Beyond Bourgeois America

I
grew up, as I know a number of you did, in small-town or actually small-city America. I grew up in a time when my Dad worked at a place called “The Shop” and came home for lunch daily, often picking us kids up to take us home for lunch, too, and bring us back to school at 1 p.m. We had a lot of family time, and I knew very few moms who worked outside the home.
Our summers were filled with day-long car trips to Granite Lake or Spofford Lake. Our mothers would make four or five of us sit in station wagons on folded towels coming home so our wet bottoms would not soak through on the seat. Often we would stop at a little grocery store for a popsicle. I learned that it is not a good idea to try to brush the sand out of your wet bathing suit when your hands are full of popsicle juice.
We were not rich at all. We were oblivious to the things we could not afford. And as many of you have told me as I was talking with you, in the 40’s and 50’s a father working could support a family of 5 or 6 in style—in a large home with vacations! We didn’t know it, but it was the heyday of bourgeois America.

I carry this memory as a memory of what America seemed to be and to my heart, always and still should be. I know I need to footnote this nostalgic memory with the fact that not everyone in my small town was really this comfortable; summers were not really this perfect for all; but still, revelations come in the strangest forms. The revelation I still glean from childhood is that being comfortably middle class is “normative,” as they say in ethics. Everyone should be able to have approximately this kind of a summer, this kind of childhood.
Today the whole underpinning of that small town has been shaken by transnational commerce. The “Shop,” which turned out to have some unsuspected but vital connection to the Detroit car industry, was sold out to a Greek heiress before decisively hitting the skids in the 90’s. Good jobs in manufacturing have been put to flight, and Big Box retailers have moved in, almost destroying the charming Main Street shopping area that I loved as a child. The forces behind these changes remind me of Darth Vader, because they wear a mask that completely obscures their human countenance.

Today, the values and beliefs, the comforts and challenges that faced small town America in the 50’s have been obliterated by different sets of challenges. The modest upward mobility that shaped my young teen years is of a sort that is now passe. What I see now is vast discrepancies in wealth and well-being piling up until we begin to resemble a European aristocracy or, in fact, a banana republic.

Feeling powerless to stop these macro events, we may tend to repress them or disavow our anxiety and grief. But, as I’ve learned in my counseling career, not ackowledging “the big stuff” can be unhealthy. We need desperately to acknowledge that this is happening, even when it makes us feel powerless. Powerlessness is one of those feelings that people just plain don’t like, because we are natural fixers. But recognition of the challenge is an essential first step. I truly think nostalgia is useful, too, for those of us old enough to remember—and be inspired by—how it used to be!

I am concerned about our life, medical care and basic rights for people, us and those poorer than us. Affordable college for your kids if you have any. A decent retirement and medical care as you age. A nursing home if you need one, and something to leave to your heirs if you have to go there.
My clients have begun to tell me stories about debt. This is the first time in my ten-plus year practice that most of my clients are talking about debt problems. They are not the kind of people that you think of as having debt. People used to come to counseling to talk to talk about their relationships, their sex lives, their depression, mom and dad, etc. They still do. But, now, their deepest secrets are their financial ones.

Something odd is underlying this new trend—the truculent new lending policies of credit cards, for one thing. But there is also our enticement into their clutches, our “real estate investing,” our “stock market hobby,” our gas guzzlers, so on. And all of this co-exists with a boisterous new wealth that makes the “Nouveau Riche” era look cultivated.

No, it’s not the first time we have seen the excesses of the rich run amuck. I went to Newport for a conference in 2001—and I’ve seen other haunts of the storied railroad, oil, and steel wealth around the 1900 era. Our country seems to have survived the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. Some of these people even became benefactors of society, such as through endowing colleges, universities and libraries that long survive them. Perhaps the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few actually served some lasting purpose. I worry, though, that with the erosion of the religious foundations for benevolence, future generations of the mega-wealthy are not going to be so public-spirited. With a few exceptions, such as the Gateses, I don’t see signs that they are.

