Toxic Inequality - A Review

In the last decade or so, economic discourse on the left has begun to focus on inequality rather than poverty alleviation. Thomas Shapiro’s recent book, Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future, explores that theme. Analysis like that in Shapiro’s volume relies on catching people at the stage after the Great Recession before they had fully recovered and blaming their lot on insufficiency of government regulation. Books like this do well for their cause to claim a crisis for their advantage.

There are basic ideas that Shapiro relies upon that are flawed. He speaks of “tax expenditures” when dealing with exemptions, cuts, and other deductions in the tax code. This is indicative of an underlying assumption that the state is the primary owner of all property and has the right to determine who should get to keep it or not. He also simply assumes that inequality is fundamentally immoral, which he makes no effort to defend.

Despite these assumptions, the book does highlight problems that deserve common concern, even if the solutions differ from those that are likely to be successful in the long run. The fundamental problem is not that rich people have too much, but that the poor are significantly disadvantaged by their poverty. The poor are, in many cases, cut off from adequate (there will never be equal) opportunity to flourish merely because of their poverty.

That should raise concerns among people across the political spectrum. Some of the case studies that Shapiro highlights reflect the logical outcomes of choices made by the subjects of the study. There are several instances that his subjects made irrational decisions and reaped the whirlwind during the financial crisis. However, there are many more cases where circumstances beyond the control of the individual or family drove negative outcomes or closed doors.

Shapiro’s book emphasizes the ongoing changes in the job market, which should be a significant concern to us all. Upper and lower skill jobs are increasing in number while middle skill jobs are largely being outsourced or automated. This is creating a narrower window for people to climb the social ladder, as the gap between low and high skill often involves a significant capital investment for a college education. This represents a challenge our factory-style schools need to adapt to, but also one which lower income, lower funding districts will increasing have difficulty overcoming.

The data in this book is sound and points toward the need for meaningful action on the part of society to seek to increase opportunities for success for those on the bottom end of the financial spectrum and their children. Some of the means that Shapiro suggests to solve the dilemma are likely to lead to worse conditions and be financially unsustainable. For example, Shapiro argues for the creation of make-work jobs by the government designed to inspire full employment. He also argues for increasing the already often unsustainable defined benefit pension plans, like those offered by many municipalities. Additionally, increasing the ability for unions to force people to join is a proposed solution. This assumes that unions always use their dues well, represent the interests of their members effectively, and facilitate authentic human flourishing. In short, many of Shapiro’s suggestions are more likely to exacerbate the negative attributes of our present economy, though they are well-intentioned.

Although the solutions are questionable, Shapiro reveals are real societal problems that need to be addressed. These are just the sorts of issues Ben Sasse was attempting to address in his recent book, The Vanishing American Adult. This conversation needs to continue as we work together across political lines to address the significant problem of the dissociative impact of poverty in our society.

Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future

$15.12

By Thomas M. Shapiro

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The Road to Serfdom - A Review

One sign of a classic book is that the critiques it offers remain valid for years after being penned. F. A. Hayek’s famous book, The Road to Serfdom, demonstrates that quality. As the battle continues to rage between advocates of free market systems and various forms of socialism, Hayek’s diagnosis of the likely end of directed economic systems—namely, tyranny—illustrates why advocates of markets have not simply rolled over and played dead, despite the economic and social realities of economic problems.

Another sign of a classic book is that it has explanatory power and offers brief summaries that could have been expanded to book length treatises. The Road to Serfdom contains dozens of examples of succinct statement of a deep, complex economic and social problems that arise from attempts to plan the economy.

The book, overall, is a masterpiece that deserves to be read and that contemporary supporters of socialism should be forced to reckon with. A few points, however, arise from the wider tapestry of the work that deserve especial note.

First, contrary to popular representations that attempt to associate free markets to National Socialism, Hayek shows that the fascism promoted by the Nazi’s was an exacerbation of the socialist ideals that had been embedded in German society for several generations rather than a market response. This, of course, violates Godwin’s Law by invoking the Nazis. However, to be fair, the volume was written during World War II. However, the close connection between the totalitarianism of Nazism, much like Italian fascism and Stalinist communism, is a significant point of the entire volume. Attempts to plan the economy centrally lead to tyranny of various degrees.

