Author: JenniferFitz

Nice post at Darwin Catholic on the habit of thinking large government programs are the best way to handle social problems.

Something that concerns me with large American-government programs, is that we tend to be too rich about it. We spend money we don’t have, hence the huge national debt. I’ve noticed in contrast that when help is provided by immediate friends and neighbors:

1) Recipients expect less, and seek to do more for themselves first

2) Donors have a better sense of what they can and can’t afford

–> this even though the giving can be downright sacrificial.

It is hard to ignore needs that are right in front of us, and easier to evaluate them. When the donor is our friend or neighbor, we are more aware of the sacrifice they are making.

But privately-provided mutual aid depends on us knowing each other. In a society where we don’t really live with each other, such a system simply can’t be. We can’t know each other’s needs, because our lives are too separated. And when our lives are separated from one another, it is harder, logistically, to provide for a need even if we know of it and want to help.

As I understand it, the Amish communities that Darwin cites really do live together. They work, socialize, recreate and worship all with the same people. I don’t think every element of Amish culture needs to be re-created in order for wider American society to depend more on mutual assistance and less on governmental programs. But I do think that particular aspect of community life is absolutely essential.

On a related note, Jim Curly at Bethune Catholic has a post up about Chesterton, automobiles, and small farmers. Another piece of the same puzzle.

Squeamishness

Next week I’m going to be putting up a review of Chiara Frugoni’s book A Day in a Medieval City. One of my cautions about that book is that it includes a number of very graphic images (all period) of the brutality of that era. She focuses on Italy in the late medieval period, and from reports I’ve heard elsewhere, it was a particularly nasty moment in the history of warfare. It was in reading this book that today’s topic came together.

***

When Mr. Boy was preparing for his first holy communion, the question of eucharistic miracles arose. We looked up a few, and as often happens when learning about miraculous events of the past, I found myself asking, “Why no more? Why then and not now?” I contented myself with the standard response, that God will send what is needed to those who need it, and if those miracles were what would really help our faith today we would have it, so on and so forth.

More careful thinking gave me another answer: Because it would make us vomit.

You can believe in the assorted miracles associated with the holy eucharist or not (regardless of whether you are catholic), but the sordid truth is undeniable: we are squeamish people these days, not of the type to find our faith fortified by seeing the sacred host turn into a slab quivering flesh and blood.

For the average American today, exposure to gore tends to be an all or nothing prospect. Either you’re in one of the corpse-tending professions, or you aren’t. Either you deal with raw sewage for a living, or you don’t deal with it all. The occasional small farmer excepted, slaughtering animals is either what you do all day long, or what you expect to be long since completed before ever your dinner makes its way to grocery cart.

When we look at history, it is important to remember this. We who live the sanitized life are the exception, not the rule, to the human experience. We’re kidding ourselves if we think every one else throughout the millenia were the ones who were so disgusting; rather we should remember that our special label in history is going to be “those really wimpy people”.

I sometimes think our underexposure to gore – in particular, the shortage of brutality that we modern americans run into in day to day life – is a good thing. Perhaps because we are more sensitive to the yuckier parts of human existence, we are more sensitive to human suffering, and thus more compassionate, more peaceful, more kind to others. But lately I think not.

Rather I think that we’ve gotten ourselves into the habit of whitewashing. It isn’t that we mind abortion – and now torture – it’s that we don’t want to see images of it. So long as these practices are hidden from view and referred to with euphemisms, the same way we use modern plumbing and clever nicknames to gloss over our excretory functions, we are, as a society, really okay with them. The offensive person is not the one who supports the right to abortion or torture, but the person who has the nerve to discuss what those procedures actually entail.

There is an important distinction here for those of us who enjoy studying history: the acceptance of brutal practices, verses the acceptance of the viewing of that same brutality. If two societies both rejoice in the executing of enemies, it doesn’t make much difference whether the one rejoices at what happens in a discreet prison room far from view, and the other rejoices when it happens in the public square where everyone can see. Either we execute our enemies or we don’t; either we derive a certain pleasure from it, or we don’t; whether or not our stomachs are strong enough to view the actions we so approve is rather besides the point.

