We are just an hour into the New Year and I’ve already had my first revelation. I grapple every day with my inability to return to weekly prayer services. I went from attending more than once a week to attending a handful of times last year. I feel guilty every Saturday morning but that guilt isn’t sufficient to get me to pray in an organized way. My belief in a higher power is unswayed and I have no desire to turn away from the basic tenets of my faith. My soul searching started about 15 months ago and I’ve gotten no closer to finding an answer except the problem is slightly more crystallized in my mind. The problem isn’t the tenets of my faith (or any other faith for that matter) but with the people that superficially show their adherence to faith.
The façade starts early in our lives and continues throughout in so many different forms. In the sight of our Lord we promise to love, honor and cherish a partner and then when the promise becomes uncomfortable or annoying we convince ourselves that the vow didn’t mean much and there are special circumstances which, in each specific case, makes divorce legitimate. Maybe if we took the original oath more seriously there would be fewer marriages and a lower rate of divorce. Or there would be more civil unions and the same rate of divorce.
But that isn’t close to the problem that bothered me the most in 2011. I have written about income inequality and problems with the economy. I have had arguments with close friends about our different perspectives. My friend Buddy is one of the best souls I know and understands the economy far better than I. He leans toward being a libertarian and is always able to show me flaws in my logic. And he is right. Sort of. But the argument that “I don’t understand how jobs are created” is correct only up to a point. I don’t understand the nuances. But I do know what is right about how my faith tells me to treat everyone else. That leads to my current state of mind.
Here’s are my latest questions. Explain to me how giving wealthy people even more wealth creates more jobs. The richer have gotten far richer and there are fewer and fewer jobs. Explain to me how the growing divide between the wealthy and the average person has improved the lives of the average person. Explain to me how, in my profession (an academic), faculty salaries have remained stagnant, taking into account inflation, for 40 years and administrators (the academic equivalent of executives) have seen a 75% increase in the last 10 years? How has that created jobs? How has further dividing the country created jobs, engendered hope, or added to the stability of the nation?
That is the central problem of my religious uncertainty. Supposedly religious politicians support the ridiculous notion of “trickle down” economies. During the news I saw a picketer with a sign that reminded me of previous protests “What would Jesus do?” I’m not a Christian but that to me is the question I wanted answered by everyone in Congress that supposedly represent the People. I want to hear how their adherence to political dogma takes precedence over the lives of their constituents. I want business executives attending religious services to explain how they send jobs overseas and foreclose on homes and then take pay raises and bonuses.
I want to understand this. I really do.
January 1, 2012 at 4:24 am
Thank you for this post. I’ve been thinking the same thing lately–one of the most serious problems with American politics, in my opinion, is how heavily the parties relies on theory and how little they rely on evidence to make their policies.
The matter of “job creation” is a perfect example. In theory, and sometimes in practice, giving wealthy individuals and businesses more money does lead to job creation. But is that what we’ve seen over the last few decades? Absolutely not. Instead we’ve seen wealthy individuals pocketing the money intended for job creation.
There are so many happenings that show this–the fact that the income of the top 1% has increased 275% in recent decades, while the middle class has seen only a 40% real increase–which actually adds up to an effective decrease with the skyrocketing prices of food, education, healthcare, gasoline, etc.. There’s the fact that wealth has actually been moving from the bottom to the top of the income pyramid in this country since 1979. There’s the discrepancy between growth of productivity and job creation–our country’s GDP has recovered from the crash, but unemployment rates aren’t even close to recovering. Employers have been squeezing more productivity out of fewer workers.
The list goes on. Now I’m sure there are some businesses that would create more jobs if they had more disposable income–but those are likely the smaller businesses. Not the megacorporations, big banks, and super-rich who have been benefitting most from legislation intended to create jobs.
I am myself a former Republican, and I have profound respect for Libertarians. But I with ALL our political parties would spend more time looking at facts and less time pushing pre-established ideology when making policy for this country.
January 1, 2012 at 4:31 am
Oh, as to the link between these subjects–I’m afraid the only answer is really that those who favor the interests of the rich have learned that religion can be used to manipulate voters. Nobody’s going to elect a politician sheerly on the platform of “let’s cut taxes on the rich and also cut spending on welfare programs for the poor.” But if you could it with “I’ll protect unborn babies, prevent gay marriage, and uphold traditional family values,” they might go for it.
Even if, you know, the person saying that is a double-divorcee or a married man with at least one mistress. As long as they paint themselves as the candidate who seeks to uphold the Christian religion, they get a huge bump in the polls.
January 1, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Let’s start with a few implied assumptions that I take issue with.
Today’s 1% is not yesterday’s 1%. For example, the Google and Facebook billionaires are moving up, and others are moving down. So the statistics about the increasing wealth of those at the top, says nothing about a group of rich individuals getting richer. It does speak to the growing disparity of wealth. Also, note that the distribution of income is much tighter, but it’s politically expedient to focus on wealth.
You imply that our current policy hasn’t created the results you would like. Do you have any evidence, or reason to believe that your preferred policy would have done better?
The real issue is what’s happening at the bottom of the salary scale, and it has little with what’s going on at the top. The old middle class jobs are disappearing, as the jobs are being taken by others around the globe that can, and are willing to do the same job at a lower price – be it manufacturing or services. As a result, many are losing their jobs, and others are seeing real wages stagnate due to increased global competition. At the same time, those with specialized skills that can be levered can command a premium, and are doing quite nicely. Similarly, I believe that there has been a large divergence in college faculty salaries over the last 40 years. Some fields, such as engineering, would have significant growth, while others have been flat in inflation-adjusted terms.
Rather than debating examples and symptoms, we should be talking about the role of government. All of the debate about taxes, the 1% versus the 99%, and corporate greed is really about the type of government and economy that we want going forward.
Is the role of the government to redistribute wealth from the successful to the less successful? Or is it to create an environment that creates the opportunity for everyone to succeed? Can it help to make the US and US workers more competitive, so that once again we can command premium wages compared to the rest of the world. Or should it be looking to protect the wages of workers that can no longer compete in a global economy?
I’m not a member of the Tea Party by any stretch, but to me the debate about higher taxes is really about the size of government, and not about the optimal tax structure. To the fiscal conservatives, higher taxes equals higher government spending, and slower economic growth. To the liberals, social justice requires more redistribution of wealth, which requires higher taxes.
The moderates need to decide where they would set the dial between the two extremes.
Similarly, it seems like the country is struggling with the role of markets in setting the price of labor. Whether it’s in the corporate sector, or in the academic. For example, should engineering professors be able to command higher salaries than English lit professors? It may seem like the two jobs are equally valuable, but the market says engineers are worth more. Steve and I agree that there are egregious abuses in the corporate sector, but don’t agree on a better approach. My question is: Without a market setting prices to signal imbalance between supply and demand, how do you propose we do it? While the market isn’t perfect by a long stretch, it seems to work better than any other approach that’s been tried so far.
Lastly, permit me one rant. If we are going to talk about economic justice and bring religion into the picture, where do the poor and suffering in much of the developing world fit into the picture? Compared to most of them, we are all in the 1%. Is anyone suggesting that we should massively increase foreign aid to close the gap between their standard of living and ours? Rather, many of our country’s policies are designed to protect our standard of living at their expense.