Postscript: Inequality and Polarization

A few days ago, Lake Chalice posted this graph:

The graph shows how one of the effects of rising inequality of income is a polarizing of our political system. Or vice-versa. "House polarization" is a measure of the internal homogeneity (low diversity of viewpoint) among House Democrats and among House Republicans, and the ideological gap between an average House Democrat and an average House Republican.

The Gini Index (or Gini coefficient) was developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist, Corrado Gini in 1912. It measures equality or inequality of distribution. The Gini coefficient ranges from 0 (where every person has exactly the same income) to 1 (where one person has all the income there is, and everyone else gets none).

Getting the Gini index and the House polarization index to map so neatly onto each other is, of course, partly a matter of adjusting the graph's two scales to get the best match. But that's not all there is to it. However we  set the scales, we're going to see both the Gini and the polarization indices going sharply up since the late 70s -- and every 0.1 increase on the polarization index corresponds to about a 0.017 increase on the Gini index.

Growing inequality of income tends to encourage political polarization -- while political polarization leads to policies that further widen the gap between the rich and the poor. How do we break out of this vicious cycle?

This week's defeat of six-term Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar certainly illustrates the trend toward polarization. Lugar and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine were dealmakers within the Republican party, willing to work with Democrats to compromise rather than effect gridlock by standing firm on ideological principles. Snowe is already gone -- and now Lugar has been ousted by a tea-party hardliner. Our political polarization continues to worsen.

Paul Krugman's column last week (click here), makes the point that:

If something like the financial crisis of 2008 had occurred in, say, 1971,...Washington would probably have responded fairly effectively. There would have been a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of strong action, and there would also have been wide agreement about what kind of action was needed. But that was then. Today, Washington is marked by a combination of bitter partisanship and intellectual confusion — and both are, I would argue, largely the result of extreme income inequality.

Growing polarization makes it increasingly difficult for either side to see a distinction between the national interest and its own partisan triumph -- though Krugman finds that it is the Republicans who have become especially unable to see such a distinction.

For the past century, political polarization has closely tracked income inequality, and there’s every reason to believe that the relationship is causal. Specifically, money buys power, and the increasing wealth of a tiny minority has effectively bought the allegiance of one of our two major political parties, in the process destroying any prospect for cooperation.

Our country has managed to break out of this vicious cycle before. The graph above starts in 1947. Let's look further back to 1879:

We have had high levels of polarization before. From 1879 until the mid-1920s political polarization was about where it is now -- and income inequality was similarly high then. How did we break out of the vicious cycle before?

Let's remember our history. The constitutional amendment allowing a federal income tax was passed in 1916. Oh, and look -- that's about when the trend toward decreased polarization began. Factors that plausibly facilitated the continuation of that trend include the crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression, the creation of Social Security and a slew of other safety net programs under FDR, and World War II.

With a return to the income tax rates we had in the 50s and 60s and renewed commitment to social safety net programs, maybe this time we can skip the need for a World War. But, dear and gentle reader, we will not get those policy changes without a spiritual shift toward greater connectedness with our neighbors.

To break the vicious cycle of domestic abuse generation after generation requires intentional work at counseling and creation of social structures of accountability. To break the vicious cycle whereby inequality fosters polarization which fosters further inequality will require a similar intervention of intentional creation of habits of building connection, and being accountable to one another for doing so.

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This is a postscript to the series, "Our Spirits Long to Be Made Whole," which begins here.

Deep Rooting of a Passion for Connectedness

How does a country achieve equality? In the nations of greater equality, some of them, like Scandinavian countries, get there with redistributive taxes and benefits and a large welfare state. Others, like Japan, manage to have greater equality before taxes and benefits: the highest-paying jobs aren't all that high and the lowest-paying jobs still pay fairly well. For the U.S. to make progress in rolling back the inequalities that have been growing since 1981 when Ronald Reagan took office, some combination of income caps, higher minimum wage, and a more progressive tax structure might be a good start.

Unitarian Universalists care about our world. And it’s clear now that “further improvements in the quality of life no longer depend on further economic growth. The issue is now community and how we relate to each other.” That means: the political task is fundamentally a spiritual task. Even if the laws could be passed, they could be repealed by the next administration. Hope must lie in the deep rooting of a passion for connectedness.

Let me say that again:

Hope must lie in the deep rooting of a passion for connectedness.

