Capitalism and the Growing Disparity Between the Rich and the Poor

Class and Ability are interesting categories to consider, because both are rather changeable, not necessarily staying static throughout our lives. Unless someone is very poor or very wealthy (in which case, their station may be less likely to change), nearly all of us experience at least minor fluctuations in social class as we grow up, get jobs, move, start families, retire, and age. 

The changes (a jump from lower-middle class to decidedly middle-class, for instance) may be subtle to others, but are often quite recognizable to us. Money is security, and it can change the way we behave and the risks we feel comfortable taking - which in turn might change the way others treat us, even if they don't know exactly how much money we have to our name. Money also offers opportunities (resources, education, networking) that open more doors for us - which can boost our self-esteem and sense of worth. In contrast, constantly worrying about having enough money can lead to heightened generalized anxiety and compromise our self-confidence. Such worries might prompt us to take on more than we can handle, stretching ourselves thin as we attempt to earn more - or perhaps disillusion and discourage us, wearing ourselves out before we even get out of bed in the morning and preventing us from work.

Most of those of us living in the middle class have probably, at some point in our lives, experienced both of these (though maybe not quite to such extremes). There might be a period of time when we have enough cash coming in, or relatively low expenses, or a combination of the two - and as a result, we not only earn enough to live off of, but enough to start saving a bit. Those who don't experience this in adulthood often experienced it as children - even when a family is poorer, it is usually the adults who make sacrifices and carry the brunt of the money anxiety; they do their best to ensure that their children are taken care of or kept in the dark from the extent of their poverty for as long as possible. During this period of our lives (whenever it may occur), we don't worry as much about the costs of goods and services, we feel safe and secure and provided for, and we believe in possibilities - that we can be anything when we grow up, that we can decide between many different options for how to spend our leisure time, and that various opportunities will be readily available to us.

But there are also times when the opposite is true. Often we experience these financial slumps when we leave home, go to college or start a trade, and try to provide for ourselves for the first time. Even if our parents are willing and able to assist us financially, we might try not to rely on them too much; we wish to assert our independence. Or it might happen with job fluctuations - whether caused by an economic repression or more personal decisions, such as going from a two-income family to a one-income family so that one parent can stay home to take care of young children. Or it might happen at the end of our careers, when we retire and lose the steady paycheck we'd grown used to for the last several decades. Sudden changes in health can also cause undo financial hardship - in addition to the cost of medical expenses, there might be a loss in the ability to work as many hours, or at all.

These types of changes to one's finances are common and expected - for many of us, they are a part of life.

But for the very wealthy or the very poor, the situation is often different. Even when someone from a wealthy family loses a job or changes careers, even when they grow their families, make poor investment decisions, or fall sick, and even when the country goes through an economic recession, they are relatively unaffected. They might occasionally worry more about money than they used to, but their worries are "what if" anxieties - what if, god forbid, their financial situation was worse? 

And for the very poor, there are limited opportunities to rise out of their poverty. How can they earn a college degree if they can't afford the tuition, and their family's credit is too low to get a decent loan? How can they pay off that loan, if they do get one, when it takes them twice as long to complete their degree (because they're working multiple jobs in the meantime), and the job pickings are slim once they do finally graduate? How can they even be accepted into college in the first place, if they can't afford the application fees, or the standardized exam fees to take the SAT or ACT, or if having to take exhausting minimum wage jobs in high school managed to help support their families (at least a little), but ruined their high school GPA in the process?

And how will they rise up in their careers, to a position with a higher salary, if they don't have that degree? Even jobs that don't require college often require internships or years of low-wage labor experience before higher positions open up - and it's hard to devote those years to earning lower wage if someone needs more money immediately. They can't volunteer to work extra hours and put in more face time at one job if they have to run off to work their second job instead; when someone is spread thin like that, it's hard to ever move up. They sacrifice the potential for more money in the future for enough money to live off of in the present; it's not a sacrifice they even have a choice over, but one that is essentially made for them, if they want to survive. No one can plan for the future when the present is already a struggle.

Worse yet, even if someone from a very poor family does manage to earn a college degree, pay off some debt, earn a good credit score, and/or land a secure job with a reasonable salary - the benefits are often short-lived. They may funnel their extra money into helping other family members or friends also rise out of poverty, driven by a sense of community and fixing problems they see in the present (instead of saving for their own future), because that's all they've ever done or witnessed others doing. Or they may finally get their heads above water - just to experience one of those "life happens" events that threaten to drown them again, like a chronic illness, a growing family, inheriting a family member's debt, or a sudden economic downturn that threatens the job security they've stumbled into.

