Creating Wealth and Poverty

Today, about half the world lives on less than $5/day per person. Improvements in recent decades have benefited the wealthy with comparatively little progress for lower income groups.

"... this process of poverty creation - the forceful extraction of commonly managed assets to serve financial elites - is exactly what recent social movements have called attention to. Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, the African uprisings, even the anti-austerity stance of new political parties in Spain and Greece, all have one thing in common: the recognition that the only way for a tiny group of people to become obscenely rich is for huge masses of others to be kept chronically poor.

This cold logic of poverty creation tells us what needs to be done. Before obsessing about amounts of foreign aid, or pretending it can solve deep systemic problems, we need to all focus on changing the rules of economic systems to make them more inclusive, more participatory, more focused on creating well-being than simply extracting more aggregate wealth, and more accountable to those billions who are not being served by the current rules. This is how mass poverty truly can be brought to an end."  ~Jason Hickel, Joe Brewer, and Martin Kirk

Here in the developed world, we fuss over the availability of the bath soap we prefer or the car we really want or the house that measures up to the stature of the person we aspire to become.  The world's typical household, however, struggles to feed and educate their children, to fight off disease, to simply survive.  

It doesn't have to be like this, does it.  There are many things we as individuals can do.

Church isn't for me ...

Really?  Church services and such are great, but is it for me?  Just lots of pew sitting?

All these apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers ... are for equipping us for our work serving others.  (That's what it says in the book.)  And if I'm not equipped yet, just how long is it supposed to take anyway ...

As my wife points out, the purpose of church and teaching are perhaps mostly for the younger folks, to help them get their lives on track and their work begun.  She says us older folks don't go to church to 'get' but to 'give'.  

It raises a question about growing up.  Do we understand that while development and learning are continuous, those are not the purpose; they're the means. Surprisingly enough, the best of life seems to show up when we're involved with some good work.

Tremendous challenge and change filled our early years as is typical, and contrary to our expectation, it continues.  There's plenty of real stuff to do along the way.  That's where the fun really starts.  I.e., joy, love, grace, strength, plus the adventure, etc.



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What is church anyway?

The Goal in 96 seconds!

How hard can it be?

Thinking outside the box.  What box?

If your ask your daughter, she might point out how we consume at a rate we can't support.  Or how we've reduced ocean fish populations to a point that they'll take a century to recover (by best estimates), but only if we quit over-fishing.  She'll see our generation as responsible.

Your granddaughter might point out that those animals she so admires are endangered along with their habitats.  That's troublesome, and it's a battle between conservationists and monied interests.  She'll see our generation as responsible.

Then there's your dad.  He might point out that he'd paid the price to defend your freedom, your chance to change the world for the better.  He will see our generation as the one where economic inequality began to infect the entire world financial system.

And grandpa; he survived the market collapse and the Great Depression.  He'll point out that the lessons learned there were all discarded by our generation.  Our extraordinarily interconnected business world now overshadows governments and national policy.

At the bottom of the world economy, folks who live a basic existence are hard pressed.  In Africa, friends struggle to get by with a few goats and perhaps a breeding pair of camels in Djibouti, a family garden and a sailing dugout for fishing on the Gulf of Guinea, a small maize crop in Kenya.

There is a silver lining, perhaps.  Our poorest friends have a chance of surviving.  If the global economy follows the predictions, when the collapse comes, maybe it's the rich people (the developed world) who will starve first.  You have to wonder.

Those are challenges we face; ours to change or to leave for others.
Are any important issues being reasonably addressed by today's candidates for office?
How hard can it be?

There is no box.
Business isn't as usual.  It's evolving as rapidly as technology.
Finance isn't as usual.  It's reshaping the marketplace.
Parenting isn't as usual.  There are new issues.
Relationships -- okay, relationships are still the centerpiece of life, but ...
Family isn't as usual.  Culture seems to be eroding some of the important parts.
Right and wrong haven't changed, but many folks seem to think otherwise.
That's the world our children have to deal with, and we need to equip them for it.

José Rizal; in whose image?

Some folks find themselves in less than perfect circumstances, and they rise up to be perhaps larger than life.  Such was José Rizal who struggled with political and religious oppression under colonial rule.  He was a world changer.

In response to a narrow, lifeless religious rule, "No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space.  However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light.  I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die.  What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, His love, His providence, His eternity, His glory, His wisdom?  ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork."  --  José Rizal, more than a century ago.  

José Rizal was a doctor, a prolific writer, and a key voice in the emergence of the Philippines as a nation.  Rizal challenged political norms and aggressively advocated freedom of speech and assembly for the Filipino people.  For his writings, he was prosecuted by the Spanish colonial authorities, both governmental and church, as an inciter of rebellion.  He was executed, and the Philippine Revolution exploded immediately after his death.  

