Views on Inequality
I think these survey results are quite interesting:
A few observations:
(1) Big picture: 60 percent want a more equal distribution of wealth. A nation of closet socialists!
(2) Religion: Catholics generally support greater equality, which tells me that Catholic social teaching is sifting through! Not surprising, Protestants are less supportive – except for black Protestants, who support it strongly - but even here, a slim majority favors less inequality. I find it interesting that white evangelicals are about 20 percentage points more likely than Republicans to support a more equal society (quite surprising given the strong overlap between these groups).
(3) Age: Old people oppose redistribution of wealth; young people strongly support it. This adds further support to the notion that the economic views espoused on Fox News and right-wing talk radio appeal to a narrow group of older, whiter, people. And these (fairly unpopular) views have hijacked the Republican party.
Interesting results indeed. Some of it is pretty intuitive but the difference in religions surprised me a little.
It looks like the percentage of Catholics who think there should be more equality, 61%, is the same as the second largest religious group, Unaffiliated, also 61%. Since the second group is primarily ex-Catholic, it probably holds true that Catholic social teaching sifts into that group also.
@John ODonnell–
On what do you base the statement that the unaffiliated group is primarily ex-Catholic? Intuitively, I would say that it is primarily those who were brought up in non-religious families, and the rest a mix of apostate Catholics, Protestants, and others.
Nothing scientific, just lots of surveys that put “ex-Catholic” as the second largest religious group in the U.S., right behind “Catholic.”
I don’t believe in wealth redistribution other than with regards to social security and the social safety net programs. Do you think that there is a way to help businesses to flourish so they are able to higher more employees thus giving Americans more wealth mobility without having wealth distribution beyond the ones I mentioned above? How do you propose to close the income gap?
Wealth distribution while maintaining a free market economy is quite possible. The model in the United States in the 50′s and 60′s was progressive taxation, a strong minimum wage and active unionization leading to high wages and benefits for workers. My father worked in a factory at, for the time, relatively crappy wages, but was able to send all of his children to college, many of us to expensive private institutions. Until this model was undone America was very competitive and business could rely on a strong domestic market (well paid employees have to spend their pay checks) to keep profits up. Everyone was happy.
@David My question asked how to attain wealth mobility without wealth redistribution, meaning without having progressive taxation on those innovators or job creators in this country.
One idea I agree with is to get the government out of backing college loans because that is part of the reason that tuition has increased dramatically. My other is high schools and others need to come clean and tell students the truth, that a college education does not an automatic guarantee that one is going to find a job, much less a good job. College tuition in the 1950′s and 1960′s was much lower than today.
My second idea is that we need to bring back more manufacturing jobs as well as encourage others to pursue the trade professions. The teaching of these trades should start in high school. Today we here the mantra that in order to achieve wealth and/or success it is a must that a person have a college degree. In the 1950′s and 1960′s people were able to earn a good living wage and raise a family without attending college so we need to make that same thing achievable today.
One more thing, your response does not account for the fact that from the mid- 1980′s, 1990′s, and even until 2008 (until the financial meltdown) that there was a financial boom in our economy while there were lower taxes. There were a few minor recessions which only lasted a few months or so but that is how the free-market works. The private sector rebounded without any government intervention in those cases.
Teresa, you must not have heard yet that the “financial boom” was driven by debt, both public and private. The financialization of the American economy – your “financial boom” – was made possible by serial deregulation of the financial industry, which created an extend-and-pretend cycle in which banks extend credit, create bubbles, and then pretend that those inflated values are real assets. They then bundle those imaginary assets and sell them in lots at a profit or create insurance products – bets – based on the “value” of those imaginary assets, creating gigantic risk in the economy.
This extend-and-pretend regime was responsible for three boom-bust cycles in the past 25 years, culminating in the financal meltdown in 2008, from which we have yet to recover (if we ever will). The recessions of 1990-1991 and 2001 were relatively short because we were floated out of them by further infusions of debt. But that doesn’t mean they were minor. They had enormous impacts on the asset base of middle class America. The crash of 2008 had an even greater impact, obviously.
Gordon! I’ll use only your last name because you are without courtesy. I realize the disparity between the amts paid into SS and that which can be received. When SS was set up it was a known fact that that would be the fact. Now omodon, what they did set up was a trust fund to be invested which has been ruthlessly looted for decades by Congress and both parties, of course since the majority of time that has been dominated by one party that may have something to do with it. I have a problem with that party and others throwing the money into wasteful useless programs. We have over 100 different job training programs in this country. ONE HUNDRED! Anyone with an wit of sense knows that for all of the billions and billions thrown into social programs over the last 60 years and especially since the “War on Poverty” we have lost that worse than the war on drugs. People get comfortable on government handouts. Look at education, I taught in the inner part of a large city in the 70′s for 8 years. The situation today in the same city, same schools, with more money smaller class sizes and more hand wringing is just as bad if not worse. Head start, free lunch, free breakfast. What have these things done? Kids still drop out, gangs shoot in school yards, The neighborhoods look more like war zones now. We throw money at problems but ignore basic ideas like being responsible. Culture glorifies the gangbangers and single mothers.