The wealthy have extra income which they can invest - which leads to more income, which they can also invest. Meanwhile, the poor are constantly struggling just to make enough to provide basic necessities for their families - and any change in their life circumstances can make that struggle instantly worse. And so the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. To top it off, many middle-income level jobs are on the decline (according to NBC news), thanks to automation, outsourcing, and wage erosion. 

There is a growing disparity between the rich and the poor in the U.S. - to the point where the middle class may disappear altogether. 

According to ThinkProgress, the wealth disparity between upper and middle income Americans has hit a record high. Upper-income families are almost seven times wealthier than middle-income families, and seventy times wealthier than lower-income families. Americans that make up the top 0.1% now have more monetary worth than the entire bottom 90%. 

Investopedia further explains that in the U.S., 26% of Americans are classified as lower income, 59% as middle income, and 15% as upper income - while in other countries, the middle class is larger (with percents in the 70s-80s). Their data comes from a Pew research report, which concluded that this decline of the middle class and the accompanying rise in income inequality presents an adverse climate for economic growth.

In theory, there is an easy solution to this inequality. The rich could part with more of their money, bolstering those in poverty. Indeed, nearly every culture/religion around the world encourages such compassion - teaching that earthly riches are temporal and not the proper thing on which to hang our sense of worth, and cautioning against the love of money or failing to share our wealth with those who need it.

Here are just a sampling of such advice:

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." - 1 Timothy 6:10

"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you." - Leviticus 23:22 

"The fool is his own enemy. Seeking wealth, he destroys himself. Seek rather the other shore." - Buddha 

"And know that your worldly goods...are but a trial and a temptation, and that with God there is tremendous reward." - Qu'ran, An-Anfal 8:28 

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." - Luke 12:15 

"Money has never made man happy, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants." - Benjamin Franklin 

"No one can serve two masters...You cannot serve both God and Money." - Matthew 6:24 

"Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity." - Mahatma Gandhi  

"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do." - Bob Dylan

"Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go." - Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 

"To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace." - Confucius, The Analects 

"Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land." - Deuteronomy 15:11 

"Hillel used to say, The more tzedakah [charity], the more shalom [peace]." - Pirkei Avot 2:8 

"Exult not in thy wealth, for, verily, God does not love those who exult in things!... Do good unto others as God has done good unto thee." - Qu'ran, Al-Qasas 28-76-77  

"The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor." - Proverbs 22:9 

"At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made... We will be judged by 'I was hungry, and you have me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.'" - Mother Theresa (quoting the Bible, Matthew 25:35)

"A kind man who makes good use of wealth is rightly said to possess a great treasure; but the miser who hoards up his riches will have no profit." - Buddha 

"If a person closes his eyes to avoid giving charity, it is as if he committed idolatry." - Talmud, Ketuvot 68a 

"If the worldly goods which you have acquired, and the commerce whereof you fear a decline, and the dwellings in which you take pleasure - if all these are dearer to you than God... [know that] God does not grace iniquitous folk with His guidance." - Qu'ran, At-Tauba 9:24 

"The world tells us to seek success, power and money; God tells us to seek humility, service and love." - Pope Francis

"As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled." - Victor Hugo 

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." - Matthew 19:24 

But these are only words - and not words that our current government lives by.

The capitalist U.S. government allows but does not require those with access wealth to share it. It maintains that it is up to people whether or not they obey those cultural/religious teachings and do their part. On the surface, this doesn't seem so heartless (even if it is passing the buck a little - pun intended). But throughout history, the U.S. government has also actively offered alternatives to those cultural/religious teachings in such a way that it seems to actually encourage our current uneven distribution of wealth - and that is a problem.

In this country, we have what we call the American Dream, which suggests that America is a land of bountiful opportunities ripe for the picking. With so many chances for people to get ahead, make names for themselves, and provide for their families, the logic goes that it would take a really unmotivated or unskilled person not to find something available to them. Furthermore, the American Dream asserts that everyone has the same goals. We all want to earn a lot of money (even if it's at a job we hate), settle down, buy a house with a white picket fence, and start a family with 2.4 children (or whatever the going average is at any given time).

Of course, neither of those points is true - but the mythology remains an engrained part of our society. We're taught optimism by our parents and schoolteachers who tell us we can be anything we want to be when we grow up - and also impart their biases about what "good" professions are to pursue, or what goals we "should" be working toward. Many of these adults should have enough life experience under their belts to know that life isn't always fair, and those things are not always possible (or desired) - and yet they perpetuate this myth anyway, perhaps because they want desperately to believe that, for the next generation, it may yet be true. 

