Tuesday, May 17, 2005

1050 Easy does it, the widening gap between rich and poor

If you are a liberal and you don’t read the Wall Street Journal, you’re missing a great opportunity to find out what is wrong with our business driven economy and culture. It won’t do you much good to read a left wing or socialist screed--everything you read there will be incorrect and biased. Preaching to the choir, as it were. But the WSJ comes down hard on misbehavior in business, government and education and doesn’t pull any punches. The female journalists are particularly ruthless in finding graft, fraud and the soft underbellies of the capitalist system.

Right now the WSJ is running a series on the widening gap between the rich and poor in the United States. The first installment by David Wessel had the oddest statement about American politics that I’ve seen in a long time: “Americans have elected politicians who oppose using the muscle of government to restrain the forces of widening inequality.” Really? Ever heard of Title 9, or Medicaid? Earlier in the article was the phrase, “Despite the rise of affirmative action. . .” Can both statements be true? It would appear to me that the constant tinkering our government has done (and for most of my adult life, the people I elected, the Democrats, were in control of the Congress) has made our life what it is today.

Today’s installment by Bob Davis was about easy credit, and most of his examples were from Utah, a state we generally think of as conservative, religious and Republican. I haven’t seen the rest of the series, but I’m offering my ten easy and ubiquitous reasons, in no particular order, why the gap has widened in the last 35 years.

1. Easy credit cards: We got our first credit card in the late 60s--I think it was a "Shopper’s Charge." We now have one department store credit card and one bank card--we’ve never carried a balance. Since the late 80s and into the 90s, many new households have never known what it was to live on their earned income.

2. Easy divorce: Christians now have the same divorce rate as anyone else in the culture. When we married 45 years ago, regular religious observance offered families some protection. No fault divorce particularly hurt women and children, pushing them economically into competition with two income families.

3. Easy sex: Casual one-night stands were glorified in the movies of the 70s and 80s. Although adultery and fornication had long been a theme in literature, drama and movies, casual sex and living together before marriage became the gold standard of relationships by the 80s, even though it’s been proven that it increases the divorce rate. Then easy sex came into the living rooms via TV so that even young children think who’s spending the night is no more important than what toothpaste mom buys. Women having and raising babies alone is the biggest cause of growing poverty.

4. Easy birth control and abortion: The millions of Americans that might have sprung from the loins of some of our best and brightest have been denied life itself, and thus their slots in the pie chart has been taken by poor, uneducated immigrants. Obviously this creates a huge gap between the middle class and the poor, who instead of having a solid footing as those aborted citizens might have had, flood across our borders or arrive as refugees with nothing.

5. Easy technology and gadgets: Time wasted on I-pods and text messaging and vegging out in front of bad movies on DVDs has certainly absorbed billions of hours that could have been invested in networking, education or advancing up the career ladder. Cable and cell phone monthly costs easily equal what we spent on a mortgage.

6. Easy bankruptcy: Load up the credit cards with consumer spending, mortgage your future, then make the rest of us pay it off for you. It might have been Plan B 20 years ago, but is now Plan A. Interest only mortgages, leases for larger and more expensive vehicles, second mortgages--for a generation who thinks the future will be paid for by someone else, it’s a recipe for a growing gap.

7. Easy leisure: Thirty five years ago (1970) few middle class families took vacations--if Dad had a week off (and most companies didn’t offer it) he spent it fixing the house. Sure it’s a huge industry and employs a lot of people, but we’re looking at the gap aren’t we? We’d probably been married 10 years before we took a family vacation (my parents never had one), and then it was at my mother’s farm for a week. Our daughter and her husband had been to Key West, Arruba and took a Mexican cruise in the first 5 years of their marriage.

8. Easy entertainment: This is related to leisure and technology, but today’s young families have difficulty being alone or quiet, it would seem. Even 30 years olds seem unable to walk around without head phones. They are spending their children’s future at movies, sporting events and theme parks. A visit to the library is most likely to pick up a movie, not a book.

9. Easy college loans: Instead of attending a state school, working during the summer or attending closer to home, many young people begin their working lives with huge debt, a debt that takes years to pay off, assuming they don’t default. Loans were so easy in the 80s, that parents who could well afford to pay tuition had their children at the public trough.

10. Easy shopping: You can be a couch potato or a computer novice and never leave home to shop. Addiction is easy. Just call in with the credit card.

