Economic Injustice

The evidence is accumulating that the last eight years or more have systematically benefited those who were very well off, compared to the vast majority of Americans. Over at the Economist's View blog two posts excerpting and highlighting commentary in The National Journal and the New York Times presented data that support perceptions that the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

The National Journal piece points out that

In the generation after World War II, the median income roughly doubled, increasing faster for those on the lower rungs of the ladder than for those at the top. Since 1979, the median income has advanced much more slowly overall, and it has grown much faster for the affluent than for those below them. Today,... family incomes are higher than in the 1970s almost entirely because women are working...; men in their 30s today earn less than their fathers did at the same age. In this environment, upward mobility becomes tougher.

I have seen this at work in my own family. Those of us with college degrees have been able to keep pace for the most part. Those without degrees or technical education are barely squeaking by. Further, every one of us daughters - all of us mothers - have had to work to support our families to make ends meet. Most of us have also been divorced and this has had economic consequences for us and our children. These factors have also impinged on our children who have not had the advantages open to the children of intact, well-off families.

In my practice of psychotherapy I see much more of this. Women who are working, often from home, every keystroke monitored, for companies where the executives make millions of dollars just in annual salaries, while they make barely enough to survive. Their work loads intensify, they are expected to work mandatory overtime, and somehow have to find ways to take care of their children when their schedule changes. I wonder about what the future for their children holds.

These changes in our national life and income patterns seem to me to be unjust. As Jim Wallis said in his book, The Next Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, budgets are moral documents. It is federal and state budgets and legislation that channeled more money into the pockets of the wealthy and took more in taxes from the middle class, sending some of them into lower income levels. It is cuts in federal and state programs for schools, child care, college student grants and loans, supported work programs, and oh, so many others that have helped to create this situation. It is citizen and governmental acceptance that it is okay to support women who do child care in their homes for pay, while it is not okay to support women in their homes to take care of their own children.

I pray that there may be a true resolve to create greater income equality, to improve the quality of life for those who are in the lower two-thirds income bracket and to tax those who are wealthy so they pay their fair share. I pray that we have many discussions of what a good life, good communities consist in. I pray that we be inspired to do whatever we can, where ever we are to make this so. AMEN.