Then, when we reach adulthood (or adolescence - for a lot of this now starts in high school and even middle school), we start to feel the pressures of competition. We begin to recognize that there are opportunities - but they're limited, and only given to the worthiest (or luckiest). We compare ourselves to our peers and try to figure out how we measure up. We grow stressed and anxious when things don't work out how we were promised they would be. Social media only perpetuates this competition - never has it been so easy to compare where we are in our lives with where our peers are in theirs, on a global scale. 

Even if we've consciously decided not to prioritize the things the American Dream tells us to prioritize (money, marriage, children), we might feel inadequate when we look at other people who have "accomplished" these things. We might feel like we've fallen behind our peers, or feel like we have a lower worth as a person, simply because we aren't doing the sorts of things we "should" be doing.

Over the years, the government has encouraged this notion of the American Dream, suggesting that our choices and actions can "earn" us certain privileges. If we all work hard enough - and have enough luck to survive - we're sure to earn ourselves a better life. Anything is possible. The image of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, as if sheer determination and relentless hard work was sufficient to rise above poverty, is a prevalent one. This is certainly what many immigrants believed (and still believe), and why many of them wanted to come to America.

The problem (well, one of the problems) is that the American Dream doesn't live in a vacuum. It has to fight with another, somewhat conflicting American ideal - one that puts considerable weight on the family someone was born into and the unchangeable characteristics they were prescribed at birth.

Both of these ideas were built right into our Declaration of Independence, in a singular phrase: "All men are created equal." On the surface, this suggests that everything is equally possible for everyone - that this is a land of opportunity, prosperity, and promise. But what those words say on the surface and what they actually meant at the time is another matter. For one thing, "all men" did not include women; for another, it was commonly accepted that "men" meant only white, land-owning men. So, all men were created equal - but only if they were already born with some status to begin with.

The idea of Manifest Destiny famously asserted that wealth, land, and privilege were entitlements one earned by the simple virtue of being an American (or, at least, a white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, able-bodied, hard-working American). Basically a giant game of calling shotgun or commenting "First!" on a YouTube video, Manifest Destiny made it legal for any citizen to claim land ownership just by showing up first and staking a claim. (Never mind that Native Americans were already using the land, or that altering the landscape might change the ecosystem in the area. Whatever a white, male citizen wanted, he could have. Everyone else be damned.)

Systems of slave labor - and inequalities of race and gender that continue into the present - further proved that the American Dream was really only available to a select few, at least initially. People of color were not given the right to vote, a hallmark of citizenship, until 1870; women were not granted suffrage until even later - 1920. (And those dates don't even count the Jim Crow laws and other methods that persist to this day which attempt to disenfranchise people on the basis on race, gender, sexuality, religion, ability and social class.) 

Eventually, laws were set forward to get rid of some of the legal discrimination that was happening - but very few laws were changed to give greater access to the same advantages that white men have had for centuries, and people who already had those privileges refused (and continue to refuse) to see the difference.

Today, it is expected that the prosperity and promise of American Dream is open to everyone, simply because many forms of discrimination are no longer legal. This simplified view neglects to see the weight of historical disadvantages, but it does come from a grain of truth. Everyone theoretically has equal access to opportunities now, and are often treated as equals - men and women, whites and people of color, heterosexuals and homosexuals and bisexuals/pansexuals. The same doors are open for everyone - and if that's the case, doesn't it follow that it would be the fault of the individual for not choosing to go through them?

I have a lot to say on the subject of choice - and already said it, in this previous post on religious discrimination. The main point is twofold:

1.) We don't all actually have the same access to choice. For example, a person living in poverty might seem to be presented with the same opportunity as a rich person, but the latter is given the key to unlock the door, while the former is presented with no key, extra security, and an unpickable lock.

And 2.) Even if we did all have access to the same opportunities, on an equal scale, not all people would (or should) make the same choices. Despite what the American dream says, we don't all want a job that makes a six-figure salary. Some of us prioritize finding a field that we love working in, or prioritize leisure and family time and strive for the sort of work-life balance that makes earning six-figures unlikely. These people don't deserve to live in poverty, unable to support their families, just because they prefer working as a writer or schoolteacher to working as a lawyer or anesthesiologist.  

