The GAP - Part IV - the cost

Tip-over

At some point, the laborer will no longer work and sacrifice his life and the lives of his children for the benefit of another's opulence and privilege.

There are crimes and there are causes.  Among the many known causes, economic inequality has direct correlation to crime rate.  Our increasing inequality in the U.S. is visible in the crime and incarceration rate.

In a 2002 study by World Bank economists found that crime rates and inequality are positively correlated within countries and also between countries. The correlation is a causation – inequality induces crime.

This finding parallels crime theory by economist Gary Becker, who shows that an increase in income inequality has a direct effect of increasing crime. Not only that, but a country’s economic growth (GDP rate) has significant impact in lessening incidence of crimes. Since reduction in income inequality gap and a richer economy has an alleviating effect on poverty level, it implies that poverty alleviation has a crime-reducing effect.

A portion of the problem, therefore, theoretically rests on the two factors being able to produce the desired effects; poverty alleviation and lesser crime rate. For now, however, reality gives us shaky economic growth and worsening income inequality.

The U.S., which ranks 3rd among the most income-unequal nations, and the worst in terms of income gap growth, also has the largest percentage of its population in prison among industrialized democratic nations.  Is it a mere coincidence or does it reflect the social ills that a big wealth disparity and overt rich-poor distinction brings?

Besides criminal activity, other warning signs point to the cause.  Protests, resistance, public demonstrations, political divisiveness and radical movements are all the norm when faced with visible injustice and inequality.

Disappointingly, government appears to consistently favor the wealthy and their corporate counterparts.  Regulations, programs, decisions, and priorities all seem to favor the wealthy to the detriment of the bottom 90% of their citizenry.  Such has been the circumstance entering each of the nation destruction eras in human history.

While there are many ways to interpret the numbers, the common perception is of an ever-widening gap; a loss of substance, of representation, of opportunity, of equality, of fairness, of liberty and a voice in shaping your own life.  Ask.

The task ahead is a difficult one, both for us as individuals and as nations.

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

A Nation's IQ

Nonsense.  Suggesting a national or cultural or racial IQ is controversial, primarily because the science doesn't support such a characterization.  Intelligence has been shown to be distributed across all lines without inherent distinguishable differences.

The chart here is based on standardized tests but reflects exposure to test-taking and education rather than a measure of 'genius' intelligence.

One of the passionate hopes of America's founders was for the availability of education; that anyone could go as far down that road as they were willing and able.  The intent has been served well but not uniformly with poverty being the primary hindrance today.  In earlier years, race and class were the limiting factors.

In Kenya, tribe determines what opportunities are available for a youngster.  My friend Joseph, now in his twenties, is bright, gracious and well-spoken, multilingual, and a handsome fellow, but his education ended at the sixth grade, and his opportunities for employment are limited to day labor.  Wrong tribe; he's Mijikenda.  If he'd been Kikuku, the ruling tribe/class, he would have gone to college and would be employed in the business or government sector.

Poverty, corrupt government, economic oppression of developing regions, all contribute to inequality.  None are chosen circumstances by common folks; all are done to them by others, usually the rich and influential.  Yes, poverty is imposed, not chosen.  The way out of poverty is discoverable if, and only if, there's a just, equitable environment.

The opportunity for education isn't the same everywhere.
That's the challenge; we can make a difference.

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NOTE (see full article):  In recent years, researchers in Africa, Asia and elsewhere have found that people in non-Western cultures often have ideas about intelligence that differ fundamentally from those that have shaped Western intelligence tests.  Research on those differences is already providing support for some of the more inclusive Western definitions of intelligence, such as those proposed by APA President Robert J. Sternberg, PhD, of Yale University and Howard Gardner, PhD, of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education (see related article). Eventually, it may also help researchers design new intelligence tests that are sensitive to the values of the cultures in which they are used.

Travel is fatal

Children on the beach just minutes from our worksite; their families took us in and made a place for us in their world.  It changed everything for us.  Everything.

So much we'd never have known, and it was more fun than staying in our own little world.  It was the chance of a lifetime to be sent to such places; an unusual blessing.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime, the author says.  Probably true, probably true.