As for illegal aliens, We are for the most part all descended from immigrants. But encouraging the concept of breaking the law for money, well that’s silly. Mexico and it’s neighboring countries are at or near their 200th birthdays, are we to be responsible for the fact that they have a greater inequality of wealth than we do? Look at a poor person in central America, Then look at the way people in poverty in the U.S. They are materially better off. I can see people envying the American way of life. But they let themselves be ruled by dictators. We can’t take in everybody. We endeavor to give aid, fair trade, U.S. companies build factories in other countries. My problem partially is that we are so willing to overlook flaunting of immigration laws that those who get away with it feel empowered to flaunt any law that they can slide under. Like laws requiring driver’s licensing and insurance.
As has been shown time and time again in history take all the money and distribute it evenly and in a generation or less it will have the same distribution. IE the Soviet Union, they got rid of the Czar, they got party plutocrats. It doesn’t work. People are people. Buying votes with other people’s money keeps you in office. That is the real Ponzi scheme.
teresa –
Unionization, leading to fair wages for the work beigndone.
I am a Roman Catholic conservative. I believe that wealth redistribution by force is taxation without sufficient representation, I am not rich. I am on Social Security which I paid for for some 40 years. I believe we have the obligation to make sure our old, infirm, or very young are taken care of. I don’t believe for example that certain behavioral problems are involuntary. I am worth less now than 4 years ago. I always was taught and begin to believe that to a great extent you form your own financial and security destiny. Certainly unforeseen circumstances can ruin your plans. That is life. There will always be sinners (the overly greedy and crooked) among us. Nobody ever promised differently. Life is real and life is earnest. Believe that God will never give you more than he thinks you can handle, work and plan as much as you can, still things can go down the tubes. I am my brother’s keeper when he is in need. Forgive and put him on a straighter path but don’t support his slothfulness. Or his flaunting of the law. Even immigration law. Jesus render to Caesar, I believe he would have gone along with law. He probably would not have supported those who flaunt the law to their economic advantage. Just as Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem because it was the law. Illegal, criminal aliens should in good conscience obey the law and accept that doing right can hurt.
Pickett,
If you are an average American and you’ve been on Social Security and Medicare for more than a few years, then your take from those programs is more than you ever paid in, which means that someone else’s wealth is being redistributed to you, by taxation, and since the Treasury Department will send armed men to a tax evader’s door, by force. Any social safety net is a form of redistribution of wealth. Progressive taxation is a form of redistribution of wealth.
By the way, Mary and Joseph also fled into Egypt, where they stayed and worked for a number of years. They were aliens, and quite possibly illegally so.
“Illegal, criminal aliens should in good conscience obey the law and accept that doing right can hurt.”
Moral theologians are generally in agreement that a man may steal food to feed himself and his family if there are no other alternatives. If person comes to the U.S. illegally out of necessity in order to feed his family, he may indeed be doing the moral thing, even if he is breaking the law.
So are you implying that it is impossible to feed one’s family in Mexico or in other countries? Or that one can simply find it easier to find sustenance and better food in America? Do you think it is right for a husband and father to leave his family behind in that country in which it is hard to attain sustenance while he works and sends money back home and not assimilating in our society like other immigrants have in the past?
Theoretically impossible? No. So difficult as to make the alternative of traveling thousands of miles to another country on a route which involves the daily threat of being beaten, robbed or killed, in order to work at a completely shitty job at sub-minimum wages seem like the only viable alternative? Yes. This is not about eating better here; it is about the desperate choice between eating and not eating. So yes, it is right and just for a father (or mother—many women with children risk the trip to El Norte) to risk it all to come to the US in order to send money home.
Also, please spare me the nativist rhetoric about not assimilating into American society “like other immigrants in the past.” When we first moved to CT the family across the street was from Sicily; la nonna spoke such poor English that she could effectively communicate only in Italian, even though she had lived in the states for decades. Anything more than a casual review of history will reveal many immigrants who came to the US and attempted to transplant their culture here; they had no intention of assimilating. In my home state of Wisconsin, the proposed state constitution had to be published in four languages so that all of the voters could read it; German was the second language of the state until it was suppressed (violently) during the government induced xenophobia during WW I.
The message of scripture is clear: “do not oppress the alien among you, for you yourselves were once aliens and strangers in the land of Egypt.” Feel free to try to rationalize your way out of that injunction, but for my part I will welcome the alien among us even as I try to contribute to a world where people are not forced to leave home to provide for their families.
Given that Catholic support for a more equal distribution of wealth is virtually identical to support for that idea in the general population, I’m not sure to what extent we can attribute that alignment to Catholic Social Teaching.
While everyone enjoys thinking that the views of those they disagree with are restricted to an aging bastion of people likely to die off soon — given that older people spent their prime working years during a period with less inequality, and that they have sufficient life expereince to know that while things are hard earlier on in life they get better with time, the old age gap may simply be a result of people having different life experiences. People in their 20s spend a lot of time wondering why it is they can’t seem to live as well as their parents did (reason: they don’t remember what things were like when their parents were in their 20s) while as people get older many of them will see their earlier efforts pay off and thus calm down about their prospects.
Finally, keep in mind that the question is about a more equal distribution, not about how to get there. Many Fox news watchers are lower middle class and wish they made more money — they just don’t support the remedies for that problem that you do.
