Conservative vs. Christian - Pt. II

A conservative approach to long-term investment is perhaps the recommended life-plan, at least according to financial advisors in the mainstream of developed nations.  An appropriate mix of stocks (value & growth) and bonds ...

Oh, oh, I know, I know!  I could lay up for myself treasures on earth where Merrill and Lynch doth corrupt and where recessions break through and steal.  

I could build bigger 401Ks and fill them up, and then I could say to myself that I've got much goods laid up for many years, and I should eat, drink, and be merry.  

Right?

Summer camp for teens on the far side of the world

So is the conservative approach to possessions and wealth suited to the Christian life?  Is there a conflict between the two?  Of course.  The two are diametrically opposed, and one emphatically precludes the other.  Take a deep breath, and deal with it.

Now, how can we resolve the conflict?

For starters, are there treasures in heaven, really? Or is that just a nice phrase to use before the offering at church.

Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

Laundry in the real world ...

So on the far side of the world, my friends took me to visit their summer camp for Catholic teens; they focus on right thinking and acting for the years ahead.  In one of the poorest countries in the world, they're smart enough to know what's important in life.  They're not preachy, and they live it pretty well.  They never asked me for anything, not even once.

Their life's labor is making a way forward out of sub-survival poverty.  Getting enough food is difficult; about a quarter of their kids are underweight for height and under height for age.  Infant mortality is high.  Education is a challenge as well, but they know it's a key component of progress for their kids.  Is helping those who need a hand part of the right path?

So can I provide for my family without being stupid in a thousand ways?  And can I do my part to help others as well?  Can I maybe do enough to make a difference in a lot of lives?  Can we all?  As in 'change the world' ....


Living in the developed world puts us in the top 10% or so of humanity for wealth and income.  If we reach the U.S. median income level, it's the top 1%.  That means we're extraordinarily insulated from the real world, sheltered in wealth and luxury, and perhaps irrational when we complain that the grocery store doesn't have the bread we like.

The most difficult challenge is living with continuous awareness of Christian principle instead of our luxurious cultural norm.  At least, that's the struggle that bothers me the most.

Got any ideas on how we might actually live according to principle and resolve these questions?

Conservative vs. Christian

A moderately humorous look at how a Christian

might see the conservative player in

 today's discussion.

Conservative - those who hold a traditionalist viewpoint and associated values.  

The conservative is cautious about change, perhaps especially in regards to politics and religion. The conservative resists government involvement in life and business, property and wealth. Critical values are liberty, property, and autonomy.

Christian - those who follow Jesus, the son of God who is Father of us all.  

The Christian is focused on right relationship, with God (first) and with others.  Critical values are justice, mercy, truth, and service.

Conservatives vs. Christians: grouped by life behaviors according to critical values (US demographic, only) ...

The Conservative life effort (not talk, just actions) focuses largely on having.  

Carson offers insight into why government often has difficulty
addressing real-life issues with simplistic solutions.
It's not about money.  Money by itself is
 much too small.

• Preparation for employment through education
• Career defined by income and advancement
• Accumulation of:
• (1st) survival requirements, 
• (2nd) comfort, lifestyle, and status requirements
• (3rd) additional wealth (unearned, partially or fully) through investment (wager)
• stocks for growth and dividend income
• bonds for interest income
• gold and silver for an income cushion against inflation
• real estate for resale or rental income
• tax avoidance

The Christian life effort (not talk, just actions) focuses largely on relationship and serving.

• Preparation for life through education
• Career defined by hard work and opportunity for service
• Living with generosity, and having only for the purpose of helping and providing
• Intelligent involvement - helping without hurting is a skill not a virtue
• Committed participation by giving - not just a sop for today's tender conscience
• Investment where it makes a difference - 
• I can send a kid to college, or I can have a bigger TV; they cost about the same ...  
• I can buy a bigger house, or I can sponsor some families and all their children and school and community improvement projects and maybe another ten families
• Investment in what's needed - If I'm pro-life, that means I am also: 
• pro-education and development, 
• pro-health care, pro-nutrition, 
• pro-shelter, safety, and security, 
• pro-opportunity and mobility

Christian values (as compared to conservative values) make no place for being obscenely wealthy and continuing to be so at the expense of others.  The median western household is in the world's top 1% for wealth.  If you're above average, you'll make more in a year than most folks will in a lifetime.  Don't gloss over that.

