PeaceBang

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1. It’s a fair (and good) question, PB. Worth and dignity of every person, right?

   OTOH, I can’t think of a single spiritual tradition that does not see wealth as — at best — a profound moral responsibility to those less fortunate. More often, it’s seen as a spiritual black mark. What was it that Jesus had to say to the rich?

   Comment by ogre — June 8, 2008 #

2. The problem with the rich is at some fundamental level, they just don’t care about poor folks–if they did, they would share. There’s enough wealth in the world that no one should be desperate. But the wealth is hoarded by a few, so most people suffer. When no one around me is hurting, it’s easy to pity the rich and their love of material things. But when someone you love needs health care, having gentle thoughts about the rich is challenging.

   Comment by will shetterly — June 8, 2008 #

3. Some of my best friends are rich people!

   Quite honestly, it’s not the wealthy that I dislike intensely (hate is such a harsh word) - it’s the ungrateful and the ungenerous. Those sins (another harsh word, but there you have it) are not confined to people with lots of money, by any means, but when lack of generosity and gratitude do show themselves in rich people, it’s much more obvious and more . . . pitiful.

   Comment by cindy, really — June 8, 2008 #

4. I was once in a UU church where the minister often said that his job was “To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” He was really good at the latter half of that mission. Good enough that he drove off quite a few of my friends. Mostly, friends who had good jobs and regularly paid their pledges. And those remaining had rough time making the annual budget.
   Yeah, I know what Jesus had to say about the rich. That’s part of why, although I am greatly instucted by much of the Bible, I don’t usually call myself a Christian.

   Comment by David — June 8, 2008 #

5. @Will:

   Please compare your statement above to the following and explain why it is any less presumptive:

   The problem with the poor is at some fundamental level, they just don’t care about improving themselves–if they did, they would seek education. There’s enough opportunity in the world that no one should be desperate.

   OR

   But when someone you love has chosen to have more children than they can support, having gentle thoughts about the poor is challenging.

   The problem I see with rich-bashing is just like anyone-bashing: it reduces other humans to stereotypes and caricatures. Does the media protray the wealthy as greedy and materialistic? Yes, and it also portrays African Americans as gang bangers and teenage girls as sexpots. If we buy into those images as representing everyone in those categories, shame on us.

   Comment by Louise — June 8, 2008 #

6. Louise, the poor don’t have the resources to “improve themselves.” But the rich have the resources to share: for the poor to “improve themselves,” they need good schools, hospitals, food, and shelter–the things the rich take for granted.

   Equating the rich with girls or African-Americans is a game the rich play: you can’t change your gender or the color of your skin, but you can share your wealth.

   Comment by will shetterly — June 8, 2008 #

7. Hmmmm, interesting topic! My husband and I ponder this issue a lot, being Episcopalians living in a particular Georgian city. Our city is an excellent (though unfortunate) illustration of the divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots” and I admit to struggling with angry feelings regularly.

   To reconcile my thoughts, I think of those with means as falling into two main categories: those who are “wealthy” and those who are “rich.” The wealthy are, in Stef’s lexicon, people who donate their time and/or money. They are good stewards of their blessings who stay plugged into the community and reach out to those around them. I also don’t think of people who are wealthy as having piles and piles of cash…some do, but one can be wealthy without being loaded.

   Being “rich” is the other side of the coin…having plenty of money, but unwilling to share with those in need. These are people who often raise my ire, but I try to pray hard for them (and me…gotta keep the ire to a minimum). If they keep all of their blessings hoarded close without offering them up, then they never get to see their offerings transformed into something wonderful and new, and that is an absence worth mourning.

   Comment by Stef — June 8, 2008 #

8. Will, you sound as though yo are judging the mere possession of wealth as evidence of moral turpitude. That sounds like bigotry to me.

   Do your accusations extend equally to wealthy philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the Kennedy brothers, as to selfish, ostentatious misers? If not, then you are not necessarily bigoted, but you are bearing false witness.

   Two verses from the Bible seem especially appropriate to mention here. They point indifferent directions, but taken together, they are at the root of the Western cultural view of wealth, from which our particular U view derives:

   Exodus 20:17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

   Luke 12:48b For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

   That verse from Luke, by the way, was one of RFK’s favorite Biblical quotations.

   Comment by fausto — June 8, 2008 #

9. My attitudes about wealth have mostly been shaped by my parents, my Muslim upbringing, and things I have witnessed with my own eyes. Of course, I’ve also been influenced by portrayals of wealth and class in popular culture.

   In the Muslim tradition, there were always sahaba (companions of Muhammad) who had wealth. Most of them did not have anything, but there were a number who possessed great wealth. Abu Bakr was one of these, and it basically seemed as though money were coming in as quickly as he could give it away. And that’s what he did. He gave it away, again and again and again. Knowing that about him really shaped my view that wealth and financial success are largely … random. Yes, there are things you can do in your life to gather wealth, but some people will always have more. That may be fatalistic of me, but that’s just how I see it right now.

   The other perspective I hold is one of shedding the excess. The poor are sometimes tempted to harmful acts because of their poverty and envy. The rich are tempted too - because of their wealth and inability to be satisfied. One tradition from Muhammad’s life says, “Very few rich people will be men of virtue except those to whom Allah grants wealth and they spend right, left, in front, and behind, thereby earning virtue.” I really like the idea of recognizing when one has ENOUGH, and then giving away the excess. There is another tradition from Ibn Maja that says on the Day of Judgment, poor and rich alike will wish they had received only what was sufficient. No more, no less.

   Recognizing wealth as a challenge - as a TRIAL - is so foreign a concept in this country, I find. The great companion Omar used to cry when he received the spoils of war because he understood the spiritual disconnect it can cause - between a person and their God, and between that person and other people! I still struggle - spiritually - with my change in financial “class.” I feel that when I’m in a better financial situation I need to give more, I cannot just do the same that I’ve always done. Time for a re-evaluation. Otherwise, there’s the almost certain chance of losing touch with everything that really matters.

   Lastly, I would say that I’m not a member of the ruling class. It is hard to speak about them because I don’t really know any of them. It’s easy to look at the economic situation in this and other countries (and the globe, really) and hold them accountable. Why? Because they ARE the ruling class. But it is a very frustrating thing because they are so invisible to us. All we see is the manifestation of their power. I respect the philanthropic efforts of some rich people like Oprah, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. Gates has even talked about the walls his foundation has hit as they’ve tried to transition from charitable work to systemic change; the governments of the country they do work in are resistant to change.

   Anger at the rich I think stems from a sense of “Who is responsible for the economic situation?” Are the poor really responsible? The middle class? To an extent, but I think it’s limited. When you feel that lack of access and inability to hold the powers that be accountable, it can come out as resentment. If I still believed in a God, that God would be pretty pissed, too.

   Comment by h sofia — June 8, 2008 #

10. I admit that I do have trouble with “The RIch” in that they have more resources than they need for a decent life while most people are going hungry, live in dire circumstances, and have little opportunity to better their situation. Moreover, “The Rich” use too many resources and foul the environment and contribute more than their share to climate change. As a class, they resist changes which would lessen their wealth, but be more just to all.

    Of course the problem with that feeling is that, although by American standards I am not “The Rich”, by world standards most of us are “The Rich” — using far more than we need, spending money on frivolous pursuits while children starve, etc. Having lived, briefly, in a 3rd world country, I found that, if I had access to decent medical care and transportation, I could live happily on about a quarter of the middle class income I now have. Coming back from the Third World and walking into an American Grocery Store is profoundly unsettling and gave me the same sense of excess that I felt a number of years ago touring the homes of the Gilded Age.

    Comment by KJR — June 8, 2008 #

11. If the comments section were broad and deep enough, this could evolve into a conversation about class, which I think is a conversation that UU’s should be having.

    But class, like race, is difficult to define (perhaps more difficult — YMMV). It’s actually not about money, though that is a conclusion that many jump to when first talking about class. Partly money, partly also family history, profession, level of education — but obviously none of those alone is a marker of class.

    I’m fascinated by this subject, as well as slightly nervous about it since I could easily be labeled in a certain class for some of the realities of my life, though other realities would cancel that out. It’s complex and touchy; I believe especially touchy because more and more UU ministers are proudly claiming their working class roots, making it suddenly “cool” to be from the working class, which makes those of us not from the working class not cool?

    I will be participating in a panel on class at GA on Thursday afternoon with two other ministers (of working class backgrounds). I’m curious to see what comes out of the conversation, and, yes, I’m nervous…

    Comment by Judy Welles — June 8, 2008 #

12. Will Shetterly–who wrote Elsewhere and Nevernever–is a UU? If that is the right Will Shetterly, than that just made my day. Love your books, man! –a UU minister who read your books dozens of times as a youth

    Comment by CFT — June 8, 2008 #

13. I continue to struggle with this issue…a friend once asked if I thought all wealthy people were suspect and all poor people trustworthy, all wealthy people jerks and all poor people saints…this stopped my assumptions in their tracks.