The financial meltdown was due to having wrong regulations in place and government enforcing “equality” through forcing banks to handout sub-prime loans. It was not necessarily due to deregulation but rather the wrong types of regulation being in place. Both the government and private sector is responsible for the financial meltdown but government created an environment which allowed the private sector to take advantage of government incentives. GSE’s played a major role in the meltdown and the government bailing those failed GSE’s out. Low taxes had nothing to do with the meltdown.
The survey strikes me as unclear. I can see how someone might say “sure, it would be great if we all had more money,” but also say “but I don’t like the idea of government playing Robin Hood.” I might be an anarchist or a libertarian or a neocon and still say “society would be better if distribution of wealth were more equal.” The more important questions to me are
1. how does a society create wealth
2. how does a society ensure that all have equal opportunity to contribute to the creation of wealth.
Tim – I would add:
3. How equitably are the benefits of wealth creation distributed?
4. Are inequities is some sense systemic?
5. What ought to be done about it, if they are?
6. Are the systemic inequalities the consequence of natural inequalities?
Everyone wishes they could get paid like a rock star, but some people can’t play the guitar. We all have to stop being envious and realize that the world needs more janitors than it does CEO’s, and that it’s perfectly ok that the world operates like that. CEO’s get paid more because they should get paid more.
Here’s a little secret – the janitor gets to go home and relax at the end of the evening with his wife of 20 years and his three children. The CEO and his third wife don’t get to enjoy their wealth, because they have a hundred worries that money can’t solve.
If you stop being envious and distracted by the glitter of the gold, who is actually richer?
Dan – No one’s proposing that everyone get “paid like a rock star.” And, this isn’t about envy, it’s about justice. You seem, every time these discussions happen, to alternate between 1. Validating despair (result: the status quo isn’t challenged due to hopelessness) or 2. Saying that if everyone would just calm down, why then they’d realize that everything is perfectly fine, and they just need to get over their envy (result: the status quo isn’t challenged due to everyone coming to realize the Incredible Gift That Slavery Can Be…or something.)
You like things the way they are. I get it.
The problem is: the Reagan Revolution has had the result that laissez-fair economics have always had, every time they’ve been tried; wealth concentration at the top, leading to economic stagnation for everyone except that top, and eventually systemic crisis and social instability. Welcome to 2011, Dan.
The thing you need to realize is, the OWS folks are making a relatively noble attempt to correct all this The Nice Way. If they fail (as you evidently hope they will) then the result will eventually be a whole lot less pleasant for everyone. My brother, an out-of-work construction worker, assures me that guillotines are relatively simple to manufacture.
And then, folks like Fox “News” and the rest of the Clueless, Corrupt, High-Class Whore Punditry will tutt-tutt at the barbarity of the Great Unwashed. At least, they will…until the Great Unwashed come for them, too.
Matt, I like your number 4, but number 3 is unclear to me: maybe it’s the use of the passive voice, begging the question “by whom”? Ideally wealth creation and distribution happen by many actors. It seems to me that the problems are evident when stronger economic actors–be they government, or corporations, or robber barons, or mandarins, or princes (…)–push out the weaker ones. I might also add another question: “what moral agents contribute to the socialization of generosity and compassion?”
Ultimately, an economy is a moral system. (Adam Smith was first a moral philosopher.)
The thing you need to realize is, the OWS folks are making a relatively noble attempt to correct all this The Nice Way. If they fail (as you evidently hope they will) then the result will eventually be a whole lot less pleasant for everyone. My brother, an out-of-work construction worker, assures me that guillotines are relatively simple to manufacture.
I suppose as a man of the right it’s my duty to observe the irony of how in these same pages a while back everyone was worrying very loudly and earnestly about the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party movement and what a horrible thing it was. This is, clearly, the kind of posturing which is very much like the bozo right’s “tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrant’s” silliness, except that it seems like an even more bald, “Give us what we want or we kill you all,” kind of statement.
But honestly, I can’t do it with a straight face. If the OWS types start building guillotines, they’ll probably end up like this poor bloke and we’ll have to rescue them after they’re disarmed.
You like things the way they are. I get it.
You misread me. I don’t like things the way they are. But I know enough about both camps to know that if you listen exclusively to the left or the right, you’ll just trade one kind of suffering for another. There are no easy answers.
The problem is: the Reagan Revolution has had the result that laissez-fair economics have always had, every time they’ve been tried; wealth concentration at the top, leading to economic stagnation for everyone except that top, and eventually systemic crisis and social instability. Welcome to 2011, Dan.
Again, you misread me. I think the usurious deregulation of the financial system is one of the greatest crimes of the 20th/21st centuries, and it is a pestilence that will destroy us from the inside out.
The thing you need to realize is, the OWS folks are making a relatively noble attempt to correct all this The Nice Way. If they fail (as you evidently hope they will) then the result will eventually be a whole lot less pleasant for everyone. My brother, an out-of-work construction worker, assures me that guillotines are relatively simple to manufacture.
This is where I am less optimistic. OWS started out as a brilliant idea that gave me hope for the future. But it now has denigrated into an unfocused rabble littered with violence (Rome, Oakland) and drug use. Nobody knows what they want – they don’t even know what they want. If a MLK were to rise up, kick out everyone who wasn’t there for the right reasons, and focus them on their mission, I would believe in it and even donate to the cause.
You misread me.
Forgive me for saying this, but I don’t think I do, Dan.
I know enough about both camps to know that if you listen exclusively to the left or the right, you’ll just trade one kind of suffering for another.
