Progressive Christians Uniting

An American Anti-Magnificat

With the Advent season upon us, it’s time to look again at why serious American Christians have no choice but to be part of the loyal opposition to the way our society is organized. None of this will be particularly new, but these numbers do show the particular harshness of prevailing trends. Why describe this as an “anti-Magnificat”? That’s easy. In Luke 2, Mary’s song presents as accomplished fact what the reign of God will do: “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

Um, quite clearly, lifting up the lowly is not what “Christian” America is about today. And our politics are certainly not about dethroning the powerful and wealthy. In this Advent 2006 the United States is singing a very different song. Here it is in numbers on income trends for the first half of this decade; the numbers were released last week by the IRS and well reported by David Cay Johnston in The New York Times on Nov. 28:

The Working Poor: The IRS says that the bottom fifth of U.S. taxpayers–some 26 million–made under $11,000 in 2004 and had an average income of $5,743–up 2.4 percent from 2000. A “taxpayer” can be a single individual or a couple with children, meaning that the poorest 60 million Americans–everyone covered by these 25 million tax returns–enjoyed an average income of less than $7 per day per person. (The official poverty line in 2004 was $27 for a single adult below retirement age.)

The Very Wealthy: Incomes at the very top–some 300,000 households–also slipped a bit between 2000 and 2004, but this group still reported significantly more income than the poorest 120 million Americans earned in 2004. The elite group increased its share of national income substantially over the period from 1979–the oldest year studied by the IRS. (In 1979 the top households received “only” about a third of the income of the big group at the bottom.)

A Disturbing Pattern: We often hear consoling numbers about overall income growth in the U.S., but this aggregate growth masks a horrendously uneven distribution. For example…

• the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers made 95 cents in 2004 for each dollar they made ini 1979: that is, over a period of 25 years their real income actually fell
• the next best off group–those between the 60th and 80th rungs on the ladder–moved upward over the period, but only by two cents, earning $1.02 in 2004 for every dollar they had earned in 1979
• only those in the top 5 percent had significant gains: those between the 95 and 99th rungs on the ladder saw their income rise by 53 percent over the period
• a full third of the aggregate growth in national income went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers–and more than half of that to the top tenth of 1 percent. Members of this super-elite group were making $3.48 in 2004 for every dollar they made in 2000. Moreover, the Bush tax cuts for the superrich meant that for each inflation-adjusted dollar they had after taxes in 1979, their 2004 equivalent was $3.94.

Mind you, this changes reflect income distribution in the United States, not wealth distribution, which is even more grotesquely unequal.

The Center on Budget and Polich Priorities in Washington has just published numbers that make the income inequities even starker. The Center says that the bottom 90 percent of all taxpayers had a 2 percent increase in income between 1990 and 2004, to an average 2004 income of $28,355 for this group; the top 1 percent of payers enjoyed a 57 percent increase, to an average of $940,441; and the top 0.1 percent enjoyed a surge of 85 percent, to an average 2004 income of $4,506,291.

A Question for Democrats: Will the Democrats, who talk a lot about rising inequality, actually do anything about it, now that they control the Congress? Do not, as they say, hold your breath! Corporate interests and the wealthy are now quicky redirecting the flow of huge sums of baksheesh to Democratic lobbyists and Democratic campaign funds. The Democrats, even those who spout a populist line, are very unlikely to bite the hands that feed them so well. 

Here are three tests that will show whether the Democrats are serious about addressing savage inequality in America:

1. Will they fight to maintain Sarbanes-Oxley regulations of financial markets, or will they go along with the gutting of Sarbanes-Oxley demanded by Wall Street and the Business Roundtable?
2. Will they roll back some of the Bush tax giveaways to the very wealthiest?
3. Will they fight for access to higher education for working-class and middle-class students by significantly raising the level of federal Pell Grants?

This last fight also needs to be waged at the state level, where Democrats made gains in state legislatures and in their share of governorships.

One of the least reported but most outrageous trends in the country is the increasing lack of college access facing qualified high-performing low-income students, many of whom no longer attend college at all. A recent report from the Education Trust, a nonpartisan foundation committed to education reform, points out that old compact under which public universities got tax subsidies in return for providing broad access has broken down. These universities have replaced traditional need-based financial aid formulas with so-called “merit” formulas that heavily favor students from very affluent homes.

In recent years, financial aid to students whose families earn more than $100,000 has more than quadrupled at major public universities. Today, the average institutional grant to students from such high-income families is actually larger than the average grant to students from low- or middle-income families.

What cheer this Christmas?

So, back at last to Advent’s promise of a just shalom, or reign of God.

Not surprisingly, given the trends cited above, sales of luxury items are already selling briskly this year. America’s well-off will be be basking in the sun or skiing the slopes when the holiday break comes around, while most of America’s everyday workers won’t be able to afford to miss a single day of work for pitiably low wages at jobs with no health care or retirement benefits. What gifts they are able to give this year will be paid for on already overstrained credit cards. And by the time they have finally paid for their Christmas giving–i.e., when April 15 rolls around again–they will be rendering a much larger share of their meager incomes to Caesar than will the privileged wealthy.

Christians who find this state of affairs to be “normal” or even commendable are seriously out of touch with their own texts, not to mention the example and teaching of the one whose birth they will celebrate on Dec. 25.

What’s the name of that lovely Bach cantata that one often hears performed in Advent? Ah yes: “Sleepers Awake!”

                                                                                        - Peter Laarman

Posted under: Director's Cut, Happening in the World