I believe the middle class is dying out in a vast squeeze play. I actually envision dollars are being sucked upward toward the mega-rich by the equivalent of a giant invisible vacuum cleaner. People are becoming downwardly mobile without even realizing it, often taking equity out of their homes to pay bills.

I believe we had best take decisive action while we can. Let me tell you about two heroes of mine, Ralph Mero, the UUA’s own retirement guru, and Suze Orman, a woman who doles out financial counsel on public TV. If there is a light saber for fighting these problems, I thin of Ralph and Suze wielding it!

These two are my current financial heroes, and I think they exemplify that good old phrase from Jesus, “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Wise, because they are not afraid to understand money matters and social problems, and innocent as doves, meaning they both put that knowledge to a spiritual use. Ralph is trying to help UU’s, and specifically UU ministers, and Suze is dedicated to helping the average person mend their ways and get ahead in a baffling financial world. Because it will not serve us to think we live in a financial Mayberry.

Ralph Mero was out here last year to lead a seminar on clergy finances. Ralph is on a one-man mission to help clueless clergy understand money. He asked us all to read The Raw Deal, by Ellen Frank, subtitled “How Myths and Misinformation about the Deficit, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America.” I found this book to be extremely enlightening about matters I historically have not understood.

One, “The politics of finance and money rest on a deliberate misrepresentation of government finances, fostering the belief that govts operate under restraints that are not, in fact, operative.” (Frank, 17.) Frank espouses a Keynesian view our national policies. She contends that our federal government chooses not to spend on social programs and rationalizes that choice with a smoke-and mirrors discussion of the national debt. But the national debt is owed mostly to ourselves and will not hamstring the country.

Frank also argues that something is askew in the distribution of wealth, whether we look at the stock market, real estate or incomes. Once we eliminate the “merely affluent,” we find that half of all equities are in the hands of the wealthiest 1%. The wealthiest 1% doubled their net worth during the 80s and 90s from 20% of the nation’s wealth to 40%.

At the same time, tax cuts have widened the gap between the richest and poorest Americans. The top one-thousandth of the population is now making about 3 million a year! Despite claims that the tax cuts would go to the poor and the middle class, according to an article by David Cay Johnston in the Denver Post this month, 53 per cent of the Bush tax cuts will go to the most affluent 10 percent of the population. Most of the very rich are not even paying much taxes, and the Alternative Minimum tax is snaring income from more and more households. (The Denver Post, “Tax Cuts Widen Gulf between Ultra Rich, rest of U.S.,” June 5, 2005, 3A.)

Frank maintains that a new consensus is taking hold of international economic theory, one that contends that governments bear no responsibility for the welfare of their citizens. I celebrate whenever I see the G-8 or the IMF forgiving some debts from Third World countries, but believe me, there are plenty more they have not wiped away.

We need some awareness of the Common Good in our economic and fiscal policies. Up until now, the rhetoric of equality in America has talked about levelling off opportunity so that everyone could succeed. That rhetoric works as long as there really is a large class of Horatio Alger capitalists who went from rags to riches. Everyone buys into the dream and justifies the economy by pointing to them.

When I was teaching ethics in college in the late 80’s, Donald Trump was in his youthful heyday. I decided that a good pathway into ethics, which I have always thought of as being about character, would be asking the students whom they admired. I went up and down five rows with almost every male student saying “Donald Trump.” (I do remember hearing “my dad,” but very seldom.) I still don’t know why the guys picked Trump. My guess is, it was their Horatio Alger myth.

I believe that idolizing Trump and his ilk is truly a dead end, morally and spiritually. I do not see a glimmer in Trump of caring about the Common Good. But we have not marketed our vision with one-tenth the fervor with which Trump has marketed his.

Meanwhile my other hero, Suze Orman, has a story so unusual that you probably won’t believe it if you haven’t read it before. She was working as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery until she was 28, when her sales talents and charisma got her a broker job—the commission kind--- for Merrill Lynch. Selling is selling, and she could sell. Then, she founded her own company, made millions for her clients, was cheated by a partner, lost her own wealth, and finally found a sort of common sense religion seasoned with New Age spirituality.

