The poverty of the rich is their wont to ignore the poor
We come to the end of the year. Given their ritualistic bent, world leaders shall proclaim peace on earth and goodwill toward all men. Then, they will turn their backs on the words just uttered to continue the short-sighted governance that has caused the global political economy to plummet into the cavern of inequality.
The holiday season has become one of plastic-wrapped, disposable virtue used once yearly then discarded in the effluvia of our consumptive and egregious times. The tree of modern Christmas is ornate and outwardly resplendent; for all of its finery, the thing is barren. It bears no fruit and is taken down too quickly to do any good other than serve as lovely but transient flash before the eye.
We approach Christmas day but don’t approximate its spirit. The passage of days is inexorable; there are no plaudits earned for merely surviving from one season to the next. There is a choice in how we live and by what spirit and values society operates. Here we have failed ourselves for we have fallen face first, then to our knees, to worship before the temple of the minted god. In the indiscriminate quest for economic wealth and power, much has been gained but also something worthy has been lost. Christmas is a good time to ask what and why.
Control of money is to hold power over things and people because money is convertible to almost everything else. Thus, it has a force beyond that of any merely physical object. Once money is used to buy a thing, the owner’s power is limited by the physical attributes and constraints of the thing purchased. Once one purchases a car, he must use that car according to the car’s physical properties. He can drive it ad infinitum but he dare not try to sail it or carve it and serve it to the family for dinner.
As long as one has money, he can purchase anything amenable to purchase. He may buy the car, an airplane, a vast herd of goats or a lifetime supply of toothpicks. If possessed of enough money, one can purchase even things considered outside the realm of general and permissible commerce: He can purchase people and the power that control of people brings.
Each dollar owned represents a possible acquisition or transaction. Each dollar thus constitutes another opportunity to bring some valuable part of the world into the ambit of the owner. The world becomes a bonded warehouse of opportunity for the heavily affluent. To have money is to own the measurement of economic value. To own the measure of value is to have the capacity to redefine value itself. To redefine value is to have true power. To have power is to be able to shape the world in ways that deflect adversity and uncertainty away from you by channeling them toward others. As such, the status of money is high above that of all other things man has or does.
Because money has been the force to move all things and most people into the flow of commerce, it acquired a universality that makes it appear omnipotent and omnipresent. Consequently, those possessing great mounts of it are tempted to believe themselves to be the same.
A god has been established to rival God himself. Money is unlike those lifeless deities carved of wood or graven of gold. Those deities can do nothing but dumbly sit there. However, money lubricates the processes of life and commerce. It is visible yet intangible. Most of all, it is man’s most infallible invention. Money never ceases to work. Individual currencies may fail and lose value, but the inherent utility of and our desire for money never abate. As man exists, does money also.
Because of these properties, man has been tempted throughout the ages to treat money as his everyday god and to relegate God to the status of guest at special occasions.
The biblical injunction that love of money is the root of evil was not the expression of an overabundance of caution. It warns of the deep pit into which men and nations may fall should the pursuit of lucre cause them to betray their finer senses and to cheat their souls. Over the centuries, man has periodically strayed from this wise counsel. Each time, the misconduct ended in molten calamity. Nations and societies have been destroyed or impair by the simple error of mistaking money, the presentation of value, for genuine value itself. After the deluge, man regroups to walk a more correct path for a time. Forgetting the lessons of the past, he slowly returns to the secular worship of money and the social wreckage it brings.
Over the past several decades, the love of money has become the primary commandment of the global economy. An entire economic ideology has been constructed to legitimize the misbehavior. Rules and laws have been instituted to make what once was illegal or unethical business practices into the accepted conduct of our times. In most nations, usury laws prohibited moneylenders from sending unfortunate borrowers into debt peonage. Today, imposing usurious interest rates on the common and poor is considered sound business practice; it is an accepted way of high profit for major financial houses. Government no longer shields the poor from the avarice of the affluent. Government now stands as the eager accomplice in the fleecing of the meager and humble.
As a consequence, the economy has shifted from one where the premium is on the production of things to one where the grand prize goes to those who make money to make more money.
This leads to another problem. Unlike most tangible objects such as a car or a chicken, money has unlimited utility. No matter how acquisitive one is, at some point, a person has his fill of material things. There is a ceiling on how many things he will buy. He will not purchase another car, house, coat, shoe or pig until he depletes his existing inventory. However, the threshold for enough money is so high as to be nonexistent. Few people, even the exceedingly rich, ever say they have enough money. Fewer people will excuse themselves from the opportunity to reap a windfall, even at the unjust expense of another. Nations go to war off the hint of treasure. Brother slays brother over it. Those who have much exploit their advantaged position to hoard more. Those who have little must spend and depart with the scant morsel they have. They can neither save nor invest. As each day passes, the rich become more themselves as do the poor.
Consequently, we reach the current situation where income and wealth inequality in many nations are more skewed now than in almost a century. The global news media tells you that euro zone economic activity is on the uptick. In terms of sheer economic statistics, this might be accurate technically. But whoever said facts don’t lie is wrong. In a complex world, facts are what the powerful shape them to be. Thus, the aggregate figures of positive growth mask a grim tale. Economic growth may be present, but it is of the variety that its benefits evade the majority of the people.
Most of the growth falls into the soft, welcoming palms of established wealth. A great expanse of youth are jobless and without direction. Greece remains a dungeon of poverty. As the fortunes of the common person declines, suicides and sickness climb. Major cities in Spain and Italy are places of frequent mass demonstrations. These events don’t make the news because the rich and powerful don’t want you to see turmoil. There is an effective news embargo on the desperate protests of the sinking poor in these nations. Spain has gone a dangerous step further in conceal the rancor. The government is engineering laws that will make demonstrations and harsh public critique of government policy illegal, susceptible to steep fines and imprisonment. Welcome to the dictatorship of the wealthy.
