Tax Reform (The Magnificat in Reverse)

He has brought down the powerful 

from their thrones, 

and lifted up the lowly; 

he has filled the hungry with good things, 

and sent the rich away empty.

Luke 1:52-53

The new congressional tax bill is not tax reform. It is just tax cutting. And it is not just cutting taxes; it is distributing the overwhelming majority of those cuts to the wealthiest among us.

And it is not just at all.

The wealthiest 1% of all Americans already control substantially more than the bottom 90%. Under the new tax bill that top group will gain a little bit more.

This is the Magnificat in reverse. The rich are filled with good things and the poor are sent away empty.

Of course the theory-- and we should be clear that this is a political theory without any economic evidence to back it up-- is that if the wealthiest people have more money they will invest it in enterprises that will benefit everyone. Right now the wealthiest individuals and corporations are sitting on a lot of capital. The theory is that if they had more capital they would create jobs and raise wages.

This has not worked in the past, but (apparently) hope springs eternal.

For at least four decades the American economy has been devoted to a massive redistribution of income from the bottom to the top. The gap between the richest Americans and the poorest Americans has been growing, and the middle class has been shrinking.

And let’s be clear. This gap has widened under both Republican and Democratic presidents. There have been different rates of increase but there have been no great reversals.

President Obama made income inequality a major policy priority. He was able to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while maintaining those cuts for the middle class, and he was able to expand healthcare for middle and low income families. But those modest policy changes were more than offset by the massive gains in pretax income that went to the wealthiest Americans as the economy recovered from the crash of 2008.

The new tax bill will deal a possibly fatal blow to the Affordable Care Act. By repealing the individual mandate, the bill will result in 13 million more Americans without health insurance. That number could rise if the increase in premiums caused by the repeal of the individual mandate causes premium costs to rise dramatically. We know that premiums will go up. We don’t know how much they will go up. 

This is not unintended. 

In a celebratory gathering on the White House lawn, Mr. Trump deviated from his prepared remarks to offer a candid assessment: “I shouldn’t say this, but we essentially repealed Obamacare.”

As Dana Milbank reported in the Washington Post:

“Trump, in a Cabinet meeting earlier Wednesday, let his fleeting encounter with honesty get the better of him when he read aloud the stage directions that called for Republicans not to advertise that they were killing Obamacare. ‘Obamacare has been repealed in this bill. We didn’t want to bring it up,’ he said. ‘I told people specifically, "'Be quiet with the fake-news media because I don’t want them talking too much about it.”’ Because I didn’t know how people would —.’ Trump didn’t finish that thought, but he said he could admit what had been done ‘now that it’s approved.’”

Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act may not be the only casualty.

When the deficit increases, and we know it will, lawmakers will be “forced” to “reform entitlements.”  By “entitlements,” they mean Social Security and Medicare. And by “reform,” they mean cut.

So the rich will have their taxes cut and the poor and the middle class will have their Social Security and Medicare cut. 

Merry Christmas.

Wealth and Poverty and Taxes

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
James 5:1-6

I do not generally think of myself as a rich person. I think in household income we are outside of the top quintile, but we are still comfortably above the median. That’s in the United States, of course. 

In global terms, I am rich.

And that is an uncomfortable thought, because the Bible is hard on rich people.

The Letter of James is especially hard, but the theme is consistent. When Mary announces the coming of the Messiah, she sings about the poor being filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. Jesus says that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells the story of “The Rich Man and Lazarus.” The rich man does not directly refuse to help poor Lazarus, he simply ignores him. And for that he is consigned to eternal darkness.

For the Bible, the problem is not wealth, but the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty, and the disparity between rich and poor.

There are warnings about focusing too much on possessions and not enough on justice, and it’s clear that we don’t really own things; we are only stewards of what ultimately belongs to God. But the biblical ideal is for everyone to have enough, “every man under his vine and fig tree.” No one should have “too much,” but the definition of “too much” is flexible and the real emphasis is really on “enough.”

All Christians live with a certain amount of tension on this. We are not called to renounce everything and live in poverty, although some embrace that calling. We are called to live life fully and abundantly, to accept and rejoice in the good gifts of life. 

But if we are sensitive to issues of global poverty and inequality, then our thanksgiving for our own comfort includes a concern for those who have less. And we need to be good stewards, setting aside a portion of what we have to do God’s work in the world.

Within the United States, the gap between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the past three decades. Almost all of the gains in economic growth over that time have been funneled to the wealthiest among us. The middle class is stagnant. The poor have less. And the rich have more. 

We have been redistributing income from the bottom to the top.

The richest 1% of Americans have more wealth than the total combined wealth of the lower 90%. At the same time, the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans are lower than they have been in decades.

Increasing the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans would be a good idea even if we did not have concerns about debt and deficits. A tax increase would slow the rate of increase in the gap between wealth and poverty, and reduce the upward redistribution of income.

Opponents of increasing the taxes of billionaires point out that the richest one percent of Americans now pay approximately 40% of all income taxes. That sounds like a lot until you realize that the richest one percent also have 40% of the wealth. In other words, the amount they pay in taxes is about average. They pay more dollars but they don’t pay at a higher rate. When we compare wealth (not just annual income) to taxes paid, the tax rate for billionaires is about the same as for average Americans.

Raising the marginal tax rate for the richest Americans would make a significant contribution to reducing the deficit. It would be fairer. But it would also be good. And it would be good for the rich as well as for the poor. In the words of the prophet Isaiah:

If you offer your food to the hungry,
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Isaiah 58:10-11


Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

*A slightly different version of this post was first published on July 15, 2011.

