I am honored to be the guest service leader this Sunday, April 24, for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tarpon Springs, in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The subject of the service and my talk is, “Economic Inequality: What Would Rev. King Do?” The service is open to the public and will be held in-person and virtually, beginning at 10:30am. I will be joining the event and delivering my presentation, virtually.
I’ve heard about his argument regarding poverty and I largely agree although I don’t find the argument around inequality that compelling.
Despite the fact that I am one of the poor that King was talking about, I’ve also been on the receiving end of the government’s “help” and it’s often made things worse rather than better. I haven’t been able to find continuous secure paid work since 2012, despite receiving the government’s “job programs”. The problem with them is that they are built around the people providing “help” continuing to have people to help, thus their jobs are dependent on having people who can’t find jobs. Which just perpetuates the problem.
I don’t have a problem with the 1% having billions of dollars. I have a problem with the fact that they got that way by eliminating the jobs that I could’ve had which is keeping me in the situation I’m currently in. That’s not something that can be solved through the government programs that I’ve been subjected to.
I’m generally supportive of the concept of basic income as a program because it’s designed to eliminate the barriers that have been created to my continued success. I just take issues with the underlying justification that people have for it and many of the solutions proposed.
Happiness isn’t derived from economic value whether it comes from the government or from a private business. It’s a psychological process created by the individual. They can’t create happiness for people they can only provide the circumstances for people to find it for themselves.
We can certainly find problems with some welfare programs. Though it's important to consider that there are many and each should be addressed separately, and that they are often less effective than they might have been had they been organized by people who wanted them to succeed. All that said, we can't deny that they are vital to mitigating poverty. I can say from experience that my children would have seen the doctor a heck of a lot less without Medicaid. As a low-paid educator I also frequently benefited from food assistance which enabled me and my family to survive and eventually thrive.
Economic inequality has grown exponentially and it replicates itself. Economic power produces political power, which in turn impacts legislation including taxation policies.
The bottom 50% of the population have 1.5% of the total wealth. That is untenable nd predictive of more and more social strife. King's criticism of capitalism is that it facilitates exploitation that makes welfare programs necessary. Profits go to shareholders rather than laborers, and most shareholders begin the economic game in an exceedingly advantaged position that enables them to make money through money rather than through labor. This unfair arrangement, coupled with the fact investment makes more money, on average and in general, than actual productive labor, is the source of economic inequality and poverty.
I very much agree that the presumption that money makes people happy is profoundly mistaken. What we can all agree on is that everyone needs financial resources for their fundamental human needs. Beyond those objectively determined needs--the ones we can all agree on like food, healthcare, housing, education, resources that enable us to be autonomous--the power of money to make us happy diminishes. This is where the principle of diminishing marginal utility becomes important. The value of $100 is much greater for people like you and me compared to a millionaire.
Oh by no means am I suggesting that the programs like welfare aren’t intended to do good and does in fact help people. As I said, I’ve been on the receiving end of this help more than I would like.
For context, I’m from Canada so I look at the American system from the outside and often take issue with people who say that the Canadian welfare system is better. Having been on the receiving end of it, I don’t think it is. While there are good aspects of the Canadian system that don’t exist in the American ones, the problems are very similar in many aspects.
Economic inequality is a problem to some extent but it’s not as big a problem as it’s made out to be. We should seek to reduce it as much as possible. But even in King’s day when they were in the post-war boom that helped so many people out of poverty, inequality existed. How much billionaires have doesn’t worry me so long as people have the fundamentals.
I would also dispute the idea that there’s a difference between shareholders and labourers in terms of the value of their work. That depends on their perspective. Many people say that philosophy/humanities professors are just as unnecessary as shareholders. That doing philosophy isn’t real work compared to someone who works in a factory manufacturing cars. Yet neither you or me would necessarily agree, just as I’m sure shareholders would dispute the idea that what they do isn’t as valuable as philosophy professors or manufacturing jobs.
So what is valuable work depends on what you’re considering.
I would argue that anyone who is or could be a shareholder should have some real sense of the company that they are a shareholder of. For instance, if the company you’re a shareholder in produces cars, you should have experience on the floor assembling cars or repair or something. But even someone who doesn’t isn’t necessarily not doing work or not work that is valuable to the company on its own.
