For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. - Jesus
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. - Benjamin Disraeli by way of Mark Twain
Economics are a hard thing. Utterly dependent on statistics, economists defend theories ranging from laissez faire free markets to strictly regulated communist programs. Entire think tanks and institutes are dedicated to advocating libertarian and socialist economic policies alike. The truth is that, not unlike theology, once someone believes that they've gotten their mind completely around economics, they become dangerous. Enter the politicians.
Americans in the 21st century, even in the throws of a major recession, enjoy the benefits of one of the richest economies in history. As that economy has grown, the rich indeed have gotten richer, with the top 20% of wage earners significantly improving their lot while the bottom fifth have actually seen a decrease in their already dismal earnings. However, Steve Horwitz argues below that such disparities are in fact deceiving, arguing that economic mobility actually discredits such disparities.
Horwitz's argument is convincing. He shows a critical component of understanding poverty - that not all poverty is created equal. Many who live below the poverty line are only temporarily poor, either just having entered the workforce in a low-paying job, or in-between jobs. These poor are, as Horwitz argues, remarkably economically mobile - accounting for the lego man's movement all the way to the top earning strata by the end of the presentation. Horwitz makes an excellent case for maintaining the US's free-market system, based on a utilitarian ethic of the greatest good for the greatest number.
Unfortunately, a Christian's call is not to utilitarian ethics. We instead are called to care for the least of these, even at the cost of ourselves and our economic peers. In his example, Horwitz neglects the long-term, permanently poor. There is in this country a class of people who will never, despite their efforts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, climb into an upper income bracket.
So many of the homeless men that Rachel works with are African Americans with crack-cocaine addictions. Interestingly, the majority of these men don't try crack until they are well into mid-life, in their late 30s and 40s. Most of them had manual or unskilled labor positions, and many of them were "productive members of society" until they decided to take their first hit. They did what they were supposed to do - find a job and do it (it is funny how college-educated white folks like to remind us that "college isn't for everyone"). Many of them earned decent livings until the reality of their fate set in. Regardless of their efforts, they would never move out of the lowest income bracket. Economics are not completely to blame for their decisions - serious trauma is a common theme, and every recovering addict will confess his or her ownership in addiction. But it is interesting how many of her clients are former members of the lowest 20% of earners.
It would be compelling to see how Horwitz's model would play out if he divided the income brackets into twentieths instead of fifths. I trust we would see far fewer from the lowest five percent climb into the upper five percent - or even out of the bottom 20%. Few of the permanent, generational poor have either the education or resources to escape that low bracket. Add in structural discrimination and a touch of fatalism and you have yourself an economically immobile population.
If Horwitz broke down the statistics even further, he would show that the top 1% of earners in the US earned upwards of a quarter of the nation's income - far more than the bottom 50% of earners combined. That percentage has increased significantly from the 8% that top percentile took in back in the 1970s. I question whether even the most driven of the temporarily poor would ever enjoy a slice of that pie.
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