Healthcare and Income Redistribution

"He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”
Luke 10:34-35

Maybe it’s not always about the money, but it’s about the money often enough to suggest that’s always a good place to start.

In Jesus’ famous parable, the last thing the Good Samaritan does for the man who was beaten and robbed is to leave money with the innkeeper for his continued care, and promise the innkeeper that if it costs more he will repay “whatever more you spend.”

In an article in Friday’s New York Times, Thomas B. Edsall outlines the effects of the American Health Care Act recently passed by the House of Representatives, and he begins with the money.

The bill cuts more than $800 billion from Medicaid over ten years and basically redistributes the money from those at the bottom of the income pyramid to those at the top. “By 2022, when the provisions of the AHCA would be fully effective,” he writes, “those in the bottom two quintiles would pay higher taxes, up to $160 annually, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Those in the middle of the income distribution would get an average annual tax cut of $240; those in the fourth quintile, a cut of $510; and those in the top 20 percent, an average tax cut of $2,830.”

“The distributional impact of the tax provisions is most apparent in the highest income brackets: those in the top one percent, whose household income is more than $770,000, would get an average tax cut of $37,220. Those in the top 0.1 percent, who make $4 million or more, would get an average reduction of $207,240.”

“According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at the highest point of all, the 400 households with annual incomes exceeding $300 million apiece, the tax cut would be worth an estimated $7 million.”

The combination of repealing billions of dollars in taxes that were used to pay for the Affordable Care Act, and slashing the subsidies provided to those on low incomes means that when we compare the economic impact of the ACA with the AHCA we see huge redistributions of income in the House plan that flow from the poorest to the richest Americans. 

The politics in this are not nearly as clearly delineated as one might assume. Donald Trump was elected by white working class voters who voted for him overwhelmingly. That constituency was critical in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the key states in his electoral college victory. But the voters who put him in office are the very ones who will suffer the most under the repeal of the ACA and the implementation of the AHCA.

Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative democrat spoke with Mr. Trump about his home state of West Virginia, where Trump carried every county and won the state vote with 67.9% compared to 26.2% for Hillary Clinton. According to Manchin’s account, he told Trump:

“Mr. President, 172,000 West Virginians got insurance for the first time. These are working people, but they’ve got something they never had before. They don’t know how they got it, they don’t know who gave it to them, they don’t know the Democrats, nothing about, ‘It’s Obamacare.’ They don’t know any of that. All they know is they’ve got it. And you know what? They voted for you, Mr. President. The Democrats gave it to them but they voted for you. They’re going to know who took it away from them.”

One of the strangest observations in all of this is that so many Americans voted against their own self-interest. Lower income voters were overwhelmingly for Trump, while upper income voters were solidly for Clinton.

One of the reasons that working class white voters supported Mr. Trump is race. In his Times article Edsall cites a piece in the March 23 issue of Rolling Stone in which Bridgette Dunlap points out that manipulating racial and ethnic animosity is a tried and true political strategy. She called it “divide and rule.”

“The rich guy convinced much of the white working class that he would ‘take back’ the country from the rest of the working class and other undeserving non-white and non-Christian people, as well as the coastal elites giving those folks jobs and handouts at the expense of ‘real’ Americans. It’s a strategy as old as this country.”

Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, and the Forty-Seven Percent

When Mitt Romney spoke about the "forty-seven percent," 
I doubt that he had Donald Trump in mind.

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
James 2:1-4

We tend to favor the rich.

And we have always favored the rich.

The biblical witness, on the other hand, consistently presents an alternative vision. From the Torah through the prophets, to Jesus and the early church, the Bible argues against our bias.

The poor, says the Bible, are blessed by God precisely because they are not blessed by us.

Four years ago Mitt Romney translated our bias into political language when he made his famous observation about the forty-seven percent of Americans who paid no income tax and would vote for President Obama because they were dependent on government. This was his analysis:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, he starts off with a huge number.

“These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people.

“I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

Romney made two claims in his analysis. First he claimed that the 47 percent who pay no income tax are “dependent upon government.” And second, he claimed that because they are dependent on the government they will vote for the politicians, like President Obama, who support the programs on which they depend.

Both claims are mistaken.

About half of those who pay no income tax are working people whose incomes are so low (typically below $27,000) that they do not owe any income tax. They do pay other taxes (Social Security, Medicare, excise taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes), but they do not pay income tax. Some receive government benefits and others do not. Others who pay no income tax are seniors on Social Security and those whose deductions and credits eliminate their tax liability.

The forty-seven percent do not vote as a block. Nearly half of them typically vote for Republican candidates. The ten states with the highest percentage of individuals and families owing no federal income tax all traditionally vote Republican, and conversely all of the ten states with the lowest percentage of those with no tax liability typically vote Democratic.

Apparently, Donald Trump is one of the estimated 7,000 families and individuals making more than a million dollars per year and not paying any federal income tax. In Mr. Trump’s case it is possible that he has not paid income tax in nearly two decades.

What is most striking in this is that our reaction to a rich person paying no taxes is so very different from what we think when a poor person is doing the same thing. The rich person, we think, is smart. The poor person is characterized as a freeloader.

A friend who works in a very lucrative field and is very good at what he does observed that, “It’s amazing; when you’re rich everybody wants to give you stuff.”

Sometimes the free stuff is given in the hope that the rich person will buy an expensive car or house or boat. Other times the free stuff comes along because rich people are friends with other rich people who give them the use of a yacht or a summer home.