If we can be honest with ourselves about our own societal weakness, we can have more compassion on our ancestors and their particular versions intolerable brutality. Not to excuse them, but to see their world through their eyes and at least have a little pity on them, the way hopefully they are having pity on us.

Structures of Justice

The Living Wage – Structures of Justice

From CCC 2425: Regulating the economy soley by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it soley by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.” (CA34). Reasonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to the common good, is to be commended.

In the land of social justice activists, sometimes the terms “just structures” or “structures of justice” gets thrown about. And when I used to hear those terms, good student of classical economics that I was, I would shudder. Because I was certain – certain – that what the speaker really meant was “we should all be socialists”.

Now the sordid truth is that sometimes – sometimes — talk about “structures of justice” really is codespeak for “You should pass this disasterous piece of legislation that sounds good but is completely divorced from reality and will harm us more than it helps us.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way. And the purpose of this article is to look at what a “structure of justice” might be, and how it fits into a morally sound, economically efficient society.

So what is a “structure of justice”? For our purposes today, a “structure of justice” is anything that is: a) firmly established by society b) that is actually *optional* and c) that changes the balance of the social and economic system.

a) “Firmly established” because it is, after all, a “structure”. It can be a legal structure, such as the tax code or the right to vote, or a physical structure, such as a bridge or a hospital.

b) “Optional”: We often fall into the rut of thinking that because something exists, it must exist. We currently fund the public hospital via property taxes, therefore we *must* fund the public hospital through taxes, and we must have *property* taxes to do it with. Not so. Hospitals can be privately funded, or publicly funded through some other system. Another example, laws against homicide: Now we really must have a law against homicide, nothing optional about that. But we are in no way required to have the exact particular organizational structure and funding system for enforcing that law that currently exists in our community. We could do things differently, and that would . . .

c) . . . change our society. We tend to think of “how things are now” as being “neutral”. No, no. This is the great blind spot of “laissez-faire” economics – the notion that you can somehow have a neutral set of laws and institutions. The various structures we have in place in our society right now are having a constant impact on how our society is – what it is like to live here, who benefits, who suffers, all of that. What we have now is not neutral, and we cannot get to netural. There is no such thing as an economy or a government that is “hands off”, that lets society run its “natural course”. No such thing. Every government, or lack thereof, has its impact.

Here’s an example:

Sidewalks

Where I live, there are almost zero sidewalks. Therefore, children who are zoned to “walk” to the local public school, do not have a safe way of getting to and from school. People who are unable to drive a car for whatever reason (financial, physical, etc) do not have a safe way of getting around town. Even where there are sidewalks, wheelchair (and stroller, and children’s bicycle . . .) accesibility varies from poor to horrendous. How does this change things?:

-Even if you live within walking distance of the place you want to go, you cannot walk there.

-Therefore, you must drive a car.

-Therefore, in order to participate in ordinary social functions such as shopping, working, going to school, visiting friends and relatives, you must be able to afford your own car, and be able to drive it, or find someone to drive it for you.

-Because everyone drives everywhere, obesity and its resulting health problems are becoming widespread. (And because there are few places to walk safely, it can be quite difficult to get out for exercise.)

-Because everyone drives everywhere, pollution is a problem.

-Because businesses must provide large amounts of parking for customers, it is more expensive to operate a business.

-Because businesses must provide large amounts of parking for customers, all the resulting asphalt creates storm water drainage problems.

-Because of all the pavement, our commercial districts tend to be about 10 degrees hotter in the summer than what our normal climate ought to be. Which means we spend more energy on air-conditioning to compensate.

-Because many people must walk (because they cannot drive or cannot afford to drive), even though there is no safe place for them to do so, a certain number of pedestrians are killed every year by motor vehicles. [Though as it happens, in our city, once the proper number of school children have been killed, the local government will, eventually, put in a sidewalk for the survivors.]

Now before you get too excited about my sidewalk rant, let’s reverse it.

