The Gap

We know a few things about 2020 for certain ...

• more distance between rich and poor
• more access worldwide to the internet
• more unbalanced population growth
• more resource constraints

The gap between the rich and poor of the world

While the wealthy (successful) nations rise, the less fortunate nations stagnate or decline.  Within nations, the wealthy (successful) folks increase their wealth rapidly while the rest stagnate or lose ground.

Ethiopian home life in the center of the nation's capital; I

took this photo from the balcony of a 4-star hotel.

The world is progressively dividing itself between the wealthy few on one side and everyone else on the other.

The $10 dollar a day figure here is well below the poverty threshold in the US
and is provided here to give a more global perspective to these numbers;
the World Bank, however, has felt it is not a meaningful number for the
poorest because they are unfortunately unlikely to reach that level any
time soon.

Governments support the wealthy almost exclusively.  Success supports itself by arranging for more success, wealth with more wealth.  It doesn't trickle down.  It doesn't raise all boats.  The gap widens.

Most people in the world live in poverty.  That's an astonishing statement, particularly because it points to the threshold of survival.  If it's true that most of the world lives there, then those of us who are wealthy don't understand, or if we do, then our minds are calloused, perhaps inordinately selfish, and in denial about legitimate reality.  (We're not real; they are.  We're artificial, supported by fiction, by theft and abuse, by a Tinkertoy structure that the real world doesn't recognize.  OK, that's too bizarre for words.)

Disappointingly, the success of the wealthy is often at the expense of others.  We note that success brings jobs and upward mobility for many.  The actual results aren't so encouraging, though. “Nearly one in six Americans are living in poverty, including a record number of women, and the middle class is struggling amid falling incomes, rising prices, and persistently high unemployment.”
 ~ Andrea Saul  

It varies from city to city and region.

As an example, Washington, D.C. has a dramatic spread across the quintiles with the top income households raking in fifty+ times more than the bottom quintile.  Income for the top 20% is more than the combined income for all the rest.

Where are the key control points?
Not agriculture.  Not education. Not transportation or small businesses.  Probably not even health care. 

Business began between a fellow with grain and another with cows.  They worked out a deal so both could have food and the means of survival.  Or something like that; it was a mutual benefit arrangement.
 
Farms and factories provide food and goods in exchange for the means to have other food and goods.  Not terribly troublesome although larger corporations tend to undervalue their workforce.  The service industries provide skills and labor for daily life's needs.  Resellers like Walmart handle distribution well, but they push the ethical envelope by encouraging unfair labor practices overseas.  

Then there are the banks ...  The community bank was birthed to serve as an intermediate agency between community members, but her illegitimate children on Wall Street have become manipulative giants with tentacles reaching into governments and the rule of nations. 

Many things that happen on Wall Street and in London’s financial
district are “socially useless,” says Lord Adair Turner,
chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority

 Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"The financial industry grew rapidly, as did the sums of money with which its players speculated on the prices of stocks, commodities and government bonds. The products they developed to turn money into even more money became more and more complex. At the same time, the risks they were willing to accept became incalculable.
The sector’s high salaries tend to attract the best and brightest university graduates. The members of this youthful elite don’t devise new products that make people’s lives better, nor do they found new companies that further progress. Instead, these young financial wizards invest a great deal of money and effort to develop sophisticated financial products, the sole purpose of which is to generate more profit for both their employers and, ultimately, for themselves — sometimes at the expense of other market players or even their customers.
Many things that happen on Wall Street and in London’s financial district are 'socially useless,' says Lord Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA). The values that are created there are often not real or of any use to society, Turner adds."

If 80% of the world lives in poverty, then by analysis, that's the 'norm'.  The wealthy are abnormal, anomalous, and perhaps even cancerous tumors in the world.  Their contribution appears to be progressively less relevant and more destructive as the years pass.  It's been that way for centuries; wealth cultivates its own interests at the expense (on the backs) of others.   

Is our view of the world perhaps upside down?  Are the wealthy in fact the abnormal?  Are they like most of the financial industry?  Socially useless? Just criminals, destructive to all 'normal' folks?  Perhaps so with just a few exceptions like Gates and Gutenberg and the innovators that create great jobs and products.

We'll adjust and adapt of course, but by what path?

Interesting prospects, most of which are volatile, and as usual the poor (normal folks) will carry the bulk of the burden. 

“The gains from economic growth in 2011 were quite unevenly shared as household income fell in the middle and rose at the top,” Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, said on a conference call with reporters.

Average incomes fell for the bottom 80 percent of earners and rose for the top 20 percent, highlighting the need for “those at the top to share” as the nation looks to reduce its budget deficit, Greenstein said.

An ethical economy would make a place for all who were willing to work and contribute, would it not?

The only way for a small group of people to become obscenely rich is for huge masses of others to be kept quite poor.

Childhood is not the goal ...