As a New Deal-type Democrat, I’m not sure what “camp” you’d put me in, but as I see it, wealth concentration at the top has (once again…) led to collapse (I’ve left some things out, but that’s the problem in its essence).
Wage increases became decoupled from productivity increases beginning in the Reagan era, and now there’s not enough income in the hands of your average citizen to make the economy grow quickly enough to resolve the current economic crisis. Absent intervention by some entity with the power and resources to re-establish some fairness in the economy (and, just for fun, let’s call this “entity” the Federal Government), nothing will change.
Dan, I find you easy to misread for some reason. Your follow up comments are always much more clarifying that your initial ones. At any rate, I agree with much of what you’ve written here. I had similar hopes for the Tea Party in the first couple weeks of its existence. In the wake of the TBTF bailouts, I hoped it might become a vehicle for genuine popular change by focusing on the corporate state, regulatory capture, etc. But very quickly the Tea Party was co-opted by the right wing of the Republican Party and became yet another platform for neoliberalism, nativism, and a neoconservative foreign policy. I think OWS risks the same kind of drift. I had hoped a leadership would emerge organically that could give the movement direction and impose some discipline. I suppose my fondest wish was that trade unions would step into the breach. But in a leaderless vacuum the whole thing risks being co-opted by the left wing of the Democratic Party, the professional anti-globalization tribe, and other assorted cranks, And the eruption of violence in several places is really not good. They had hoped to stay fluid and leaderless, like the crowds in Tahrir Square, but in Egypt there was one clear, concrete, and non-negotiable goal: the resignation of Mubarak. There has been no such similar organizing principle here, and it is starting to show.
Matt,
Wage increases became decoupled from productivity increases beginning in the Reagan era, and now there’s not enough income in the hands of your average citizen to make the economy grow quickly enough to resolve the current economic crisis. Absent intervention by some entity with the power and resources to re-establish some fairness in the economy (and, just for fun, let’s call this “entity” the Federal Government), nothing will change.
I can see how this explanation would be appealing, but it’s just not how the economy works. You can make a case based on justice that people lower down in the income “stack” should be getting more income, but the mechanism you’re talking about is not the cause of the crisis. (You don’t have to take my word for it — ask MM offline where it won’t be a case of authors here contradicting each other.)
Whatismore, if inequality is all that you’re worried about, the recession is great news:
According to the IRS, people making more than $500,000 accounted for 27% of the nation’s income in 2007. In 2009, the latest year available, their share fell by nearly half, to 14%, due largely to income declines at the top.
Those making $200,000 saw a similar decline. In 2007, they accounted for 41% of the nation’s income. By 2009, their share had shrunk to 26% — the same level it was in 2000.
According to the IRS, people making more than $500,000 accounted for 27% of the nation’s income in 2007. In 2009, the latest year available, their share fell by nearly half, to 14%, due largely to income declines at the top.
Those making $200,000 saw a similar decline. In 2007, they accounted for 41% of the nation’s income. By 2009, their share had shrunk to 26% — the same level it was in 2000.
Let me throw out a couple of ideas. 1st. In the 1950′s and 1960′s there was a situation where a skilled manual laborer, or a college educated white collar worker could expect a certain standard of living which we expected as middle class. Suddenly in the 1970′s we experienced a vast amount of raging inflation. This coupled with decrease of opportunities in production industries and a major influx of parts of the population who had not previously been as large a factor in the workplace such as minorities and women, (I am not ant-feminist or racist this just a question for discussion.) These things combined with out of proportion increases in the price of energy, (remember when electricity was advertised as “little bill”) and increasing emphasis on service in the economy rather than production of actual goods, seems to have changed the nature of this country. We have seen also a second look at what should be done to help the poor, I’m sure you remember the “great society”, Throw in going off of the Gold standard. We are on a different course. Ending poverty, which didn’t work, cost enormous amounts of money. Vietnam on top of the cold war was enormously expensive. Letting energy prices explode certainly didn’t help. We spend more and more of our money on leveling a playing field which is naturally full of waves, send large piles of money overseas, Trade with people who won’t trade with us on equal terms. How is that for a challenge. Governments who spend to keep voters happy. Voters who object to the bills for these palliatives. We have to get back to individual and national feelings of unity and encouragement to self sufficiency. Instead we just throw money at problems, and block entrepreneurs yet don’t control the worst abuses of capitalism, especially if they are friends of whoever is in power. Consider these thoughts. .
Darwin –
What I’m saying is this: Too much power is concentrated at the top of the wealth scale. Wealth = political power in the United States. The Reagan Revolution was about tilting the table toward the rich, who have received virtually all the gains from economic growth. Wages have been more or less stuck in neutral since the late 70s, while the rich have used their gains in wealth to rig the game in their favor.
The Republican Party’s agenda – the real one, mind you, not the culture war stuff they make pious noise about – is all about protecting and expanding the privilege of their rich friends.
I mean, think about this: The Republican Party opposes:
1. Unionization in any form
2. The ability of anyone except very rich people to sue corporations (they call this “tort reform”)
3. Progressive income taxes
4. The kind of banking regulations that would have prevented the 2008 crash
5. Pretty much any other regulation – environmental, safety, health – that might interfere with corporations raking in obscene heaps of money
6. National Health Care – and not because of unborn babies they don’t care a whit about, but because the fear of losing health coverage is a boot on the neck of the American worker.