Roads:

-Provide us a way to move large quanities of goods efficiently.

-Allows emergency vehicles to access the community quickly and efficiently.

-Allow citizens to travel longer distances with more flexibility than either mass transit or walking and cycling permit.

-Therefore local neighborhoods can remain more stable, even as economic conditions fluctuate – you don’t need to move if you get a job across town, you can reasonably hope to commute. Both spouses can work outside the home without needing to find jobs that are in the immediate area. [Mass transit does this to a certain extent, but tends to favor certain routes, and tends to offer less flexibility than an expansive road network.]

-Makes it possible for institutions [churches, schools, dentists, grocery stores] to set up a single location from which to serve people from a wide geographic area.

You could build your own examples. For example, how does your local property tax structure change the incentives for holding onto different types of real estate? If you had to pay tuition to attend your local public school, would it change your educational choices? [Most of my catholic friends send their children to public schools, which are already ‘paid for’. I balk at high parochial school tuition myself.] What about if there were no public library? [As a homeschooler, I’d be sunk. I live for that place.]

—> The point is this: As a community we tend to fall into the assumption that how things are now is how they have to be, and that any change is ‘extra’. In reality, how things are now is how we are actively choosing them to be.

Now what does this have to do with a living wage?

This: Structures of justice are going to change the living wage. If your workers must own a car in order to get to and from work, you are going to have to pay them more than if they can walk or bike to work. If your local land use policies discourage local agriculture, food prices are going to be a lot more sensitive to fuel prices – which means that when fuel prices go up, the living wage will go up, even if food production itself is not affected.

And in this way, the living wage provides something of a feedback loop. Say, for example, that the local laws lend themselves to concentrating most land ownership into the hands of a few wealthy landowners. Well in that case, employers are going to have to include in their living wage income to cover relatively high rents for their employees’ housing. (Monopolies and oligopolies tend to charge somewhat higher prices.) Which gives employers an incentive to change the local legal structure to encourage more small property owners, so that the wages employers must pay can be lower.

–> When employers are obligated to pay a living wage (whether by law, by social pressure, or by personal moral conviction), a kind of solidarity develops between employer and employee. And then the most basic economic force – personal self interest – can do its job to wake us up to which structures in our society are helping us, and which need to be changed.

July is here, time for me to start putting up new articles.  Since tomorrow’s the first Friday, look for an economics article.  Topic will be “structures of justice”, and will tie into the living wage articles I’ve put up from my old blog.  Forecast is for the article to go up later in the day rather than sooner, so smart money says plan to come read Saturday morning.

See you then.

****

Hey and here’s the tentative schedule of articles for whole month – subject to change, but I don’t think it will:

First Friday, Economics: Structures of Justice

Second Friday, History: Squeamishness

Third Friday, Book Review: _A Day in a Medieval City_ by Chiara Frugoni

Fourth Friday, Education: Surprising Foreign Language Helps

The Living Wage: What is it? – pulled from old blog

The last of my old living wage articles, originally posted: October 30, 2007

A question that seems to come up frequently in living wage discussions is “What is the living wage?” This is sometimes used as a (poor) rhetorical device, tossed out desperately, as if to say the fabled concept is unknowable, and therefore not worthy of debate.

Or the question is sometimes used to suggest that the “living wage” being advocated has a meaning so rediculous (McMansions, SUV’s, a television in every pot) that those who propose it are some kind of bizzare breed that answers the question of, “What do you get when you cross a socialist busybody with a greedy materialist?”.

But it is also a question that can be asked sincerely, and deserves as sincere an answer.

***

First some thoughts about poverty. I have seen the “what is poverty?” philosophy from the pen of people who elsewhere have proven they really do know poverty when they see it. And there, I saw two types of confusion. First, confusing relative poverty with absolute poverty. Secondly, confusing happiness, contentment, or even resignation, with adequacy.

I think the church teaching on the living wage deals primarily with absolute poverty, not relative poverty. It isn’t about whether a worker can only afford one coat in a society where the norm is to own half a dozen. It is primarily about making sure the worker can purchase the coat he needs.