    It is the entitlement factor that pushes my buttons. Entitlement is an equal-opportunity offender, and I find arrogance to be the antithesis of faith.

    I’ll be attending the GA session on classism. As a person raised working class and currently married to a blue collar guy, I’m anxious to hear the panel’s thoughts…The “isms” are interwoven — especially class and race — and I am hopeful that being honest around one will benefit and deepen conversations about the other.

    Comment by Rev2bCME — June 8, 2008 #

14. “As a minister now, I occupy that funny middle-class position of serving a mostly middle and upper-middle class congregation and appearing to be one of the wealthy Main Street home-owners. Now that’s rich!”

    You know, this stuff is really interesting to me. As a professional DRE whose wife is a stay-at-home mom, I relate to that space. I live in the “lower middle class” while serving a mostly solid-middle and upper-middle class congregation. I definitely think that presents some interesting dynamics about which I’ve had to be very attentive.

    There probably was a time in my life when I had hostility about wealth. I’ve worked through a lot of that, and now I would say that it can be uncomfortable to me to be in a position of being surrounded by wealth.

    I am guessing that many of us have very complex histories with “class.” Mine involved watching my parents shift from the “working class” to struggling middle class during my childhood. I did not learn the “rules” of life for those in the upper-middle and upper classes. I never learned how to choose a nice wine to go with a meal, for example, and still squirm if put in a position to choose. That’s a benign example, and probably not the best example, but what I am trying to say is that there is a place that feels most natural to me and that is with folks in the lower and solid middle class. Mainly because that’s where I know the rules of social engagement backward and forward.

    These days, I’ve come to resent more the “intellectualism,” in the sense of a real *ism* more than wealth. That is, when one’s worth as a part of conversation (in our coffee hours at church, or elsewhere in the world) seems to be determined by how many degrees one has and how well one can hold up his or her end of an intellectual debate on the merit of particular tax laws, etc. I think having a son with a possible cognitive disability, and wondering about his future place in our larger faith community, has made me particularly sensitive to this.

    I think this is closely related to class (and classism). But here, again, I am more interested in behaviors than in people. It is hard to wrap my head around resenting a *person* because of his or her wealth, or degree of focus on intellectual issues, but I do find myself struggling to accept classist behaviors or behaviors that make unwelcome those with lower intellectual means or simply with less education.

    Am I making sense?

    I think a greater conversation on issues of class and issues of intellectualism within our faith community is one of our “next steps” as Unitarian Universalists. I think this should take place within the context of conversations on our theology and theological diversity, and I think that this will further work we have been doing and doing and re-doing on race. This relatively untouched/unexamined issue is a hinderance to our faith development and our growth as human beings, and our growth in congregations.

    By the way, feel free to totally ignore this if you want, but I only read so many blogs (yours included), and anyway, I thought this one was fun.

    I tag you:

    1. Write the title to your own memoir using 6 words.
    2. Post it on your blog.
    3. Link to the person that tagged you.
    4. Tag five more blogs.

    Comment by Masasa — June 8, 2008 #

15. * The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

    * Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

    * Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

    * Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

    These principles say nothing of wealth. Why are we judging people because of how much money they have. Where do we get off saying that we are morally superior because of who we are and what we have compared to our neighbor.

    Being a UU is to care more about the spirituality and the dignity of all people rather then how much they make or what car they drive.

    Do not judge people for what they have. Judge them on what they do; and only if you yourself are free of judgment. I suspect that there are not many that can say that. A wise person once said these words.

    Comment by Matt — June 8, 2008 #

16. This is interesting because it brings to mind the dangers of labelling “those people.”

    As an earlier commenter noted, I think what matters more is generosity — whether of time, talent or treasure.

    I attend a central city congregation that has a wide income distribution. Perhaps there are lots of us in the middle, but there appear to be very few with deep pockets. Successful programs at our church tend to be those in which people can give time and we are fortunate that folks are serious about honoring their commitments.

    My sister attends a congregation in an affluent community in Los Angeles. The congregation can and does raise, to my mind and imagination, extraordinary sums of money for various ministries as needed. The congregation is filled with many creative and talented ‘movers and shakers’ who also use their skills and talents to organize and gett hings done.

    Of course, my observations are flawed by comparing members of congregations who are committed to practicing their faith.

    BJ

    Comment by BJ — June 8, 2008 #

17. These days, I’ve come to resent more the “intellectualism,” in the sense of a real *ism* more than wealth. That is, when one’s worth as a part of conversation (in our coffee hours at church, or elsewhere in the world) seems to be determined by how many degrees one has and how well one can hold up his or her end of an intellectual debate on the merit of particular tax laws, etc. I think having a son with a possible cognitive disability, and wondering about his future place in our larger faith community, has made me particularly sensitive to this.

    I think this is closely related to class (and classism). But here, again, I am more interested in behaviors than in people. It is hard to wrap my head around resenting a *person* because of his or her wealth, or degree of focus on intellectual issues, but I do find myself struggling to accept classist behaviors or behaviors that make unwelcome those with lower intellectual means or simply with less education.

    Am I making sense?

    Absolutely you are, and it is a burden that has long encumbered our denomination. Our Universalist predecessors were largely blue-collar laborers, farmers, machinists and tradesmen, while our Unitarian predecessors were largely a highly educated elite. Harvard was founded to supply the ministers to the oldest churches in what is now the UUA, and it continues to supply them almost 400 years later. A lot of the intellectual elitism that characterizes us today can be traced in a straight line back to Puritan times. It is a manifestation of the same thing in a religious setting that in secular circles here in New England is scorned as the “Harvard attitude”.

    Comment by fausto — June 9, 2008 #

18. The possession of wealth is not (usually) a sign of individual ‘moral turpitude’ but it is (often) a sign of a collective failure to establish political and economic systems which are accountable to the needs of all.

    The “generosity” of individuals is beside the point; even in their generosity, these individuals wield enormous power. Who the hell is Andrew Carnegie to decide for us that we should build lots of public libraries, no matter how much we may agree with the decision post hoc? Who the hell is Bill Gates to decide that malaria should be the priority over cancer? And who the hell am I, in my relative privilege, to decide that another $400 should be spent on providing sandwiches to the homeless? The major social, political, and economic problems we face are not basically about policy, but about power. (If they were about policy, an enlightened despot would be much neater.) Wealth confers that decision-making power on some and not on others.

    So what are the wealthy to do? Well, it’s probably too subtle a thing for a blog comment at 8 in the morning, but I imagine it will have something to do with using their resources to dismantle or reform the systems that put them at such an advantage, keeping firmly in mind that the idea is not a redistribution of wealth, but a lasting redistribution of power.

    Comment by Benjamin — June 9, 2008 #

19. One more thought — I think part of what is meant by what I said above is that hostility toward the rich qua people is not appropriate in the church. But hostility (of a kind) toward their wealth, and even more, toward the systems that fostered it, is.

    If that makes them feel bad, then tough.

    Comment by Benjamin — June 9, 2008 #

20. Disdain for the Rich can change history. See this New Yorker article http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_packer , which quotes the book Nixonland by Rick Perlstein. Nixon was driven by a desire to show those “to the manor born” that he was just as good or better.

    I like what Matt said. We all need to struggle with our judgments of other people.

    Comment by Anna Banana — June 9, 2008 #

21. Who the hell is Andrew Carnegie to decide for us that we should build lots of public libraries, no matter how much we may agree with the decision post hoc? Who the hell is Bill Gates to decide that malaria should be the priority over cancer? And who the hell am I, in my relative privilege, to decide that another $400 should be spent on providing sandwiches to the homeless? The major social, political, and economic problems we face are not basically about policy, but about power.

    Before we condemn Andrew Carnegie’s or Bill Gates’s power to make philanthropic as well as econimic decisions, we might ask whether America and the world would have been better off not only without their generosity, but also without a steel industry in the 19th century or a microcomputer industry in the 20th.

    We religious liberals might well also ask whether liberal religion would have been better off if John D. Rockefeller Jr. had not had the power to decide that there should be a University of Chicago and a Unitarian seminary associated with it, and a Union Theological Seminary at Columbia, and a Riverside Church to provide a pulpit for liberal voices like Harry Emerson Fosdick’s and William Sloane Coffin’s.

    Comment by fausto — June 9, 2008 #

22. Before we condemn Andrew Carnegie’s or Bill Gates’s power to make philanthropic as well as econimic decisions, we might ask whether America and the world would have been better off not only without their generosity, but also without a steel industry in the 19th century or a microcomputer industry in the 20th.

