(This is the first part in a two-part series, with part two running next Sunday.)
Does this describe a dilemma familiar to you?
• You’ve worked hard, often really hard, to make a reasonably comfortable life for yourself and your family.
• You’ve sacrificed for the sake of your kids getting launched in life, and for other close relatives who’ve needed your help in a crisis.
• You’ve educated yourself, both inside and outside of formal institutions, to keep pace with challenges in the economy and maybe even risked a lot to get to a place where you’ve been rewarded for all that effort.
• You’ve made mostly good choices with respect to your health and well-being, and avoided most risky behaviors.
• You’ve volunteered, in your church or elsewhere in the community, on behalf of those less fortunate.
You’ve done all this, and arrived at a place where you can begin to relax and enjoy the fruits of your hard work. And then you get hit with the issue of “inequality” – income inequality, racial inequality, housing inequality, educational inequality, health inequality, whatever inequality.
Historically, of course, the greatest source of inequality in America was and continues to be the way Native Americans were dispossessed from their ancestral homelands and how African-Americans were first enslaved then, after the Civil War and Reconstruction, subjected to a century of racist violence and blatant discrimination. But that is an issue that deserves its own special attention.
Today, we are looking at the kinds of income inequality that have hit particularly hard those Americans who used be part of a growing middle class and whose outrage is finding a voice in our current presidential campaign.
And there is a temptation, perhaps a great temptation, to give a sigh, or stick some money in an envelope, or sign an online petition in support of those who want to do good – and then turn away. You’ve done your bit, and more. You can’t solve the world’s problems – Why don’t they turn to someone else for a change? – even if you do acknowledge that you have benefited at various points in your life from a network of people who have supported you, or helped ease your path to “the good life.”
And while it’s easier to sympathize with those whose factories have been sent overseas or who have been sidelined by physical or mental illness, you find yourself getting frustrated or even angry at those individuals who appear to have contributed to their own lousy circumstances, and on whose behalf you’re being asked to give up more of what you have.
What sticks in your craw is the nagging feeling that some (certainly not all, but a good number) of these people just don’t seem to be deserving. They make bad choices. They spend time with the wrong people. They medicate themselves with the wrong substances. They have declined to work hard, or wasted other opportunities. They just keep losing.
They seem like “lost causes,” too painful to even think about.
This is, for myself and likely for some of you, the dilemma of inequality in our society. And yet I have a strong premonition that this issue won’t go away, that I can’t just dismiss it (even though I do have to cut myself slack at times, put it aside and continue to enjoy life).
I have been helped a lot in my struggle with this by learning more about just how inequality has gotten worse over the past few decades, and what the forces are that are working to deny to more and more Americans a reasonable shot at living a good life.
None of this resolves my dilemma, but it helps give it perspective and focus on whom to blame and what can reasonably be done.
The best resource I’ve found is a book by the former New York Times writer, Hedrick Smith, titled Who Stole the American Dream? In it, Smith details, point by point, where laws were changed, regulations were imposed, decisions were made in government offices and corporate boardrooms, and by leaders of influence in our society, to move resources (money) away from those who have less and give it to those who have more.
Another good source is Michael Moore’s recent film, Where to Invade Next?, which highlights how much worse off American workers are than workers in countries with strong unions.
To be sure, technology has played a role in this redistribution, as has the globalization of the economy. But there are nations like our own that have embraced technology and kept pace with the world economy while making sure to share the benefits and burdens a whole lot more fairly than we have here in America.
There is no getting away from the fact that since the 1970s the rich have gotten a lot richer, the poor a lot poorer, and the middle class has declined in numbers, in influence and in confidence in the future. These changes have been great and have had a profound impact on the disadvantaged (those suffering from discrimination and neglect), on working people and on middle-class families.
There is also no denying that attitudes throughout all sectors of American society have hardened in a way that benefits the wealthy and continues to punish everyone else.
The myth that freedom and liberty in our society depend on our having fewer regulations, less government, lower taxes and fewer social services has been vociferously promoted by those who prefer to blame the victim than to solve the problem.
And, on the other side of the political spectrum, those of us who call ourselves “liberals” or “progressives” have largely turned away from active participation in the struggle, even as our own financial well-being has stabilized or improved, following the recent recession.
So when we see so many of those who have suffered from this redistribution of wealth support demagogues and wrong-headed policies that would punish those less fortunate, even than themselves, the tendency to throw up our hands can be irresistible.
Put a bag of canned goods out of the front porch, contribute some more to our favorite charities, vote for the lesser of two evils and try not to worry too much about the country we are leaving to our grandchildren.
In a follow-up column, I’d like to consider a range of views we might consider to wrest this issue out of the vortex of cynicism and helplessness.
So, to stimulate such discourse, I invite readers to consider this question: “How can I, as a citizen, be clearer in my own mind about what I can do to stem the tide of inequality that threatens us all?”
(Robert L. Fried of Concord is a retired educator who is now a writer, gardener and tinkerer. He can be reached by email at rob.fried@gmail.com.)