Mind the Gap: The Increasing Economic Divide
By Rev. Michael Piazza

The phrase “Mind the Gap” has long been a part of the corporate psyche of the residents of London. Some years ago, however, I was at lunch with a rather wealthy woman in Dallas, and our waiter had the phrase “Mind the Gap” on his t-shirt. This woman, who has traveled all over the world, repeatedly thought the shirt referred to the gap in the waiter’s teeth. It was then that I realized that she had never heard the phrase because she had never ridden the Tube, or any other form of mass transit for that matter. This became, for me, a powerful symbol of the growing social and cultural gap in our country fueled by the diminishing middle class.

The gap between the poor and the rich is such that the two no longer speak a common language or share a common reality. Their expectations about government services, taxation and political representation no longer even have shared hopes. Increasingly, the dreams of the social classes are so different that they are becoming mutually exclusive.

In the forward to the book Inequality Matters, Bill Moyers writes, most eloquently:

Some things are worth getting mad about ... The House of Representatives, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate, political, and religious right, has approved new tax credits for children. NOT for poor children, but for families earning as much as $309,000 a year—the very families that have already been showered with tax cuts. The editorial page of the Washington Post calls this “bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You’d think they’d be embarrassed,” the Post says. “But they’re not.”

Moyers goes on to talk about Washington politicians’ total lack of shame despite the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrialized nation, or that millions of workers are making less money in terms of real dollars than 20 years ago. He writes:

Astonishing as it seems, scarcely anyone in official Washington seems to be troubled by a gap between rich and poor that is greater than it has been in half a century—and greater than that of any other Western nation today. Equality and inequality are words that have been all but expunged from the political vocabulary.

I grew up in a lower-middle class household in the South. For the first 10 years of my life, my family often qualified for government assistance, but we were too proud to ask for help. We were taught implicitly and explicitly that, if we wanted to move up the economic ladder, the key was hard work and a good education. It turned out to be a successful formula for me. Today, however, that formula no longer works for many people. “New York Times” columnist Bob Herbert, writing in the June, 6, 2005 edition, says:

Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and sprinting off with the nation's bounty.

We have become a nation where, more and more, “winner takes all” is the rule; a nation in which there is little or no value among our leaders for maintaining a healthy cultural equilibrium. The only possible explanation for continued under-funding of public education is that our leaders have a greater investment in creating a permanent underclass than they do in the prosperity of all citizens. Under the euphemism “no child left behind,” the funding of public education repeatedly has been cut, ensuring that more and more children would, in fact, be left behind. Inevitably, the children hardest hit are urban and children of color.

In the United States the wealthiest 1 percent owns more than the bottom 95 percent combined. In school we learned about castles and palaces surrounded by the hovels of the peasant class. Yet, our nation now has the greatest disparity of wealth in the entire industrialized world. This disparity has grown dramatically, and, given the tax cuts and corresponding cuts in social services of recent years, that disparity will only grow. Corporate profits have soared while real wages have remained stagnate since 1978. This reality has been obscured by the fact that two-income households are now the absolute norm. It is now impossible for a middle-class woman or man to choose to be a homemaker or stay-at-home-parent. Infants and the elderly who were once cared for by their families are now being warehoused in institutions.

In 1970 the average CEO earned 30 times more than the lowest paid employee in their company. In 2005, according to “Fortune Magazine,” the average CEO earned more than 400 times than the lowest paid. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, has created a new dynasty of billionaires while leaving the largest body of employees without living wages or health care. Wal-Mart is the largest provider of working poor dependent on public hospitals for health care. In almost every small town in America, Wal-Mart has succeeded in shutting the doors of thousands of smaller businesses. The result is that employment options are fewer, just as the options for shopping are. The cultural changes are incalculable, but leading the list is the loss of a community connection that cared for the sick and helped the poor.

This is just a brief description of the economic state of affairs in the United States. Poverty is a much bigger issue, but beginning the conversation focusing on the inequity of our own national economy seemed a bit more comprehensible. Before we can tackle poverty on a global scale, we must facilitate a shift of our national values.