    We religious liberals might well also ask whether liberal religion would have been better off if John D. Rockefeller Jr. had not had the power to decide that there should be a University of Chicago and a Unitarian seminary associated with it, and a Union Theological Seminary at Columbia, and a Riverside Church to provide a pulpit for liberal voices like Harry Emerson Fosdick’s and William Sloane Coffin’s.

    *cringe* Can’t speak for anyone else, but this argument doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve heard it used many times to justify all kinds of imperialist and immoral actions. Unfortunately, if parallel universes exist, none of us has access to them. So who can say what other outcomes might have been. Is this truly the best of all possible worlds?

    Comment by h sofia — June 9, 2008 #

23. *cringe* Can’t speak for anyone else, but this argument doesn’t sit well with me.

    I know. Nevertheless, it’s the hard reality of the only universe we have access to, so we have to deal with it. We can’t dismiss it merely because it conflicts with how we wish things were instead in an ideal universe.

    Unfortunately, if parallel universes exist, none of us has access to them. So who can say what other outcomes might have been.

    You’re right that we have access to no other universe than this one. My point is that neither did Carnegie or Gates or Rockefeller, so who can say they made the wrong choices with the opportunities available to them in the only universe they knew?

    So what are the wealthy to do? Well, it’s probably too subtle a thing for a blog comment at 8 in the morning, but I imagine it will have something to do with using their resources to dismantle or reform the systems that put them at such an advantage, keeping firmly in mind that the idea is not a redistribution of wealth, but a lasting redistribution of power.

    That was the idea behind communism, and indeed, it proved to be somewhat more adept than capitalism at redistributing wealth in the short run. However, it also proved far more susceptible than capitalism to abuses of power in the long run. Furthermore, not only did it abolish the excess accumulation of personal wealth that might be seen as one of capitalism’s greatest weaknesses, but it also abolished the incentive to raise the general level of prosperity through economic innovation over time that is capitalism’s greatest strength.

    Democratic socialism corrects some of communism’s problems with abuse of power, but not its disincentives to economic innovation. No socialist politico-economic system has ever invented a prosperous new industry.

    Comment by fausto — June 9, 2008 #

24. I’ve just been skimming, the comments, but forgive me for being a pollyanna, I’m really feeling a lot of UU pride right now.

    I agree that wealth cannot automatically be viewed as worthy of hate.

    I do, however, believe that we are experiencing a backlash to the hypermaterialism of the Regan Years. For too long, many of us have tried to identify with the 1 percent of the country that holds 98 percent of the wealth. Now, however, times are tight and we are waking up to the fact that they are not the same as us. The constraints, limitations, and inherent morality of husbanding resources are a choice for them, not a fact of life.

    Also, as resources dwindle and the divide between rich and poor widens, I believe those who purvey ostentatious wealth will become targets. There was a time when our culture was not so aware of the interconnectivity between lavish wealth and the impact of wasted resource, but now we know. Now, we look at our 4 dollar a gallon tank, look at our yellow ribbon and then feel visceral hatred towards the single guy fueling up his Hummer. Now, we leave the house after watching a BBC story on droughts killing children, drive our Prius down the road and glare at the massive expanses of lawn. Now we watch a story on a drug killing, go help recovering addicts in a shelter and feel fury when a Hollywood actor gets a slap on the writs for drug possession. Now the connection is in our face. Now it affects us,

    I believe that is what is angering us now.

    I am struggling, but I do not believe the wealthy should have their property siezed. I do believe, however, that we should make them pay via taxes more. I do believe, it is not class warfare or anti-american to make the rich shoulder responsibility for a war that lines their pockets more than mine. I do watch politicians defend their right to make us pay for a war to support their lifestyle and….well…hate them.

    “I think that we should give a rifle to anyone who buys a Hummvee and send them over to Iraq and tell them to get their oil themselves. That’s fair, and American.”
    -Anonymous Comic.

    [Chuck, love this. Thanks for posting it. - PB]

    Comment by Chuck B. — June 9, 2008 #

25. Scanning through this morning’s news, I came across an item that reminded me of this discussion:

    Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., … said his father is looking forward to returning to the Senate and working with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on universal health care legislation should the Illinois senator win the White House.

    “That is what he is talking and thinking about,” Kennedy said. “It adds a great deal of poignancy to his recovery. But that’s how he sees it — he has to recover so he can get health care for the millions of people who don’t have access to the care that we do.”

    Following the mandate of “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” in Luke, Ted Kennedy has made a lifetime political career of fighting for political and economic equality for the underprivileged. Does he also have a moral obligation to relinquish his own family’s wealth, or to decline the elite medical care that is available to him merely because it might not be equally available to others?

    I don’t have time to go into it now, but this whole issue resonates with our 19th-century Unitarian theology of “salvation by character”, which in turn has its antecedents in our 17th-century theology of “visible sainthood”, which in turn also explains our enduring national tendency to equate wealth and merit.

    Comment by fausto — June 9, 2008 #

26. Well, I only have a moment as I’m at work right now, but I think many of us on the lower end of the totem pole (in our jobs, at least) feel like we constantly get shafted by those who are higher up. I’m talking about on a day-to-day, rubber meets the road kind of level. We get treated differently. We are stabbed in the back. We are passed over or get smoke blown up our buns in terms of getting training or promotions. We are expected to be in three places at once. Our daily problems are viewed as insignificant, while those with any ability to fix it take off early on Friday to go play golf or drink margaritas at Bahama Breeze.

    The people who have those big paychecks just often treat those of us with smaller paychecks like second class citizens.

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 9, 2008 #

27. Well. As one of the original two confessed wealth-o-phobes, I find this discussion fascinating. My reaction to the wealthy (which I suppose I define by a large, well-appointed home, a vacation home, multiple foreign trips per year, & more stuff if they want) is not well-reasoned, or part of my deepest religious convictions! It’s a knee-jerk reaction I have to be mindful of when I pull into a congregant’s long driveway, or hear about their third trip to Tibet. My spiritual discipline is to remember their individual selves in the midst of the knee-jerking. I suppose it comes from growing up lower middle/middle-middle class, and envying people with more, or getting the message of being “less-than”. It certainly does not have much to do with my lived experience of individuals - be they generous or entitled - right now. But it does still whap me when I’m not thinking.

    Comment by Rev. Gidget — June 9, 2008 #

28. And….am I less of a female because I couldn’t give a rat’s butt about shopping and shoes and being trendy and being anything LIKE those people in SATC?

    No thanks.

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 9, 2008 #

29. And….am I less of a female because I couldn’t give a rat’s butt about shopping and shoes and being trendy and being anything LIKE those people in SATC?

    Not at all. Although I think the question PB is asking is not that, but rather, would you be a less worthy human being if you did? As she puts it:

    This is about honest folks who wrote in to say that they have hostile feelings towards the very wealthy, and I think we should talk about it. What’s that about? What does it mean for our congregations? What are our assumptions about the rich? What constitutes “rich enough” to earn hostility (for those who have those feelings)? Is there any corollary here about the un-rich? Do they merit special favor for those who harbor hostile feelings for the extremely wealthy? And finally, is this a personal prejudice or is it a liberationist stance aka “God’s preferential option for the poor?”

    To which I would add, if affluence rightly merits hostility on moral grounds, where is the point at which one should decline an otherwise deserved raise or higher-paying job on moral grounds?

    I don’t think affluence is inherently contemptible. But I do think that on some level one’s moral debt to society rises in proportion to the degree of advantage one has enjoyed in society. I also think, historically, that sense of moral noblesse oblige is the reason that Unitarians, so many of whom were socially and educationally elite, developed such a characteristically strong sense of social justice.

    Comment by fausto — June 9, 2008 #

30. I grew up fairly poor. My Mom was left with three kids and pregnant with her forth as my father went and had four more kids with a woman who was a kid herself. We struggled. We lived on welfare ( as it was called then) food stamps, limited food, free lunch, etc. But I say only fairly poor because our lives were rich with each other and we did not live in the abject poverty so many other people face around the globe.

    I am sure not all, but almost all of the people who post on this site are rich when compared to the rest of the world. I get outraged at the Wal-mart commercials that says “save money-live better” as if plastic crap makes us really “live better.” We should be helping the people who are making these products live better– but we are not. Make no mistake about it we live our lifestyles off other people barely living (we just no longer see it first hand).

    Yet this has been burning in my own mind lately. I just moved to a wealthier neighborhood because I wanted more for my son. ( A place he could play outside–on two occasions I found hypodermic needles on the sidewalks and the public school was in a serious decline). I struggle with wanting the best for my son, while wanting more for all the children of this world.