I’ve heard about his argument regarding poverty and I largely agree although I don’t find the argument around inequality that compelling.
Despite the fact that I am one of the poor that King was talking about, I’ve also been on the receiving end of the government’s “help” and it’s often made things worse rather than better. I haven’t been able to find continuous secure paid work since 2012, despite receiving the government’s “job programs”. The problem with them is that they are built around the people providing “help” continuing to have people to help, thus their jobs are dependent on having people who can’t find jobs. Which just perpetuates the problem.
I don’t have a problem with the 1% having billions of dollars. I have a problem with the fact that they got that way by eliminating the jobs that I could’ve had which is keeping me in the situation I’m currently in. That’s not something that can be solved through the government programs that I’ve been subjected to.
I’m generally supportive of the concept of basic income as a program because it’s designed to eliminate the barriers that have been created to my continued success. I just take issues with the underlying justification that people have for it and many of the solutions proposed.
Happiness isn’t derived from economic value whether it comes from the government or from a private business. It’s a psychological process created by the individual. They can’t create happiness for people they can only provide the circumstances for people to find it for themselves.
To be clear, King advocated for a jobs guarantee like FDR. The idea was that there would be good and important jobs like the Civilian Conservation Corps, which built so many of the U.S.'s cherished parks. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-creates-civilian-conservation-corps#:~:text=On%20April%205%2C%201933%2C%20President,on%20projects%20with%20environmental%20benefits.
We can certainly find problems with some welfare programs. Though it's important to consider that there are many and each should be addressed separately, and that they are often less effective than they might have been had they been organized by people who wanted them to succeed. All that said, we can't deny that they are vital to mitigating poverty. I can say from experience that my children would have seen the doctor a heck of a lot less without Medicaid. As a low-paid educator I also frequently benefited from food assistance which enabled me and my family to survive and eventually thrive.
Economic inequality has grown exponentially and it replicates itself. Economic power produces political power, which in turn impacts legislation including taxation policies.
The bottom 50% of the population have 1.5% of the total wealth. That is untenable nd predictive of more and more social strife. King's criticism of capitalism is that it facilitates exploitation that makes welfare programs necessary. Profits go to shareholders rather than laborers, and most shareholders begin the economic game in an exceedingly advantaged position that enables them to make money through money rather than through labor. This unfair arrangement, coupled with the fact investment makes more money, on average and in general, than actual productive labor, is the source of economic inequality and poverty.
I very much agree that the presumption that money makes people happy is profoundly mistaken. What we can all agree on is that everyone needs financial resources for their fundamental human needs. Beyond those objectively determined needs--the ones we can all agree on like food, healthcare, housing, education, resources that enable us to be autonomous--the power of money to make us happy diminishes. This is where the principle of diminishing marginal utility becomes important. The value of $100 is much greater for people like you and me compared to a millionaire.
Oh by no means am I suggesting that the programs like welfare aren’t intended to do good and does in fact help people. As I said, I’ve been on the receiving end of this help more than I would like.
For context, I’m from Canada so I look at the American system from the outside and often take issue with people who say that the Canadian welfare system is better. Having been on the receiving end of it, I don’t think it is. While there are good aspects of the Canadian system that don’t exist in the American ones, the problems are very similar in many aspects.
Economic inequality is a problem to some extent but it’s not as big a problem as it’s made out to be. We should seek to reduce it as much as possible. But even in King’s day when they were in the post-war boom that helped so many people out of poverty, inequality existed. How much billionaires have doesn’t worry me so long as people have the fundamentals.
I would also dispute the idea that there’s a difference between shareholders and labourers in terms of the value of their work. That depends on their perspective. Many people say that philosophy/humanities professors are just as unnecessary as shareholders. That doing philosophy isn’t real work compared to someone who works in a factory manufacturing cars. Yet neither you or me would necessarily agree, just as I’m sure shareholders would dispute the idea that what they do isn’t as valuable as philosophy professors or manufacturing jobs.
So what is valuable work depends on what you’re considering.
I would argue that anyone who is or could be a shareholder should have some real sense of the company that they are a shareholder of. For instance, if the company you’re a shareholder in produces cars, you should have experience on the floor assembling cars or repair or something. But even someone who doesn’t isn’t necessarily not doing work or not work that is valuable to the company on its own.