That’s why, as important as it is for us to get our voices out there, it’s even more important to get our ears out there. Put away the smart phones, stop texting with our friends who post clever repartee on Facebook to reinforce our prejudices, and start listening with care, face to face, with people we might not agree with.

Let us be charged full with the charge of the spirit, with a passion for connection. Isn't that how a people of love live in the world? Isn't that what is ours to do? Isn't that why we are Unitarian Universalists? Is it not a passion for connectedness that has brought us here?

Well, is it?

So here’s what I want you to do. Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

Find someone this week with whom you don’t see eye to eye. Have a conversation with them about the topic you don’t see eye to eye on.

I appreciate that this may be challenging. This is my assignment, too, and right now I don't know how I'm going to do it. I'm going to try to find a way.

Give yourself a week. Then check in at your local Unitarian Universalist congregation and find someone there to tell how it went for you. Or, leave a comment here at Lake Chalice to describe the encounter.

To get full spiritual credit for this assignment, it must be face to face, and must last at least half an hour. Partial credit for phone calls. No credit for emails or text messages.

A real conversation. Just one: some time in the next seven days.

Come spirit, come. Our heart’s control.
Our spirits long to be made whole.

Amen.

* * * * *
This is part 6 of 7 of "Our Spirits Long to be Made Whole"
The "Postscript" (part 7): click here.
Previous: Part 5: "Roots of Joy, Roots of Despair"
Beginning: Part 1: "Lost But Making Good Time"

Roots of Joy, Roots of Despair

A relatively equal society (i.e., one in which the total of the top 20% of incomes is less than 5 times the total of the bottom 20% of incomes) is able to sustain a shared understanding among its members. But if, as in the U.S., the top fifth are getting eight or nine times what the bottom fifth are getting, there’s a disconnect. The wealthy are beyond attainability, beyond any story of deservingness we could tell ourselves. We lose the sense that we’re in this together.

The wealthy become “them.” We can’t see "them" as caring about "us" -- so we don’t care about them. Anomie and division set in: anger and alienation.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"?

Sensing our resentment, they retreat behind gated communities, which further increases the disconnect. We begin to believe the game is rigged; we don’t have a chance. When we believe that, we become more likely to behave in ways that make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, our neighbor really is our self, so when there are neighbors we don’t care about, we don’t care about ourselves, don’t do the things that better conduce to our own well-being.

Rich and poor alike feel the division, the disconnect, and respond with higher levels of depression, higher levels of consuming things that aren’t good for us: from drugs to alcohol to junk food to mindless TV shows to mindless consumer products.

Our spirits are not whole when inequality is so massive – and our spirits long to be made whole.

The benefits of equality show up all over. They show up, for example, on baseball teams.

“A well-controlled study of over 1,600 players in 29 teams over a nine-year period found that major league baseball teams with smaller income differences among players do significantly better than the more unequal teams.” (Wilkinson and Picket, The Spirit Level, 237).

Yogi Bierra, the baseball player who pronounced his team, "lost, but making good time," also, on another occasion, expressed (charmingly, if nonsensically) that spirit of equality and basic care. A reporter asked him what he would do if he found a million dollars. Yogi said, "If the guy was poor, I'd give it back."

When people feel like they stand on equal footing with their neighbors or teammates, there’s a cohesion that lifts spirits, heals wounds, and improves performance.

My colleague, the Unitarian Universalist minister at our Clearwater, Florida congregation, the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi, was born and raised in India. He was a young adult before he ever left India. At our District gathering in Jacksonville last month I heard Abhi share his Odyssey. The annual Odyssey presentation is a tradition among the Unitarian Universalist ministers of Florida, as it is in a number of our districts. I was honored to present my Odyssey last year (I have gotten around to posting only the first part of it on Lake Chalice: click here), and this year Abhi had that honor. He spoke movingly of the shock of coming to this country. Of course, there was a new language to be learned and a new culture. But it wasn’t just that US culture was different. It was that it was so disconnected. And so unhappy. There are many poor in India. By sheer material standards, India's poor are worse off than most of the U.S. poor -- except that almost all Indians do have some kind of home: a shanty perhaps, but there is relatively little homelessness in India. What was striking was the despair in the U.S. In both the homeless poor and those who have a place to live, the weight of despair brings with it dysfunction. Abhi spoke of the joy in life that in his homeland is evident even among the poor. It was moving and disturbing and hopeful all at the same time.

There is a joy in community and connection to which material wealth, or lack of it, is all but irrelevant (as long as ill health and strong hunger are mostly at bay). High levels of social inequality destroy the basic grounding for that community and connection.