    I don’t hate the rich, but I do envy some of the things they take for granted:

    Heathly food every day
    Good Schools
    Safe neighborhoods
    Money as a safety net

    Comment by Kim — June 9, 2008 #

31. Fausto, you can’t covet what you don’t want. Well, okay, I covet health care for my wife, but I covet that in the context of coveting universal health care, so you may judge that as you please. I believe in the median way–in a just community, the average and the median would be very, very close. I believe that when Jesus told us how to be perfect, he wasn’t kidding, and if self-styled Christians aren’t ready for perfection, they should at least meet him halfway. And, yes, I do judge “philanthropists” by how much they hoard, not how much they give–many of the worst people in history gave bread and circuses, but that did not make them good people.

    KJR, yes, as a country, the US is rich, but when something like 40% of us have little or negative wealth, I’m reluctant to say that all Americans are rich. Middle class Americans are rich by the world’s standards. Poor Americans, not so rich.

    Judy, money has always been the main factor in class: lose it, and your class privilege isn’t worth much. Get it, and your former class is quickly forgotten. That’s more true today than 100 years ago, of course, but new money blends into old money very, very quickly.

    CFT, aw, shucks! Now I’m feeling all embarrassed just when I was shifting into class-warrior mode.

    Masasa, I hear you on intellectualism. Thought’s important, but there are kinds of thought that are indulged in to rationalize inaction and privilege.

    Benjamin, well said!

    Fausto, I love you on universalism versus unitarianism, but this desire to excuse the excesses of robber barons seems odd to me. Yes, great progress has been made under capitalism, just as it was under feudalism. The question is whether we’re ready to leave robber barons behind now, just as we’ve left kings.

    You may also want to read a little more about Marx and communism. In the meantime, to keep this in Christian terms, Luke’s saying that they should give a lot because they have a lot to give should also be interpreted literally: it’s not saying they should keep a lot because they’ve got a lot to keep. The crux is simple: how much should they give? And while you ponder that, remember where perfection lies.

    Apologies to all for writing quickly about a serious subject. It’s great to see UUs addressing class.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

32. Fausto, I love you on universalism versus unitarianism, but this desire to excuse the excesses of robber barons seems odd to me.

    I never said that. I challenged the a priori supposition that wealth is inherently evil, but I also endorsed the Biblical principle that much is required of those to whom much is given.

    Does it say something about you that that is what you heard instead?

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

33. Masasa: what you are describing seems to me not “intellectualism” so much as “intellectual elitism.” The difference is important to me.

    The problems of intellectual elitism also don’t seem quite congruent to problems of having wealth or being wealthy. And wealth is not always congruent to educational level. (I will have a PhD in Anthropology soon and will probably never be financially rich although I am educationally blessed.)

    I think in the US there is bizarre pairing of anti-intellectualism to intellectual elitism among people of power and influence. Whichever is most likely to maintain the structure of power at any given point seems to me to be employed strategically.

    Additionally, I think right now, at least no one has to surrender their access to education/intellectualism for others to gain the benefits education/intellectual wealth offers.

    Most importantly, education and the intellectual gifts that come with it are [one path to] liberation, and obstruction of that path on the part of power is systematic and deliberate.

    (A college degree protects women from a catastrophic income drop should they go through a divorce. *Liberal arts higher education* appears to be, from what research is out there, the most critical factor in reducing prison recidivism.)

    From the point of view of an educator, the most pernicious thing about intellectual elitism is that it sends the message that there are those who deserve to be intellectuals and those that do not.

    I am not saying you have to go to college, want to go to college, or be able to go to college to be a worthy person. Not at all. I am saying access to an intellectual life (to be able to talk about tax law and Milton, if you want to) is one possible route to making a better world and better personal circumstances. Intellectual elitism is a tool used to make that possibility seem remote and undesirable. And that is its biggest failing.

    Comment by Kate — June 10, 2008 #

34. PB, may I share a comment made by my boyfriend Joe, who grew up very impoverished in Indiana?

    I showed him your entry here, and he noted this line: “Neither SweetieBang nor I could ever take care of a house this big on our own: we’re completely useless around the house….”

    OK to him, that is a statement that only someone who had certain luxuries could make. When he was growing up, he wasn’t allowed to be completely useless around the house. If something needed doing, his alcoholic stepfather would beat him until it got done. I don’t mean just spank. I mean BEAT. Thowing a 7 year old down a flight of stairs kind of thing.

    THAT is the kind of life he feels like the wealthy know nothing about, because they can afford to be indulgent. They can afford housekeepers.

    Joe’s stepfather is dead now. And for his part, Joe prefers to waste no mental energy on the man, who was very abusive and wound up alienating everyone around him and he died alone.

    No pity. No sympathy for the dead man. Joe’s only comment, when his auntie told him his stepfather had died was: “May his God have mercy upon his soul.” That was the end of it. Beyond that, Joe does everything in his power to ignore the fact that the man ever existed. That’s the way he wants it. Erase all memory of his existence from the mind of the universe. Even on a spiritual level, he wants the man “gone” as he put it. As if he’d never been born.

    This is the kind of life (physical, mental, spiritual) he feels like wealthy people know nothing about.

    Just sayin’.
    [Um, if you think that adults who abuse and throw children down the stairs for being useless or any other reason is an issue of economic class, you’re waaay off base. I grew up in a very wealthy home with a very abusive father and an alcoholic mother. Sorry, Tracie, you’ve just lost a tremendous amount of credibility with me by veering way off the topic of hostility toward the rich into a totally ignorant fantasy that wealth creates emotionally healthier families. I know a guy whose fathers beat him to a bloody pulp for not getting into Yale. My own father went into violent,blind rages if someone got a bad grade on their report card or if the house wasn’t clean. Just sayin’. - PB]

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 10, 2008 #

35. I don’t hate the rich, but I do envy some of the things they take for granted:

    Heathly food every day
    Good Schools
    Safe neighborhoods
    Money as a safety net

    That seems to me to describe more the middle-class “American Dream” than the kind of extraordinary wealth that PB is asking about here. Is anyone other than Will calling people who earn enough (or would like to) to provide these things for their families “robber barons”? Will, if you would not apply such epithets to this sort of material aspiration, where is the line of excess beyond which your contempt lies?

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

36. I think another part of it is the condescension on the part of the wealthy that he, as someone who grew up in the projects, resents very strongly. The message of “Oh, we are wealthy, so we should go help those poor people over there so we can look like we’re doing something worthwhile, and so we can ease our guilt about being wealthy!”

    I think he’d tell said wealthy people to take their charity, fold it so it’s all corners, and put it where it would do them the most good.

    :sigh:

    That’s how I understand it.

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 10, 2008 #

37. By the way, what happened to the Biblical idea that one cannot worship God and mammon at the same time?

    “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s” means: nothing actually belongs to Caesar. Everything in all creation belongs to God. Caesar can’t take any of his wealth with him when he dies. He can’t even keep his own body.

    All of it belongs to God, it always has and always will.

    Also: easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a wealthy man to enter the Kingdom of God.

    I have to admit - hanging out with Episcopalians (rather than evangelicals) has been an eye-opener in terms of Scriptural interpretation.

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 10, 2008 #

38. That seems to me to describe more the middle-class “American Dream” than the kind of extraordinary wealth that PB is asking about here.

    Actually, on second thought I’ll go further and say that a wealth ethic that makes you feel guilty about wanting these things is at least as toxic and evil as hoarding too much wealth — if not even more so.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

39. Fausto: you seem to defend the wealthy. Are you wealthy, and therefore taking exception to the fact that there are people out here who are resentful of the wealthy?

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 10, 2008 #

40. By the way, what happened to the Biblical idea that one cannot worship God and mammon at the same time?
    

    You can’t, it’s true. But in this context “worship” means to make something the object of one’s ultimate, overarching desire.

    Make no mistake, the Bible (especially the NT) is full of admonitions about giving up all one has and following Jesus, and about the powerful spiritual temptations of wealth, including especially the well-known proverb from I Timothy 6:10, that “love of money is the root of all evil” [emphasis added]. (I like h sofia’s observations that wealth is seen in Islam as a trial or test rather than an ipso facto mark of shame.) But it is also full of other exceedingly difficult moral precepts, as well as the warnings that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, that we ourselves will be judged or forgiven commensurately with how we judge or forgive others, and that only those without sin themselves may cast the first stone.

    In the Christian view, human nature may aspire to all these moral ideals but is incapable by itself of achieving them, and bridging the gap between reality and perfection is the role of divine and undeserved grace. As Thomas Cranmer wrote in the Episcopal prayer book, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us. But thou, o Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.”

