Musings

Social and Spiritual Capital

(Re: my recent article about the "Burklo Limit", see Warren Buffet's recent op-ed piece in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html )

One major value of religion is its tendency to build social capital for people, creating networks of relationships that sustain them in both practical and spiritual ways.  Religious congregations are extended families that increase the “surface area” of a person’s contact with the rest of the world.  “Coffee hour” after worship often has a bigger positive impact than the sermon that precedes it, as people serve each other with listening ears, offering practical help as they mingle.  As a pastor, I practice what I call “power coffee hour”, working hard to connect with as many of the church members as possible during that time, so I can get a sense of the needs of the congregation, and also introduce people to each other. 

In his famous book, “Bowling Alone”, sociologist Robert Putnam argues that as people participate less in local institutions in America, they suffer a loss of social capital.   The churches, mosques, and temples in America are among the few neighborhood-based organizations that buck the trend.   Saul Alinsky, the “godfather” of community organizing in the U.S., was not a religious person, but his first stops in his organizing projects were at local houses of worship. 

I have witnessed the remarkable power of religious communities to bring social capital to bear on behalf of their members.  Certain kinds of congregations are particularly good at bringing low-income, isolated people into a milieu in which they benefit tremendously from contact with fellow congregants who have the connections they need to get ahead.  It is as if they’ve stepped into an updraft as they enter the door of the church or temple or mosque, and find themselves swept toward job contacts, vital information about services and resources, and good role models to follow toward creating better lives.

To some degree, this updraft of social capital is accidental, an unintended consequence of congregational life.  But I believe it helps a lot to be intentional about it.   I teach public policy in the graduate school of Social Work at USC, and in my classes I constantly mix up the students in different small subgroups.  Part of my purpose is to get them to engage more intensely and personally with the topics of the course.  But another purpose is to encourage them to get to know each other.  Part of the course is an exploration of the topic of social capital, so it's best that I practice what I preach in class!

Mario Luis Small, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, wrote “Unanticipated Gains”, a study of child care centers.  He identified them as surprisingly powerful engines for building social capital in neighborhoods.  He noted that not all centers were equal in the degree to which they brought parents together in networks of friendship.  The centers that expected or required parents to work together in such activities as fundraising and field trips with kids were much more effective at building social capital. 

Organizations of all kinds can make the creation of social capital an important part of their missions.  How can we structure all institutions in such a way that they will serve in the formation of friendships and webs of mutual support among the people whose lives they touch?  How have you, or organizations in which you've been involved, helped to create social capital, whether intentionally or by happy accident?

Is God a Christian?

Is God a Christian?
by R. Kirby Godsey
Mercer University Press, 2011
Review by Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California

In 1996, R. Kirby Godsey was president of Mercer University in Georgia, which was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.  He had just published a book called “When We Talk About God, Let’s Be Honest”, which declared that the Bible was not inerrant.  For this he was hauled before 3,000 members of the Georgia Baptist Convention of the SBC and condemned and censured.  Shortly after that, Mercer University and the SBC severed their ties.

Godsey remains a thorn in the side of fundamentalists, as is evidenced by the reaction by Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, against Godsey’s new book, “Is God a Christian?”  “This book is an unmitigated theological disaster,” says Mohler on his website.  Albert Mohler was part of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC: he is now effectively the Pope of the Southern Baptists.  The old Baptist principle of individual interpretation of scripture, dating back to Roger Williams, was thrown out and replaced with a fixed dogma, which all SBC institutions were forced to endorse.
 
Godsey offers a strikingly different definition of Christianity than Mohler’s.  “We do not become Christians by adopting certain beliefs or following certain moral prescriptions.  Christianity is not a formula for getting to heaven… The Christian faith transforms our understanding and relationship with God, enabling us to experience that our being bears the imprint of God…” (p 109) 

The book is a beautifully-written essay promoting religious pluralism from a Christian perspective.  Much of it is an argument against fundamentalism in all religions, and an argument for openness, toleration, and compassion within and among the world’s faiths.  The book offers brief introductions to the world’s religions, praising their positive contributions, and pointing out the limitations of some of their expressions.

Kirby Godsey speaks for and to Christians who are in recovery from doctrines that do not reflect the compassion of the Christ.  He is committed to Jesus Christ and to the Christian church.  He explains that he’s not a “relativist”:  “…rejecting exclusivity does not require abandoning our commitments.”  (p 25)  His faith itself has led him to embrace religious pluralism.  “As we recover from our proclivity to be exclusive and arrogant, we can begin a new journey of learning and growing in our spiritual lives.” (p 29)  He puts his own awakening to the fact that “all religion is human religion” (p 27) in the context of his upbringing, listening to fire-and-brimstone sermons in the South.  His account of his childhood summers with his beloved grandmother in rural northern Alabama, absorbing her natural faithfulness, grounds the book in experience that touches the heart.

