By Dr. James “Jim” Kadlecek
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.” – John Berger
Before the reader jumps to the conclusion that this piece is yet another “liberal” lament on behalf of poor people, let me point out that none other than conservative economist Alan Greenspan has expressed concern over the growing gap between rich and poor. The former fed chairman testified publicly that “the income gap between the rich and the rest of the
While our economy has grown in recent years, the beneficiaries have been the top 20 percent of the population, and especially the top 1 percent. Data from the Congressional Budget Office indicates that this small group (the 1 percent) recently received 11.4 percent of national after-tax income compared to 7.5 percent five years earlier. By contrast, the middle fifth of the population saw its share of national after-tax income drop.
The richest 0.01 percent enjoyed a 250-percent increase in income between 1973 and 2005, even though the economy grew by less (160 percent). The wealthiest Americans had an average 2006 income of almost $1.3 million, as contrasted with overall per-capita income in the
And, as has been pointed out before in this column, nearly 13 percent of the population lives in poverty (27 percent in
Greenspan thinks the villain in this story is our educational system. We aren’t educating young people to compete in a high-tech society, and as a result many Americans are not equipped to be anything other than retail clerks or low-paid service workers. We have “dumbed down,” and this has impacted our earning capacity, according to the Greenspan logic.
Our societal values need to change
While reforming our antiquated and inefficient educational system at all levels is no doubt needed, I think the poverty and rich-poor gap problems have more to do with our societal values. This hugely unequal distribution of income is blatantly wrong. To allow large segments of Americans to suffer poverty while a few benefit is unjust. For those who say they adhere to “Christian values,” reference Jesus’ admonitions: “Woe to you who are rich,” and “Sell your possessions and give to charity.” There is a long list of such teachings in all religious faiths.
For those of us who have great respect for the policies of our founding fathers, let me remind that two of the basic principles that established our constitutional democracy were separation of powers and popular sovereignty. In other words, we resist the concentration of too much power in any one place, and we place final power in the hands of the people. Certainly, allowing so much wealth to be concentrated with so few is contrary to both of these fundamental ideas on which our nation is based.
Without dwelling further on history and why our values have gone awry, let’s understand that we could change. While societal values may take time to adjust, we can alter public policy. We can stop rewarding the rich through tax policy, and go back to a progressive income-tax schedule. We can eliminate the tax breaks that primarily benefit wealthy persons. We can adopt universal health care, increase minimum wages (more than the pittance that just passed the Congress), invest more in affordable housing for low-income families and improve job-training programs. Rather than spending our resources on unjustified foreign wars, we could invest in our own people. In short, we could and should drastically change our priorities.
To conclude, our American obsession with wealth and the accumulation of material stuff is a false and damaging value, and we need to deal with it before it is our undoing as a society. In the words of economist Henry George, “What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.”
Kadlecek has lived in