Deal with it and move on

Community folks pray over a new well in Burkina Faso

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Eph 4:31-32

So, what if we actually did that?  If we followed the counsel we're given, would it change things?

• A Peace Corps friend told me of his early years in Burkina Faso and in Somalia. 
• In Somalia, they were one tribe and culture, closely related, and they hated each other, my friend remembers.  When meetings were held to deal with local issues, there was always finger pointing and name calling among clan members, like, "I'm not dealing with you, your grandfather stole my uncle's cow!" 
• In Burkina Faso, the Burkinabé (local folks) just dealt with problems. "You did wrong, you pay him a goat," the elder would say, and to the other, "You were wronged, he's going to pay you a goat. That settles it, so make peace and let's move on."
• One culture carries a grudge for decades, another makes things right.  Imagine the difference in daily life and in the lessons the children learn.

Interesting observations, nothing more.  In the decades following these observations, Somalia collapsed and has not recovered.  Burkina Faso has fared only slightly better, since countries are more complex by far than villages.  Marxist influences and power players have made things more difficult.  Folks are making progress now with help from the French.  

You can't help but wonder, though.  What if we followed the good counsel we're given, what kind of towns and churches would we have?

Republicans and Democrats Agree!

In a fascinating study, 5,522 folks were asked what an ideal distribution of wealth might look like, one which they deemed to be fair and just.  They were also asked to estimate today's distribution of wealth in the U.S., i.e., how much does each 20% have.

Their results are given (right) along with the actual distribution.

It's called the GAP between the rich and all the rest; economic inequality. The participants knew about the spread but not the extent.  Did you?  That the bottom 40% of Americans possess about 0.3% of the country's wealth?

The participants were asked to choose where they'd prefer to live if given the choice between these two hypothetical societies, A and B.

Of the study participants, 92% chose society B.  Interestingly, it matches their suggested ideal distribution rather nicely.  It's a common desire among all the participants and perhaps the rest of us as well.

Society A represents the U.S. as it was in 2012.  Society B is fictional but approximates Sweden's distribution of wealth.

Surprisingly, 93.5% of Democrats and 90.2% of Republicans prefer and approve of the more equal distribution.

Finally, they agree on something of substance.  Now all they need is to admit it and figure out how to make it happen.  When President Obama raised the issue in 2013, both parties in Congress shut him down.  Understandable, perhaps; they and their friends are all top 2 percent wealthy and maybe haven't really seen the rest of the country.  Trump's plan will expand the GAP even more.  Of course.

You can see the source published article here for all the scholarly details.
Michael I. Norton, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA; and Dan Ariely, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NC

Wait, wait; 93% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans would rather live in Sweden?  Okay, that's bizarre.

When does economic inequality become a problem?

An economic difference between households is perhaps normal and a necessary element of capitalism.  Everyone hopes to improve, and perhaps the difference in wealth we see helps us define our goal.  The motivating question we face, however, is not 'do I have enough' but 'can I get more'. That's the cultural context we live with in the western world.

The result of such thinking is broadly visible both in market and government policies, regulations, and favoritism.  The rich get richer without any particular impediment, and certainly not because they work harder.  Is that a problem?

The dilemma with such a self focus is that it is quite content to advance at the expense of others. All others.  It protests against the less fortunate, its victims, blaming them for not having stepped up.

What might be the motivation for having a hundred or thousand times more than you or your family could ever need?

Fishes live in the sea

Our noble intent is a fair world for all, equal opportunity, education, safety,  ...

Income inequality refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among
 a population. In the United States, income inequality, or the gap between the rich and everyone
 else, has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for some 30 years.

'Getting ahead' was an early goal of western civilization, the chance for your children to have a better life than you. Today for much of the population, there are impediments to such hope.

Wages in the post-war years were based on a worker having a share in corporate productivity,
improvement, and success.  Beginning in the 70's, wages for the workforce became a liability
to be managed and minimized for the benefit of the bottom line.  

Despite the extraordinary rise in national productivity, it seems only the fortunate (in the U.S. and elsewhere) are benefiting.  Real wages are generally flat over the last four decades.