When a poor person gets something for free, we worry that they will become “dependent.” When a rich person gets something for free we somehow think they have earned it.

At some point, if we are Christians we need to ask ourselves the biblical question, “Do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?"

Thank you for reading this post. Comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media.

Thank God for Janet Yellen

Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather as much of the manna as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.’” The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.
Exodus 16:16-18

In biblical economics, a core principle is that there should not be a great gulf between those who have the most and those who have the least. The Bible is deeply suspicious of wealth. Jesus told his disciples that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. But Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all rich by ancient standards, and the New Testament tells of disciples who used their resources to help others and support the early church. The biblical ideal is not economic equality, but an economy in which those with the least have enough and those with the most do not have too much.

We can (and should) debate the meaning of “enough” and “too much,” but there can be little doubt that the current widening gap between rich and poor does not fall within acceptable biblical parameters.

Last week, in an historic address at the Conference on Economic Opportunity and Inequality hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen spoke about the widening gap between rich and poor.

She began her remarks by noting that “The distribution of income and wealth in the United States has been widening more or less steadily for several decades, to a greater extent than in most advanced countries.” She went on to make an important declaration followed by several significant observations:

“The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me. The past several decades have seen the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality following the Great Depression. By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then. It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority. I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity.”

When the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board says that something (anything) “greatly concern(s) me,” that is important. And the widening gap should concern all of us.

Her suggested solutions are neither radical nor particularly biblical. She is not about to sing with Mary about casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. She does not suggest that the hungry be filled with good things or that the rich be sent away empty. But she does offer a place to start.

One of her most important insights is that the widening gap between rich and poor is incompatible “with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity.” Technically, she doesn’t make that as a statement, she poses it as a question, but I’m guessing that is what she thinks.

Her proposed building blocks of opportunity are hardly groundbreaking: early childhood education and support, access to higher education, business ownership, and inheritance. She talks about how budget cuts have decimated the funds available for education and weakened the safety net, but she does not propose a graduated tax to offset the losses and fund those programs. And she does not address the ways in which reductions in the marginal tax rate and other government policies have exacerbated the problem. But it is a beginning.

Naming our demons is an important first step in confronting and defeating them. When Janet Yellen names the demon of increasing inequality, it makes a difference. She is by no means the first person to say that the widening gap in income and wealth inevitably leads to inequality of opportunity and undermines a core common value for us as Americans, but when the Chair of the Federal Reserve Board speaks, people listen.

Jesus Called It an Abomination

A servant cannot serve two masters; for a servant will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.
Luke 16:13-15

The 85 richest people in the world have about the same amount of money as the poorest 3.5 billion people. Jon Stewart listened intently as a news clip played, explaining that the total wealth of half the world’s population was barely as much as the richest 85 people.

“JESUS CHRIST!” he exclaimed, sounding as if he could not help himself. And then he paused before finishing the sentence, “. . . would be very unhappy.”

Yes, Jesus would be very unhappy.

According to the Gospel record, Jesus used the word “abomination” exactly once. Wealth, he said, is “prized by human beings,” but it is “an abomination in the sight of God.” After that exchange he went on to tell the parable of the rich man and the poor man (Luke 16:19-31) and he made it clear in the parable that the real problem was the dramatic inequality between the two. As far as we know, the rich man did not get his money dishonestly. The problem was simply that he had so much and the poor man had so little.

The poor man “longed to satisfy his hunger with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table,” but he got nothing.

Pope Francis expressed a similar sentiment when he commented on the failure of “trickle down” economics. “The promise,” he said, “was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger and nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

Luke says that when Jesus talked about wealth and poverty, the wealthy people “ridiculed him.” The same thing happened to Pope Francis. The same pundits and commentators who were totally on board with Roman Catholic teachings on gay rights and abortion were quick to say that the pope should stick to spiritual matters. One can only assume that they have never read the Gospels.

In one sense, the pope’s critics are right. The economic problem is symptomatic of a deeper spiritual problem. It isn’t about economics as much as it is about theology. Jesus said that we cannot worship wealth if we want to worship God. The worship of wealth is idolatrous. In our time the worship of wealth is buttressed by the conviction that a free market will provide a fair and just distribution of wealth and income. We believe that the distribution is fair because it is determined by the market. And we know that the market is fair. We “know” this even though the numbers tell us that it isn’t fair at all.

Social Insecurity

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 
Exodus 20:12

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
James 1:27

Conventional wisdom says that if we are serious about reducing the deficit, then we will have to do something to curb “entitlements.” And in this context the entitlements under review are Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

The obvious question is why we are so concerned about deficit reduction when the immediate need is for jobs and almost everyone agrees that cutting government spending will slow the recovery (or send us back into recession) and we can see that austerity has failed all over Europe. But we will leave that for another time.

Medicare and Medicaid belong in a separate discussion that focuses on health care costs. But let’s look at Social Security.

First, Social Security is not adding to the deficit. Right now, Social Security has a surplus and that surplus is being used to buy government bonds which are funding the deficit. If we do nothing, Social Security will eventually become a problem. In 2033, if we do nothing, Social Security will have to reduce payments by 25%. That projected shortfall, and the related assumption that Congress will appropriate funds from the Federal Budget to prevent a reduction in benefits, is what drives the idea that Social Security is part of the debt problem.

Correcting the problem is not that difficult. If we eliminated the cap on wages subject to Social Security, the fund would be solvent for the next seventy-five years. In other posts I have written about how the incomes of the richest Americans have grown much faster than everyone else’s. In terms of Social Security, that means that a larger percentage of total wages is not taxed for Social Security. Even if we did not eliminate the cap, we could still reduce the shortfall substantially by adjusting the cap on wages.