Conservatives and big business:  twenty years of removing market safeguards (at the purchased insistence of the finance industry) gave us the collapse in 2007-8.  Derivatives and predatory lending made mega-billions for the wealthy.  Regulators turning a blind eye made billions for the perpetrators.  The government bailout provided billions in profits and bonuses for the monied participants.  Around the country, regular folks lost homes, savings, and security.  Around the world, regular folks suffered and the poor starved.  More than a million died in the first year due in part to the Great Recession.  

So what did Jesus say about such wealth and behavior?
Can someone like that enter the kingdom?  
Have we finished making excuses for ourselves yet?

Giving money at church isn't the solution, but it perhaps could be a good starting place, a first step.  Once we learn to give joyfully, we've begun to understand.  Giving of ourselves, our lives, and all we have is the honest second step in a rather long treck.  That's the calling of a Christian and completely missing from the conservative agenda.



Just my opinion, of course.  Feel free to disagree.
I suspect we're all less than perfect, me included.
This article was written to provoke my own thought and perhaps
a review of how I spend my own life.  I'm open to ideas.

You might appreciate - The Helper for some perspective.  Or Change Makers.  :)

For Richer or Poorer

It's been uncomfortable for most of us with wages being stagnant and the middle class in decline.  The GAP widens. Coping has been difficult as jobs move overseas, skill requirements change, and folks are sidelined from the workforce.

For most of us, things haven't gone well.  90% of U.S. households

have lost income, but the top 10% has soared.

As difficult as it has been for us and our families, it's worse in many of the countries we've affected.  Like here, the middle class has crashed in most African countries.

   Between 2000 and 2007 Africa added 11.5 million to their middle class ranks, coinciding with the boom years of “Africa Rising”, and doing its part in adding to the massive global expansion of that period. In just two years, however, it shed 7.5 million of these. It was 2007-08, the recession Wall Street caused.  In the eight years since, Africa’s middle class has fallen by a further 3.2 million.   Ref: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2015

The years 2007-08 were the brunt of the global financial crisis Wall Street gave the world; it squeezed the middle class and sent it scrambling for debt. The world and the middle class have yet to recover.  

The run-up to the recession was filled with purchased government decisions. Unethical and illegal practices followed along with failures of regulatory oversight and fraudulent securities classification, all things we now know.  If I farm the land, but I cheat my neighbor and he goes under, that makes me a crook.  If he starves, I'm culpable. I'm wrong, regardless of what excuses I might make.

Realistically, since what we do as a nation affects the world, we carry a measure of responsibility.  In the first year of the Great Recession, more than a million died.  For the poorest, when the price of corn meal doubled, they starved.  

Is there a way forward for us that at least doesn't do harm?  What kind of leadership would that require?  

For so many reasons, we have hope for a better world.  As annoying as change might be, it brings opportunity for improvement, does it not.

Quibbling

Let's quit quibbling about the dollar figure and remember why we have a minimum wage in the first place.  If it isn't doing what we intended, we've failed. We've failed our friends, our neighbors, our families, and our citizenry.

Workers who make the minimum wage or less are just 2% of the workforce.*

And the fix is easy.

Leaving it at half-mast (doing nothing) however, is like sending your kids to school with only half their lunch money.




So moving on to the question of what happens if we raise it ...

"But doing so means prices go up!"  Yes they will in some market venues.  Each of us will pay our fair share of the price for service.  Businesses will adjust; more self-service, perhaps, and so on.

"But corporate profits will be threatened!"  Perhaps.  (1) Corporate profits are higher today than ever before in U.S. history.  (2) Most corporation do not have a significant percentage of employees at minimum wage, but some do; e.g., Walmart, McDonalds, Burger King, etc.  Others like Costco and Target pay reasonable wages for all employees with development and advancement opportunities.

"But small businesses will fail!"  Perhaps.  If their survival is based on employees living in poverty, then perhaps they need to grow, change, or close.  Rules do not apply to all small businesses.