The true religion of Americans is capitalism. We have more unexamined devotion to that concept than to God, Jesus or Allah. It is impossible in this country to even raise the possibility that there may be a better way. Capitalism has succeeded in making this country the wealthiest in the world, but at what price? Jesus was the one who asked, “What does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your own soul?” Who have we become if we are a nation that decreasingly cares for the poorest and most vulnerable among of us? What kind of people sell health (and health care)? We withhold health care from those who cannot pay and sentence them to death while their loved children and loved ones watch helplessly. I am not suggesting that capitalism is inherently evil; I am echoing the warning of the Bible of the danger to our souls of making money our god and capitalism our religion.

I have often said to my congregations that if we really want to know the truth about what kind of people we are we need to look at our checkbook and our calendar. How we spend our time and our money tells the truth about us, regardless of our self-delusion. In the same way, the Federal Budget speaks the truth about what kind of country we have become. We have seen decreases in the money we invest in basic education (-13%), housing (-12%), veteran’s medical care (-13%), higher education (-20%), the environment (-22%), among others. Despite these cuts, the federal deficit has soared. Why? More than one-third (36%) of the deficit has been generated by tax cuts that have gone disproportionately to the wealthiest among us. The top 1 percent will pay $900 billion less in taxes over the first ten years of the tax cuts; those households with incomes exceeding $1 million annually will receive more than $600 billion of that total. They receive a tax savings that averages about $136,000 per year, while the average middle-class taxpayer saves about $15 per week ($650 per year). This misdistribution of wealth has been pursued with the patriotic pride of capitalist fundamentalists.

Ironically, it seems that responsibility for these values lies mostly with people of faith. In particular, the American Church needs to be called back to caring for the poor and valuing an equitable society. It is as basic and obvious as the principle that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yet, it is even more foundational than that. According to the Bible, there are to be no poor people living among the people of God. Some of our politicians seem to think that means we ought to keep the poor out of our country, or perhaps let them die off. One billionaire, who claims Christ as his role model and who ran for president said, when I suggested he might use his wealth in charitable ways, “I believe in the survival of the fittest. Charity only encourages the poor to stay poor.”

The Bible talks copiously, and in great detail, about how the people of God must care for the poor. Deuteronomy 15:4 plainly says, “There will be no poor among you.” The book of Acts gives this description of the communal life of the early church:

And there was not a needy person among them for as many as owned houses or lands sold them and brought the proceeds...and it was distributed to each as any had need.
Acts 4:34-35

What has been described here and elsewhere is a community of compassion where all are cared for, not by the government, but by the people of faith. What I think we can reasonably expect from our government is equitable treatment that does not hinder those seeking to build a better life for themselves and their families. Jesus was clear that, while it is our individual responsibility, caring for “the least” must also be our national priority.

A careful reading of Matthew 25, in which Jesus reminds us that how we treat the least we treat him, reveals two important but often neglected truths. First, this is a parable of judgment. It is a clear statement about the basis on which we will be judged. While that may be seen in apocalyptic terms, I personally believe it is a warning of what will happen to us if we neglect basic human values. Is there any doubt that we are becoming increasingly separated from God? The second reality often missed in this passage is found in Matthew 25:31. There, Jesus is clear that this judgment is passed upon NATIONS who neglect the sick, the poor, the prisoners and those considered least.

What I think God expects of people of faith is that we care for one another with such tender compassion that poverty is not an issue. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of talking about what he called “the Beloved Community.” I think it was essentially what Jesus meant when he talked about the Kingdom, or Reign, of God. It is the state in which prophets and dreamers see humanity treating one another with absolute humanity.

There are many barriers to this Beloved Community, to God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. The most tragic barrier has been the Church. Nothing can be more anti-Christ than for people of faith to:

• drive by the poor and avert their eyes;
• care more for the reduction of one’s own taxes than for the care of those in need;
• pretend health care is not an issue because we have adequate health insurance;
• send our children or grandchildren to private or suburban schools and abandon the poor to an inferior education that will doom them to permanent poverty.

Any set of values that pursues self-care and enrichment over the care of the least is clearly anti-Christ, at least that is how I read Matthew 25.