Second, we should be thinking about ways to expand Social Security, rather than ways to shrink it. Social Security is our most successful domestic program. It has dramatically reduced poverty among our elderly. Theoretically, Social Security is one leg of a three-legged stool that makes up American retirement accounts. The other legs are employer sponsored pension programs and individual retirement accounts. But the non-governmental legs are much weaker than they once were. Fewer corporations are offering pension plans, and individual accounts have been hard hit by the Great Recession. Fewer than half of households ages 55-64 have any retirement savings. And fewer than half of those that do have savings have more than $120,000.

The majority of retirees have incomes of less than $32,600 per year and receive approximately two-thirds of all their income from Social Security. And the average benefit is just $1,265 per month. Eighty percent of all seniors have incomes below $57,600 per year and receive, on average, half of their incomes from Social Security. Only the top 20% or seniors do not count Social Security as their largest income source, and that’s because most of them are still working.

Expanding Social Security sounds like crazy talk if you believe that the current budget discussions in Washington are sane. But we need to think hard about what sort of living conditions we imagine for future retirees. Most of the talk about “reforming” Social Security really means reducing benefits, either by increasing the retirement age or by decreasing the amount paid out. And that will translate into more seniors living near or below the poverty line.

We need to think seriously about how we can make Social Security into a reasonable replacement for disappearing corporate pensions. That will require increasing the payroll tax on almost everyone, and it’s hard to imagine our current leadership taking that on. But the alternative is a future in which the gaps between rich and poor increase as we age and are much greater in retirement.

How Much Is Too Much?

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 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. ’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. 
Luke 16:19-25

One of the things the Bible is very clear about is that a large gap between poor people and rich people is not a good thing. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, recalling the story of Manna in the desert, the goal is a society in which “the one who had more did not have too much, and the one who had less did not have too little.” In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus is telling a story that is not meant to be taken literally, but he places responsibility on the rich man to do something about the divide between those who have nothing and those who are able to dress well and feast “sumptuously every day.”

But the Bible does not give much guidance on what sort of income gap is acceptable.

Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School recently published an interesting study, asking a random sample of 5,500 Americans which of three possible patterns of wealth distribution would be best for the country.

In one pattern, the wealth was divided equally. The bottom fifth had 20% of the wealth, as did the top fifth, and each of the three fifths in between.

Another pattern, represented the current situation in the United States, where the bottom fifth has just .1% of the wealth (one tenth of a percent), and the top fifth has 84%.

The third pattern showed the income distribution in Sweden, where the bottom fifth has 11% of the wealth, and the top fifth has 36%.

Of course, the participants were not told that two of the distributions represented real countries, and they were not told that one was the United States and the other was Sweden. Without knowing what the countries were, over 90% preferred the pattern in Sweden to the pattern in the United States. And this was true of Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals. It was also true of people in every income group, from the bottom to the top. With small differences among the groups, almost everyone wanted to live in a country where the wealth is more evenly divided.

Ariely and Norton asked two more important questions.

They asked participants what they believed the wealth distribution in the United States was right now. On average, they believed that the top fifth had 59% of the wealth.

And they asked participants how much the top fifth should have, and on average they responded that the top fifth should have just 32% of the wealth. On average they believed that the poorest fifth should have 11% of the wealth.

In other words, the average American thinks that the richest Americans should have much less and the poorest Americans should have much more. And the average American would rather live in Sweden in terms of income distribution, but believes that even there the gap is too much.

The study also revealed (no big surprise) that Conservatives and Liberals have very different ideas about what we should do in order to move toward a more equitable distribution. But at least we agree on the goal. I count that as a win for the Jesus and Paul and the Hebrew prophets.

Raising the Minimum

Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 3:5

It is hard to argue that as a society we have not “oppressed the hired workers in their wages.”

From 1967 until 2011 the richest quintile of the country has seen a 75% increase in income. The second quintile has gone up 42%, and the bottom 60% of the country has averaged about half that much. If we look more closely, we find that within that top quintile the richest 5% have had an increase of over 94%.

Before the Great Recession, the gap between the richest Americans and everyone else reached its highest level since the Great Depression. Since the recession (allegedly) ended in 2009, the top 1% has enjoyed an 11% gain in income. The other 99% has gained nothing. The median income today, adjusted for inflation, is 11% lower than it was in 1999.

For those of us who are followers of Jesus (or of the Hebrew prophets), the increasing gap between the richest and the poorest Americans is a major ethical problem. It may well be the most important ethical issue we face. Certainly, it is one of the most important economic problems we face.

Raising the minimum wage to $9.00 per hour would be a small step in addressing that growing gap. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage would need to be over $10.00 per hour to equal what it was in the 1960’s, so this is a modest step.

The Cato Institute argues that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs and hurt the very people it is supposed to help. Others argue that raising the minimum wage is like “giving a man a fish,” which will feed him for a day, rather than “teaching a man to fish,” which will feed him for a lifetime. Curiously, these same critics are not proposing any job training programs or new educational initiatives.

In the gilded age before the turn of the last century, the Social Gospel reformers argued that factory workers should be paid a living wage. The owners argued that any such windfall would be bad for the workers. They wouldn’t know what to do with the money and would inevitably squander it like the prodigal son, on “riotous living.”