    In the past, our U and U denominational ancestors have responded differently. Upper-class Unitarians developed a theology of “salvation by character” in which grace may not have been quite so unconditional. In the words of a former minister of my church, if we do the best we can with the gifts we are given, “we are saved for the hope that, having done our best, God will do His best, and His best will be better than we dare hope or think”. For them, as regards personal wealth, that did not necessarily mean eschewing it, but it did impose an obligation not to flaunt it or spend it indulgently, and instead to apply any excess to benefit society as a whole. (I think it is from this not-quite-unconditional, not-quite-all-forgiving view of grace that UUism today gets its unappealing attitude of moral stridency, btw.) Blue-collar Universalists, in contrast, were not particularly troubled by what they should do with their own excess wealth since they didn’t have much of it, but they did believe as to those selfish rich people over there, that they were no more nor less sinful than anyone else, and that a merciful God would ultimately extend the same undeserved saving grace to them as to everyone else.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

41. Fausto: you seem to defend the wealthy. Are you wealthy, and therefore taking exception to the fact that there are people out here who are resentful of the wealthy?

    I don’t think so, but you might. Depends what one considers “wealthy”. We’re not hurting, and we have a nice house and a modest nest egg, but I need my job. I’m what PB describes in the OP as upper-middle-class affluent, probably like many members of her own congregation but not at the rarefied level of the good citizens of New Canaan. (The median house price in my town in 2005 was $469,900; in PB’s it was $543,750; in New Canaan it was $1,367,700.)

    What I’m trying to do in this discussion is play “devil’s advocate” to some degree and challenge what seem to be overly casual moral assumptions and resulting judgments. It’s the same premise invoked by William Ellery Channing in his “Unitarian Christianity” sermon and a longstanding Unitarian spiritual practice: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

42. Fausto, you seem to be quick to forgive the rich and very fond of hierarchy. Examples:

    “Do your accusations extend equally to wealthy philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the Kennedy brothers, as to selfish, ostentatious misers? If not, then you are not necessarily bigoted, but you are bearing false witness.”

    “Before we condemn Andrew Carnegie’s or Bill Gates’s power to make philanthropic as well as econimic decisions, we might ask whether America and the world would have been better off not only without their generosity, but also without a steel industry in the 19th century or a microcomputer industry in the 20th.”

    Perhaps the clearest example of your prejudice is when you speak of capitalism’s “incentive to raise the general level of prosperity through economic innovation over time that is capitalism’s greatest strength.”

    But there’s also this rather revealing bit: “that sense of moral noblesse oblige is the reason that Unitarians, so many of whom were socially and educationally elite, developed such a characteristically strong sense of social justice.”

    To promote noblesse oblige, you must believe there should be nobles with a sense of obligation. I think the problem of hierarchy is hierarchy itself.

    Your understanding of communism is simplistic; you seem to think totalitarianism is the only model. I’m rather fond of the approach taken by the Scandinavians, myself.

    You seem to think greed is the great spur of invention. I like people like Tabitha Babbitt and William Blake, who simply invented and shared.

    You see distinct kinds of rich people where I see people on a scale. Carnegie and Rockefeller have blood on their hands. The cruelties of Gates and Buffet are subtler, but the consequences of their principles remains: take more than your share, and everyone else has less.

    Well. These posts are a bit unwieldy, so I’ll start a new one to address people’s new comments now.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

43. “I also endorsed the Biblical principle that much is required of those to whom much is given.”

    Your concept of that principle appears to stop with philanthropy. I like RFK, too, but I don’t think Jesus would’ve said, “Oh, hey, that stuff about the rich and perfection only applies to Republicans.”

    Kate, I’ll second everything you say about the wonders of education. I think it’s significant that socialist countries offer free education; they don’t benefit from having ignorant citizens. But “intellectualism” is a word with many nuances. Masasa’s casual use is legit.

    Fausto, when I spoke of robber barons, I didn’t realize you thought I meant the middle class. Seriously, read about the 19th century and the Gilded Age. Read Twain’s comments about the people you call philanthropists. Heck, start with Wikipedia: Robber baron (industrialist).

    I confess, I was surprised by the degree of your scorn, but now that I know it comes of ignorance, I’m simply sorry I made assumptions about your education. I’m 52. Things that were commonly taught in my day may not be taught now.

    Tracie, I’m with Joe and the Episcopals on the things you’ve discussed so far.

    Fausto, I admire your willingness to enter this discussion, and your willingness to admit that you are among the privileged. I understand why this makes you react harshly. But since we’re giving each other advice, I suggest you ponder the meaning of “excess.”

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

44. Fausto, an apology: I just checked your blog, and I see we’re about the same age. Perhaps your confusion about my use of “robber baron” came because I lower-cased it. Since you’d mentioned Rockefeller and Carnegie, I’d thought you would recognize the phrase.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

45. Will, I’m 51, and since the question of not only economic but also educational elitism has already been placed on the table by others in a general way, and now by you as well with particular respect to the presumptive superiority of your own remarks, I might as well also admit that I have three Ivy League degrees, including substantial undergraduate and graduate training in both history and economics. (None of them is from Harvard.)

    You speak of the degree of my scorn, but it is only you who have called an entire class of people deserving of spite and have resorted to derogatory epithets against them. You have done so without declaring precisely who should or should not be included in this hated category, or how to avoid belonging to it, despite several different participants in this conversation (including PeaceBang in her OP) asking where such a line should be drawn. I am merely asking you either to make a clearer case to justify your contempt, and against precisely whom, or otherwise to show how your remarks are not tainted by an unjustifiable prejudice.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

46. Fausto, you spoke of “bigotry” in your first response to me. You seem to believe that criticizing the upper class is like criticizing whites or men, but skin and gender are beyond our control. Class is very, very different than race or gender.

    You seem to believe that the rich are with us always. Jesus didn’t say that. Because of accidents and disasters, the poor are with us always, and therefore we must always be ready to help others. That doesn’t mean we must live in luxury while people are homeless. (There’s also the possibility that Jesus meant “good people are with us always,” because many good people have taken the name of “the poor.” Yes, I’m always too happy to digress.)

    If you would look up “robber baron,” you will see who is commonly included in that category. It really isn’t an obscure term, and it’s more precise than you seem to think.

    Where do I draw the lines? I think if you have twice as much as the average person in your nation, you’re rich, and if you have half as much, you’re poor. I use “nation” as a guide because the value of money changes enormously from culture to culture, and I do believe you have to fix things at home first.

    Let’s look at one person you admire: in 1999, Bill Gates had more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American households combined. Had there been no need among Americans in 1999, I would’ve thought that a fine thing. (Apologies for using old statistics–those were simply the easiest to google.)

    But I don’t believe in waiting for magical wealth to arrive. The world has the resources to care for everyone now. All we need is to find a way to convince the rich to share.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

47. Fausto, I admire your willingness to enter this discussion, and your willingness to admit that you are among the privileged.

    I am more privileged educationally than economically, I think. Now, the US is a wealthy nation, and middle-class Americans are wealthy and privileged by any worldwide standard, I’ll admit. However, my personal wealth goals are pretty ordinary middle-class ones: to live comfortably but not extravagantly, to educate my kids, to save enough for retirement, and to give generously to charity. My own moral struggles around wealth, such as they are, involve striking a proper balance between the last two more than overindulging on the first. These struggles may be significant to me, but I don’t think of them as being on the same order of magnitude as the kind of wealth PeaceBang is asking about.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

48. “We’re not hurting, and we have a nice house and a modest nest egg, but I need my job. I’m what PB describes in the OP as upper-middle-class affluent, probably like many members of her own congregation but not at the rarefied level of the good citizens of New Canaan. (The median house price in my town in 2005 was $469,900; in PB’s it was $543,750; in New Canaan it was $1,367,700.)”

    If you’re “upper-middle-class affluent” and you “need” your job, you’re working to maintain an “upper-middle-class affluent” lifestyle. That’s a privileged definition of “need”. I believe we all need food, shelter, health care, education, and meaningful work. Beyond that, we’re in the land of “want”. The question the rich avoid answering is, “Why do your wants trump other people’s needs?”

    By “rich” here, I’m primarily thinking of the people you might call the super-rich. I don’t want a one-size-fits-all solution to the distribution of wealth–people do have different needs. But, to use an example that I came across recently, if there are ten chairs in the world and ten people, I don’t think one person should lie on seven chairs while nine people try to squeeze into three.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

49. If you would look up “robber baron,” you will see who is commonly included in that category. It really isn’t an obscure term, and it’s more precise than you seem to think.

    But you seemed to be applying it to anyone who fits your idea of “rich”.

    Where do I draw the lines? I think if you have twice as much as the average person in your nation, you’re rich, and if you have half as much, you’re poor.