* * * * *
This is part 5 of 7 of "Our Spirits Long to Be Made Whole"
Next: Part 6: "Deep Rooting of a Passion for Connectedness"
Previous: Part 4: "Love Knows No Means. It Knows Standard Deviation"
Beginning: Part 1: "Lost But Making Good Time"

"Come spirit come, our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole. Let inward love guide every deed. By this we worship and are freed." Verse 3 of "Thou I May Speak with Bravest Fire", words by Hal Hopson, melody from Trad. English. Hear the tune: click here.

Love Knows No Means. It Knows Standard Deviation.

The US is quite wealthy. Annual national income is around $38,000 per person.

But on the measure of social health (combined scores for life expectancy, infant mortality, homicides, obesity, teen births, imprisonment rates, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, children's educational performance, social mobility, and level of trust) we’re doing worse than most countries that have only half that much per-person income.

After meeting a certain minimum, more wealth doesn’t do us any good. What does correlate with social health is equality. Countries with high inequality, whether they are rich or poor overall, have worse social health. In statisticians' terms, it’s not the mean income that matters, it’s the standard deviation.

Assuming a minimum level of wealth (about $9,000 per person per year), if a country’s top 20 percent is making 4 or 5 times what that country’s bottom 20 percent is making, then that country’s social health is going to be pretty good. If a country’s top 20 percent is making 8 or 9 times what that country’s bottom 20 percent is making, then that country’s social health tends to be worse.

The US, for instance, is quite rich, and Portugal is relatively poor. Yet they both have high inequality and low social health. US social health (combined scores on the factors listed above) is roughly the same as Portugal’s.

The US and Norway, however, are both quite rich. Both countries have average income of about $37 or $38 thousand per person per year. Yet Norway has much greater equality – and much higher social health.

Researchers conclude:

“The evidence shows that reducing inequality is the best way of improving the quality of the social environment, and so the real quality of life, for all of us . . . this includes the better off.” (Wilkinson and Picket, The Spirit Level)

If we are to be charged full with the charge of the spirit, and carry that forward into our lives and into our world, we need a sense of how this should be so. If I’m poor, and I’m going to be poor anyway, how does it hurt me if you’re rich? That seems like a reasonable question.

I might not know how to articulate the answer, but if I’m poor, and you are, too, then I can feel like we’re in this together. I have a sense of common cause with you. We may not have much, be we’ve got each other.

Societies with relative equality (the top 20 percent earns less than 5 times what the bottom 20 percent earns) maintain some shared assumptions about wealth and about each other. Roughly, the attitude is:

If there are somewhat wealthier folks among us, that’s OK. I can accept that some people are luckier, or more skillful at work that society prizes, or they’re more driven to work hard, and they end up wealthier. The relatively wealthy serve as a reminder to me of what good schooling and commitment and a little luck might make available to my children. If the town doctor has a bigger house on a hill, that’s OK – he’s smart and had a lot of training, and he’s using that to help us when we get sick, so more power to him. Maybe my kid can get a scholarship and be a doctor.

If, however, the rich-poor gap grows too large, that attitude loses purchase. The ones at the bottom and middle can no longer see the wealth of the ones at the top as either attainable (by anyone who doesn't already have it) or deserved. That the previous paragraph sounds as quaint as it does is one of the indicators that the US rich-poor gap has been unhealthy for some time.

* * * * *
This is part 4 of 7 of "Our Spirits Long to Be Made Whole"
Next: Part 5: "Roots of Joy, Roots of Despair"
Previous: Part 3: "High Inequality Corresponds to Low Social Health"
Beginning: Part 1: "Lost But Making Good Time"

"Come spirit come, our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole. Let inward love guide every deed. By this we worship and are freed." Verse 3 of "Thou I May Speak with Bravest Fire", words by Hal Hopson, melody from Trad. English. Hear the tune: click here.

High Inequality Corresponds to Low Social Health

When you compare nation to nation, there’s no correlation between wealth and life expectancy or mortality. Rich countries have about the same life expectancies and mortality rates as relatively poor countries, until you get into the really poor end of the spectrum. As long as a nation has per-person income above about $9,000 a year, further increases do nothing to increase life expectancy. That’s the nation-to-nation comparison.

