Equality is Good for Us

If I’m poor, and I’m going to be poor anyway, how does it hurt me if you’re rich? That seems like a reasonable question. I might not know how to articulate the answer, but if I’m poor, and you are, too, then I can feel like we’re in this together. I have a sense of common cause with you. We may not have much, be we’ve got each other.

Societies with low inequality (the ratio of the income of the top 20 percent to the income of the bottom 20 percent is less than 5) maintain some shared assumptions about wealth and about each other. Roughly, the attitude is like this:

If there are somewhat wealthier folks among us, that’s OK. I can accept that some people are luckier, or more skillful at work that society prizes, or they’re more driven to work hard, and they end up wealthier. The relatively wealthy serve as a reminder to me of what good schooling and hard work and a little luck might make available to my children. If the town doctor has a bigger house on a hill, that’s OK – he’s smart and had a lot of training, and he’s using that to help us when we get sick, so more power to him. Maybe my kid can get a scholarship and be a doctor.

If, however, the rich-poor gap grows too large, that attitude loses purchase. In fact, in the US today, that kind of outlook is quaint -- an echo of a bygone time. Few, it seems, think like that anymore. The ones at the bottom and middle can no longer see the wealth of the ones at the top as either attainable or deserved.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here?

A relatively equal society is able to sustain a shared understanding among its members. But if, as in the U.S., the ratio of the income of the top 20 percent to the income of the bottom 20 percent is 8 or 9, there’s a disconnect. We lose the shared understanding of the legitimacy of things. The wealthy are beyond attainability, beyond any credible story of deservingness. We lose the sense that we’re in this together. The wealthy become “them.” And "they" don’t care about "us" -- so we don’t care about them. Anomie and division set in; anger and alienation become the social mood.

Sensing the resentment of most of society, the wealthy, in turn, retreat behind gated communities, which further increases the disconnect. We begin to believe the game is rigged; we don’t have a chance. When we believe that, we become more likely to behave in ways that make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rich and poor alike feel the division, the disconnect. The result is higher levels of depression, higher levels of consuming things that aren’t good for us: from drugs to alcohol to junk food to mindless TV shows to mindless consumer products. Our spirits are not whole when inequality is so massive – and our spirits long to be made whole.

Equality has benefits that show up all over. They show up, for example, on baseball teams.

“A well-controlled study of over 1,600 players in 29 teams over a nine-year period found that major league baseball teams with smaller income differences among players do significantly better than the more unequal teams.” (Wilkinson and Picket, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, 237).

When people feel like they stand on equal footing with their neighbors or teammates, there’s a cohesion that lifts spirits, heals wounds, and improves performance.

High levels of social inequality destroy the basic grounding for that community and connection. For the U.S. to make progress in rolling back the inequalities that have been growing since 1980, some combination of income caps, higher minimum wage, and a more progressive tax structure might be a good start.

Unitarian Universalists care about our world. And it’s clear now that “further improvements in the quality of life no longer depend on further economic growth. The issue is now community and how we relate to each other.” The issue is not only at the economic level but at the spirit level.

"Come spirit, come. Our heart’s control. Our spirits long to be made whole."

* * *
This is part 4 of 4 of "Income Inequality"
See also:
Part 1: Deconstructing the Mango Pop
Part 2: It's Getting Worse
Part 3: Inequality Harms Social Health

Inequality Harms Social Health

There are various ways to measure inequality: We can compare the top X% to the bottom Y% for any X and any Y. And all the measures very closely correspond with each other, so it doesn’t matter much which one we use. One very common measure is the ratio of the top 20 percent to the bottom 20 percent, so let’s use that one.

In Japan and four Scandinavian countries (combined), the top 20 percent bring about four times what the bottom 20 percent earn. The ratio is between 3.4 to 1 and 4.3 to 1. In the US, the ratio is 8.5 to 1 -- meaning the top 20 percent get eight-and-a half times what the bottom 20 percent get. Singapore's inequality is even higher: the ratio there is 9.7 to 1.

As a people of faith and compassion, we care about our world. We take in the wonder of this world, and we also take in the brokenness we see, and ask, “What happened?”

Let’s talk about social health. Let us define "social health" the way that researchers do, as an amalgam of ten factors. The lower the rates of:

• homicides
• obesity
• teenage births
• infant mortality
• imprisonment rates
• mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction),

and the higher the rates of:

• life expectancy
• children’s educational performance
• social mobility
• level of trust,

then the higher a nation's social health.