    The median household income in 2006 was about $48,000. If someone makes $48,000, and his or her spouse or household partner makes $48,000, and one of them is offered a raise or a higher-paying job, in your view is the only moral choice either to turn down the offer or give all the additional money away? If they don’t, are they more deserving of contempt and exempt from forgiveness than other people? That’s what your previous comments seem to suggest.

    Fausto, you spoke of “bigotry” in your first response to me. You seem to believe that criticizing the upper class is like criticizing whites or men, but skin and gender are beyond our control.

    When you condemn unknown people because of their membership in a class, that’s a pretty good working definition of bigotry.

    My father was the son of an immigrant orphan, and my mother’s father was a farmer’s son who dropped out of eighth grade to raise his six younger siblings after his mother died in childbirth. Both were the first in their respective families to attend college, but both families believed in hard work, self-reliance, and self-improvement. Those qualities were once seen almost unversally as virtues. Those are the same values, by the way, that 19th-century Unitarians like William Ellery Channing celebrated as “self-culture”. Whatever modest privileges I may enjoy are because my family instilled the same values into me.

    Perhaps this is why I am arguing with you so tenaciously. If those habits and values pave the way for opportunities that are otherwise difficult to obtain, you seem to be saying that is inherently contemptible merely because those opportunities are not widely available, and that seeking or accepting such opportunities is a character flaw rather than a virtue. To the contrary, I think from the point of view of building a healthy society that your view represents an enervating and toxic, rather than beneficial, ethic.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

50. Just for the record: I just moved out of a studio apartment (my first one) into a two-bedroom that I pay $899/mo for. I wouldn’t be able to afford that and my car payments of $350 (on an ‘05 Toyota Corolla) on my wages alone (just under $14/hour as a full-time receptionist). Thankfully I have Joe, who pulls in $15/hour on his job and has no car (but thankfully again, we work for the same company). I have no children. Neither does he. Neither of us graduated college. He has a GED, and he served 3 years in the US Army. Sometimes this makes him feel really uncomfortable around UUs, as there seems to be this really weird vibe of “soldiers are just paid assassins” as well as “blue collar workers aren’t high class enough for us” going around the UU scene.

    I don’t know where we fit on the “poverty” scale, but we most certainly are not the upscale professional folks that such movies like SATC focuses on. See why I can’t even begin to identify with those people? [Just for the record, no one ever asked if you identified with “those people.”‘ I don’t think many of the millions of people who saw that film identify with “those people.” It’s entertainment and fantasy. The writers I know can’t afford personal assistants and Manolo Blahnik shoes like Carrie Bradshaw has. It’s entertainment. It’s about a certain group of characters I happen to enjoy watching. I don’t identify with their wealth, I identify with their human predicaments within relationships. I suspect that 98% of their audience is in the same category. -PB]

    Joe mentioned that the wealthy people can’t begin to comprehend what life is like for a single mother living on welfare in the projects trying to raise six kids (this would be his mom, and he is the oldest of those six kids). And because he’s lived in a world where his life has been directly affected by the way wealthy people cast their votes when election time comes, that’s how he came to see that wealthy people are two things: wealthy first, people second. From what he’s seen, they will always opt to protect their wealth first, and only after that will they even consider doing something to assist someone in need.

    Just sayin’ [We know that you’re “just sayin.” Everyone here is just sayin. That’s what this forum is all about! - PB]

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 10, 2008 #

51. Tracie, when I think Will and I would agree is that it’s contemptible what has happened to the social safety net for people like Joe’s mom under a succession of Republican presidents and/or Congresses since 1980. We would probably also agree that a more progressive income tax structure and a more evenhanded corporate tax structure is needed to help restore basic services to the most needy segments of the population to help them lift themselves out of their anxiety.

    My mother-in-law never graduated from high school and was widowed in the early 1970’s with two teenagers (not six, but still) and no job prospects. She received job training from a Federally funded program that has since been eliminated, and as a result was able to find steady work for the next 20 years until she retired.

    What’s contemptible? Eliminating that job training program and other programs like it in order to reduce personal income tax rates in the highest brackets, that’s contemptible.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

52. Fausto, I only used “robber barons” after you mentioned people who inspired the phrase. I am sorry I didn’t clarify that.

    The problem with using income as a measure is wealth is far more important. Anyone living in our society should use their income to raise their wealth to the median–after that, you’re richer if you help make everyone else richer. After all, the better society you make will be yours, too.

    An example of what we should do from Luke: Zacchaeus said, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus seemed to think that was a good start.

    I don’t think anyone is exempt from forgiveness. But just as Jesus said bankers were wrong and called “woe to the rich,” we should, too. Love the sinner, hate the sin, eh?

    When you condemn unknown people because of their membership in a class, that’s a pretty good working definition of bigotry.

    You continue to miss the fact that no adult is in a social class by accident. At some point, you make your allegiance, and by making your allegiance, you accept responsibility for what your class does. There are better and worse rich people, but even those I like–say, Oprah Winfrey–could live comfortably and still help many more if she didn’t prefer show to substance. ($50 million goes a long way when buying shelter. Say she keeps $500,000 to live in a more expensive place than most people do. That leaves $49 and a half million that could be used to help others. If no one needed help, again, who would begrudge her? But the need is out there, no matter how much the rich may wish to ignore it.)

    both families believed in hard work, self-reliance, and self-improvement. Those qualities were once seen almost unversally as virtues. Those are the same values, by the way, that 19th-century Unitarians like William Ellery Channing celebrated as “self-culture”.

    They’re still seen as virtues–you seem to be buying the conservative meme that the poor are lazy and content to be ignorant. You may wish to do more reading about economics to understand why virtues alone are not enough to improve a person’s lot. We need resources to exercise our virtues.

    If those habits and values pave the way for opportunities that are otherwise difficult to obtain, you seem to be saying that is inherently contemptible merely because those opportunities are not widely available, and that seeking or accepting such opportunities is a character flaw rather than a virtue.

    Not at all. I’m saying that hoarding what comes from hard work and good luck is a character flaw. Those who prosper should help others prosper.

    Tracie, tell Joe some UUs get it, but in many cases, he’ll have to be mighty patient. UUs are almost all well-meaning, but as a group, the richer ones are much more comfortable dealing with racism and sexism than class concerns because racism and sexism are about bad things others do and not about the ways their wealth affects the world.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

53. Anyone living in our society should use their income to raise their wealth to the median–after that, you’re richer if you help make everyone else richer. After all, the better society you make will be yours, too.

    I don’t know how to apply that in practice, though — not even to myself, much less to anyone else in order to decide whether I ought to sneer at them is self-righteous indignation at their greed. There are not really any reliable statistics for median or mean household net worth, so there’s no good yardstick for comparison.

    A hard statistic that might be more useful is that, at the current 10-year Treasury bond rate of 4.09% (which is often used as a proxy for a risk-free rate of investment return), it takes about $647,000 to produce an annuity for 20 years equal to the $48,000 median household income in 2006, before any allowance for inflation. It takes about $821,000 to produce the same annuity for 30 years before inflation. If you project an annual inflation rate of 3%, those figures rise to $836,000 for 20 years and $1,193,000 for 30 years. Average household income is higher than median household income, so those figures could easily be raised still further without (I think) leaving the universe of self-preservation for the universe of greed.

    Which is why I said that my moral dilemma in my own finances is not so much the amount I am spending on myself today, but how to strike a proper balance between saving for future retirement and giving to charity today.

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

54. Fausto, you keep using words like “sneer.” I don’t want to sneer at anyone. I want a just world. To get it, we have to be able to discuss social structure. To point out that the feudal system is unjust is not “sneering” at the nobility.

    Our calculations about fairness are wildly off. I don’t have time to see if my sources are still valid, but when I looked at wealth here, I found this:
    

    The US median net worth (wealth) is $46,506. Yet the average wealth is three times greater, $144,000 per person.

    That applies to income: The median income is $25,149, but the average income is $55,238.

    I think if you’re trying to live fairly, your target should be somewhere between the median and the mean, and your work should be directed toward narrowing that gap for everyone’s sake.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

55. Fausto, you keep using words like “sneer.” I don’t want to sneer at anyone.

    Your first post in this thread is pretty darn contemptuous, and paints with an awfully broad brush.

    I think if you’re trying to live fairly, your target should be somewhere between the median and the mean

    Let’s imagine a realistic scenario given our similar ages.