Among the world's nations, we see a similarly disproportionate benefit from globalization.  Wealth from resources and labor streams from the developing countries to the developed world at an accelerating rate.  In many countries, the inequality gap widens at an accelerating rate over the decades.

Despite the advances in productivity and average income by nations, the benefit is commonly to the upper income half of the economy.  Segments of

the population for each and every one of the advancing nations are unimproved in circumstance since 1980.  

The marketplace, whether fruit or flowers or finance, increasingly favors the wealthy with each passing year. Government policy and trade regulations are purchased by wealth and influence, it would appear, to the detriment of many.

From what we have seen, what might we expect from continuing the current path?

Below are campaigns we might consider supporting today:

• The Interfaith Worker Justice’s campaign, Paystubs for All Workers. This campaign aims to make it a federal requirement for employers to issue pay stubs to all workers as a deterrent against wage theft.  (Wage theft by employers exceeds all robbery, auto theft, burglary, and larceny, combined.)
• The National Employment Law Project’s campaign, Raise the Minimum Wage. This campaign puts pressure on federal, state, and municipal lawmakers to reasonably raise the minimum wage for all workers.
• The Institute for Policy Studies’ campaign, Close the Billionaire Loophole. This campaign aims to put the brakes on concentrated wealth by restoring the estate tax.
• Americans for Tax Fairness, a diverse campaign of national, state and local organizations united in support of a fair tax system that works for all Americans.
• Oxfam’s new campaign, Even It Up. This global campaign focuses on tax fairness, investing in public health and education, and establishing fair wages for all.
• The Robin Hood Tax campaign. This campaign aims to secure a Financial Transaction Tax on Wall Street transactions.
• The Jobs with Justice campaign, Change Walmart, Change the Economy. This campaign urges Walmart to reform its business practices to set the stage for changes across the retail sector.

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- See more here. 

Fair Trade Practices?

From Der Spiegel - August 22, 2011
"... like a pack of wolves" that seeks to tear entire countries to
pieces, said Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. For that
reason, they should be fought "without mercy," French
 President Nicolas Sarkozy raged. Andrew Cuomo, the
 former attorney general and current governor of New York,
 once likened short-sellers to "looters after a hurricane."

Curious how the derivatives market works?  

"One might think of derivatives as a random game of online poker.

• You don't know who your opponents are [your counterparty], 
• you do not know if you will be paid [counterparty risk], 
• you do not know if the game is legitimate, [lack of regulation], and 
• your opponents are probably able to see what cards you are holding,  [market domination by large banks]. 
• As well, you are making bets that in many instances neither you nor your opponents fully grasp [complexity of the market]. 
• With each wager you are potentially risking not only your current assets, but your future assets as well. [leverage]. 
• In some cases you do not know how much you are betting. 
• Imagine as well, that you play this game every day with trillions of dollars that you do not have. 

This is the global derivatives market."

 ~ David Hague, 2014

"..., we know that the use of derivative securities played a pivotal role in the ... the financial collapse in The 2007-08 Financial Crisis."    ~  Kristina Zucchi, CFA 

Nothing of substance has been done to mitigate the risks inherent in this unregulated industry.  Bank balance sheets, British central banker Andrew Haldane said caustically, are still "the blackest of boxes."

You might appreciate: The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

Los Angeles vs the Comet

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission landed on a comet, and we all heard the news.  An interesting note not obvious in the photos from the mission is the size of the comet.  It's illustrated here, actual size, compared to the city of Los Angeles.

The Rosetta spacecraft traveled some 4 billion miles on the way to the intercept.  That's way more than forty times the distance from here to the sun.

It's hard to grasp such numbers in our mind picture of the mission. Maybe it would help if we visualized the earth at about the size of a VW Beetle; then you'd only have to drive 3 million miles to get to the comet.  Okay, still too much, huh.

So if Earth were the size of a grape and hanging on a vine in real-size Florida, the comet would be about the size of a white blood cell floating over real-size Sydney, Australia. Now visualize people living on that grape trying to launch a pair of molecules off to Australia to land on that white blood cell that is so unimaginably far away.  Never mind; I give up. And don't get me started on how far the Voyager mission has traveled.

Space missions are bizarre.