What will allow the economy to grow in a sustainable way is if economic gains result in pay raises for workers, who can then afford to buy more stuff, resulting in more economic growth, resulting in rising incomes, resulting in workers who can afford to buy even more stuff, and so on. Everyone wins.
The last 30 years, with incomes stalled, the only way growth could happen was through debt – credit cards, and most recently, mortgage refi’s – and illusory gains from
gambling winningsplaying the stock market. Now that the real estate market has tanked and will remain that way for the foreseeable future, and everyone’s credit cards are maxed, and no one except the rich has any money to play the market with, we’re running out of options.The Republican response – fiscal austerity – removes one of the remaining supports for economic growth, and in fact could send the economy into a death spiral: Less growth = fewer tax revenues, leading to further cuts, leading to less growth, leading to fewer tax revenues, and so on.
Some version of a revived New Deal – say, massive public works paid for by a combination of bonds and taxes on the rich – is the only real option, I’m convinced. I’m watching the powers that be selling “solutions” that don’t address the real problem, and in fact make it worse.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There will come a day when the long suffering American worker will have had enough. You’ll want to be well down in your foxhole when that day comes.
David
Wanting immigrants to assimilate into our culture is not nativist rhetoric. The majority of immigrants in the past assimilated and contributed to our society. Assimilating doesn’t mean that they can’t speak their own language, just that they must be contributing members in our society. Using one example in the past when that was the exception not the rule in order to justify your position today is really grasping at straws. The Church even says that sovereign nations have a right to control their borders. What if great numbers of people bombarded all the Churches or residences of all the bishops who support open borders (illegal immigration) and we demanded to sleep, eat and to take up residence there because we were being treated unjustly in our society I wonder how the bishops would react? Would we have a “right” to these things or do illegal immigrants only have a “right” to these things? I am just trying to figure out how much of a slippery slope you are willing to go down with justifying the breaking of laws?
Theresa,
1. An unjust law is no law at all.
2. Who is “we” and “ours”?
Sam
1. An unjust law is no law at all.
Give me any one law, and I will give you five contexts in which it is unjust.
Sam,
How is a law which protects our borders unjust?
“We” is referring to those people without necessities or who have trouble attaining food, water, clothing, and decent housing.
When I used “our” I was referring to in America.
Teresa, do you not even see what you’re doing? You are demonstrating as clearly as the decoration on your blog that you see yourself as an American first and a Christian second. Are you aware that most of these desperate people are your Catholic brothers and sisters? Doesn’t the bond that you share with them – a bond forged in baptism – take precedence for you?
Teresa,
I am not grasping at straws: I maintain that the two examples, separated by 150 years, show the complexity of immigration history in the US: there never was a period in which immigrants all assimilated in any uniform sense of the word. Indeed, our Catholic identity owes much to our Irish and German forebearers who refused to assimilate by becoming Protestant, which in the 19th century was regarded as a necessary part of becoming American.
I fail to understand your definition of assimilation. In your original post which I was responding to you asserted that illegal immigrants were not “assimilating”. By what measure do current immigrants (legal or not) fail to satisfy your new criterion that “they must be contributing members in our society”? Immigrants want to come here, work hard, support their families and perhaps get ahead in the world: in a nutshell, they are chasing the “American dream” as commonly defined, just like everyone else. They pay taxes, set up small businesses, send their kids to school so they can get better jobs. How is this not “contributing to society”?
You seem very concerned by the fact that illegal immigrants “broke the law” to get here, or that they “cut to the head of the line”. Beyond my original point—that in the face of necessity it is morally acceptable to break immigration law—I should point out that American immigration law is byzantine and punitive. I have seen, first hand, how hard it is for highly educated professionals (Ph.D. mathematicians, among others) to navigate the system: it is costly (thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars), time consuming (years) and so complicated as to require the services of a specialized lawyer. Recently, a colleague had to return home to Rumania because he could not get his visa extended. It was a catch-22: he could not get it extended because he did not have a job; he could not get a job because he did not have a visa. Given their difficulties, I find it hard to hold, say, a hard working but poorly educated campesino at fault when he cannot traverse this system.
With regards to your final question about “the poor” demanding food, clothing and shelter from the bishops: they all deserve it, whether or not they are illegal. The testimony of the Fathers of the Church is clear: feeding the poor is not charity, it is justice. To deny food to the poor is to steal from them what is rightfully theirs. We must manage the process with prudence, and this should shape our response, including our immigration laws. But our response must rest upon the bedrock of the gospels: we are an incredibly rich nation surrounded by a world filled with very poor people, and they have a call upon our wealth for their own well-being What does the parable of the rich man and Lazarus tell us is the right response?
What this survey shows is that agewize, it correlates with the whole depiction of those in the Own whatever city movement: that some of my generation (X/Y) and more of the new millenials have been raised to be spoiled rotten and to be a generation that wants social handouts for free without any responsibility whatsoever.
