I would like to write to you today in a different vein, not strictly related to our discussions of suffering and the Christian. It has to do with our notions of suffering as it relates to poverty. We have many instructions in the Bible on how to help the poor among us; I would not begin to quote them all. However, John asks in I John 3:17, " But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?"
The Bible intsructs us to aid and comfort the poor. What I am concerned about is people taking this notion and using it to legitimize the government taking from one person and giving to another. Nowhere in the Bible is this even remotely hinted at as a mechanism for looking after the poor. And many in our government and media are providing very, very false notions about poverty in an effort to further their agendas. Yes, they have an agenda, and a narrative. It is a story to be adhered to by the unquestioning of the untruthful. It is imperative that those who care also be those who think. I will try and show you how you, too, can verify this information-- so don't just take my word for it.
The basic notion being propagated is that we are economically unequal and somehow that is somebody's fault and that somebody else ought to fix it. Never mind that we are unequal in most regards, whether it be height or intelligence or good looks or abilities. It seems that there is a body of belief that it is wrong to be wealthy and that the wealthy are reponsible for the poor being poor, or at least our current economic system is responsible. It is frequently said that our wicked system of capitalism leads to the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer", and that our free market system only benefits people at the top. It is an "unfair" distribution of income.
First, it is important to realize that nobody "distributes" income. It is earned, by people of varying skills, life circumstances, and work ethics. Given what you know about people and human nature, if you could magically give each and every American the exact same amount of wealth beginning tomorrow morning, a miraculous equal distribution, how long do you think it would take before they became unequal again? I am sure that by tomorrow night, you would already see some people wealthy again and some that are broke.
The wealthy do not "steal" from the unwealthy. Lady Gaga made 90 million dollars last year. Does that make you any poorer? Roger Federer makes $47 million dollars a year. Did that reduce your income by one penny? (http://www.paywizard.org/)
The average poor person in America is not destitute by the standards of the world. The poor in America rank in the top 30th percentile of worldwide income. The average poor person's home in the United States is larger than that of a middle-class home in Europe. A typical poor person's home has 2 color televisions (1/3 a wide-screen or plasma) and 80% have air conditioning, 70% have a car, and only one in seventy is homeless. (2009 American Housing Survey, 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey)
Government intervention worsens income inequality. The countries with the most socialized forms of income redistribution also have the greatest gaps between the very wealthy and the very poor. The more the government intervenes and centrally plans income redistribution, the worse things get. For example, the poverty rate for blacks was plummeting between 1940 and 1960 (87% to 47%), it slowed its fall in the 1960's (47% to 30%), and has changed little since then after the introduction of Welfare. (The Thomas Sowell Reader, Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, New York, 2011, pp 302-303; America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, Stephen Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 380; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports P23-80, The Social and Economic Status of the Black Population in the United States: An Historical View, 1790-1978. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. )
Although income categories show inequality, and that gap may be increasing, income categories are not people. Individuals do not stay in the same income category over their lifetime. Think about how much money you made at your first job as a teenager, how much you made after you graduated, how much you make now, and how much you will make when you retire. People in the very highest income levels, the "1%", drop out regularly. Thirty percent of households in the lowest quintile in 2004 moved up to a higher quintile by 2007, and thirty-two percent of households in the highest quintile moved down to a lower quintile over the same period. The number of people who stay poor is quite small; only two percent of the population lived in poverty for all four years from 2004-2007. ( U. S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports P60-239, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010, Page 4)
Income statistics, including the Census Bureau's, typically use household income to look at poverty, and households. But the surprising thing is that households have been shrinking, meaning fewer wage earners per household. So when you hear someone say that a particular group has seen their income fall over time, in reality the number of workers per household has been declining. The amount of income per person has risen. (Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, New York, 2008, Page 125; U. S. Bureau of the Census,Current Population Reports P23-196, Changes in Median Household Income: 1969-1996, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.) However, it is important to note that there are fewer single-person households and fewer small families in higher income households, and more single-person households, single-parent households, and smaller families in lower income households. (P60-239, Page 11) The average number of people in the top quintile households is 3.2 and the average number in the lower quintile housheholds is 1.8. In addition, because the households are smaller, the actual number of people in the lower quintile is much less than the higher quintiles. (Microeconomics, Roger Arnold, South-Western Cenage Learning, 2011, Page 331).
Finally, the wealthy work more. Individuals in the bottom quintile performed about 4% of the work and individuals in the top quintile performed about 39% of the work in America in 2002. (Ibid) And in II Thessalonians 3:10, Paul commanded, "If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat." Clearly, not everyone who is in poverty is able to work. However, despite the incredible advances in medical care over the last fifty years, the number of people on disability compared to the workforce as a whole has increased from less than one percent to five percent. (Coming Apart, The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray, Crown Forum, New York, 2012, Page 198; Social Security Administration, Annual Statistical Report on the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, 2010)
So all this talk about the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer" isn't quite so simple, is it? The people who are pushing the redistribution agenda to alleviate the suffering of poverty are counting on two things: 1) that you will believe everything that you are told without bothering to research it yourself, and 2) that your desire to do good for the poor will lead you to do what they are telling you is the morally right thing to do.
Many years ago, our government saw itself as an agent of God, given stewardship of this country and accountable to the people. Nowadays, God is a competitor to our government, which seeks to replace Him in our lives and make us accountable to it. The easiest way to get God out of the way is to convince people that He isn't getting the job done, that He has done a lousy job of distributing wealth, and only the smart people who can be elected can fix all of that. I am profoundly grateful that God doesn't have to run for re-election, but if He did at least we could believe his promises.
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