· --The
official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent — up from 14.3 percent in 2009.
This was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. Since 2007,
the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points, from 12.5 percent to
15.1 percent.
· --In 2010,
46.2 million people were in poverty, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth
consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty. (U.S Census Bureau)
The views held on economic justice depend greatly upon
the experience presented to one over the course of their lifetime. One of my earliest memories is reading an elementary
book about migrant workers in Florida. (I was reading in the back seat of our
car with my parents in front. We were
returning home from a Florida Methodist Annual Conference.) Living in rural areas, I have seen migrants working
in the fields with barely a subsistence level of income. I have seen them living in camps and have
empathized with their children in raggedly clothes who are constantly on the
move and out of regular school. Since
food is a necessity for everyone, the lesson this has always impressed on me is
that income distribution is not always just however much it may be “determined
by the market.” While migrant labor is
deemed essential, a wage adequate to maintain and advance their families is
not. I am cognizant of many “low end”
jobs all around me. These are extremely
low paying jobs with few or no benefits.
When the business cycle takes a downturn, they are the first to feel the
impact, not infrequently being laid off.
My life has also touched the lives of people who through no fault of
their own—because of disabilities, for example—cannot work but obviously must
have an income of some sort. In my view,
economic justice cannot be whatever the market determines for “the market” is made
up of individuals with prejudices and vested interests and is inherently
colored by its political cocoon. One
important lesson for me has arisen from an indelible fact—I was a witness to economic
discrimination against blacks. There is
no point in trying to convince me that market forces are pristinely mechanical
and outside the influence of attitudes, opinions, prejudices, assumptions, vested
interests, and—in short-hand—politics. There
is a very real reason for calling it a “political economy” and not merely “economy.” One cannot be truly free until one is free
from the want and fear of poverty.
Today I heard Andrew Young mention a phrase that I
cannot shake: “the evolution of freedom….”
To me, providing a laboratory for that is what America is all
about. No one will ever have all the
answers. But hopefully we will never
sacrifice our freedom, our responsibilities, and our sacred destiny on the altar
of a mechanical incarnation of “the market.”
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