselves living on the streets after a rent spike or an unexpected crisis. As Blasi notes: “In America, housing is a commodity. If you can afford it, you have it; if you can’t, you don’t.”[2] .... A renter earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would need to work 117 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom rental home at the Fair Market Rent and 94.5 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom. “[4]
Many low and moderate-income residents are being forced to move out of the city due to gentrification and rising housing costs. These residents are being forced out to the first or second ring suburbs. Many of these folks not only endure longer commutes for their jobs in the city but also bear the additional costs for transportation. The longer commuting time also creates additional problems in accessing childcare, transportation and other services.
Many of the jobs created in recent years with our economy growing again are low-wage jobs, temp jobs, and part-time jobs.[5] Wages have stagnated for low and moderate-income workers. These factors are increasing the income inequality gap between city residents and creating neighborhood inequality and economic segregation within cities. “When low-income persons are segregated in high-poverty neighborhoods, they are systematically cut off from public resources in education, housing, and healthcare and simultaneously exposed to higher levels of crime, violence and economic isolation.”[6]
RON SIDER of
Evangelicals for Social Action writes of a conversation with
Professor Robert D. Putnam.
Putnam is appalled at the radical lack of equality of opportunity in the U.S. today, and he wanted to know if evangelical preachers would dare to say what his pastor said when he was a teenager. Putnam told me that back then, in the midst of Martin Luther King’s great campaign against segregation, his devout Methodist pastor dared to preach that “racism is a sin.”
Professor Putnam asked me, as an evangelical, whether evangelical pastors today would be ready to declare today’s great economic inequality of opportunity a sin. That’s a great question.
So how should we evaluate the extreme inequality in income, wealth and power in the U.S. today?
American economic inequality today is greater than at any time since 1928 — just before the Great Depression.
In 2004, the richest .1 percent had more income than the poorest 120 million. If you divided the total U.S. income among 1,000 people, the richest person (one person!) would have as much income as the poorest 387!
Between 1993 and 2007, more than half of all the increase in income in the U.S. went to the richest 1 percent. Between 2002 and 2007, 66 percent of all increased income went to the richest 1 percent. And in 2009-2010, 93 percent of all the increased income in the U.S. went to the richest 1 percent.
The richest 1 percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent.
Over the last three decades, the average annual income of the richest 1 percent has jumped by $700,000 while the average Joe has actually lost ground.
The poorest 20 percent had less income in 2009 than they did in 1979.
More than 46 million Americans are in poverty.
Today there is much greater inequality and less equality of opportunity in the U.S. than in “aristocratic” Europe.
Making things even worse, some prominent politicians say that our serious budget deficits mean that we must slash effective programs that empower poor people. House Republicans have called for cutting $128 billion from food stamps; cutting Pell grants that help poor kids afford college from $5,500 to $3,000; cutting effective foreign aid that saves the lives of millions around the world. At the same time, they want to give more tax cuts to the richest Americans.
(
https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/563602157)
In the US
1% own 20% of pre tax income. The top .1% own more than 80% alone. The bottom 50% have less than 20% of the income. In the "recovery" post 2008, the top 19% got 91% of the growth and the top 1% gained more than 81%more than the bottom 50%. The US is now 41st out of 141 nations in income equity.
As for GERMANY
The
Economy grew 22% since 1991.
The richest 10% more than 27%
The middle more than 9% and the bottom less than 5%
Real wages grew by 5% while investment income, money from money, grew by more than 30%. Those in danger of falling into poverty grew from 12% to 16%. There is a hidden food crisis as rich Munich now has 8 food banks. 10% of the population now owns 60 % of the wealth.
One more reality
A fascinating new study from the Journal of Experimental Psychology roand lets that Three Canadian neuroscientists have suggested that being rich and powerful actually makes you less happy and, even worse, unable to sympathize with the poor. They find that the rich and powerful among us show less brain activity in that region of the brain where human sympathy is excited.
References for above data are found at:
http://www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm,
lnews.shafaqna.com/rss/EN/US/91732
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/20/news/economy/germany-election-inequality-income/index.html
III. What are our BIBLICAL/Theological resources?
Pope Francis draws ours attention to the story of Zaccheus and the restorative nature of his response.
Sider recognizes that the traditional evangelical equation is an equivalence between wealth and blessing. He says, on the other hand, that he believes the Bible suggests at least two limits on inequality. For one, the biblical principle of
justice demands that each person and family has access to productive resources so that if they act responsibly, the can earn a decent living and be dignified members of society. Whenever the extremes of wealth and poverty make it difficult or prevent some people from having access to adequate productive resources, then that inequality is unjust, wrong, sinful, and must be corrected.
The second limitation on inequality flows from the biblical understanding of sin and power. In our broken world, whenever one group of people acquires excessive unbalanced power, they will almost always use it for their own selfish advantage.
Is it any wonder that when a rich young man came to Jesus asking for spiritual guidance, Jesus said: "If you wish to feel complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." (Matthew 19:21). The young man "went away grieving," as he had so much property and didn't want to let go of anything.
I chose the “chasm” passage because I believe, like the Old Testament prophets, that the chasm is not a punishment by God but something of
our own creation. The exile to Babylon was not an imposed punishment but
a natural outcome of the broken bonds of a society that failed to care for
the poor and vulnerable. The
widow, orphan and
stranger at your gate are woven inextricably through the cycle of the first five books.
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| Bible refernces |
Workshop participants came up with Luke 12: 16 and the story of Joseph and the dream of fat and lean cows, although someone pointed out how Joseph had manipulated the system to make all the Egyptian working people dependent on pharaoh.
1 Timothy 6: 17-19
The importance of the concept of
sabbaths for ALL including slaves and animals
Acts 2 where all things were held common
V. So....then what do we do?
How do we "return good for evil" in this reality? Collins suggests the answer is
empathy.
Yes, if we don’t try to understand each other’s experiences, we’ll remain separated.
Privilege keeps the wealthy apart from others. I think we all feel this gap, wherever we are on
the economic spectrum
In
Born on Third Base, he a suggests that the wealthy “accompany” the disadvantaged
as they struggle for economic justice in selling papers, standing with hotel workers on strike, etc.
We need to act and then have reflection on our action…our church West Park serves first Sunday dinners to our local homeless shelter. Other churches serve sandwiches or pizza. We serve full dinners…with tablecloths, napkins, glassware, silver ware.. the volunteer who heads the program says,
Everyone deserves Sunday dinner. And all can sit down and eat with the guests. “ Feeding programs are for zoos …brothers and sister break bread together.
Now what are your ideas?
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| Looking to create empathy |
YOURS?
Our focus is on
empathy and
accompaniment. On
solidarity. On
never giving up on someone. What we learn just from riding the
SBahn. We can reduce personal consumption. (Upper West Side of New York congregations did a shared experience of trying to living on food stamps for week…there was a blog...and sharing thoughts with other congregations and sharing the resources of our faith traditions then meeting with advocacy groups to determine what public policy issues to support)
We need to learn and practice non-violet communication and seeing god in the other
We need to find ways to extend invitation to the wealthy to participate
One member of the group had adopted refugees as “sons.”
There was a strong desire to carry the conversion on with the larger community context and for common activity beyond individual.
It was clear the conversation had only just begun.