    It’s five or six years from now. We’re in our late fifties. One of our children or life partners has developed a chronic disease which is only partly covered by insurance. Government social programs have expanded modestly under Democratic government to begin to mend some of the worst Republican shredding of the social safety net, but at the cost of higher tax rates, and for the benefit (so far) of only some of the very neediest members of society, a category that doesn’t include us. Fuel prices have doubled or tripled. General inflation is rising 6% or 7% annually, with inflation in the energy and healthcare sectors even higher. We have a couple of kids in college or about to enter. Our parents and grandparents all lived into their 80’s and 90’s, and we are likely to do so as well. People are still talking about whether Social Security will go bankrupt soon, because there has not been the political resolve coalescing yet in Congress to fix it. Our equity value in our houses has eroded because of the mortgage crisis of a few years ago, and is unlikely to recover to former levels very quickly. Interest rates for mortgages and other consumer loans are rising along with inflation.

    Now imagine that our employers force us into early retirement in a cost-cutting initiative, because older employees are more costly to keep on the payroll than younger ones. At our age it will be difficult to find an equivalent, or prehaps any, steady job. The money in our IRA’s or 401k’s is taxable when we withdraw it.

    Would you feel secure retiring under those circumstances with $46,500 in net worth, including both savings and the equity value of your house? With $144,000?

    If someone else in the same circumstances did not, would you express the same judgmentalism and hostility toward them that you did in your first post?

    Comment by fausto — June 10, 2008 #

56. I guess I’m a little surprised that there is no more sympathy for the lived experience of so many people who find themselves wealthy in comparison to so many of the people in the world. Perhaps no one wants to wade into these intimidating and fairly heated waters, but what the heck–it is the Internet.

    Sure, wealth and what to do with it is a spiritual concern, but to have such antipathy toward people who have been “successful” in their chosen field (assuming the best of rich people, which of course isn’t always the case–but not all poor people are virtuous either. . .) is not only pretty prejudiced behavior, it is missing a ministry opportunity.

    As ministers we can choose to help the rich find ways to minister with their wealth, or we can revile them and banish them. Obviously some of these comments are from individuals who have very particular beliefs about this issue, and that is what it is.

    I say that if Jesus found a way to reach Zaccheus, I can dang well find a way at the bare minimum not to hate the “neighbor” in the 20 room house on a third of an acre of land with a Hummer. It’s easy to love people with whom we have things in common and for whom we have sympathy, right? The harder task is to love the different, the hated, the “stranger and sojourner” in NT parlance. We tend to think of this category of persons as those excluded from society for whatever reason, but from some of these comments I’d say that the owner of the McMansion would not be all that welcome by some of the responders to this post.

    One other thing: The middle school rule of life is not to base relationships on a shared hatred. Not following this rule gets good religious folk into hot water all the time in my experience.

    [Madge, right. I had hoped that more ministers would write in about this very issue, which is why I asked the question in the first place. I’m not really interested so much in whether or not we should hate the social structures that allow some individuals to amass obscene amounts of money while others struggle to keep food on the table — I mean, DUH.
    I’m interested in the person in the pew next to the other person in the pew. It disturbs me deeply that someone like Tracie the Red would sit in that pew actually believing that the wealthy person next to her was spared suffering or an abusive childhood because they could afford a housekeeper and didn’t have to deal with “real life,” as she suggested in one of her comments. If that’s the kind of mentality of our parishioners insist on maintaining, we have no hope at all of being the Church in any real way. Yes, we know that many Unitarian Universalists and other church-going folk hold prejudices against the economically underprivileged or even against people who choose not to keep up with the Joneses. What I was hoping to discuss at more length is how the prejudice works going in the other direction. I find at least one commenter willing to reveal that she has deep contempt for “the rich,” which I only imagine extends to people she doesn’t know very well who have money, but whose personal lives she knows nothing about. As pastors, we know that wealthy people have terrible things happen to them just as often as people with little money. And we know firsthand that while money can help during crises, it can turn to dust in the hands pretty quickly under many circumstances. There is a bottom-line helplessness and powerlessness that afflicts all humans that no amount of money can touch. Yes, it can put the mentally ill child into a hospital, it can afford a good rehabilitation program, but it can’t get Mom through the waiting line at the nursing home, it can’t assure that the surgery won’t be botched, it can’t keep the alcoholic child from getting a third DUI and going to prison, it can’t stop the lawsuit by the mentally ill, vindictive neighbor from proceeding, it can’t reverse time and keep the 3-year old from running across the street and getting killed by the truck, it can’t awaken the 40-year old husband from the coma he lapsed into for no apparent reason, it can’t stop the fire from burning down the house. The hostile would say, “Well, they have money, they can get over these things.” The hostile are angry and ignorant. They are willfully holding themselves apart from a portion of humanity because they prefer it that way, and they prefer not to know the truth that no amount of money on earth can heal the broken heart. Every single one of us should be welcomed to the pews as those carried on stretchers from the battlefield. Some will be able to get well and buy more stretchers. Others won’t be able to contribute that, but will be able to contribute other gifts that are every bit as valuable. But again, it’s always easier to have a pissing match about social conditions and about why “I” am justified in holding tight to my hatred than to talk about what we are called to be as people of God, abiding together in one Church. - PB]

    Comment by madgebaby — June 10, 2008 #

57. Fausto, out of curiosity, do you also want people to be respectful of the nobility? The problem with the class system is the class system itself. It can be fixed from below or above. So far, the rich show no inclination to seriously modify things–look, for example, at the way HR 676 is ignored, and mandatory corporate health care is promoted instead.

    I should clarify this: I live below the poverty line. If you add up what I own and what I owe, I have less than nothing. I live in the bottom 40% of this society. There are things I like about that; it means none of my tax money goes to support war. On the other hand, I worry about the health care of those I love. I don’t worry about my own; it’s been a good life, and I would like another thirty or forty years, but I’ll live life as it comes.

    Madgebaby, because it’s the internet, I’ll note that by ministering to the rich, you’re taking the way of the Sadduccee, not the way of Jesus.

    And I’ll also ask this: Who says they hate individual rich people? Our complaint is directed at the institution of privilege. So long as you refuse to address hierarchy, there’ll always be another hierarch along.

    Oh, what the heck, another point about Zacchaeus: he was doing good before Jesus approved of him. Jesus recognized his goodness; he didn’t inspire it. I haven’t noticed Jesus saying good things about Caesar, Annas, or Pilate. Jesus’s cry of “Woe unto the rich” rings loudly to those who have ears to hear.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 10, 2008 #

58. I should clarify this: I live below the poverty line. If you add up what I own and what I owe, I have less than nothing. I live in the bottom 40% of this society.

    By inescapable circumstance, or by choice? Your blog makes it sound as though this is an intentional choice for you, not an involuntary condition over which you have no control and which you could not change even if you were determined to do so.

    I worry about the health care of those I love.

    As we all do. And I happen to agree with that scion of privilege Ted Kennedy that we need radically more egalitarian health insurance programs to be available to all in this country. But in the meantime, my own choice is to hold a job that provides health insurance for my family and helps me save for retirement, because I both have the ability and feel a moral responsibility to do so. I am not ashamed that I earn enough to provide these things myself, or that I want to, and I don’t resent others who are far richer than I am for their failure to provide them for me. The way you speak, though, it sounds as though you think it is wrong for me to think that way, and makes me one of the contemptibly wealthy “them”.

    I think your characterization of the wealthy as a societal institution resembling the feudal nobility is a straw man, a canard, by the way. They are not a permanent order in the structure of society, as the nobility were in Europe. They are individuals who have made and continue to make individual choices. One of the things we UUs say we affirm is the value of each individual, and one of the things we decry is stereotyping people by arbitrary groups.

    Comment by fausto — June 11, 2008 #

59. Fausto, I live a writer’s life, and I keep it simple. I’m not complaining about my life, and I have many friends who are rich–you’re the one who keeps reading in words of contempt for individuals when I speak of an unjust social structure.

    I was thinking about your phrase, “a realistic scenario.” Part of my criticism of the rich is that you use terms like that, even though the scenario you describe is not realistic for most of us.

    And there’s this: “I think your characterization of the wealthy as a societal institution resembling the feudal nobility is a straw man, a canard, by the way. They are not a permanent order in the structure of society, as the nobility were in Europe.”

    Do you really believe our current society is not structured so some may be rich and many may be poor? The statistics are not hard to find. I’m especially surprised by your suggestion that the nobility were a permanent structure but the upper class are not: that’s just who the respective societies are structured. The nobility were displaced by the merchants, and someday, our upper class will be gone, and a more just society will rise in its place.

    Unless, of course, the culture of greed succeeds in destroying the planet.

    And there’s nothing arbitrary about being rich. It’s a simple measure of wealth. People who say wealth is relative are right: wealth is relative to poverty.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 11, 2008 #

60. My bad! A typo: that’s just *how* the respective societies are structured.

    Comment by will shetterly — June 11, 2008 #

61. …you’re the one who keeps reading in words of contempt for individuals when I speak of an unjust social structure.