"Progressive Christianity" is a term he doesn’t use in the book, but his writing reflects both its theological and social senses. He makes accessible a humbler, kinder, open-hearted and open-minded theology, particularly for readers who share his Southern Baptist background.

A Vision for America

 

"Where there is no vision, the people perish... " Proverbs 29:18, Bible, King James Version

 

Imagine a nation of free, healthy, happy people living in a democracy and working in a vigorous market economy. 

 

Nobody worries about lacking the money for rent or food.  People are emboldened to be entrepreneurial because they know they will not starve or become homeless or lack health insurance if they fail in their business ventures.  The private sector thrives because the public sector guarantees basic, universal protections for the people.

 

This social “safety net” is funded by taxes, and its services are provided efficiently by both public and private agencies.  Wherever possible and practical, market-based incentives are used to maximize the quality and cost of the programs.  Everyone has health insurance paid for through their taxes: public insurance pays for services provided by private doctors and hospitals.  Free K-12 education is excellent and accessible to all.  Higher education is excellent and adapts to new technology like web-based teaching: tuition is heavily subsidized for students.  Research universities,well-funded from public and private sources, are the engines that drive the nation’s global leadership in technological and cultural development.  Workers displaced by economic changes are offered generous retraining opportunities.

 

Taxes are substantial but not so high that they stifle the economy.  People are willing to pay them because they get so much in return.

A huge federal budget deficit is brought to balance by a combination of careful cuts to military spending and entitlements and measured increases in revenues from closing tax loopholes and raising taxes on higher-income people.

 

Straightforward, efficient regulations govern the economy to protect the natural environment and the interests of consumers, while maintaining the health of industry and commerce.  Regulation is carefully crafted to avoid bad unintended consequences and excessive red tape.

 

Incomes of citizens vary widely, but low income people do not suffer severe deprivation, and the total wealth is not overly concentrated in the upper income class.  Executive compensation is moderated by regulations that require transparency in corporate governance.

 

The liberty of individuals is honored unless it adversely affects other people directly.  Laws are based on the principle of harm reduction.  If a ban on a self-destructive personal behavior will not prevent it, or will make the problem worse, then the behavior is not criminalized.  Public health services and mass media campaigns are employed instead, to reduce the personal and social harm of substance abuse, alcoholism, gun ownership, etc.  The number of people incarcerated goes down annually as a result of rehabilitation and educational services inside and outside of jails.

 

Abortion is legal and safe but there are fewer abortions performed each year as a result of universally accessible family planning services and excellent public education about sexual health.

 

Religion thrives in the country because the rhetoric of politicians and the laws of the government do not officially endorse any one particular faith or religious institution over others.  A free market of faith keeps religious organizations responsive to the spiritual needs of the people.

 

The system of democracy is reformed to encourage maximum citizen participation through greater representation of all political perspectives and lessened influence of big-money interests.  Constitutional changes are made so that a wider range of public opinion can be represented, and also to encourage the formation of broad consensus.

It's a vision that builds on America's historic strengths, and makes it once again a beacon of hope for all humanity.

What's your vision for America?

 

The Burklo Limit

(Updated, 6-18-18)

What is the most that anyone’s labor is worth?

And does it matter?

 

I ask these questions because of the dogma that dominates politics in this country today.  It posits that rich people deserve the massive tax cut they just got from Trump and the Republicans.  Never mind the massive federal deficit and the overwhelming need for investment in social safety net programs and public education and infrastructure.  What does America need most?  More people building iron gates around rich people's mansions, or more people rebuilding roads and bridges that everybody uses?  Never mind that rich people are at least as much “job exporters” as they are “job creators”.  Never mind that the number of public sector jobs lost through the federal spending cuts proposed by Republicans will offset the number of new private sector jobs that result. Never mind that lower and middle-class incomes have been stagnant for a long time, and that the old "rule" that wages are set by labor supply and demand does not work anymore.

 

Politics in Washington is being driven by something other than facts and common sense.  Supposed friends of the business class are making decisions that run counter to the interests of capitalists, to say nothing of harming poor and middle-class people. Evidence mounts that income inequality is not just damaging our democracy: it is hurting Americans' mental and physical health.  (See an Economist Magazine article about this problem here.)

 

Politics in Washington today is driven by Republican Tea Party theology.  They seem to believe it is God's will for the rich get richer, and that those of lesser means deserve their lot.  Theology being my domain, I take this as an invitation for a person like myself to weigh in on these matters.  If the political party of capitalists can behave this irrationally and cruelly, surely a Master of Divinity can contribute to the discourse, in the interests of middle-class people, poor people, old people, students, and the disabled – the people who are paying for the sins of these crass politicians.