As an ancient father pointed out, we're not raising children; we're raising adults.  Just a turn of phrase, but his point, kids learn adult thinking from us.  Personal safety,  ethical balance, morality, nobility, unselfishness and compassion, courage, clarity in analysis.  We teach by word, and much more effectively, by example.

Childhood is not the goal, it's the pathway.

Classroom in Kenya

School under a bridge, India

Our hope is that for each child, their early years will include the lessons needed for decision making, the affirmation needed for a healthy self-image, and the experience needed as a foundation for faith in a loving heavenly Father.

Food, water, shelter, safety, a loving family, school.  The basics are a short list; they're enough as a beginning, I suppose.  Oh, and 'hope'.  We want so much for our children to grow up with a heart full of hope and expectation, possibilities and distant horizons filled with wonder.

American classroom

Do the decisions we make as a nation reflect our hope for the world's children as well as our own?  And for their future?

Our petty infighting over the fiscal cliff is disturbing the marketplaces of the world again.  Just like last year and the year before and the year before that.  Such things have an impact that the wealthy don't see.

Note the timeline.  Misbehavior by wealthy nations has brought
trouble to the marketplace.  The wealthy complain about their
investments; the poor suffer real loss and some starve.

The world price of corn has more than doubled in recent years, triggered by the market collapse we caused.  Children in Kenya survive on maize meal (corn meal), but the price fluctuations mean they can't afford to eat.  A family that spends all their income on food can't afford the increase, so ...  Such disruptions often mean kids drop out of school as the family struggles to eat.  Many never return, and poverty persists for another generation.

Do the decisions we make as a nation reflect our hope for the world's children as well as our own? 

Northeast Mombasa, street vendors and buyers. 
The nice stores are for the wealthy.

Different thinking is due.  Over due.  Way overdue.  Tell Steny Hoyer.  Or your own congressional reps.

The family business, pushed to the market area ...

Just down the road from our work site, children and their
teacher make do with a shaded area for the classroom.  No
chairs, no desks, no fan, no air conditioning ...

Have you noticed?  You have access to more educational material than you'll ever be able to use.  These kids, on the other hand, beg for the chance to study and learn.  Now is the opportunity they have.

We can help.  We can make a difference.

Heart issues

This year for Christmas, a family's children decided they didn't want gifts; they wanted instead to send help to children and their families in Kenya.  Others in the extended family heard and did the same.  I'm stunned.

We have about twenty families with whom we are directly connected in Kenya.  There are about fifty kids in the village on our education project; more than a dozen are orphans.  There are a couple of goals:  

• If the kids stay in school, they eat.  The meal the school provides is all some kids get most days.
• School equips them for employment later on, we hope. 
• Work with families focuses on small projects for income.  Buying and selling, raising vegetables, making clothes.  A little start-up help goes a long way. 

Corn and water in a Kenya school kitchen; pretty much life and death issues, unfortunately.

 It's been a really difficult year.

Poverty is a tough cycle to break.  Progress from generation to generation can be excruciatingly small, and a bad year can take it all back.  

In the most difficult of areas, water and food, shelter and sanitation, education and healthcare (of any kind) are in short supply.  Simple skills like avoiding contaminated water require community action and support. 

Thank you Father for the chance to know and help.  Thanks for the generosity of children that makes today's efforts possible.

Starry, starry night ...

Vincent van Gogh sold just one painting during his career.  The best of his works were done in a brief three-year period before he took his own life, "... for the good of all." 

Attempts were made to bring him back from the edge where his mental dysfunction had dragged him, but with little effect.  There was no science or medical understanding in those days for the brokenness of his mind, the chemical imbalances, the upside-down causes and effects.  The world had no place for him.  Things are perhaps a little better now.

It does make you wonder, though.  Our human world seems well-equipped for some but perhaps not for all.  At its center, the successful among us find society welcoming us and making a place for us.  Moving outward from that center though, life becomes progressively more difficult.  Less opportunity, less welcome, less of a comfortable place and more of a struggle just to survive.

At its center, success shapes more success for itself, and it does so at the expense of the larger whole. 

World trade practices favor the powerful and wealthy, while often negatively affecting people struggling to make a living.  World governance shapes itself to foster business and power, often at the expense of justice for the marginalized.

In a small African country, dad and his kids tend their prolific garden plot.  Okra (!), corn, beans, manioc; enough to
feed themselves and sell a little.  A family of six, they're working hard and making progress.  We get to be part of it
with them.  (A friend from the states provided the start-up help.)

Perhaps the next world will be better.  Or rather than resignation, might we instead reshape this one?  One little piece at a time!  What could be more fun than that?

Merry Christmas, 2012.

Don't want to be numb

numb dumb blind.

Meeting my brothers and sisters, and their kids ... probably the most fun you can have this side of the next world.

A bit of a dilemma followed.

Coming back yet again from Africa, I find it hard to face my own home.  All I can think of is moving to a simpler place, a cabin perhaps, or a garage.  I'm uncomfortable with my lifestyle.  The years spent in pursuit of education, career, retirement ... all oddly out of balance viewed from recent experience.