Yet, many people in this country (and around the world) neglect to understand these points, or refuse to believe them. The practice of poverty-shaming is alive and well. Many people insist that all doors are openable to every person (even if they allow that some doors are harder to open for some), and that it is a poor person's fault for being poor. They made the wrong decisions, prioritized the wrong things, or didn't work hard enough.

And so, many people with wealth to spare do not heed the age-old advice of leaders, clerics, writers, moralists, and orators that we read above. They only marginally support the lower classes, or not at all.

They take the view of our capitalistic society, which promotes the individual over the community, and say, "What's in it for me to help others?" and "Why should I have to support someone else's lifestyle? What does anyone else's situation have to do with my situation?"

Or they take the beliefs we are fed that wealthy people are deserving of their wealth, and worked hard to earn it, and say, "It won't teach the lower classes the value of hard work if we just handout freebies" or "What makes them think they're entitled to things for free that I had to work hard to earn?"

Some wealthy individuals do indeed work hard - but poor people work hard, too, and if effort was all that was required, there would be less discrepancy in wealth. Those with wealth work hard and have privileges that support them financially, make their hard work go farther, and make their lives easier. This fact is too often glossed over - partly because no one with privilege wants to believe they have privilege, and partly because our government seems to support such views. Our government does not legally require the wealthy to share their wealth (through taxes and universal care programs), and in fact often caters to the ego of the wealthy, giving them ready-made excuses for not aiding those who need financial support.

People will not always do what's best for their communities - especially when they are brought up with conflicting views. We give lip service to "money is the root of all evil," but at the end of the day, we are taught to value ourselves and other people based on the amount of money they have, or earn, or spend. We may want to be compassionate - but we also want to have value and be valued. We want our hard work to be rewarded; we want to believe that hard work is always rewarded. We want to believe we are in charge of our own destinies, and that we've earned whatever success comes our way. 

Thinking these things doesn't make someone a bad person. We all have these thoughts. But the trick is to consider these thoughts rationally to determine if they are actually true - or at least "true enough" to let them influence our actions. Can two people put in an equal effort, yet achieve different results? Is it possible that we have only some control of our own destinies? Or that people with privilege have more control over their lives than people without privilege?

Putting effort into imagining ourselves in other people's situations is another good tactic. Maybe it is true that our hard work has always been rewarded, and things just seem to work out for us - but is that the case for everyone? How much more difficult would our lives be if we hadn't had access to a quality education and transportation, or grown up well-fed and with plenty of leisure time to play and explore our world as a child? How much more difficult would our lives be if we or someone in our families had a chronic illness that required a lot of money and time to care for? Consider what other people go through, and how their experiences might differ from your own.

Still, it's hard to do such exercises all the time, especially if someone doesn't regularly interact with people in more unfortunate circumstances. Is it really a good idea to continue to rely on humanity's compassion for others? Or would it be better if the government increased taxes on the wealthy to better support the lower classes? 

We have to do something. We've tried these experiments of "let the wealthy do what they think is best" and "humans will do what's right on their own even if they aren't obligated to do so" for a long time already, and it's obvious that they are not enough.

I'm clearly not alone in this train of thought. According (once again) to ThinkProgress, two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied with the current unequal wealth distribution in this country, with roughly the same number believing the federal government should play a role in guiding the transition toward a more equitable society.

"Inequality has risen to the point that it seems to me worthwhile for the U.S. to seriously consider taking the risk of making our economy more rewarding for more of the people." - Economist Janet Yellen 

"Overcoming poverty... is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life." - Nelson Mandela  

"Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system." - Martin Luther King Jr.  

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." - Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis 

Socialism requires higher taxes - but those taxes would be used to try to level the playing field, actually make something like the American Dream more possible for everyone who wants to pursue it, and compensate for historical discrimination. We all benefit from amenities like well-funded and maintained streets and bridges, mass transit systems, public schools, and libraries - but those amenities necessarily come with a price tag. Why couldn't we also benefit from universal health care, homeless shelters, food stamp programs, reproductive health education, parental leave, and other programs that other (more socialist) countries have already successfully implemented? It's certainly something to consider.

In the meantime, while we work toward bolstering the lower classes and making sure everyone has their basic necessities provided for, it would do for all of us to remember that we are more than our bank accounts. We don't deserve wealth or poverty because of who we are as a person, how hard we've worked, or our family heritage. But we do deserve respect and compassion just by virtue of being human. Let's all be kind and considerate to people of all social classes, instead of demonizing each other out of fear, jealousy, misunderstanding, or tradition.