As we have seen in previous posts, the living wage does not rest with paying “the market rate”. It follows that however much a worker may be willing offer his suffering joyfully, and find happiness in life even when deprived of basic needs, the church does not allow employers to therefore pay suffering-inducing wages.

Likewise, we cannot say the worker earns an adequate living merely because he earns as much as anyone in his position always has earned. If generations before him also shivered in the cold for lack of a coat, that does not mean we of this generation are excused from paying coat-wages.

***

Because the living wage deals with specific, objective human needs, it is not all that difficult to make a good approximation of what constitutes a living wage. Let us look, for example, at what kind of housing a living wage ought to be able to purchase:

Adequate housing is the kind that keeps out dangerous animals and holds up to reasonably-expected weather conditions. It needn’t be flood-proof if it is built in an area that last flooded at the time of Noah; it needn’t have its own heat supply if located in a climate where the sun provides all the heat a family could want. But yes, in an earthquake zone, it ought to be built so as to not kill its inhabitants when the earthquakes come, nor to leave them homeless afterwards. There ought to be easy access to safe drinking water, and a means of safely disposing of human waste. And so forth.

The exact construction details are going to vary from place to place. But if you live or travel in that place (as you would, if you had employees there), you could figure this out fairly readily. If you needed to, you could rely on the ever-useful “what if it were me?” questions. “What kind of housing would I need, if I were one of my workers, and lived in this place?”

And once you know what it is your workers’ wages must pay for, the calculation may be tedious, but it is doable. It is not so difficult to find out what local rents are, and see what sort of housing those rents buy. The amount of rent (or mortgage payment) it takes to inhabit safe, decent housing, that is the amount a living wage needs to cover.

The calculation is the same for the other human needs. How much does it cost to purchase clothing? To buy nutritious foods? For safe transportation?

The living wage is, in this respect, terribly simple. Financial advisors are forever telling people to make a budget for personal expenses; the living wage is the bottom line of an adequate but frugal budget.

This is the kind of the thing the local Better Business Bureau could publish. An accounting firm – the same one that audits your financial statements, for example – easily has the skills to put together such an analysis. Chances are the workers in question have a fairly good idea themselves, too.

***

I don’t say that living wage calculations are an exact science; people can reasonably disagree over the precise bottom line. Witness the wide variety of housing that Habitat for Humanity builds around the world. Some of that variation must represent a margin of error, or a range of disagreement, in calculating a living wage. (Or in habitat’s case, what a living wage would buy, if it were paid – Habitat’s clients are the working poor).

But Christianity isn’t a math test. I can’t imagine that on Judgment Day Jesus is going to turn to one business owner and say, “You paid your workers too much! Who needs sneakers when sandals will do?!” and to another, “You paid too little! Anyone born after 1970 was supposed to have air-conditioning!”

On the other hand, it isn’t unreasonable to fear hearing our Savior ask, “What part of ‘the children shouldn’t have to play in untreated sewage’ didn’t you understand?”

The essential thing is that we make the effort required, and make it in good faith. And then that we carry it out. Better to be off by 5%, but to pay the wage, than to not bother in the first place for fear of an honest error.

***

This moral burden falls first of all to business owners and managers. In a lesser it way, consumers, too, need to do what they can to support the living wage. The government’s part is to put into place those “structures of justice” that support, rather than undermine, this moral imperative.

Asking “What exactly is a living wage?” is a legitimate question, for those who mean to find, and live out, the answer. A good catholic can have doubts about what role minimum-wage laws should play in it all, or agree to disagree about what sort of meals a worker ought to be able to afford. But the question ought not be used as an excuse for rejecting the moral teaching the church. Rather, because the question can be answered, it behooves us to see it answered and implemented.

the compartmentalized life

Trying again on this post, too, to express myself clearly. What I meant to say was:

-We modern americans tend to compartmentalize our lives. We live, work, shop, learn, and worship all in separate places. Because of the way our communities tend to be physically built, we literally travel great distances to go to these different life functions.