Sackcloth seems more appropriate, somehow. 

It hadn't occurred to me in my youth that much thought was needed in regards to others.  Things would work out, I supposed.  

Things will work out?  They don't, actually.  Kids go hungry, adults work harder for less.  Poverty in my country is considered wealthy in most of the world.  

For many, $65 a month is a typical wage if they have a job.
 
An average U.S. home, converted to materials and money, would provide housing for between fifty and perhaps a few hundred families in some other places.  The economic differences between countries are a problem; the people, well we're all pretty much the same.
 

Neighborhood kids, out of school for the afternoon.  'Don't call me 'Babe' on my goddaughter's shirt.

I have no idea where that one came from.  :)

Growing up, I believed the common version of class distinctions; that wealth was somehow an indication of having worked harder or being smarter or better. 

Then I saw that those without wealth work harder than anyone I know, that they rise up and try again and again, and that they genuinely understand community.  They know more about survival and what's really important.  And they're nicer than me, most of them.  I didn't know.

Cooking requires firewood for the stove.

It's taking awhile to re-balance my own worldview.

Old questions have different answers now.

• The world's finest gentlemen may well be ...
• The most noble among us are perhaps these ...
• The most hospitable of families are ...
• The truly courageous today are those ...
• Strength, grace, joy, hope, and faith are most visible in ...  
• Members of my hero short-list are ... 

Bishop Samuel in Kenya and kids he helps to stay in school ...
I got to meet one of these kids when I was there.

The family that adopted us ...
UPDATE: 2016 - the kids are
grown up and on Facebook!
We text msg sometimes and
video chat.

Balance!  I'm still reeling a bit.  My wife, too.  :)  What fun!  OK, not so much fun, maybe, but what fascinating changes.  

Wife and dear friend in western Africa

Now there are no longer insiders and outsiders, gentile and gaijin, us and them, but just the one family, and one God and Father of us all.

 

Hmmm.  Where do you go with that kind of thinking?
 

The legacy ...

The top 0.1% ...

The richest people in the world.

People whose wealth exceeds that of a million average folks.  Wealth that for the median income group has no frame of reference for a discussion.

The odd and unasked question ...  why are they so rich?

Is it because they work harder? 
Is it because they are smarter? 
Is it because they deserve it more than anyone else?


Some of them are the hard-working, clever ones like Jobs or Gates.  And generous as well, some of them.
Some are brilliant innovators like Oracle's Ellison or Amazon's Bezos.
Or smart investors like Buffet.

Some are celebrities, athletes, and others who get paid extraordinary amounts for the entertainment value of their appearance or physical talent.  

Just in case you were beginning to think rich people 
were deeply misunderstood and that they feel the 
pain of those who are less fortunate, here’s the world’s 
wealthiest woman, mining tycoon Gina Rinehart, 
with some helpful advice.
“If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just 
sit there and complain,” she said in a magazine piece. “Do 
something to make more money yourself — spend less 
time drinking or smoking and socializing, and more time 
working.”
Yeah, let them eat cake.
Rinehart made her money the old-fashioned way:
She inherited it.  Her family iron ore prospecting
fortune of $30.1 billion makes her the richest woman
on the planet.
“Become one of those people who work hard, invest
and build, and at the same time create employment and
opportunities for others.”  Right. She makes more in a
minute than most folks make in a year.  In her defense,
she gives away around 1/1,000th of her income to
charitable work.

Too, there are a disturbing number of folks whose wealth arose from doing more harm than good.  Wall Street is awash with such from the hedge fund industry.  Billionaires selling worthless derivatives.  Million dollar/year and /month types.  Hedge funds, leveraged buyouts, investment banking, and money laundering management; they provide little benefit to humanity; they just skim off the collective wealth of the world.

Then, of course, there's the world's top 20% ...
Interestingly, the gap between the wealthy and the rest is widening faster than ever before. 

The gap between the rich world and the poor world is quite visible, and is now the subject of broadly based discussion.  And concern.

So what legacy will the wealthy leave to the rest of their relatives?  To the rest of humanity?

Around 80% of humanity lives below the western world's poverty line.  That's five billion people.

Around 27% of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of that deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.  (If you walk the streets there, you'll meet them every day along with their families.  By the hundreds in a given hour.  Sweet folks, most of them.)

According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”<sup>Source 4

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.Source 7</sup> 

In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on firewood, charcoal and animal dung for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of the population depends on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China.^{Source 14}

Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000, and of course, it didn’t happen.^{Source 8}

Oh, and why are the poor ... well, poor?

"There are 47 percent of the people ... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. ... My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." -Mitt Romney (further analysis)

"They should have fewer children; it's their choice.  Children or air conditioning." -anon

What might be the conclusion of such thinking?  And what of the ever widening gap between rich and poor? 

Thoughts?