That's a pretty good way to define social health. You might think of some other factors that would be important. For instance, I might imagine that "high teacher salaries," "high number of bookstores per capita," or "low proportion of the population who are lawyers" might be part of a healthy society, but that might be controversial. People of all political persuasions will pretty much agree that homicides, obesity, teenage births, infant mortality, high imprison rates, and mental illness are bad, that high life expectancy, children's educational performance, social mobility, and level of trust are good, and that all these are relevant to the health of a society.

With a definition of social health thus nailed down, researchers have then found that a country’s wealth does not correlate with its social health. A country may be rich, medium, poor, or extremely poor (less than $9,000 per person per year). Except in extremely poor nations, more wealth has no effect on social health. Equality, however, does correlate with social health.

Countries with high inequality, whether rich or poor, have low social health. Countries with low inequality, whether rich or poor, have high social health.

The US is quite wealthy. Annual national income is around $38,000 per person. But on the measure of social health we’re doing worse than most countries that have only half that much per-person income. After meeting a certain minimum, more wealth doesn’t do us any good. Equality does. In statisticians' terms, it’s not the mean income that matters, it’s the standard deviation.

Remember that ratio of the top 20% to the bottom 20%. If that ratio, in a given country, is 4 or 5, then social health is going to be pretty good in that country. If that ratio is 8 or 9, then that country’s social health tends to be worse.

The US is wealthy and Portugal is poor -- yet they both have high ratios (8.5 and 8.0) and low social health. Norway, however, which has about as much per capita wealth as the US, has a low ratio (3.9) and high social health.

Social health means a better quality of life for all of us. All of us. Even the rich. The quality of life of the top 1% -- or, indeed, the top 20% -- cannot be improved with any more money. Their quality of life can, however, be improved with greater equality and thus greater social health in the society in which they find themselves.

“The evidence shows that reducing inequality is the best way of improving the quality of the social environment, and so the real quality of life, for all of us . . . this includes the better off.” (Wilkinson and Picket, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger)

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This is part 3 of 4 of "Income Inequality"
See also:
Part 1: Deconstructing the Mango Pop
Part 2: It's Getting Worse
Part 4: Equality Is Good for Us

It's Getting Worse

Societally, when inequality becomes great, we lose the sense of community, lose the sense that we’re all in this together.

We’ve been seeing some pretty drastic changes in the last 35 years – since 1980. In 1980, eight percent of the nation’s total income was earned by the top one percent. The richest one percent of people got eight percent of the income. Eight times the average income would seem to be plenty. Who could want more than that? Surely that’s more than enough. But in 2011, the richest one percent brought home 20 percent of all income.

Starting in the early 20th century and continuing through the middle decades of the century, the trend in this country was toward steadily improving income equality. The gap between the top and the average of everybody else was shrinking. Then that trend reversed.

Our spirits long to be made whole, to be connected to each other on this wonderful world we share – to be connected with equals as equals. I don’t mean that we all have to have exactly the same income, but when the inequalities get this bad, it has a corrosive effect on the social contract, and on our souls as a people.

“Consider executive pay. During the 1950s and 60s, CEOs of major American companies took home about 25 to 30 times the wages of the typical worker....In 1980, the big-company CEO took home roughly 40 times. By 1990 it was 100 times. By 2007,...CEO pay packages had ballooned to about 350 times what the typical worker earned.” (Robert Reich)

Even if you think inequality by itself isn’t our business, wouldn’t you want to know what’s going on to make it get so much worse?

Various studies in various ways show that when inequality is greater, violence goes up, trust goes down. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket write in their illuminating study, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger:

“At the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement, we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume, and with little or no community life.”

All of those conditions of modern life -- anxiety, depression, unsure friendship, consumerism, lack of community -- are connected with inequality – either as cause or as result, and often partly both. Wilkinson and Picket go on to write:

“The unease we feel about the loss of social values and the way we are drawn into the pursuit of material gain is often experienced as if it were a purely private ambivalence which cuts us off from others....As voters, we have lost sight of any collective belief that society could be different. Instead of a better society, the only thing almost everyone strives for is to better their own position – as individuals – within the existing society.” (4)

When we're all in it for only ourselves, there's increased political polarization.

Gini Index is a measure of income inequality. When it goes up, political polarization goes up.

This is not a life of spiritual wholeness.

When you compare nation to nation, there’s no correlation between wealth and life expectancy or mortality. No correlation. Rich countries have about the same life expectancies and mortality rates as relatively poor countries, until you get into the really poor end of the spectrum. As long as a nation has per-person income above about $9,000 a year, further increases do nothing to increase life expectancy. That’s the nation-to-nation comparison.