 

So to this public debate I contribute this concept: the Burklo Limit.  BL for short.  Pronounce BL any way you want:  I can take it.  I’ll explain a bit later why I coined this term.  (Hint: it has to do with coins.) 

 

The Burklo Limit is the rough maximum dollar figure that a person can be said to have earned through the expense of their time, effort, and skill in a year.  Any income beyond the BL represents a failure of the labor market and a danger to democracy.  Four times the BL equals the rough maximum dollar value of assets that any individual can possess without causing significant damage to the capitalist system and a free society, by over-concentrating wealth and the power that goes with it.

 

The Burklo Limit is not a clear, fixed amount.  For the sake of freedom, for the sake of encouraging hard work, skill, and ambition, it should be a very high figure and it should not be permanently defined.  I would argue that the BL hovers around $28,000,000 a year, give or take $10,000,000.   $28 million is the average earned income (roughly as defined by IRS) of the top 50 incomes of athletes in America, according to Forbes Magazine (May 2011).  I suggest that the incomes of top athletes reflect something akin to a market-based, skill-and-effort-based valuation.  There’s a meritocracy in professional sports, moreso than in many other highly compensated occupations.

 

The Burklo Limit challenges the idea that whatever anybody is paid is a reflection of the actual value of their labor in an idealized free market.  First of all, it’s important to note that there really is no such thing as a pure free market, nor will there ever be one – not even in the least-regulated economies.  All markets are distorted by many forces, including monopolies, crime, cultural factors, religious factors, government interventions of many sorts, and bad habits.   This is yet another reason that the Burklo Limit never should be a fixed figure, and that it should be assumed to be very liberally large.  To posit the existence of the Burklo Limit, at any level, is to admit that all markets are imperfect, that all markets function irrationally.  Indeed, this is the very point of the Burklo Limit:  that there always will be people who make more money than they possibly could earn.

 

Therefore there is no moral, religious, cultural, nor practical economic reason not to tax the heck out of any money people make beyond the Burklo Limit.  Nor is there any reason to hold back on any tax policy that would cut into assets that exceed four times the Burklo Limit.  Nor, for that matter, is there any reason that America should not go back to the tax structure that existed during the Clinton presidency, when rich people, including those with incomes well below the Burklo Limit, paid higher tax rates than they do today.  Going back to the reasonable rates of that era would take us a long way toward resolving our nation's financial challenges.

 

Now we come to the reason for the name of the Burklo Limit.

 

First of all, the reason some people get incomes far beyond the BL, and amass outrageous fortunes, has much to do with smoke and mirrors.  Hype.  Jive.  Trickery.  Cabals of people strive to maintain a façade of legitimacy for this illegitimacy. 

Why do corporate executives get paid so outrageously?  Because they belong to the same class of people who pay them.  They serve on each others' boards of directors.  They insulate themselves from the scrutiny of small-time investors.  Big-time investors have an interest in maintaining inflated compensation.  It’s a racket that exists outside any model of an ideal labor market.

 

Indeed, hype and fantasy feed the upper end of the labor market, even at levels far below the Burklo Limit.  The lecture circuit is one example.  I have colleagues who work the lecture circuit system masterfully.  They are brilliant at marketing themselves, quite apart from the quality of their presentations.  Indeed, their skill in selling themselves is more important than content when it comes to the money they make.

 

It is to this end that I came up with the name for the Burklo Limit.  It’s time I got into the game with the big boys and girls.  What I’m doing here is blatant, crass, unabashed self-promotion.  How can you have a meeting in which the Burklo Limit is discussed, without at least being tempted to invite the coiner of the phrase, and paying him the attendant coinage?  Indeed, part of my hype is my lecture fee: a very modest  1/100th of the daily income (261 working days a year) of a person earning the Burklo Limit.  If, for the sake of example, that limit is $28,000,000 a year, that means $28,000,000 divided by 261 = $107,279 a day (a fantastic sum, yes?), divided by 100 = $1,073 (humble by comparison, yes?) for a day’s presentation (travel, etc, expenses not included – and my wife comes with me).  The institution inviting me to speak must declare publicly what it estimates as the Burklo Limit.  I would not be surprised if progressive church groups chose a low Burklo Limit, and paid me a lower speaker fee as a result.  Nor would I be shocked if a convention of hedge fund managers came up with a Burklo Limit an order of magnitude larger than what I suggest here.  All to the good, both for the conversation about compensation and taxation… and for me!

__________________

 

(For a look at a related proposal:  The Case for a Maximum Wage - Sam Pizzigati)