And Teresa, the reason right now our products are even reasonably (as in highly priced enough to make big bucks for CEOs) “affordable” with the capitalist economy we have is because sadly they are being produced mostly in China and other countries where human rights are squandered and the people are being paid less than minimum wage. Between union demands (which are now in 2011 totally unreasonable and beyond “don’t defraud us of our wages and respect our human rights,”) and the greedy nature of businesses to churn a profit for its owners that’s why those jobs are overaseas and not N.A. You want those jobs back in N.A.? Then be prepared to be taxed to the hilt, because those damn greedy unions, their employees and head people, aren’t going to let you pay their workers minimum wage for those jobs or even less, and squander those false “human rights” of theirs like job security and those retirement packages. The other option is for the governments to just say “screw you” and bypass whatever the unions want with back to work legislation or even no negotiation at all, but I’m sure people would be rioting in the streets (in the USA with arms equipped.). So, do you perhaps have a better solution if you want those jobs back?
Julian
I understand what you are saying about unions and their demands. I think that there ought to be competition in the private sector and no guarantees of particular jobs or special treatment of unions. If the repatriation tax is cut to zero then the companies could bring back jobs to the U.S. and hire Americans. There may be a slight hike in prices but people who buy American now already pay more for a product made in the U.S. than a similar product made in China. I think education and retraining individuals to learn new skills is one of the best ways that Americans will be able to find good jobs. Right now many jobs are not being filled because there isn’t anyone or only a few who has either the knowledge or skills to fill those jobs. Obviously our public school system is failing our children and something needs to be changed so that students learn a different updated skill set so that they are able to attain a good job. Products may cost more but hopefully the quality and not having to buy a new DVD player every few years would make up for the difference in cost?
“…given that older people spent their prime working years during a period with less inequality, and that they have sufficient life expereince to know that while things are hard earlier on in life they get better with time, the old age gap may simply be a result of people having different life experiences..”
As a 60-something Baby Boomer, I’ve got a little secret for you: There’s a generation gap among
us so-called Life Experienced. Many of those a generation older than us are living on fat pensions.
Some got them from public-sector jobs, but many others come from the good old corporations that used to vie for workers by offering life-long security. My mother-in-law, e.g., gets the same annual salary she was making at the time of her retirement, plus a moderate-sized Social Security payment; in addition, her old employer helps pay part of the premium on her Medicare supplemental insurance. Most of us Boomers have only what we may have saved via 401Ks and IRAs that wasn’t eaten up in the 2008 meltdown, plus, of course, Social Security and Medicare (premiums paid for by ourselves). Future generations may have even less, since pensions are becoming a thing of the past even in government and the stock market seems less and less reliable as a replacement mechanism.
What I’m saying is there are old folks and then there are old folks: Life experiences differ with the availability of cash on hand, and cash is drying up. Leave it to Republicans to choose now to talk about getting rid of “entitlements” and letting the old fend for themselves in the same market that’s killing everybody else. The old who are sitting pretty now may not care, but Boomers and everybody younger should, and apparently do.
Mark
I do see them as brothers and sisters in Christ but ignoring the fact that these immigrants have broken the law and gone to the front of the line before those who have waited in line properly to immigrate to the U.S. is not doing them any favors by saying it is okay for them to break the law just like it wouldn’t be okay for a thief to be enabled in breaking the law by covering for that person and lying by saying that person did nothing wrong when that person had in fact broken the law. I can believe in the rule of law and feel for my brothers and sisters in Christ plight at the same time. It doesn’t have to be an either or choice.
J. Pickett writes
“My problem partially is that we are so willing to overlook flaunting of immigration laws that those who get away with it feel empowered to flaunt any law that they can slide under. Like laws requiring driver’s licensing and insurance.”
Do you have any evidence that this is actually the case, the fear-mongering of nativists aside? For my part, I am not aware of any; indeed, it would seem to me that most immigrants (legal or not) want to keep their heads down, work hard, and stay out of trouble. Are they all angels? No, of course not. They have problems with crime, but I would argue that their problems have more to do with being poor than with being illegal immigrants. I can only look to my own background: my father was an illegal immigrant (who eventually got a green card) but, with the singular exception of immigration laws, was a “law and order” type who would never have countenanced any flouting of the law, either by his family or by fellow immigrants. Admittedly, he is just a single example, but I see no reason to believe he was an exception and not the rule.
As I said elsewhere to Teresa, immigrants want exactly the same things you wanted: to work hard, to care for their families, to save some money and get ahead in this world. They want to chase the American dream.
“Immigrants want to come here, work hard, support their families and perhaps get ahead in the world: in a nutshell, they are chasing the “American dream” as commonly defined, just like everyone else. They pay taxes, set up small businesses, send their kids to school so they can get better jobs. How is this not “contributing to society”?”
Why should immigrants from Mexico and Central America be given favoritism over those who cannot cross over by water or have to travel long distances and therefore aren’t able to cross our borders illegally but have to go through the proper channels to immigrate here? Do you have evidence that illegal immigrants pay taxes? Or do many actually receive benefits due to having anchor babies here? How many actually own legitimate -legal – businesses as recognized by our government? Better jobs and better food are reasons to come to the USA using the proper channels, not crossing the border illegally. Aren’t there any schools in Mexico – good or bad? Yes, most are honest people who want to come here to make a better living for themselves. But some who cross the border are in gangs, participate in criminal activity, and possibly are members of terrorist organizations and this is why we need to enforce our borders. Mexico and other Central American countries need to work to make Mexico and their lands better and stop relinquishing their responsibilities to America. I have no problem with the US helping to make Mexico a better place to live. But that should be the priority, not promoting an anarchist open borders philosophy where the rule of law doesn’t matter.