But when we do a zip code to zip code comparison, we get a different picture. The poorer zip codes have higher mortality than the richer zip codes. If you took several of the poorest zip codes, created a new island in the South Pacific, put them all there, maintained their per-person incomes as they were, made a new island nation of them, they’d have decreased mortality. They’d be fine. But because they live near the wealthier areas, they perceive that difference. They see inescapably all around them that they live in a society that is set up to work others, but not for them.

There are various ways to measure inequality: We can compare the top X% to the bottom Y% for any X and any Y. And all the measures very closely correspond with each other, so it doesn’t matter much which one we use. One very common measure it the ratio of the top 20 percent to the bottom 20 percent. In Japan and four Scandinavian countries (combined), the top 20 percent bring in less than four times what the bottom 20 percent earn. The ratio is between 3.4 to 1 and 4.3 to 1. In the US, the ratio is 8.5 to 1: the top 20 percent get eight-and-a half times what the bottom 20 percent get. Singapore's inequality is even worse: the ratio there is 9.7 to 1.



As a people of faith, as a people of compassion, we care about our world. As a people of compassion, we need to know what’s going on.

An image that comes often to my mind is from a story of the Dalai Lama approaching someone he knew. He discovered that her leg was in a cast. He said to her, "What happened?" The Dalai Lama has a way of his compassion being so obvious on his face, and in his voice. So you have to imagine that simple question -- “What happened?” -- as the expression of a gentle man exuding compassion with every aspect of his being. That’s the image.

We take in the wonder of this world, and we also take in the broken-ness we see, and ask, “What happened?” What went wrong here? As a a people called to love, we ask, “what happened?” How can this social woundedness be healed? Let us see what we can learn.

Researchers created an overall measure of social health. The social health measure is an amalgam of various factors. High social health is comprised of low rates on these:

• homicides,
• obesity,
• teenage births,
• infant mortality,
• imprisonment rates,
• mental illness (including drug and alcohol addiction),

plus high rates on these:

• life expectancy,
• children’s educational performance,
• social mobility, and
• level of trust.

Those are nine factors that go into an overall score of social health. It turns out that a country’s overall wealth does not correlate with social health. That is, as long as the per-person income is at least about $9,000. After that, more wealth has no effect on social health. Equality, however, does correlate with social health. Poor countries (as long as they are not so poor as to fall below about $9,000 per person per year) have greater social health the lower the ratio of the top 20 percent to the bottom twenty percent. Rich countries also have greater social health the lower the inequality among their citizens. Rich countries with high inequality have social health that is as low as poor countries with high inequality. Poor countries with $9,000 or $10,000 per person per year, but with low inequality, have social health that is pretty high -- as high as rich countries with low inequality.

* * * * *
This is part 3 of 7 of "Our Spirits Long to Be Made Whole"
Next: Part 4: "Love Knows No Means. It Knows Standard Deviation"
Previous: Part 2: "Numbers to Know"
Beginning: Part 1: "Lost But Making Good Time"

"Come spirit come, our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole. Let inward love guide every deed. By this we worship and are freed." Verse 3 of "Thou I May Speak with Bravest Fire", words by Hal Hopson, melody from Trad. English. Hear the tune: click here.

Numbers to Know

I know we have created for ourselves such a hustle-bustle world, and actually listening to someone slows us down. It slows me down to have to take the time to listen, to reflect back what I think I’ve heard. It takes time to make sure I heard it right. And maybe by the time the other person is ready for my turn, time is up.

That’s OK. We don't always have to get our turn. We can let go of that need.

But we do have to be ready, just in case. So let us know some numbers.

Q: In 1980, what was the percent of the nation’s total income that was earned that year by the top one percent?

A: It was eight percent in 1980.

That’s a number I had read and forgotten, and re-looked it up this week, and I’m going to try to remember now. That, and the next number, are worth remembering. The top one percent of incomes accounted for 8 percent of the nation’s total income in 1980. Eight times the average income would seem to be plenty. Who could want more than that? Surely that’s more than enough.

You can probably tell where I’m going with this. We had some substantial income inequalities 30 years ago, and today, you guessed it, it’s even worse. So, how much worse?

Q: What percent of the nation’s income goes to the top one percent now (well, as of 2007)?

A: Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, and now professor of public policy, reports that in 2007 the top 1 percent of US earners were bringing in 23 percent of the nation’s total income.

Wow.



Starting in the early 20th century and continuing through the middle decades of the century, the trend in this country was toward steadily improving income equality. The gap between the top one percent, or the top twenty percent, and the average of everybody else was shrinking. Then that trend reversed.