The same observation applies to the trajectory many African political economies. These nations tout high growth rates, but the reality behind these figures is dismal. The bulk of the populace remains mired in age-old poverty while a small elite zooms away in imported cars. This is not economic development. It is economic and social estrangement of the leadership from the people. It can’t but result in a foul end.
It seems dear Karl Marx had a backward gaze into the crystal ball. The processes of capitalism have not led to his dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, capitalism has yielded to a virulent species of itself, financialism. This financialization of the economy is producing a dictatorship of money that threatens democracy where it has been established. In African nations, where democracy is yet to give fruit, this distortion threatens to nip that happy process in the bud.
To his partial credit, American President Obama gave a stirring speech earlier this month proclaiming economic inequality as the primary moral and political challenge of this generation. The man has come to the party rather late. That it took him five years in office to attain this basic understanding is baffling. Had he realized this before perhaps his now dwindling presidency would have been different.
For too long, he has fraternized and made cozy with those who would bleed the life from democratic society by wrecking its economic underpinnings. He is now chained to these people. The best he can do is become a modern-day Samson who, upon recovering his senses, used the remnants of his strength to bring down the pillars upon himself and those who had enticed, then captured, him. Yet, he appears not to have the special courage to do such a selfless thing.
His speech endorsed several measures to help the poor and narrow America’s inequality gap. One measure was to continue unemployment benefits for the jobless. Within ten days, he backtracked. Before people had time to forget his speech, he signaled approval of a budget proposal terminating jobless benefits for 1.3 million households this month. Such was his Christmas gift to the nation’s most needy. Sadly, his speech against inequality seems to be one of his notorious feigns. Whenever he says he will do something “for” the poor, be prepared that the real intent is to do something “to” the poor. His fine talk is to sugarcoat the bitter pill so people do not take to the streets of America as they now do in Spain, Italy and Greece.
In a way, I feel sad for President Obama. Here is a man who has allowed an ounce of greatness to slip through his hands that he might hold fast to a pound of mediocrity. By tethering himself to the rich and powerful, he has written a place for himself that the collective memory will not remember as a fine one.
God is generous but Fate is stingy. The numerous chances God provides, Fate tries to steal away. Fate always seeks to narrow our chances of greatness to one fleeting moment that once missed is forever gone. This is why we must always be cognizant of Fate’s devices and avoid abetting its attempt to defeat our better purpose.
Since this is Christmas season, there is no better figure than Jesus to demonstrate how to treat this matter of economic inequality. The establishment tells us the entire profile of Jesus is encapsulated in how he silently took his punishment like a sheep led to the slaughter. Thus, the poor should stoically eat of their poverty for that is their fate.
In reality, this was but a single episode in an extraordinary life of multiple dimensions. Christians believe his sacrifice was a divine mission to render humankind spiritual salvation. Since there was no alternative except to allow mankind to perish, the Prince of Peace decided he might as well shut up and get on with the heavenly but excruciating mission.
Before the time for silent sacrifice came, Jesus did much that needs remembrance in the here and now. This man was born of a humble, uneducated family. Yet, he challenged the teachings of the establishment of his time. He so baffled and perplexed the learned ones that they conspired under cloak of darkness to kill him; he had exposed them for the ugly thing they had become.
They decreed that man must do nothing on the Sabbath. To confound them, Jesus performed many miraculous healings on that day. He did this to demonstrate that the Scribes and Pharisees knew the form of propriety but lacked the substance and spirit of it. They were ghosts parading as living beings, followers of mean doctrine masquerading as moral leaders of the people.
Jesus chastised them for turning the temple of God into a money-making machine, an olden-day ATM where the priests conspired with moneychangers to separate the poor from their hard-earned money. He did not countenance the disgrace or attempt to sidle up to those in power to partner with them in the gain and profit. He fought the powers of the day to ease the burden on the people. He chased malefactors and their malpractice from the temple that it might return to what is was erected to be.
Jesus was the consummate radical reformer who cared little for the doctrine and ritual of the establishment. He dealt with the spirit of things and of people. This is the spirit we must now hold. To better the welfare of the poor and struggling, we must do more than sing carols, strain to purchase gifts and act happy during the Christmas season. We must ask fundamental questions such as what is the real purpose of society, governance and our economic patterns. Today, we are told to cheer as long as there is economic growth. This growth has been further distilled to one numerical measurement, GDP.
We forget that the concept of GDP was devised as an indicator or measurement of economic health. It is but a map, a rough reflection. Today, the map has become more important than the real thing. If GDP is growing, we are told that all is well even when our lives say all is not.
This deception is the work of modern-day secular Scribes and Pharisees who would place form over substance because it profits them. Their way produces vast riches and power for them but it is destitute of morality and meaning for the people.
Today, let’s begin to give Jesus honor – not by making merriment – but by dedicating ourselves to the reforming spirit in which he lived. We need to redefine our economic processes away from this adoration of growth figures. Reliance on aggregate growth figures means you accede to the structure of things as they are. It means the bulk of the people will continue to increase in poverty and suffering while the smallest minority enjoys greater bounty. It is an unfairness that caters to evil.
Let us begin the process of redefining how we gauge the economy so that we begin to talk about concepts such as economic health and fairness. Let us construct new measurements that balance and combine aggregate growth with a fairer distribution of wealth. The poor work too hard for the little they get and the wealthy work too little for the windfall they take. Let this mission be our special Christmas gift to ourselves. If we do this, the history we make will be a benign one, the lives we save will be many and, for those of us who believe in these things, we may just give the Primary Resident in heaven reason to smile and say, “Well done, my children! Well done!”
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