Second, Hayek is careful to differentiate the welfare state from economic socialism. He actually lauds the work of the British safety net in helping to ensure the basic needs of people are met when they are out of work. At the same time, he cautions against welfare efforts that that undermine the market.

An element that is missing from Hayek is a discussion of why liberty is a worthy end. That is, after all, the great advantage he lauds in the market system. Despite its inequities, the market system enables a greater freedom of choice for people. He argues for individualism, which is not quite the bogeyman contemporary opponents of markets make it out to be, but an effort to value the individual and to assert the rights of the individual even amidst the collective. Because of this lack, this work by Hayek is open to criticism that it can result in atomistic selfishness, but there are answers that are implied by the context. Hayek represents there are limits to human freedom, which should be enshrined in law. He is, therefore, not arguing for a Randian version of anarcho-capitalism. Hayek also recognizes there are externalities (like pollution) that may need to be regulated apart from market influences.

In short, despite the lack of explicit reasoning about certain moral assumptions, the market economy that Hayek lauds in this text is a far cry from the strawman constructed by many of capitalism’s critics. It is also quite a distance from the dangerous individualistic vision of market participation that is offered by some of the free markets popular supporters. There is a moral thickness to Hayek that, while still falling short of biblical adequacy, represents a better foundation than many, both supporters and detractors, assume.

A strength of the text is that Hayek shows that good intentions in economic planning do not make up for the inability of humans to adequately plan. The range of social goods that are valued by different people make it impossible for central planners to prioritized the preferred goods of the population, since there will always be competition between those goods. The priority of goods must, therefore, be imposed rather than derived and will thus lead to the constraint of reasonable and warranted freedoms of many to meet the goods of the empowered few planners.

Here again, the lack of an ethical consensus that can drive the social action of the planners reveals that economic reasoning is second order. That is, moral virtue must precede the economic system. Any economic system is doomed to reveal the moral failings of its constituent members. Hayek’s argument and historical economic evidence reveals that markets have the best internal mechanism for mitigating vices apart from centralized planning. Still, a market driven by an immoral people will merely enlarge their immoralities. There is, perhaps, greater danger in enforcing evil as an intended “good” in collectivist economics that makes the ability in a market system of to refuse to participate in immorality preferable.

Hayek also reveals that today’s arguments that “socialism must be implemented because of impending doom” is nothing new. There is nothing new under the sun. Human nature is consistent in any economic system. Our task is to work toward the best possible system of economics that will encourage human flourishing. There are many who believe, as Hayek does, that free markets tend to do that better than various forms of collectivist economics.

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2)

$9.83

By F. A. Hayek

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Protestants - A Review

Alec Ryrie’s recent volume, Protestants, is an immense project that attempts to survey the impact of Protestantism over the past five hundred years. Ryrie is, himself, a licensed lay preacher in his Anglican church. He is also a professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University.

Attempting a project this broad in scope is brave. In five hundred years, Protestantism has gone from a local attempt to correct theological errors of Roman Catholicism to a worldwide movement that has strong theological, social, and political emphases. Any project of such expansive scope will be subject to common criticisms that it makes generalizations, skips key points, and does not satisfy the desires of those with a pet theory about a topic. To cover every possible topic in perfect detail would have made this book tedious and impenetrable. Some of those criticisms are valid, however, and I will point to some areas of particular weakness in this review, but the book deserves consideration beyond such simple dismissals.

Summary

Ryrie attacks his enormous task in three movements. In Part I he deals with the contours of the Reformation Era, beginning with Luther and considering the various reformations that spread through Europe. This was the strongest section of the volume, as Ryrie weaves together the threads of history into a representative tapestry. Part II focuses on what Ryrie calls the Modern Age, which includes Pietism, the sin of human slavery, American Protestantism, the rise of liberalism, the German Nazi crisis, and American religious politics. Clearly in this selection of topics, there is a great deal Ryrie skips. His selections show something of his intentions through the volume. In Part III, Ryrie addresses a handful of examples of Protestantism in various corners of the globe, including South Africa with a focus on Apartheid, Korea and its evolution of a prosperity gospel, Chinese Protestantism, and Pentecostalism. His Epilogue attempts to tell the future, revealing his hopeful anticipation of changes in Protestantism to come.