Our spirits long to be made whole, to be connected to each other on this wonderful world we share – to be connected with equals as equals. I don’t mean that we all have to have exactly the same income, but when the inequalities get this bad, it has a corrosive effect on the social contract, and on our souls as a people.

“Consider executive pay. During the 1950s and 60s, CEOs of major American companies took home about 25 to 30 times the wages of the typical worker . . . In 1980, the big-company CEO too home roughly 40 times. By 1990 it was 100 times. By 2007, . . . CEO pay packages had ballooned to about 350 times what the typical worker earned.” (Robert Reich)

Various studies in various ways show that when inequality is greater, violence goes up, trust goes down.

“It is a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement, we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume, and with little or no community life.”

– so write Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket in their illuminating study, The Spirit Level.

All of those conditions of modern life -- anxiety, depression, unsure friendship, consumerism, lack of community -- are connected with inequality – either as cause or as result, and often partly both. Wilkinson and Picket go on to write:

“The unease we feel about the loss of social values and the way we are drawn into the pursuit of material gain is often experienced as if it were a purely private ambivalence which cuts us off from others. . . . As voters, we have lost sight of any collective belief that society could be different. Instead of a better society, the only thing almost everyone strives for is to better their own position – as individuals – within the existing society.” (4)

When we're all in it for only ourselves, there's increased political polarization.

This is not a life of spiritual wholeness.

* * *
Update: See Nicholas Kristof, "An Idiot's Guide to Inequality" NYTimes, 2014.07.23 -- CLICK HERE.

* * * * *
This is part 2 of 7 of "Our Spirits Long to be Made Whole"
Next: Part 3: "High Inequality Corresponds to Low Social Health"
Previous: Part 1: "Lost But Making Good Time"

"Come spirit come, our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole. Let inward love guide every deed. By this we worship and are freed." Verse 3 of "Thou I May Speak with Bravest Fire", words by Hal Hopson, melody from Trad. English. Hear the tune: click here.

Lost But Making Good Time

The great catcher for the New York Yankees, Yogi Bierra, got his start in the minor leagues. Once, the team bus was winding its way through the hinterlands looking for some small town where the team was due to play. Yogi was studying the road map. He looked at his watch.

"We're lost," he announced. "But we're making good time."

Our economy for the last 70 years -- the recent recession notwithstanding – has been making good time. But we're lost.

To begin to find our way, we have to understand where we took a wrong turn. We took a wrong turn when we decided that the measure of how well we’re doing is our total wealth rather than how it is distributed. We take a wrong turn every time we look at our national mean per capita income, or mean per capita spending, or mean per capita productivity, but don’t look at the standard deviation, don't look at the growing gaps between us and how that gap corrodes our common life.

To help our country find its way again, people of good will (that would be us, right?) must have some basic facts ready at hand. We need to know some numbers. We need to let our voices be heard. We are a people of faith, a people of heart and soul, and we want peace. Our spirits long to be made whole.

Yes, all around us we see such amazing beauty. As the song goes:

I seen trees of green, red roses too
I see ’em bloom for me and you.
I see skies of blue, clouds of white
Bright blessed days, dark sacred nights.
The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by.
I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do?
They’re really saying, “I love you.”
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

What a wonderful world!

Because this world is so intrinsically wonderful, when injustice mars that wonder, it tears our hearts. That wonderful world needs us. It needs our engagement. As thoughtful people, people of heart striving for a fuller love, as people of a faith that tells us that everyone is worthy of decent treatment, as people whose spirits long to be made whole, what is ours to do is to speak up for fairness, equality, love. The public arena needs our voices: writing letters to the editor, letters to our lawmakers, organizing, filling up the blogosphere, and the social media with our vision. Let the beauty we love be what we do.

But there are two things missing from public discourse. Truth is just one of them. Listening is the other. Our world needs our engagement, and, yes, it needs us to speak some truth, it needs our faithful voices at the table. And it needs us not to let that need lead us to fail to listen. And I know this is hard. I have not mastered the skill of making sure a person has been heard and feels heard before I venture to offer an alternative viewpoint. But I believe in such listening. If we help each other, we can learn this together.

* * * * *
This is part 1 of 7 of "Our Spirits Long to be Made Whole"
Next: Part 2: "Numbers to Know"

"Come spirit come, our hearts control. Our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed. By this we worship and are freed." Verse 3 of "Thou I May Speak with Bravest Fire", words by Hal Hopson, melody from Trad. English. Hear the tune: click here..