Today’s Suze is on PBS trying to keep you, me, and the girl next door from letting those credit cards sharks eat our lunch. I don’t recommend her phone-in show; she’s far better on the full-length studio audience specials. Most people don’t know that the anti-usury laws started coming off in the 90’s in South Dakota. Now we need people like Suze Orman and Ralph Mero to teach us how to save, invest, and make trade-offs. Suze’s watchword is “People first, then money, then things.” I went to seminary twice and was not taught this.

When you live in a country and witness the ostentation that we see, I do feel it is a major test of our spiritual mettle to be able to keep from envying those who have more than we do. I truly mean spiritual mettle, because spirituality—Buddhist, Christian, UU humanist---is a hugely useful tool in the quest against personal bitterness in this climate. Those of us who never cared much about things to begin with are lucky. During my thirties and forties, I was clear on what mattered in life—family, ethics, knowledge, religious community. . . I was lucky. Only now, in my fifties, I occasionally think about what I might have done with a little more compound interest! I learned a technique from Gerald May in Addiction and Grace which by the way takes the broadest possible notion of addiction. May taught me to take a few deep breaths while saying “Enough. Enough.” Most times for me, and many of my clients, ten seconds of this breaks the addictive cycle of craving for things.

Among my favorite books for lending to clients is Cameron and Bryan’s The Money Drunk is right up there. These books work by giving people leverage against the consumer culture with its lack of genuine creative outlets. I also like Jeff Opdyke, who has been telling readers of his Wall Street Journal syndicated column that ever since he and his family moved back to Louisiana, his son forgets to ask for his allowance! The kid is having too much fun doing cheap fun creative stuff like catching crayfish with his small town family and neighbors.

I took a sociology course in grad school wherein the professor kept talking about the “nature of the social bond.” I.e., he asked, what holds us together as a society? At first, I did not get the question or why it was important.

Society used to be held together by a bright net of individual relatedness. Americans shared visions of fruitful plains and small towns where Dad might really see your third grade teacher at the food market and find out what you were up to in school today. It isn’t anymore, and my professor thought the cash nexus was replacing relationships.

Even ten years ago, dads in counseling used to talk about spending time coaching baseball or soccer, going to the ballet recital or working on the eternal Pinewood Derby. Now I hear more dads worrying about the cost of college and how much overtime will they have to work, or how many income streams will they need to pay the mortgage. That makes me sad.

Well, we can’t exactly go back to the small towns and cute little cities of the forties and fifties. We had a lot fewer people then! But we can fight against the transformation of the social bond of friendliness, fairness, and care into the exchange of cash at some vast impersonal store.
We can fight against the facelessness of Darth Vaders like dishonest brokers, heartless medicine, etc. and try to support the little guys who are creative a while longer. We can fight against taxes that impoverish the poor, enrich the already wealthy, and make a mockery of the concept of a comfortable middle class and old age.

That’s why I indulge in a little nostalgia—because it inspires me with a vision for America that sticks to my ribs.

CUTS

When I worked at The Freedom Fund in Denver a couple years ago, I talked to girls who not only could not afford to have a baby—with a pricetag of maybe 10,000 a year---but who could not afford a flat $300 to get an abortion. Yes, there were the usual sob stories about my boyfriend went back to Mexico; my sister stole my paycheck money and spent it on drugs; and we can’t even get to your church because we have no gas and the car wouldn’t start if we did.

although you having money has some vague connection to the church prospering. You having money has to do with other things too---your openhandedness to charity and to the poor, including the homeless, the hungry, the out of work.

Harvard contract lawyers interviewed on PBS tell us that contract law is stood on its head by the existence of an enforceable contract whose terms can be changed by the lender to suit his interest, at his time schedule, and you have never agreed to those terms at all!