But when we do a zip code to zip code comparison, we get a different picture. The poorer zip codes have higher mortality than the richer zip codes.

If you took several of the poorest zip codes, created a new island in the Pacific, put them all there, maintained their per-person incomes as they were, made a new island nation of them, they’d have decreased mortality. They’d be fine. But because they live near the wealthier areas, they perceive that difference. They see all around them the inescapable fact that they live in a society that is set up to work for others, but not for them. They are reminded daily that they are not in a society of mutual care.

And that wears them down much more than relative material deprivation.

* * *
This is part 2 of 4 of "Income Inequality"
See also:
Part 1: Deconstructing the Mango Pop
Part 3: Inequality Harms Social Health
Part 4: Equality Is Good for Us

Deconstructing the Mango Pop

"Come spirit come. Our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole."

The delegates at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly last June voted to select a new Study/Action issue. We select only one such issue every two years. The issue selected was “escalating inequality,” thereby urging UU congregations to make it topic of concern and engage it, reflect on it, learn about it, respond to it, comment on it, and take action—each in their own way. So let us reflect.

The great catcher for the New York Yankees, Yogi Bierra, got his start in the minor leagues. Once, the team bus was winding its way through the hinterlands looking for some small town where the team was due to play. Yogi was studying the road map. He looked at his watch. "We're lost," he announced. "But we're making good time."

Our economy for the last 75 years -- the recent recession notwithstanding – has been making good time. But we got lost. We took a wrong turn when we decided that the measure of how well we’re doing is our total wealth rather than how it is distributed. We take a wrong turn every time we look at our national mean per capita income, or mean per capita spending, or mean per capita productivity, but don’t look at the standard deviation, don't look at the growing gaps between us and how that gap corrodes our common life.

There is an argument that we should be concerned with poverty, but not with inequality. It’s our business as a society to make sure that everybody has enough, but not our business how much more than enough the rich have. Comedian Louis C.K.’s illustrates that point. In one episode of his show, Louis is making dinner. There’s an extra slice of mango, which he gives to his older daughter, Lilly, and goes back to making dinner. The younger daughter, Jane, appears and says, “Can I have a mango pop?”

Louis says, "There was only one." Jane says, "Why does she get one and not me? It’s not fair."

Louie squats down to be face-to-face with his daughter at her level. He says, “Listen. The only time you should look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.”

That sounds wise and mature. Envy, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins, right?

Here’s the thing. What we want is to care and be cared for. We want to be in relations of mutual care. We weren’t built to keep caring and caring if others just take advantage of us, use us, and care nothing for us in return. That’s not healthy. We need to care – and we also need some level of mutuality and reciprocity. Reciprocation need not be exact – we don’t keep score – we just need some sign that caring about each other does go both ways.

When Jane asks for a mango pop because her sister has one, it’s not about the mango pop. That’s just a symbol to test whether she’s being held in a relation of mutual care. I don't see envy going on here -- though over time, if Jane is systematically excluded from the full participation in the family's circle of care, envy might emerge. In the moment, I simply see a little girl who needs affirmation that she counts. If she gets it when she needs it when she's young, as she gets older she won't need that affirmation as immediately. She'll begin to see that, as her father says (see the full clip, below), sometimes her sister is the luckier one, and sometimes she is, and over the longer term, it balances out.

Right now, Jane's developmental stage requires a more immediate "evening of the score." Our fairness needs gets looser as we mature, but we retain them in some form. We have a need to be in relations of mutual care. And when that need is not met, it makes anxiety, depression, and social alienation more likely.

This segment from Louis C.K.'s show has been getting attention on the blogosphere and in social media. Most of that attention has focused on what a great lesson Louis offers when he says "The only time you should look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough." And that is a lovely ideal. It's worth saying even though Jane is not at a developmental stage to hear it right now. (Which is OK -- if the lesson is repeated regularly, she'll remember it when she is ready to hear it -- though, really, how many of us ever become spiritually advanced enough to truly follow that lesson?) For me, though, the greater wisdom comes a moment later, when Louis accedes to Jane's plea for fairness, grants Jane some "calcium chocolate" -- and adds, thus reinforcing the very need for fairness Jane was expressing, "make sure your sister gets one, too." So now Lilly gets a mango pop AND a calcium chocolate while Jane gets only a calcium chocolate. But that's OK. Jane's happy with that because she doesn't need precise score-keeping. She just needs to know her Dad cares about her, too.

There’s a joke about a mother explaining to a little boy, "We are here to care for others."
The little boy says, "What are the others here for?"