I agree that the immigration system is broken. This is why we need to change the current system but not ignore or bypass it and encourage abuses of the system as illegal immigration does. We need to have a faster system which allows more people to enter the country legally quicker. We also need a guest worker program. But in concert with all of that we need to enforce our borders, which isn’t happening now.
Teresa,
you do realize that the expression “anchor baby” is pejorative and offensive, especially as it has no firm basis in reality? The government will not deport a native born citizen, but it will still deport his/her parents. Look at the situation in Alabama, in which parents are scrambling to make guardianship arrangements for their American born children should they be picked up and deported.
Your definition of “assimilate” shifted around, and now when you concede that most immigrants are hard workers and “honest people”, you question whether they pay taxes and point to the spectral danger of “terrorists” in their midst. As for taxes: for any job except cash work, they need a social security number or tax id. If they use a false social security number (which is common) they are paying taxes into a system from which they will get nothing. They will also pay income taxes. They pay sales taxes; if they settle and buy a house, they will pay property taxes.
This really does seem to be a pointless discussion. You refuse to engage the points, particularly scriptural injunctions that I raise, and continue to find ways to demonize or otherwise distort the reality faced by the men and women who have chose to immigrate to the US illegally. This has nothing to do with conservative politics or the tea party: this has everything to do with painting illegal immigrants as a dangerous “other” which is destroying our way of life. As Zizek says, they have stolen your jouissance.
You may find the term “anchor babies” offensive but what I find offensive is immigrants who cross the border solely to have a child to receive benefits. I am sorry in your naivete that you can’t see the possibility of dangerous folks – not decent immigrants looking for a better life – crossing the border and the unintended consequences that may bring to U.S. soil or your inability to even see the necessity to protect the U.S. from such dangerous folks. You mischaracterized my entire previous comment because of your own preconceived narrow-minded falsely based views on those who believe in the rule of law. You, progressives, only believe in the rule of law when it fits into your agenda, like demonizing anything and everything about war and the necessity thereof. In addition, using your favorite scripture passages to disregard the rule of law, to fit your own agenda is very selfish but that fits in with the entitlement mentality of you progressives, in thinking that you are owed something and with great ease you are so very willing to give away other peoples’ money and even American property and resources which affect all citizens in America to those who break our laws not out of pure necessity but out of expediency. By allowing illegal immigrants to use fake social security numbers et al. you are aiding them in perpetuating a lie and lying is clearly against scripture and God’s Commandments.
I am wondering what is so wrong with believing in limited government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility, reduction of the federal budget deficit and the national debt, and adhering to the Constitution, as the Tea Party does?
How is this in any way nativist? The nativism charge doesn’t hold water. The Tea Party is for immigration and the rule of law at the same time. The Tea Party is not against immigration as long as immigrants use the proper channels to come here. The Tea Party wants everyone to achieve success and that includes immigrants and citizens alike. You may consider this to be right-wing grassroots movement but that may because you believe that the Federal government is the answer to our problems and that the Federal government can make better decisions for the people better than the people can for themselves so any philosophy that promotes the empowerment of citizens, less dependency, and less government intrusion into peoples’ lives is perceived by you as being “right-wing”.
“I am wondering what is so wrong with believing in limited government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility, reduction of the federal budget deficit and the national debt, and adhering to the Constitution, as the Tea Party does?”
Teresa, there are two problems with terms like these. First, as John Medaille points out in his new book, “Toward a Truly Free Market,” they are slogans that don’t really reflect a theory of governance. Take ‘limited government.’ Limited to what? Anarchy plus one government function is limited government, but so is totalitarianism minus one government function. The term itself is practically meaningless unless accompanied by a comprehensive philosophy of the purposes and principles of government. In the absence of such a philosophy, the term becomes an incantation or a badge of identity.
“Low taxes” is another content-less incantation. Again, as Medaille points out, without a comprehensive philosophy of the purposes and principles of government, how can we know whether taxes are too high or not high enough? Let’s say you favor lowering the top marginal rate to 25%. Why? Without a positive theory of governance isn’t that simply an arbitrary percentage? If ‘low taxes’ are an undefined and unqualified good, why not 10%, or 1%? Would someone who advocates a 1% flat tax have a point in calling you an enemy of limited government for advocating 25%.
The second problem is that those who use terms like ‘limited government’ really don’t mean it. During the Bush years, the national security budget of the United States (all spending on national security, not just the military) doubled to over a trillion dollars annually, which is more than the rest of the world combined. The Patriot Act has hollowed out core civil liberties, giving the government vast new powers to pry into the private lives of American citizens. And yet, these explosions in the size and power of government were intiiated and are sustained by the very people who sprinkle “limited government” like magic powder on every political debate.
Mark, I think part of the problem is that people don’t give others the benefit of the doubt when others see the errors of their ways and are open to reforms that they weren’t previously. During the Bush years I, like many others, were asleep at the switch just thinking everything was being run fine when it wasn’t. Quite a few people such as myself didn’t really follow politics during the Bush years other than to watch a bit of news every now and then but now many are more engaged and more informed politically. During the Bush Years I was for the Patriot Act because I thought that we needed it to combat terrorism but after looking into and researching the Patriot Act further I came to the conclusion that it is unconstitutional and needs to be repealed and replaced with something that adheres to our Constitution. Many, including myself, believe that military spending needs to be reduced. Spending on the wars, whether they were necessary or not, and the wars effects is a topic which is debatable. The Tea Party actually started forming at the end of the Bush administration as a response to the bailouts. The movement then expanded as the movement caught on in reaction to excessive spending and the health care bill which many believe will ruin the innovation in our health care and excellent health care industry we have today (not talking about access or price of health care – yes, that needs to be reformed) into some bureaucratic nightmare which harms the patient doctor relationship and increase rationing.