In a recent column in the New York Times, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman acknowledges the theory behind the arguments against raising the minimum wage, but argues that “there’s evidence on that question — lots and lots of evidence, because the minimum wage is one of the most studied issues in all of economics. U.S. experience, it turns out, offers many “natural experiments” here, in which one state raises its minimum wage while others do not. And while there are dissenters, as there always are, the great preponderance of the evidence from these natural experiments points to little if any negative effect of minimum wage increases on employment.”

Since the 1960’s worker productivity has doubled, but little of that gain has been shared with those doing the work, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder. It’s time to give them a raise.

We Belong to a World Community

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. ²Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; ⁴but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. ⁶But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’”

Matthew 25:1-9

In a recent column, Nicholas Kristof observes that, “In upper-middle-class suburbs on the East Coast, the newest must-have isn’t a $7,500 Sub-Zero refrigerator. It’s a standby generator that automatically flips on backup power to an entire house when the electrical grid goes out.”

I’m jealous.

We didn’t lose power for more than a few seconds during Super Storm Sandy, but folks across town, just a few miles away, were without electricity for more than a week. That’s nothing compared to what happened in New York and New Jersey, but it does make you think. Standby generators are not cheap. It’s easy to spend over $10,000, but for many families, it’s worth it. Power outages are only fun for a short time.

There are at least two problems here. One is the increase in extreme weather caused by global warming. That is a long term problem that needs to be addressed (and it is becoming a crisis sooner than expected). The other problem is our infrastructure, and specifically, the electrical grid. In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers examined our electrical grid and gave it a grade of D+. The World Economic Forum ranks our electrical infrastructure as 25^th in the world, down from 8^th in 2003-4. Remarkably, neither global warming nor infrastructure got very much attention during the presidential campaign.

This points to an underlying problem: When it comes to major issues we lack a sense of community. In the language of kindergarten progress reports, “we don’t play well with others,” and we don’t know how to share.

I don’t criticize the people who are buying generators, but from a national or global perspective it makes no sense. It’s inefficient and it increases pollution. Ironically, it addresses the problems caused by climate change by adding to the conditions that cause climate change.

But this is where we are in America. Community services are being replaced with private alternatives. Rather than pay for services with higher taxes, we leave it to individuals.

If you are worried about crime, you can live in a gated community with private security. If the public schools have problems, you can send your kids to a private school. If the roads are crumbling, you can buy a bigger SUV. If public parks and recreation areas are not maintained, you can buy a home on the beach. But these “work arounds” only work if you have a lot of money.

We need to think hard about what it means to be a community, rather than a collection of individuals who happen to live in the same country (and on the same planet).

Something Missing from the Debate

¹⁷As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ¹⁸Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. ¹⁹You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” ²⁰He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” ²¹Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” ²²When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Mark 10:17-22

Earlier this week in his column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote about an urgent issue that was completely absent from the presidential debate, the growth of income inequality in America.

Kristof began with a parable. He invited readers to “Imagine a kindergarten with 100 students, lavishly supplied with books, crayons and toys.” There is more than enough for everyone, but one little boy has almost all the toys. Nine others each have a few toys, and the remaining 90 children have nothing at all.

One little boy has more toys than all those ninety others combined.

As a responsible adult, you want to correct the situation. “What’s going on?” you ask. “Let’s learn to share! One child shouldn’t hog everything for himself!” But the one with all the toys is unmoved. “I don’t want to share,” he says. “This is America!”

Sadly, the little boy is right. America does in fact look like the kindergarten in Kristof’s parable. The top 1% in the United States has more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. Every time I write that I think it must be wrong. It seems impossible, but it’s true. There are studies that vary slightly in their calculations, but the basic facts hold. And within that top 1% there is a steep increase as you move from the .09% up to the .01% (one in a thousand).

In the present economic “recovery,” 93% of the gains in income went to the top 1%. And last month the Gini coefficient, the standard measure of inequality set a modern record and reached the highest level since the great depression.

Last year scholars from Duke and Harvard conducted a study in which they asked Americans which country they would like to live in, one with income inequality like Sweden’s or one with income inequality like America’s. Turns out that most of us would rather live in Sweden. Of course the researchers didn’t label the countries as America a Sweden. We want to live in a more equal society and we believe that America has a much more equal distribution of wealth than it does.

For Christians, inequality is a moral problem. Kristof, who would not call himself a Christian, is nevertheless closer to the ethics of Jesus than many devout “believers.” He describes our inequality as “unconscionable.” For the past thirty years we have been redistributing income, from the middle and bottom to the top.

Inequality is not just a moral problem; it is also an economic problem. It stifles growth because those at the bottom cannot create the necessary demand for goods and services, and they cannot afford the education to train for the jobs of the future.

The answer is not for the government to play Robin Hood and take money from the top to redistribute at the bottom, but to restore a more progressive tax policy. In the 1950’s, the marginal tax rate on the highest incomes was 90%. It wasn’t until 1987 that the highest tax rate came down to less than 50%. That income could be used for education, job training, and infrastructure, investments that would create jobs and benefit all Americans.

The Parable of the Extra Cookie

When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” 
 Deuteronomy 8:12-17

Bestselling author Michael Lewis gave a remarkably self-effacing and genuinely humble speech to the graduating class at Princeton last month.

His speech was titled, “Don’t Eat Fortune’s Cookie.” It was in many ways the antithesis of the traditional graduation speech. He did not outline his keys to success or exhort the graduates to set high goals, or talk about discipline and hard work. What he told them was that success was more about luck than hard work. Successful people have to work hard. They have to be disciplined and focused. But lots of people work very hard and are very focused and still achieve much less.

As individuals and as a society, we don’t want to see it that way. We want to believe that what we have achieved is entirely the result of our own efforts.