-When we try to build up our parish community, we are therefore fighting a very big battle.

–> This is because we have to plan special activities that get people to leave their normal life and go join the parish life. Church is one more place you have to travel to. The church community isn’t also the people you work, shop, learn & play with — it is separated from the rest of your life in both time and space.

-People who are unable to attend the special activities (for whatever reason — disability or other) are thus unable to participate in the parish community.
–> So long as we tend to live a geographically compartmentalized life, building the church community is always going to be a struggle. And it is always going to be especially difficult to include in the community those people who are unable to navigate the physical distances required. (Likewise, those who can’t navigate the time requirements, due to odd work schedules, etc.)

It is always going to be easy to simply “lose” those members, because they are going to be invisible to the parish, hidden away as they are, someplace other than the parish activities.

I’m not sure if this clearer or not, but at least it isn’t quite so grouchy. In any case, it wasn’t supposed to be one of the topics of this blog. Everyone will breathe a deep sigh of relief when the regular schedule starts up.

Inclusion at church

Ruth at Wheelie Catholic lays it all out: Why everyone ought to be included in parish life, and how to make it happen.

I’ve edited my initial reaction. Too grumpy. What I was actually trying to say:

I agree entirely with Ruth. I also think there is a deeper problem with the way our church communities are built. The difficulties facing disabled catholics are in many ways just part of a larger problem. (Well, several larger problems — Ruth has since written about “fighting to get out the front door”. But at least some of the issues disabled catholics deal with, other folks are suffering from, too.)

Also it should be observed that no one intends it to be this way — many people are working very hard to build up their parish community, and they deserve a lot of credit for their efforts.

And I’m going to stop there, lest I lapse back into my grumpiness, which won’t do anybody any good. My sympathy if you subject to the original rant.

The Living Wage: Is something better than nothing? – from my old blog

2nd in the series, again just for background. Originally posted august 18, 2007:

A common justification for not paying workers a living wage goes something like this: “If I didn’t hire these people, they would be unemployed. It is better for them to have something, even if it is not an ideal wage, than to have nothing at all.”

I didn’t see any treatment of the “something is better than nothing” argument in the Catechism; the Church is emphatic about the need to pay workers a living wage. The Catechism does list several factors that employers must take into account when setting wages, and one of those is the “state of the business” (CCC 2434).

There are situations in which the state of the business might not allow employers to pay a living wage. Imagine, for example, if our family farm (previous post) were to suffer a dust bowl or a depression. The farm operates at a loss; even the owners are living on less than they need. Certainly in that scenario, the owners are not guilty of any injustice if they are unable to pay their workers a living wage — they cannot pay themselves a living wage!

But one cannot use the “state of the business” clause to justify paying inadequate wages under “business as usual” conditions. When the farm recovers from this temporary calamity, or the various workers find some other more profitable line of work, it is understood that the return to normalcy includes all workers earning a living wage.

This is a radical way of thinking for corporate America (and corporate elsewhere), where the market price is considered the acceptable wage under all conditions. There are many firms today which are reporting profits to shareholders, and paying sizable salaries to management, but which are not paying all workers a living wage.

The church tells us this is not acceptable. To say that a company which acts this way is “building the economies of the developing world” would be like saying that a parent who indulges himself while feeding his child concentration-camp rations is “helping his child grow”.

I think the Church is asking us to do something that is both radically big and very very small.

To pay a living wage, even if that wage is higher than the going market rate, is a big change. It costs. It means a company cannot rely on the investment capital of those whose idea of “normal” is to pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits, no matter how little those wages are. It likely means owners and managers must sacrifice some of their own salary in order to ensure all workers can earn a living.

On the other hand, making sure your workers can have food and shelter and clothing — how much is that too ask? Would you consider it unreasonable to ask your own employer for enough of a salary to provide for your basic needs? The moral mandate of the living wage boils down to common decency.