The term “limited government” means reducing the size and scope of Federal government. Yes, there are varying degrees to which different people have different perceptions of what “limited government” means but we all agree that our federal government has expanded beyond its authority granted in the constitution, and needs to be reined in. We tend to believe in states rights and that certain powers which have been taken over by the federal government need to be returned to the states. We also believe that excessive regulations are crippling this country’s economy. We realize that some common sense regulations are a necessity but that overregulation and tax loopholes, and government favoritism to corporations (crony capitalism) is hurting small businesses since they can’t use loopholes like corporations are able to.
Just because people may have differing opinions on exactly which percentage constitutes “low taxes” doesn’t mean that the philosophy of believing in low taxes as opposed to excessive or progressive taxation is lacking in its philosophy. I am positive that even among progressives there are disagreements over what constitutes “progressive taxation” and what percentage progressives feel is enough to meet their perceived needs. That doesn’t make the “progressive” philosophy flawed, nor does the similar situation make the philosophy of “limited government” flawed. There are limits as to what constitutes “anarchy” usually being defined as the failure to recognize government or rule of law, or implied as meaning public disorder and lawlessness in a society. The term “limited government” in no way, shape, or form fits that definition, for the Tea Party believes in following and respecting the rule of law but promotes one which is less intrusive into our lives than our government is today. This includes the belief in upholding the Constitution. Yes, the Tea Party wants to make changes to the rule of law as far as federal overreach goes but that does not mean the absence of laws. Laws are necessary for society but need to done in the realm of common sense , not like some laws which are so intrusive and prohibitive today.
J. Pickett – You remind me of this little thing I came across on Facebook:
Dear cruise or youribee or whatever your alias is this week, I live in a neighborhood overwhelmed by immigration in the twenty years I’ve lived here I have seen them pull their children out of school and send them driving to work at 14, Frequently read and see the effects of unlicensed driving. Read the police reports in you local paper nipplehead. Seen vast overcrowding. seen them use their own people to finance their own existence by overcharging them for rents to finance their own home purchases. Refuse to assimilate. linguistically. As for their Catholicism they are more than willing to drop that for evangelical protestantism. They especially seem to like Jehovah’s Witnesses. They ignore their children’s destructive behavior. Overcrowding in my neighbor’s house set my house on fire, you should have seen the border’s run. Twice neighbors have repaired their own roofs and piled stone on my roof, causing my roof to be repaired and finally replaced. torn down my gutter because they didn’t know or care that they could simply seal their basement. Not all of my hispanic neighbors are bad. But the ones who do these things attract cops like donuts. I love gang banger wannabees with huge pictures on their trucks. With no kids belted in, but rather bouncing around loose like marbles. I have family members who are Mexican in origin. I love them. It may be that when your family came here the people were coming from a different area, or that he was just a good man. But do not defend the lawless because it reflects on you. Rather look at how it taints how others see you. That’s why I corrupted your name. I apologize it was to make a silly point. Bless you and Yours Mr. Cruz-Uoribe. It would suit you more to help your friends integrate for their future and all of ours.
A “nativeist”, Funny I would expect a native American to be such.
Apology accepted. However, given the depth of insult and innuendo in your post that you have not apologized for—including referring to me as a “nipplehead”—I am not going to bother to respond further.
Teresa,
You can ‘want’ immigrants to assimilate into your culture all you want. But can you explain how in a libertarian, small governmentthere is a state enforced ‘culture’? Where does the Constitution give the government the power to enforce a culture?
“And all they that believed were together and had all things common. Their possessions and goods they sold and divided them to all, according as every one had need.” (Acts 2:44,45) Redistribution of the wealth was indeed part of the earliest Christian tradition. Acts goes on to say how this was enforced by the Apostles. The fact that as our Church became more widespread, accepted and powerful it began to accept separation in the status of believers and that as the bishops and popes gained temporal power they enforced uneven distribution of the wealth to those in power (including themselves) does not alter the fact that the Church has long stood for an equitable distribution of the wealth, initially enforced by the apostles themselves. Let’s stop picking various lines from various encyclicals and read the Bible and wealth of Church tradition from the earliest times to the present. The Church has always taught we should stand by the poor, even when she acted just the opposite!
On a practical approach, name the time in history or the place in the present where a total free market has helped the poor. The greatest growth in America occurred during the time when taxes were the highest and unions the strongest. Since 2001 we have had the lowest tax rate since WWII, we also have the worst 10 years of job creation since the Great Depression. Though I would not blame low taxation for our current lack of job creation, it should be obvious that supply side economics does not work.
If anyone is interested I posted this in reference to assisting the poor – http://catholibertarian.com/2011/11/12/catholic-social-teaching-my-thoughts-on-the-preferential-option-for-the-poor-and-vulnerable/
I may need to write another post with more specifics but this will at least cover some of what people have been asking.