The answer, of course, is, we’re all here to care for each other.

It does me good to care for others, and part of that caring is wanting them to also have the good of caring for others – which, for them, includes me. Systems of mutual care are good for all of us -- not just because we all get cared for, but because we all have opportunities for the joy of caring for others.

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This is part 1 of 4 of "Income Inequality"
See also:
Part 2: It's Getting Worse
Part 3: Inequality Harms Social Health
Part 4: Equality Is Good for Us

This Week's Prayer

Source of healing and wholeness we call by many names:

The rich and the poor have this in common: on this pale blue dot, we are all passing wisps of bone and hope. Let us not lose an instant of this brief chance to be present.

Let the yearning of our heart be spoken, made conscious, and guide our actions.

We want the compassion to comfort the afflicted. We want the courage to afflict the comfortable. Everyone we meet is both: afflicted by something that bothers them and complacent about something about which they could be bothering. We want the wisdom to respond skillfully to both. We want the grace and love that will make us brighter lights in the darkness.

We remember and celebrate with same-sex couples in Florida which this week became the 36th state to afford civil recognition to their marriages.

The police slowdown in New York City weighs on our minds. It is difficult to know what to make of it. Many fewer citations are now being given for the sort of infractions for which, in the last decade, 80 percent of those penalized were black or Latino. Many officers are trustworthy and fair. We yearn for a police force in which many more of them are.

We remember today the lives of those displaced across the Middle East.

We remember the dead, massacred at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

We remember the teachers and educators in northern Nigeria, Afghanistan and Somalia in their challenge to provide education and to make a difference in lives lived in extreme conditions.

As winter descends in earnest, we remember those at risk in the cold.

So may compassion and wisdom guide our words and actions to make of us more effective agents of care.

Service to Transform 4

There remains much to do. Most of the gains we've seen in recent decades (such as worldwide reductions in extreme poverty, hunger, child labor, child mortality -- and increases in life-expectancy, literacy, and democracy) will turn around if the climate change trend is allowed to continue and droughts, floods, and rising sea levels lead to hardships and political instability.

Women’s reproductive freedom is under assault. Forty-one years ago this month, Roe v. Wade was an epic win for abortion-rights activists. We’ve been losing ever since.

2014 was also the year a lot more people began to notice how problematic it is that many of our police departments have developed a self-supporting and insular culture that teaches that no one understands police work except fellow officers; doing the job means bending the rules; the real law is the law of the jungle; and there are only two kinds of people — cops and jerks. Some departments don’t have such a culture, and some fine officers resist that message even in departments that have such a culture. Yet too often that culture plays out in unnecessary police violence against pretty much anybody – with the possible exception of white, middle-aged white-collar professionals – and disproportionately against young African American men.

There remains much to do.

What are you up for?

God knows, and I know, we’re all way too busy. We're stressed from overwork and overscheduling. Still. I see numbers that the average adult American watches more than 20 hours of live TV every week. Maybe we do have a little bit of time for justice. I know I don’t watch anywhere near that much TV, and probably many of you don't either. Still. There may be some time in the day for things we really want to do – if it energizes us and fulfills us, if it’s enriching and meaningful. More stuff that’s a drag to do and wears us out – no, we surely, indeed, do not have time for that.

Community Unitarian Church has said that engaging in service to transform ourselves and our world is what we’re here for. It’s our mission. How shall we do that?

What projects of transformation of yourself and your world would be energizing and fulfilling for you? Community Unitarian Church could:

• Host a dinner once a month free to all in the community
• Focus on being more welcoming and supportive of people with mental disorders.
• Expand and strengthen our “welcoming congregation” status for LGBT folk.
• Prepare for mobilizing in greater numbers for marches that represent UU values
• Advocate for more community-oriented policing and reduced racial profiling
• Address climate change and environmental justice
• Develop a prison ministry
• Prepare ourselves to respond to disasters
• Explore ways to deepen our reverence for life and expand compassion to nonhuman animals
• Get training in restorative justice and make ourselves a community resource for restoration
• Organize support for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
• Join Westchester United and team up with other faith organizations on issues of shared importance
• Work closely with the local chapter of Planned Parenthood to advance access to birth control, sexuality education and information, and abortion services.

That’s just a starter list – there are many others that you might suggest.

We probably can’t do all of those things – but we could do some of them. Which ones would you be interested in being a part of?

Our theme of the month for January is Justice – and developing a plan for Social Justice is a goal this year that the CUC Board set last summer. Our Journey Groups this month on the topic of Justice will afford you more opportunity to think through what justice means to you and what direction living your Unitarian faith might take you.