See? And I haven’t even said a word about how much health care costs, or how the women’s movement changed our culture, public transportation or taxes. And while the government is tangentially involved in these areas, mostly it boils down to perfectly legal choices, choices which when they become ingrained in our way of life lead to poverty or slippage down by a quintile for the next generation.

5 comments:

Feed Fido said...

While I tend to agree, I do think you failed to address the root causes. Yes, abortion and birth control, women's movement and easy credit, but poverty is generational. Poverty today looks different today b/c our standard of living is higher. And I think many poor folks are tired of living without, rent-to-own is better in their eyes than never owning. Sucess is seen as having material goods and no one wants to look like a loser. But I really don't believe, and maybe I am wrong, that a big % of debt is goodies, unless healthcare and owning a car are luxuries. I don't own a car, but if I lived most anywhere else I'd have no choice but to get one. CEOs today make, I believe recent quote, 30 times (or was it 300) what the average line worker makes, where's the equity there? I am not necesarily pro-union, but I see the need for organized labor. Business demonstrates time and time again, that the average worker is a slave in their eyes.

David said...

Nothing to argue with in your quick list. All of them have contributed to the widening rich/poor gap (although it's still relatively easy to bridge that gap... by personally applying the converse of your list :-)

May I suggest adding a public education system that seems bent on creating subliterates? "No Child Left Behind," for one example of many, might as well be titled "No (bright, willing, hard-working) Child Gets Ahead" or "Hold Everyone Back to the Lowest Common Denominator."

And that, of course, is but the latest fad of many that have wreaked havoc on a process that was once at least functional in places, but is now dysfunctional almost everyhere in this country.

Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Three generations of idiots are enough" seems eerily applicable to what public education is doing today. Actually, when speaking of a whole society, far too much.

Norma said...

I'll have to address L's comments in a separate blog, because I know a little about her unique situation from her own excellent blog writing.

The median income in the USA for one full-time worker, working all year is $60,852--that is not slavery in anyone's language or culture. Slavery still exists today--more people are in slavery today than in the 17th century-- and it undercuts the seriousness of that problem to call our workers "slaves."

But I know L is a librarian, and that is a very low paid profession for the education required. Poverty in the bottom fifth includes the young, inexperienced and the part timers and that's another reason why this rich/poor gap looks so huge.

Feed Fido said...

CEO pay at 365 largest corps in 300 times the factory workers. Today b/c of NAFTA factory workers can't make a sustainable living. I believe in competition, but the American worker cannot compete against folks getting no benefits and $5 an hour. Alan Keyes has excellent essays on why NAFTA is killing American wages. More and more whote collar and pink collar jobs are being outsourced too, so I expect a re-examining of NAFTA. Sorry bit of a tangent there. Back to poverty today being generational. Norma, you made mention of your stable, supportive family that helped you start out in the world, that, as you know, is priceless. Imagine trying to live and pay for your future while going to school. Even a state school can break someone with no funding. Add into that mix kids who have never had squat wanting to fit in with kids who have new clothes and cars, you end up with bankrupcy. And once you are in debt, good luck getting out-- I swear the system is rigged to keep you down. And ironically those who shrugg off astronomical interest rates as "punishment for foolishness" well they pay too in taxes to support soial service agencies and greater demands on charity.

In 2003, CEOs of the 365 largest U.S. corporations were paid on average $8 million, 301 times as much as factory workers. This paper asks whether CEOs get paid too much. Appealing to widely recognized moral values, I distinguish three views of justice in wages: the agreement view, the desert view, and the utility view. I argue that, no matter which view is correct, CEOs get paid too much. I conclude by offering
two ways CEO pay might be reduced. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Publication title: Business Ethics Quarterly. Chicago: Apr 2005. Vol.
15, Iss. 2; pg. 257

Abe said...

Good post. Good points. Some questions for socialists (avowed and those who don't admit to that label, but just want to redistribute the wealth).

So what's the "right" gap between rich and poor? I've never heard a good answer to that question.

How are the bottom 25% in income doing today relative to how they were doing 35 yrs ago? (answer: Better. Lots better.)

How many people move from one quartile to another (up and down) in 10 yrs? (answer: Lots.)

Why is it that those who produce more should be penalized for it in order to reward those who produce less?