His books, poems and plays are seen as powerfully influential both at home and abroad, inspiring change for freedom and liberty, for education and opportunity, a grand vision indeed.  His first book Noli Me Tángere was initially banned by colonial authorities, but copies were smuggled into the Philippines.  A poem he wrote shortly before his death was later recited by Indonesian soldiers before going into battle for their own independence. 

Monuments in his honor stand in more than a dozen cities around the world including Manila, San Diego, Chicago, Madrid, Lima, and Hong Kong.  Nearly every town and city in the Philippines has a street named after Rizal.  He was thirty-seven.

Curious what triggered Rizal?  He read Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Against the odds

One against many is not uncommon, nor are the results predictable.

"Are you in over your head, son?" The judge smiled as the young lawyer answered, "Absolutely." ~The Rainmaker -- Danny Glover, Matt Damon, 1997

One against many is not uncommon, nor are the results predictable.

'Pick your battles', we're told.  Does that mean pick the ones where the odds are in our favor?  Or perhaps it means we should choose the important ones; the ones where the issue is life-significant.

Should we battle over which tv show to watch?  Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to invest our personal efforts in serving well, ethically well, good-conscience well for the sake of others.

It's sometimes difficult to see clearly what has perhaps been obscured by time and competing concerns.  Sometimes, important issues finally emerge, and you see that you can do something.

So you decide.  You're going at risk, but this is important enough to justify action.  You've picked your battle.  Now, how do you go forward?

Ideally, you'll graciously unveil the problem (and a reasonable solution), and others will immediately agree and change.  More likely, you may stand alone against the inertia of things as they are; most folks dislike change and the associated effort.

It was like that with slavery.  Pro-slavery advocates claimed that enslaved Africans were lesser human beings who benefited from their bondage.  In England, William Wilberforce and others campaigned for years against the slave trade.  They won in 1833.  In America, the abolitionist John Brown led a violent insurrection in 1859 that got him tried for treason and hung.  He's credited with triggering the Civil War.  Brown's actions prior to the Civil War as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose, still make him a controversial figure today. He is sometimes memorialized as a heroic martyr and a visionary and sometimes vilified as a madman and a terrorist. Historians are divided on whether it is accurate to refer to Brown as "America's first domestic terrorist".

Today, economic inequality is a worldwide epidemic brought to us by the business world.  The by-products -- social and racial discrimination, constrained opportunity, and class oppression, all are increasing rapidly in both developed and developing countries.  Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and protests in Ferguson all point to the same inequity.  While some recognize that all are created equal, not all are treated equally.  

So, is the issue of equality big enough, life-significant enough to warrant our involvement?  Or to at least have a clear opinion?

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Fighting Persistent Discrimination

In the beginning, conquerors just killed or drove out the inhabitants of the land.  They justified their behavior, saying the natives were lesser creatures, sub-human, and owed no particular consideration.  Humanity has improved somewhat.

Social change through the centuries ...

slaughter

 slavery and indenture

  segregation and violent separation

   social and class isolation, discrimination, regulatory exclusion
     economic inequality and immobility

One common element remains unchanged through it all; the belief that 'they' are less worthy, somehow.  Such thinking persists across the centuries and continues today to produce new problems for 'them'.  The 'upper' person looks at the 'lower' and says things like, "they don't deserve," or, "not my problem."   The trigger might be race or ethnicity, economic status, or even manner of dress.  

Such thinking gives us 'shopping while black' and QOL policing practices, racial profiling and violent response problems, all of which are deeply troubling.  It goes on to provoke crime and gang cultures, rebellions against inequality and today's thinly veiled oppression. 

There's much more underlying criminal activity, of course, but the science is established.  Inequality and discrimination provoke protest, resistance, and violence.  Such was the root of the French revolution and dozens more in the 18th century.  It was the root of the women's rights movement,  the civil rights movements, and modern feminism.  There's more happening even now.  

So, either ...
 there are some who are 'above' others by virtue of race or culture or status ...
  those 'above' deserve greater freedom, power, wealth, opportunity ...
   their children deserve better food and care, better education and jobs and pay ...
Or ...
 all are indeed created equal ...
  all are equally deserving of respect, of opportunity, of a place ...

We can't have it both ways.  Either we will serve ourselves at the expense of others, or we will accept and make a place for others and treat them like we treat ourselves.


Economic inequality (the GAP) is today's most visible expression of that which plagues humankind.  It too can be conquered.

The GAP.   It's only one piece of the puzzle, but it needs to be acknowledged, understood, and addressed.

Monday, January 18, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 2016

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has spent a career thinking about how to address income inequality. One major reason: Dr. Martin Luther King.   Stiglitz says King saw the struggle for social justice as a battle not just against racial segregation and discrimination, but also as one for greater economic equality and justice for all Americans. 

In a recent book, Stiglitz examines the causes and consequences of an unequal society and offers solutions for what we can do about it. For this Martin Luther King Day, a conversation with Joseph Stiglitz on “The Great Divide” in America.  ~ on NPR Today