Simple

Saying goodbye to friends in rural Djibouti is hard as  I leave for home and an easier life.
Is there a way to share?  Am I doing what I can?

When I think about my friends and the way they live, I'm tempted to sell everything and go work where they do.  Is there a way to balance things out?  In Texas yesterday, I saw a grocery store the size of a small town; it had dozens of kinds of pretty much everything, and I remember my friends who've never been in a grocery store.

It's hard to imagine one of them walking down the block-long, air conditioned aisles, seeing a hundred different kinds of cookies or cereal or canned things.  And a cart full of groceries would cost them three months income or more.  We live in such a fractured world.

What churches do

A famine on the West Bank in the first century brought difficult times for the churches.  Famine on top of persistent food shortages, double taxation, and overpopulation crippled an already precarious Palestinian economy.  Churches in the eastern Mediterranean took up collections to keep them alive.  It wasn't easy for any of them, but they did it because that's what you do when there's a need.

Children in Mpeketoni
left without fathers.

The church in Corinth was the first of several churches to give and did so eagerly, according to the history.  They asked Paul how to save up such monies. He told them to do like the Galatian churches: each person should set aside a sum every week according to their income. That way no big collections would be necessary when next Paul visited. Their surplus was small, and the week-by-week savings were how they achieved a generous gift in the end.

In Kenya just days ago, a terrorist attack on the village of Mpeketoni left 48 men dead.  They'd been asked if they were Christian and shot if they were.  Families were shattered and the town was set ablaze before security forces arrived to drive off the attackers.

The pastors in Mpeketoni asked for help, so churches in the region raised some money and sent the bishop and a truckload of food and other supplies to help out. There is much to do in the community to begin the process of recovery, of healing, but they're not alone. It's what churches do.

The Corinth church wasn't perfect. In the couple of years between Paul's letters, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, the collection effort fell by the wayside. Titus visited the church and rekindled interest in the relief fund, but after he left, it again came to a halt. Second Corinthians 8 & 9 is Paul's encouragement to the church folks to finish what they had pledged to do the previous year.  Difficult, even in the best of times, of course, so reminders and encouragement are part of the deal.

Sincere thanks come from Kenya for those who joined in the effort.
Let us know if you'd like to lend a hand.

The GAP - Part III - what he told his mother

Goldman Sachs trader is suing; his bonus of $8.25 million was five million less than he told his mother he was getting.  

Deeb Salem said in an arbitration hearing that he was expecting $13 million, down from a $15 million award for 2009 when he was paid more than the CEO, Lloyd C. Blankfein. Salem said his bonus was unfairly docked because of a written warning he received for his 2007 performance.

Salem said his group put on a large short bet against the housing market, reaping billions of dollars for Goldman Sachs and helping it weather the financial crisis better than peers. He said Blankfein told the desk to cover its bet in early 2007, forcing the group to sell almost $5 billion of positions to Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, the hedge-fund firm run by Phil Falcone that made billions betting against subprime mortgages.

In 2011, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said Salem and other Goldman Sachs traders manipulated prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in 2007 for their own benefit. The subcommittee’s assertions were based in part on Salem’s self-evaluation, in which he wrote “we began to encourage the squeeze with plans of getting very short again after the short squeeze caused capitulation of these shorts.”

Summary: one of the primary blood-suckers that precipitated the Great Recession and the collapse of my retirement savings by gambling, betting against the market tumble he helped create... he is complaining because he didn't make more millions personally for his performance.  This miscreant crashed the world marketplace, he and a few others like him, by gambling!  That was illegal until recently when big business and government colluded to provide yet another path for extracting wealth from the working class.  My loss was endurable, but my friends in Kenya saw the price of their food double.  The toll was and continues to be deadly.  

This particular tantrum by a Wall Streeter offers us insight into the power-player thinking that pervades the financial industry in the developed world.  

We know how it works now. We've created venues for an individual or team to manipulate the marketplace with multi-billion dollar wagers.  Win or lose, the cost is extracted from the world's working class. Functionally identical to Los Vegas gaming, it continues today, largely unregulated and unimpeded. The lower-income folks of the world pay for that play, and the GAP widens.  

If banks were countries, Goldman Sachs would be in the world's top 100 countries for wealth.  Had enough yet?




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