He tells the story of his own lucky break this way, “One night I was invited to a dinner, where I sat next to the wife of a big shot at a giant Wall Street investment bank, called Salomon Brothers. She more or less forced her husband to give me a job. I knew next to nothing about Salomon Brothers. But Salomon Brothers happened to be where Wall Street was being reinvented—into the place we have all come to know and love. When I got there I was assigned, almost arbitrarily, to the very best job in which to observe the growing madness: they turned me into the house expert on derivatives. A year and a half later Salomon Brothers was handing me a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars to give advice about derivatives to professional investors.”

For Lewis, the money was really beside the point. He didn’t want to be a Wall Street executive, he wanted to be a writer. The critical thing was that now he had something to write about, “Wall Street had become so unhinged that it was paying recent Princeton graduates who knew nothing about money small fortunes to pretend to be experts about money.”

He went on, “The book I wrote was called ‘Liar’s Poker.’ It sold a million copies. I was 28 years old. I had a career, a little fame, a small fortune and a new life narrative. All of a sudden people were telling me I was born to be a writer. This was absurd. Even I could see there was another, truer narrative, with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady? Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm from which to write the story of an age? Of landing in the seat with the best view of the business? Of having parents who didn't disinherit me but instead sighed and said ‘do it if you must?’ Of having had that sense of must kindled inside me by a professor of art history at Princeton? Of having been let into Princeton in the first place?”

He talked about his writing, and then he told a story which is also a parable.

Researchers at Berkley recruited undergraduates to particpate in an experiment. They segregated them into three person teams. Each team had either trhee males or three females. Then they arbitraritly chose a person to be the group “leader,” who would report back to the larger session. The “leaders” were each given a special T-shirt to wear, identifying him or her as the “leader.” And each group was given a moral dilemma to solve, like reducing campus drinking or academic cheating.

After thirty minutes, the researcher interrupted each of the groups and offered them a plate of cookies. Each plate had four cookies. There was one for each participant and one extra. This might have been the source of some awkward negotiation, but it wasn’t. The fourth cookie was almost always consumed by the “leader,” who “Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of the extra cookie were crumbs on the leader's shirt.”

Lewis observed, “This leader had performed no special task. He had no special virtue. He'd been chosen at random, 30 minutes earlier. His status was nothing but luck. But it still left him with the sense that the cookie should be his.”

The experiment, he said, helps to explain Wall Street bonuses and CEO pay and lots of other human behavior. And then he explained the meaning of the parable in specific reference to Princeton graduates, “In a general sort of way you have been appointed the leader of the group. Your appointment may not be entirely arbitrary. But you must sense its arbitrary aspect: you are the lucky few. Lucky in your parents, lucky in your country, lucky that a place like Princeton exists that can take in lucky people, introduce them to other lucky people, and increase their chances of becoming even luckier. Lucky that you live in the richest society the world has ever seen, in a time when no one actually expects you to sacrifice your interests to anything.” 

All of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may. But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't.”

And then he urged them never to forget the Princeton motto: “In the nation's service. In the service of all nations.”

We do live in the richest society the world has ever seen at a time when no one actually expects us to sacrifice our own interests for anyone else. We will be tempted to “eat the extra cookie.” In some cases we will be tempted to eat the extra cookie even when we know that outside of our group there may be others with no cookies at all.

Opportunity Is Not Equal

Happy are those who find wisdom,
and those who get understanding,
for her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.

Proverbs 3:13-18

My friend Keith Sanzen posted a CNN essay on education on his Facebook page. The article was titled, “For Poor Children, Trying Hard Is Not Enough.” It was written by Trina R. Shanks, an associate professor of social work at the University of Michigan and a Rhodes Scholar.

Shanks, who is black, notes that she is the granddaughter of an elementary school cook and a woman who cleaned other people’s homes. Her grandmothers never had much money, but they worked hard and encouraged their children to get an education. In spite of their difficult economic circumstances, both of her parents earned college degrees and were able to raise Shanks and her siblings in a middle class lifestyle. And now she, their daughter, “went on to receive a Ph.D.”

Her point in the essay is that the story she lived, of upward mobility, is increasingly difficult to achieve. She cites studies showing that income level and educational opportunity are linked. And points out that the effects are dramatic: the highest achieving students from poor families are less likely to complete college than the lowest achieving students of affluent families. In terms of completing a college degree, income is a greater determinate than ability or effort. We are not just wasting the lives of individual children, though that would be bad enough, we are losing precious intellectual resources that could benefit our whole society.

The article was interesting and appalling. But it did not break new ground. Anyone who has been concerned about upward social mobility in the United States already knows that we now lag far behind many other western countries.

To me, the comments following the article were more interesting than the article itself.

The negative responses followed a pattern: “I was poor and I worked hard and I succeeded. Everyone can succeed if they work hard enough.”

We won’t question how “poor” the writers actually were, or how hard they worked. I applaud the effort and the achievement, but I am appalled by the reasoning. The point that Shanks and many others are making is not that it is impossible for a poor child to overcome his or her circumstances, but that such success is so very rare. 

This is not about individual success or failure; it is about broad social patterns.Among poor children, even those with great gifts and determination face daunting odds. Some will succeed, but too many will fail. The individual struggles are poignant, but the social costs are staggering.

As a child, when I learned about the American Dream, I was taught that education was the foundation and the great equalizer. Regardless of race or class, everyone had the opportunity to learn and, therefore, the opportunity to succeed. In my idyllic Cape Cod childhood, I understood success to mean a home, a family and a satisfying occupation that contributed to the greater good. That modest dream is increasingly out of reach for children growing up in low income families. As one researcher ironically observed, the best way to insure success is to choose wisely when selecting your parents.

