A Surprising Take on Wealth Inequality

By CEO/Executive Director Laura Gray

In July I went to the Kansas conference on poverty. For the most part, the point of view was what you would expect – most of the presentations were about poverty from a social justice point of view. The pleasant surprise was at least one session that was realistic about winning an argument when it’s purely about social justice. To quote Nick Hanauer from “The Pitchforks are Coming…for Us Plutocrats” the July issue of Politico, “Republicans say growth. Democrats say fairness – and lose every time.”

Hanauer’s article and much of the conference was about wealth inequality in America.

There is a marvelous illustration of the changes in the distribution of wealth in a YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM.

What’s just as interesting to me is a talk given by Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute called “America’s Future in Focus: A Conservative Vision for Social Justice.” I’ve excerpted several sections below. I’m not doing it justice, because I left out so much. Hopefully, what I am sharing is the common ground of social justice.

“I want to talk about Two Americas. I want to tell you, first, the poor are being left behind.”…

“Now, I said that the poor in America are being left behind and that’s just a fact. If you look at the data, it’s actually one of the most striking things about the non-recovery in the bottom half of the economy. Economists like me like to tell you that in 2014, we’re going to see a slow but steady increase in GDP, about 2.5 percent growth. Now, that’s true as far as it goes.”

“The problem is there are actually going to be two growth rates in 2014. The top half of the American economy: 5 percent. It’s terrific, fast growth. … Now, the problem is that the bottom half is going to see 0 percent economic growth. If you look at the data on economic growth over the past seven years, you’ll find that the bottom half of the American economy has stayed stagnant or has lost purchasing power in inflation-adjusted terms every year for the past seven years. Imagine how exhausting this is for the bottom-half. We haven’t seen anything like that since the Great Depression.” …

“I do not begrudge the rich one dollar of their gains because this is America. But we’ve got to do something about people in the bottom half,”…

…”Listen to conservatives arguing about poverty. … You’ve heard it a million times, right? You’re poor, what do you hear? You hear, I care about money. I don’t care about poverty. I don’t care about you. I care about money. Right?”

“It’s time for conservative politicians and people of good faith to say, I’m going to fight for you and your family with conservative policies whether you vote for me or not, and actually mean it.”

…” I started doing a lot of reading about what actually helps poor people. And what did I find? I found that the free enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system in history, Billions of people are not poor today because of your American free enterprise system that spread around the world after 1970. I want to fight for that. I want to do more of that. … Forget bringing down the top. Let’s lift up the bottom.”...

“So where are we? The first thing I told you is the poor are being left behind.” …

“The question is not if you’re mad enough to fight for change. The question is do you have enough love on your heart for everybody to fight for change. See, what leaders and patriots do is they fight for the weak, no matter how the weak vote. It doesn’t matter if they like the other guys. You’ve got to fight for them because that’s what leaders do. Do you have enough love written on your heart for everybody to get in the fight?”

“If you do, this country can win for the poor. This country can deliver on its promises. This country once again can be a beacon of hope for everybody, whether they’re coming here as immigrants or they’re not even here yet, but they’re Americans in their hearts. Or whether they’ve been here for a long time and they’ve been left behind. We are the generation that can make this occur. We can pass this on to people who are younger than us and they can be the heroes. They can be deputized to the heroic activity that is the patrimony left to us by the great founders of this nation.”