Under normal business conditions, the “something is better than nothing” argument is deceitful and cruel. It is an excuse to take advantage of other people’s vulnerability and poor bargaining power, in order to grow rich at their expense. Is it hard to pay a living wage? In a time and a place when the wider culture says it is normal not to pay one, yes, it is hard to go against that practice. But it isn’t meant to be. The living wage ought to be business-as-usual.

The Living Wage: An example to illustrate the concept – from my old blog

Originally posted on my old blog, August 8, 2007:

I find it easier to understand economic (and accounting) concepts by beginning with small — though realistic — scenarios. So here I am opening with a possible living wage scenario, but an intentionally uncomplicated one.

Also, I am at this time making no prescriptions. So nobody get huffy and tell me that I don’t understand the implications of minimum wage laws or what is wrong with our welfare system or any of that. If you must know, my personal opinion is that the living wage issue is far more pressing in certain other countries than it is in the United States. We have social justice problems here, of that I am sure. But primarily they are, in my opinion, of a somewhat different (though related) type.

But today, living wage. And just an introduction to what it seems to be about. That’s all. If it isn’t helpful, other people might have something more useful to you elsewhere.

****

Imagine you own a farm. Some of your produce directly feeds your family, and then you sell your excess crops to purchase those things you don’t make yourself. In addition to yourself and your family members, you employ some hired hands to assist you in the work. It’s going well — you and your family have all that you need and enjoy a few extras as well. You consider yourself a successful farmer.

Now one of your hired hands is a guy named Bob, and he’s an ordinary local guy, a good enough worker. He does work that you need done around the farm — if Bob didn’t do it, someone else would have to do it instead. Bob works hours that everyone agrees are “full time”.

You pay Bob the going wage. You comply with all the relevant laws regarding his employment. Bob is happy — even grateful– to have the job you give him, for the pay you offer. Part of your view of the success of the farm is having good workers like Bob who are happy to work for you.

Now imagine that Bob, who does all that you expect of him, and who earns a wage that everyone agrees is fair, does not make enough money. The wage you pay him is not enough to pay for Bob’s basic needs. We aren’t saying “Bob can’t afford an MP3 player” or “Bob can’t eat steaks every week”. Bob’s wages force him to choose between, say, owning a pair of socks, or having a bowl of beans and rice for dinner — he can have one or the other, but not both. If he manages to have both, it is by the charity of others.

Furthermore, it is not some extraordinary personal expense that is causing this problem. His counterparts on the other local farms all share his plight. As a result they, like Bob, suffer physical loss — the toll of inadequate nutrition, shelter, clothing, and so forth. Some kind of aid program is required in order to supplement the farm workers’ wages so that their basic needs are met.

***

The essence of the catholic social teaching on the living wage is this: You, the farm owner, cannot count yourself as sucessful, if your success depends on someone else’s deprivation.

CCC 2427: “The development of economic activity and growth in production are meant to provide for the needs of human beings”. An economic activity which is pursued without meeting that end simply is not a successful economic activity.

CCC 2434: “Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages.” The fact that Bob, and his counterparts elsewhere, agree to the wage, does not mean that you, the farm owner are on solid moral ground.

This doesn’t mean you have to run the farm at a loss. CCC 2432: “Those responsible for business enterprises . . . have an obligation to consider the good of persons and not only the increase of profits. Profits are necessary, however. They make possible the investments that ensure the future of a business and they guarantee employment.”

But what it does mean is that you the owner are wrong to be taking home profits for your own consumption, above and beyond your own legitimate needs, if it means leaving your workers to go without basic necessities as a result.

****

Catholic social teaching is, therefore, radically different than the going assumption in the wider culture, that if it’s legal and mutually consented to, it is acceptable.

The reality is that inadequate wages cause physical harm. Poor nutrition, exposure to the elements, unclean water supplies, all these things lead to disease and death. So if your profit model depends on some of your workers not being able to afford the essentials of life, your profit model depends on literally harming another person. That’s wrong. Even if your workers live far away, and are used to this suffering, and everyone else in their city suffers the same and always has — no, you may not profit off their willingness to suffer.

And I think that’s about the heart of it.