And laws may need to change.  The intent is a reasonable wage for the health and well-being of the worker.  Should we have a different standard for teens entering the workforce but still living at home?  Do our child labor laws cover it adequately?  Should we have a classification of skilled vs. unskilled labor?  Anything more needed in dealing with dynamic hours and benefits?

"Raising the minimum wage doesn't affect the poverty rate."  It does, and the context is larger than just the individuals.  Raising the minimum wage would move hundreds of thousands off of federal assistance programs.  Walmart alone costs taxpayers $6.2 billion annually in public assistance for low-wage employees.   McDonald's costs us $1.2 billion each year.

Our 10 biggest fast food corporations are responsible for more than half of the funds required in 2012 federal assistance for low-wage workers in that industry. These same 10 companies together declared $7.4 billion in net profits, and they paid $7.7 billion to shareholders.

In other words, the rich get richer off the labor of the poorest who are themselves supported by welfare the bottom 90% pays for.  Funny how that works out.

U.S. poverty numbers have increased since this analysis in 2010.

Poverty and associated inequality numbers are high in the U.S., and have been rising since the 70's.

Approximately 52 million folks in the U.S. were recipients in government assistance programs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. (report)  Among employed folks, 18% of part-time workers, and 7% of full-time workers were recipients.  About one-third participate for one year or less, and another half participate for 48 months or less.

*In 2015, 78 million workers age 16 and older were paid at hourly rates.  That is 58% of workers. Among hourly workers, 2,570,000 earned the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour or less. Together, these workers with wages at or below the minimum made up 3% of hourly workers and less than 2% of the total work force.

Trickling ...

Interestingly, no one has admitted supporting 'trickle down' economic theory.  The actual category is 'supply side economics'.   There's been discussion and accusation for more than a century about such practices, but the critical concern through it all is policy and regulation favoring the wealthy and corporate interests.  Particularly since the 1970's, wealth has flowed to the top 10% at the expense of the bottom 90%.

The result of those decades, the GAP, the deadly end-product of it.  It has spread like a plague through the developed and developing world.

All's fair in love and football.

Football!
Play to win.
  Winning is good.
    That's competition.

As long as you don't underinflate the ball or have too many guys on the field ... you know how it works; it's fair, and losing is just a disappointment.  No big deal; nobody dies.

But what if they did?  What if life depended on winning the game?

What if all the players on the winning team got jobs and homes in a nice neighborhood, and what if the losers never got a fulltime job or a decent place to live ... would that still be fair? Depends on the rules, doesn't it.  If the rules say it's okay, well, that's fair.  That's the way it works.

Ever wonder about competition?  It's a centerpiece in our economy and culture, but sometimes it starts doing damage.  And people die.

It two farmers sell corn competitively, the lower priced stuff will sell first.  That's fair.
But what if one farmer got subsidies and the other one didn't?    That's NAFTA, and more than a million Mexican family farms went broke; they couldn't compete.  The families abandoned their homes and migrated elsewhere, usually to the cities, looking for work and survival.  It hasn't gone well.

In a small country near the equator with rich soil and good rain, people struggle for food because competition has dedicated their land to producing mostly exports, and competitive fishing has depleted their territorial waters.  Foreigners own much of their land, and the income generated by productivity goes to corporations outside the country.

So then, playing by the rules, is that good enough?

International finance and trade are troublesome today.  Since about 1980, business competition has escalated radically in the pursuit of profit to the detriment of both employees and customers.  When it crosses country boundaries, it's even more volatile. At the core, it's a competition for resource extraction and profit by corporations that are bigger than countries.  Unintended consequences happen on a large scale and continuously.    

One example among many, national attempts (World Bank) (Vox.Eu) at dealing with price spikes in the real food markets do as much harm as good.  They're trying to minimize the impact of price fluctuations on the poor, but the folks at the bottom of the income ladder are the ones who are the most adversely affected by the results, of course.

Do your own inquiry.

Samantha Powers, before she was nominated to be U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., asserted that "we're neither the shining example, or even competent meddlers.  It's going to take a generation or so to reclaim American exceptionalism..."  A generation?  Or do we perhaps need a better goal and a better plan.

As things change which they must, what might we do as individuals?  There are plenty of opportunities to make a difference, are there not?




You might appreciate Humanomics 101
All are created equal, but few are treated equally.
If we're to love one another, can we do this degree of competition?