In the next few months you’ll see and have chances to participate in the unfolding of a congregational plan to engage in service to transform ourselves and our world.

For we must stand on the side of love – and justice is what love looks like in public.

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This is part 4 of 4 of "Service to Transform"
Previous: Part 3
Beginning: Part 1

Service to Transform 3

In the 20th century, Rev. John Haynes Holmes famously – or notoriously – led opposition to World War I. He also lived his Unitarian faith as co-founder of both the NAACP and the ACLU.

Unitarian minister, Rev. Gordon Gibson, right, with
Dr. Martin Luther King, after Gibson and a fellow
UU minister were released from jail in Selma, in
1965 after a voter registration drive

In 1965, the call went out to Unitarian ministers across the land to join Martin Luther King in his march from Selma. At least one-fifth of them set aside their busy schedules and went to Alabama to do that. And some of those who stayed home did so because they were lead organizers in the parallel marches for civil rights in their own cities at the same time. Our Rev. James Reeb was beaten to death by white thugs at in Selma. Viola Liuzzo was fatally shot as she participated in the demonstration. These Unitarians lived their faith, and died for it.

Nationally prominent civil rights leader Whitney Young was a member of Community Unitarian Church at White Plains, worshipping on Sundays in the sanctuary in which we continue to gather and worship today. Sometimes activist values lead a person to become a Unitarian, and sometimes Unitarian values lead a person to become an activist. Often it’s a little of both. Whitney Young was speaking a religious truth of his Unitarian faith when he said:

"Every person is our brother or sister, and every one’s burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal."

Whitney Young on cover of Time in 1967

I cannot brag about our participation in Selma and in the civil rights movement generally without also mentioning the conflict that rived our General Assemblies in 1968 and 1969 where black and white Unitarian Universalists were torn apart over how best to address racism. We are a people who so want to do what is right, but we are not without our own blindspots – then and now.

I remember the 70s as a time when our congregations were active in the anti-Vietnam war effort, and in organizing support for the Equal Rights Amendment.

Our churches have been at the lead in the effort to end LGBT discrimination. A few of our churches and ministers were quietly performing same-sex ceremonies of union as far back as the 50s. By the 70s, more of our churches were doing that, and more publicly. Eventually, we stopped calling them ceremonies of union and started calling them marriages – distinguishing civil from religious marriage and proclaiming that civil marriage is a civil right, religious marriage is a religious choice. In 2004, the Massachusetts Supreme Court made that state the first to civilly recognize same-sex marriage. In that case, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the lead plaintiff, Hillary Goodridge, her partner Julie, and a total of seven of the 14 plaintiffs were Unitarians living their faith.

Our Standing on the Side of Love campaign was begun in 2008 following the hate-motivated shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist church that killed two and wounded several others. It’s a campaign that has focused on issues where the national discourse is most distorted by hatred. Through this campaign, Unitarian Universalists, wearing the distinctive yellow shirts, stand on the side of love with immigrant families, with LGBT folk – and, more recently, African American communities subjected to police abuse.

Let us remember who we are as Unitarian Universalists. We are a people of activism. We are here, Unitarian Universalists gathering week after week, in order to nurture our spirits and help heal our world, for we have discovered that those are not two separate things but that each reinforces the other. We help heal our world by nurturing our spirits, and nurture our spirits by helping to heal our world.

I told a little of the story of me, and some of the story of us. Let us turn to the story of Now. How do things stand?

A lot of things are getting better. Worldwide in the last 25 years we’ve seen worldwide extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25 a day), the Global Hunger Index (a measure of undernutrition), child labor, child mortality, maternal mortality in childbirth are all substantially down and life expectancy is up by about 9 years in low-income countries. More people are going to school for longer, and literacy rates are up. More and more countries are democracies.

War is actually on the decline. Steven Pinker writes,

"The rate of documented direct deaths from political violence (war, terrorism, genocide and warlord militias) in the past decade is an unprecedented few hundredths of a percentage point."

World stockpiles of nuclear weapons peaked in 1986 and have sharply declined.

In the US, homicides, violent crimes, teen births, smoking, the unsheltered homeless population are all down.

2014 was quite the banner year for marriage equality. The District of Columbia and 35 states now recognize same-sex marriages – up from 16 states one year ago -- and Florida will become number 36 on Tuesday.

And there remains much to do.

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This is part 3 of 4 of "Service to Transform"
Next: Part 4
Previous: Part 2
Beginning: Part 1