1. Poverty and Racism—Twin Oppressions
Rev. Barber of the Poor Peoples Campaign frequently opens his remarks with the following statistics:
One hundred and forty million people in this country are poor and have little or low-wealth. That’s 43% of the entire nation’s population.
Sixty-six million are poor Whites, which means 33.5% of the White population is poor or has low-wealth.
Twenty-six million are poor Blacks—which means 61% of all African Americans live in poverty or have low wealth.
So in terms of sheer numbers, many more individual White Americans will benefit from reducing poverty in America. But reducing poverty will benefit the entire population of Black Americans more because a higher percentage of the Black population is poor.
2. The Report for the Truth Commission on Poverty in WNY was prepared by the Poor People’s Campaign and other organizations in 2018. The Executive summary begins,
In 2016, Buffalo-Niagara’s poverty rate was 13.8 %, which is lower than the state rate of 14.7% and the national rate of 14%.
The region is not unusually poor, but it is unusually unequal in geographic and racial terms.
The 2016 poverty rate in Buffalo was 30.5%.
Deep poverty is even more concentrated in the city. Of households with incomes below $10,000, 48 % live in Buffalo.
The region’s poverty rate for African-Americans was 32.3 %, but for whites it was only 9.3%.
Only 14 % of the region’s white people live in areas of concentrated poverty, but 64 % of people of color do.
Tom Head, Professor of Economics at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, has written a Pendle Hill Pamphlet titled “Envisioning a Moral Economy.” The idea of a Moral Economy has been around for centuries, but the term Moral Economy doesn’t seem to reflect ethical economic behavior as much as political economic behavior where profit is prioritized over doing the right thing, and where individual wants and needs are prioritized over the common good.
In the 2016 Presidential campaign Bernie Sanders referred to “the need for a moral economy” to reduce wealth disparity. Envisioning an economy that works from an ethical “system of exchange… based on fair and equitable practices” is one definition of a moral economy, and it makes Sanders a lonely voice in presidential politics in this country.
Tom Head is a Quaker economist who believes we must help “bring a moral vision to economic life.” Relying on the discipline of formal economics, he says, is not the answer because it rarely sees itself as connected to morality and religion. If we want to build an economic system that benefits all, answers to questions about what is the “morally right thing to do?” must come from beyond the discipline of economics. We need economists to take that step beyond and envision how things ought to be. For example, “What might a good economy look like?”
Answering this question requires exploring “what ultimate needs the economy serves.” Head asks his readers to envision a good economy, and to use that vision to redesign the economy we have now. Throughout the Pendle Hill pamphlet he avoids “one best system” thinking. He does not say which of the two economies that are usually argued over is best, socialism or capitalism? Both are social inventions designed by us collectively. But he does believe the Gospel teaches us that “we are not independent, isolated individuals entitled to do whatever we please and to amass for ourselves however much we wish.”
For Head, recognizing “the delusion of a separate self” is necessary when trying to build a moral economy. Those of us who are economically comfortable must ask and answer truthfully “Why it is so for me? Why is it not so for others? And how is it all connected? … How will it be that all can come to experience life’s generosity?”
Head says John Woolman “sought truthful answers to economic questions, and he let those answers change his own economic choices.” ForWoolman, truth has implications for the true use of things. “Good, sensible, and fair economic practices emerge from spiritual knowledge about the true nature and purpose of life. …how life works, and how all of life is interconnected.”
In Head’s view the concept of enough plays a primary role in deciding if an economy is good. He asks: Does the economy speak to the need for every human being to have enough? While meeting basic needs is necessary, it is clearly not sufficient for Head. Everyone having enough may be close to his non-negotiable starting place “for establishing a moral economy.”
I’m grateful to Tom Head for sharing his views as an economist, a Quaker, a pacifist and a CO who asks, “What is the economic equivalent of being a conscientious objector?” And, “How does one apply for a discharge from this dreadful, distorted, and violent economy?” Declaring non-cooperation with an unjust system, he acknowledges is just one step; “but charting a new course boldly begins with first steps.”
While John Woolman and Tom Head were/are brave individuals that I deeply admire, they were/are individuals following their own intense desire to end the violence of slavery and war. Restructuring our economy to reduce the violence of poverty requires collective action and that means building a movement to secure everyone’s right to a moral economy.
How can a moral economy once envisioned be established? What opportunities do f/Friends’ have to participate in a movement for a moral economy? What local organizations are building a movement to understand and reform our current social and economic structure? Can we as f/Friends contribute to a moral economy movement by educating ourselves and others about our basic human economic as well as civil rights? I think it will be worth the effort to find out.