Coffee and Conscience

Happy are those
who do not follow the advice
of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of the scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.Psalm 1:1-3
Just a few years ago Starbucks was closing stores and laying off employees in a desperate attempt to restore profitability. Today they are expanding, and the Starbucks stock price is at an all time high. At the shareholders meeting this week, the man responsible for the turnaround, CEO Howard Schultz, announced record profits of more than 1 billion dollars, and said that conscience was a key component of the company’s success.

Companies, he said, need to give back to their communities. He argued that it is good for business and essential to restoring the American Dream. “We’re heading into a crucible,” he told the shareholders, “something that’s really going to test the conscience of the country. It’s a test we cannot pass by being bystanders.” He talked about the growing gap between rich and poor and potential “cuts in social services we haven’t seen since the great depression.”

He criticized the government for not doing enough to resolve the debt crisis, or help create jobs and restore the middle class, and he criticized banks for not loaning more money to small businesses. He also insisted that business leaders can no longer wait for Washington to act.
Starbucks has created a jobs program that makes loans to small businesses and non-profits. And he announced the company’s commitment to the goal of job creation by investing $180 million in a new plant in Augusta, Georgia, as well as the expansion of existing facilities in South Carolina.

During the meeting, two shareholders stood up to question the company’s decision to support same sex marriage in Washington State. Each time, he answered calmly and respectfully, noting that not everyone agrees with their stand. “But,” he said, “I want to say candidly, this was not a hard decision.” We looked at the issue, he said, “through the lens of humanity.”

He went on to say that he wanted the company to stand for something more than a product and he wanted the company employees to feel like they were part of something larger than themselves that would make a difference in the world. Last year Starbucks employees contributed nearly half a million hours to volunteer projects in their communities, and the company is working hard to recycle more and be more environmentally friendly.

Looking at a business “through the lens of humanity” does not guarantee financial success, and “doing good” does not automatically translate into “doing well.” But without a concern for the common welfare, real success is impossible.

Occupy the Bible

The LORD rises to argue his case; he stands to judge the peoples.
The LORD enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people:
It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the face of the poor?
says the Lord GOD of hosts.Isaiah 3:13-15

There are lots of things wrong with “Occupy Wall Street.” As a social vision, Anarchism, even Pacifist Anarchism (even Christian Pacifist Anarchism) has its limits.

Phil Wogaman describes the oddly naïve combination of pessimism and optimism found in anarchistic movements as “utter pessimism about any redeeming possibilities withn the present forms of social organization combined with stupendous optimssm about the goodness that will simply blossom forth, unaided, after the present social organization is smashed.” The OWS message seems to be that if we can get rid of the oppressive collusion of business and government, then “the people” can create a society ruled by consensus and everyone can live in peace and harmony.

On the other hand, the Occupy movement has done some important things. In his Sunday column, called “Occupy the Agenda,” Nicholas Kristof reports that use of the words “income inequality” quintupled in news reports after the protests began. That is no small achievement. For more than three decades, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer (relatively), and no one has seemed to care. Now, at least people are talking about it.

The top one percent of Americans have more net wealth than the bottom ninety percent. That doesn’t seem possible, but it is true. We have been redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top at an alarming rate.

I think this is what Isaiah meant when he said that “the spoil of the poor is in your houses.” And this is what he called, “grinding the face of the poor.”

Kristof reports on a new study by Michael Norton of the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University. In their study they asked Americans how they believed wealth should be distributed across income groups. Respondents thought that the richest 20% should control about one third of the wealth, and the poorest 20% should have about one-tenth.

Most people are surprised to learn that the richest 20% of Americans actually possess more than 80% of the nation’s wealth, and the poorest 20% own one-tenth of a percent. Again, the real numbers are hard to believe.

Wealth is power. The concentration of wealth has led to a concentration of power, and those who have wealth use their influence to keep on the government on their side. In a recent speech the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, James M. Stone, said that before the economic collapse of 2008, congressional leaders knew that the banks needed to be more closely controlled. And he asked rhetorically, “So why was this not done?” One obvious part of the answer, he said, is that “both political parties rely heavily on campaign contributions from the financial sector.”

The Bible is relentless in opposing oppression and zealous in advocating for the poor. It sees an implicit injustice in a growing gap between rich and poor. But it does not give us a political program. That is up to us.

The Occupy movement has brought critical biblical issues into mainstream conversation, and for that we can be grateful.

A Growing Chasm

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 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.’ 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. 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.’”Luke 16:19-26
Jesus was teaching about wealth and poverty and justice and the grace of God in a series of parables when he was interrupted by some hecklers who ridiculed him because, Luke says, they were lovers of money. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.” And then he went back to talking about the Kingdom of God, and he told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

In many ways, Jesus’ teachings on wealth and poverty are an extension of the witness of the Hebrew Prophets. He makes it more personal and his teaching is more emphatic, but the theme is consistent across the centuries of biblical witness. Explaining God’s judgment on Sodom, Ezekiel said, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16.49). Jesus calls this “an abomination in the sight of God.”

Against this biblical background a new report from the Congressional Budget Office should raise serious concerns (http://cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485). The CBO found that from 1979 to 2007 the average income of the top one percent of the population grew by 275% in inflation-adjusted dollars.