With such an expansive topic and, possibly, a strong desire to get the volume finished during the year of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, it is little surprising that Ryrie relies much more strongly on secondary and tertiary sources to write his volume. He includes some primary sources, but there are clear cases, as with his depiction of Zwingli’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper, that Ryrie sticks to the mainstream theories, which are obviously inaccurate to those who have read the primary source. Such an approach is understandable, but it severely limits Ryrie’s ability to deal with topics about which he is apparently largely unread.

One such example is in Ryrie’s treatment of Fundamentalism. Though he opens the volume professing to attempt to treat movements fairly, writing, “Condemning ugly beliefs is easy, but it is also worth the effort to understand why people once believed them. If we are lucky, later ages might be as indulgent toward us. We all live in glass houses.” However, he dismisses Fundamentalism as a “mood” and not a doctrinal movement. In other words, Fundamentalism is a psychosis. These are the marks of someone who is critiquing a movement that he despises, has not bothered to research, and thus has not adequately considered. To say there are excesses in negative attitude among Fundamentalism is certainly true, but to dismiss the doctrinal heart of the Fundamentalist dispute with modernism is sloppy.

Analysis and Critique

Significantly absent from Ryrie’s lengthy tome is a chapter focused on the influence of Protestant missions. He engages in occasional discussions of the topic, but the central thrust of the volume is the sociological impact of Protestantism on history rather than on the concern for conversion. In fact, most of the discussions of missions in this volume are negative, describing missionaries in largely imperialistic terms, which is a sometimes-fair, but incomplete depiction. He largely skips the positive impacts that Protestant missionaries have had through their social reforms, and he certainly does not talk about the concern of so many Protestants to preach the gospel that many may not suffer the fires of Hell. Whether it is by design or default, Ryrie’s presents a Protestantism that is entirely devoid of the gospel which compelled Luther to seek reformation of faulty doctrines and inspired many to give their lives for their faith.

The portrait that emerges from Ryrie’s Protestants is one of an ever-adapting religion that lags somewhat behind the cultural winds, but always follows. In fact, his Epilogue is a hopeful prediction that will be exactly the case. However, it should be clear that Ryrie’s portrait is not of the forms of Protestantism that still feel strongly connected to their roots in the Reformation. Rather, Ryrie argues that Protestantism “is not a doctrine or theology. Defining it that way is usually an attempt to exclude people. . .” That approach enables Ryrie to trace out the influence that Protestantism has as it has morphed and migrated throughout the world. If the purpose of the book is to survey how people who have been impacted by movements that were influenced by those who attempted to reshape Christianity half a millennium ago, then it has accomplished its purpose. Such a book would say little about the content of Protestantism and a great deal more about the social influence of an event. However, Ryrie’s purpose seems to be something more than that.

The story that Ryrie is telling has a moral that begins to appear in his recounting of the evolution of liberalism. Ryrie makes his point explicit in the final pages of the book. One central theme is that it is not necessary to take the Bible too seriously to consider oneself a faithful Protestant. (His repeated bashing of inerrantists, whose actual beliefs he never considers, and Fundamentalists reveal this early on.) This leads to the more significant idea that Protestantism is descended from orthodox Christianity, but not significantly moored in that. Ryrie sees the liberalizing trend of culture as the final destination of all Protestant Christians. Thus, he seems to be saying, ethical revisionists should feel free to patronize churches (in both senses of the word) while the amorphous religion comes around to contemporary, culturally compatible doctrines. By ignoring evidence to the contrary, his conclusions are entirely plausible. And, by ignoring the possibility that extensive changes can actually sever a movement from rightful claims to a historical root in the Reformation, Ryrie’s conclusions may indeed salvage an anemic form of Christianity in the eyes of those who long to see it shaped by the waves of culture. Ryrie is telling a story that sounds a great deal like Niebuhr’s category, “Christ of Culture.” If Protestantism is primarily a social movement, the Ryrie’s predictions may be accurate, but those seeking a theological interpretation will likely question his prognostications.

Ryrie’s book is well written. The first part is quite well done, with engaging prose and even-handed interpretation. This is the sort of volume that will likely find its way onto a public library shelf, and which may serve as a launching point for a conversation. It will provide comfort to the culturally comfortable Protestant Christian, and potentially fuel criticism among those who want Christians concerned with historical orthodoxy to evolve faster. As such, this is the sort of volume one should read because of its potential for conversation in the plane or over the water cooler rather than as a normative interpretation of the history of Protestantism.

Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

$19.95

By Alec Ryrie

NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.