    Yes, exactly. I’m talking about individuals, while you are talking about social structure.

    I would agree that the current tax and social services policies in the US are unjust and skewed to favor the wealthy, but when you accuse “the rich” as a group of “greed” and other sins, you introduce a dimension of moral stereotyping against individuals. Your objections notwithstanding, that kind of categorical judgment sounds like bigotry to me. Just substitute a word like “Jews” in place of “rich” and see how it sounds. Peacebang is asking how we view rich people, and it’s crystal clear that you view them with moral prejudice as a group, rather than as individuals.

    I was thinking about your phrase, “a realistic scenario.” Part of my criticism of the rich is that you use terms like that, even though the scenario you describe is not realistic for most of us.

    Reread my “realistic” scenario of what the economy and individual retirement might look like in five or six years. It’s not about preserving a hierarchical social structure or the unrealistic worldview of rich people. It could apply to almost any working stiff in his or her late 50’s.

    What’s unrealistic, I think, is to project your own voluntary and extremely unusual lifestyle choices as a morally and sociologically normative model for the entire lower- to upper-middle-class population of the nation. I don’t think that under the same circumstances most of the working population of the country would say, as you do, “it’s been a good life, and I would like another thirty or forty years, but I’ll live life as it comes”. They would be worried about their future, and I don’t think they would be morally wrong to do so, or to take steps beforehand to protect themselves — which means saving money (or “hoarding wealth”, to use your judgmental vocabulary), not out of greed, as you are suggesting, but out of prudence.

    There’s a pagan Greek moral text from the sixth century BCE that offers an interesting normative moral alternative to your own views about wealth. It’s told from the perspective of bottom-up personal choice rather than top-down social structure. You’ll probably recognize it:

    In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

    “Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

    “I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”

    “Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew:

    It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

    Comment by fausto — June 11, 2008 #

62. Of course, we must weigh the story of the grasshopper and the ant in one hand, and Jesus’ advice to behold the birds of the field in the other. Both parables have their use. Wisdom is recognizing the truth of both, and knowing how and when to apply them.

    Comment by Jonathan — June 11, 2008 #

63. Hey Fausto,

    In the muppet version of that story, the Grasshopper moves to Florida and the ant gets stepped on.

    Just sayin’

    Everybody else,

    My husband and I let a couple I went to high school with us stay with us for a big chunk of last year and I thought about a lot of these issues often as I had essentially grown up with this couple. We all had started from about the same place financially. Yet theSO and I own a house, and this couple lived in our house for free because we couldn’t stand to watch them live with their baby in the roach-infested apartment they had. (The other couple now lives with the husband’s mother.)

    As near as I could figure it, in our specific case, the class differences between the two couples come down to:

    1. They dropped out of college, we didn’t and indeed now I’m in law school.

    2. The other wife had three kids with her previous husband that she pays child support for and she and her new husband have a kid, too. They are always talking about another one because second husband wants a boy.

    3. They take real vacations to vacation destinations, hotels, etc. TheCSO goes to sci-fi conventions, I go to GA, and we sometimes go stay with friends, but we’ve taken one regular ol’ vacation in the almost nine years we’ve been together.

    So we’re rich in retirement savings and house, they are rich in free time and kids.

    Of course, every economic difference doesn’t come down to choices and values, but a lot of them do.

    We did share the apartment in our finished basement, and indeed painted it the color they wanted and put in new carpeting.

    So do they have to give us a baby?

    CC

    Comment by Chalicechick — June 11, 2008 #

64. Hey Fausto,

    In the muppet version of that story, the Grasshopper moves to Florida and the ant gets stepped on.

    Just sayin’

    Indeed. There’s another ancient bit of wisdom concerning that possibility:

    “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11

    (Which is why we do need an effective social safety net — as well as a strong communal church, as PB observes in her follow-up thread.)

    Comment by fausto — June 11, 2008 #

65. Oh, and for the record: Joe was born in 1966. His sister Martha was born in 1971. The struggles his family has faced go back long before the 1980s.

    And bear in mind also that my sympathy for the non-wealthy comes from talking to Joe, who did grow up impoverished - whereas I did not.

    Maybe I had not made that quite clear enough. He just doesn’t have much time for blogs, otherwise he might just post here himself.

    Comment by Tracie the Red — June 11, 2008 #

66. No matter someone’s experiences, if they make a statement like:

    “_________________ people are two things: _______ first and people second”

    I’m inclined to call that bigotry, no matter what descriptor you put in the blanks, and I really don’t care what bad experiences with persons matching that descriptor you’ve had.

    CC

    Comment by Chalicechick — June 11, 2008 #

67. CC- thanks for your comments. I wanted to provide a similar perspective. When I was in graduate school, I saw many of my colleagues make a lifestyle decision to stay in southern california (wonderful place to live) but not as many jobs in my field with advanced degrees 20+ years ago as there are now. My husband and I made a difficult decision to relocate to midwest and to a good job in a low cost living area. If we had stayed in S.Ca, I know we could not have done as well economically as we did with the move. Cost of housing is so much lower, good schools, cultural opportunities. We do miss the coast, but go there on vacation (stay with family) when we can.

    Siblings have made choices to stay home with kids during their young years and forego using their education- a noble decision, but economically tough on their families. We are considered the “rich” ones, with not much thought on the hard choices that helped us get there. We also drive older (used) cars, live in a relatively modest home (to be able to afford vacations and saving for retirement, college, and donations to charity). We see others in our family and communities making different choices (no money to give to church or other charities, private schools when we live in a great public district, huge homes, new cars, really fancy vacations) and wonder at their choices. They either have family money, debt, or not much in savings for their future.

    We are lucky to have grown up in an educationally middle class environment (both grandparents and parents on my side went to college; his didn’t, but he did), somehow bred to have a strong work ethic which has served us well.

    I am glad to see this class issue explored. In our push for racial and sexual orientation/gender diversity, we haven’t dealt with it as well in our UU churches and should (imho). One of the reasons we chose our neighborhood is due to the class and racial diversity it has- we would not have been comfortable in a community with less diversity; and we wanted our kids to grow up with kids of different backgrounds and classes. This discomfort I think is from our lower middle class backgrounds growing up. Vacations were camping; we went out to eat only on your birthday; new clothes and shoes only at start of school and Easter. We didn’t lack food or fun and learned to cook and sew and make do more than I see our kids doing now. I feel more comfortable hanging out with others of my background- there is less pressure on how to dress, or keeping up with Jones’ as in higher class, more homogeneous neighborhoods.

    Comment by cincinnati mom — June 11, 2008 #

68. Just to be clear about some of my previous comments:

    I’m not criticizing the validity of Will’s personal life choices or his moral basis for making them. Those are his own choices and they have integrity.

    I’m not defending the status of “the rich” as a worthy social institution or stratum of society.

    I am, however, disagreeing with Will’s apparent belief that his personal moral views are exclusively and self-evidently valid, and just as applicable to the rest of society as to himself.

    I am offering as an alternative another ethical construct, dating back to antiquity, in which protecting oneself against future adversity, and avoiding becoming a burden to others to the extent feasible, is a moral responsibility rather than presumptively immoral.

    And I will criticize the hypothetical expectation (it exists in some quarters out there, although it hasn’t yet been directly raised here) that anyone else in society has a moral obligation to intervene and provide for someone who is perfectly able to provide adequately for himself, but prefers not to. In my view that attitude is just as selfish and entitled as that of the stingiest miser, and just as corrosive to the overall health of a society.

    Comment by fausto — June 11, 2008 #

69. Oh, and by all means I am saying that with increasing affluence comes an proportionately higher moral obligation to society.

    Comment by fausto — June 11, 2008 #

70. Fausto, would you be as reluctant to discuss class and hierarchy if we were talking about Southern slavers in 1850?

    The rich and the Jews are not equivalent groups. One is a social group; the other is an ethnic group.

    What’s unrealistic, I think, is to project your own voluntary and extremely unusual lifestyle choices as a morally and sociologically normative model for the entire lower- to upper-middle-class population of the nation.

    What I’ve accepted as a lifestyle in order to be a writer is one that is forced on 40% of Americans. It’s the lifestyle that you’re building your “realistic” life on. Do you think it’s right that 40% of Americans have none of the country’s wealth so you can be comfortable?

    Jesus understood the grasshopper story. See the story of the lilies of the field.

    But your analogy is false in our economy. Or do you think the 40% who have nothing don’t work? Do you think the people who clean your house and serve you at restaurants are doing that for fun?

    CC, love the Muppets! And I would like to think your friends’ kids are now part of your village.

    Fausto, your mention of “an effective social safety net̶