The rest of the top 20% grew at less than a quarter of that rate. In the middle quintile, the growth was only about one eighth of the top rate. And the lowest twenty percent grew at less than one fifteenth the rate of the top one percent. Those are rate differences. The actual dollar differences are enormous.

Yesterday in the Providence Journal they applied their “Truth-O-Meter” test to a sign held up by one of the “Occupy Providence” people claiming that a person working at minimum wage made $16,000 per year while the CEO of Goldman-Sachs made $16,000 per hour. Calling the claim “False,” the Journal pointed out that the minimum wage earner would have an annual income of closer to $15,000 and the Goldman-Sachs CEO actually earned less than $10,000 per hour.

Call me crazy, but I don’t see how that really makes a difference.

A little research reveals that the sign-maker had the wrong company. The company was Lehman Brothers. The CEO was Richard Fuld. He made $17,000 per hour in 2007 while driving his company and the whole economy over an economic cliff (see Nicholas Kristof, September 17, 2008 in the New York Times).

There are places where the Bible seems to advocate income equality (Acts 2:44-46, Matthew 20:1-16), but that is not a dominant theme. There are many examples throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the history of the early church, where people of wealth are held up as positive examples. Sometimes they are praised for how they use their money to help others. Other times they are praised for virtues that may be unrelated to their economic status.

And the Bible never holds up poverty as a virtue. There is no suggestion that the poor are better than the rich.

The problem is in the gap between rich and poor. Jesus does not give us hard numbers and he does not give us a formula for how much is too much. When the rich man dines sumptuously and the poor man begs for crumbs, the gap is too great.

Reasonable people may differ in how much we think is too much. And we may differ on what we believe is the best way to reverse course. But we are going in the wrong direction.

You Will Always Have the Poor

Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”Deuteronomy 15:10-11
Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish.” (Mark 14:7.)

Shortly before his crucifixion, as he was enjoying a meal with friends, a woman came to Jesus and anointed him with a jar of costly ointment. When some at the table were appalled at the apparent waste and said that it would have been better if the ointment had been sold and the money given to the poor, Jesus responded by praising the woman’s generosity and told the group that they would always have the poor, but they would not always have him.

The episode has often been recounted as evidence that we should focus on worshiping Jesus rather than on helping poor people. Of course, that interpretation turns the commandment from Deuteronomy upside down and totally misses the point. In the Gospel stories, Jesus is quoting the commandment from the Torah. He is praising the woman for her generosity and reminding his listeners that they have not yet eliminated poverty and they need to keep working. They (and we) need to “be ungrudging” because there will always be people in need.

The latest figures from the census bureau remind us of the truth of the biblical observation. Unfortunately, those figures also show that we are not doing very well at fulfilling the commandment to help move people out of poverty. Between 2009 and 2010, the number of Americans living in poverty grew by 2.6 million, to 46.2 million. Over 15% of all Americans are living in poverty, the highest percentage in two decades.

This will not be another blog on the gap between rich and poor, but it is worth noting that the median income fell by 2.3%, to $49,455. In constant dollars, that is $3,800 less than the peak achieved in 1999. So the Middle Class is also hurting.

The poverty level is even worse if we go back to the original formula for what we call “poor.” By the standards we used in the 1960’s, about 22% of Americans are now poor.

The good news is that Social Security lifts many elderly out of poverty, and the rate of poverty among seniors did not increase. The bad news is that numbers are skewed toward more childhood poverty. Without unemployment benefits and food stamps, the numbers would be much worse.

Our short term economic need is for job creation. Long term, we will need to deal with the deficit, but short term we need jobs. We can argue about how to get that done. And we should argue about how to get that done. But the census numbers remind us that we need to face the issue and we need to work together to find solutions.

Class Warfare

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Mark 10:21-22
In our current political discourse, there is no shortage of politicians who want to turn the Gospel upside down.

We used to have the "war on poverty," now we have a war on the poor.

Some politicians are concerned because 47% of Americans do not pay income tax. So am I. But not for the same reason. As Christians, we need to be concerned about the roots of that problem. The root problem is that the bottom half of the country has so little money. The gap between rich and poor has been growing for decades. Since the 1970’s we have been redistributing income from the bottom to the top.

The top 1% of the population has an average household income of over $1,000,000.
The top 10% has an average income of over $160,000.
The bottom 90% averages just over $30,000.
That’s per household, not per person.

The wealthiest 1% pays about 40% of all income taxes, which sounds like a lot until you realize that they also have about 40% of the wealth. So their tax burden is really about average.

Poor people do pay taxes, of course. They pay sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, and payroll taxes. On average, the lowest income group pays over 16% of their income in taxes.

But there are lots of politicians who want poor people to pay more in income taxes. Senator Dan Coats of Indiana has said that everyone should pay some income tax so that “everyone has some skin in the game.”

Some are upset with the earned income tax credit, introduced by President Reagan, which provides tax “refunds” to the working poor in excess of what they paid in taxes. But the earned income tax credit is one of the most effective antipoverty programs, because it provides an extra incentive for working, as well as thousands of dollars to poor families each year.

The earned income tax credit and the child tax credit lifted 7.2 million families out of poverty in 2009. And they provide an on-going economic stimulus because almost every dollar is immediately pumped back into the economy in the form of consumer spending.

When Jesus told the rich young man that he “lacked one thing,” the disciples were shocked. Mark reports that then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And again, the disciples were perplexed, so Jesus repeated himself, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

“To enter the kingdom of God” is to live into God’s presence, to live as God calls us to live, and to be part of making the kingdom of God come “on earth as it is in heaven.” That is the prayer that Jesus taught us and that is the work to which he calls us.