Robert Reich's Blog: The Heart of the Economic Mess (Updated)

Robert Reich's Blog: The Heart of the Economic Mess

Excerpt with emphasis added:

The heart of the matter isn't the collapse in housing prices or even the frenetic rise in oil and food prices. These are contributing to the mess, but they are not creating it directly. The basic reality is this: For most Americans, earnings have not kept up with the cost of living. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has finally caught up with the pocketbooks of average people. If you look at the earnings of nongovernment workers, especially the hourly workers who comprise 80 percent of the work force, you'll find they are barely higher than they were in the mid-1970s, adjusted for inflation. The income of a man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Per-person productivity has grown considerably since then, but most Americans have not reaped the benefits of those productivity gains. They've gone largely to the top.

Inequality on this scale is bad for many reasons, but it is also bad for the economy. The wealthy devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they're rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, the very wealthy are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

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Luke 12:16-21
Then He told them a parable: "A rich man's land was very productive. He thought to himself, 'What should I do, since I don't have anywhere to store my crops? I will do this,' he said. 'I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods there. Then I'll say to myself, "You have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself."

"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?'

"That's how it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

While being "rich toward God" includes giving toward the work of the Kingdom through the church, it is more than that.

Jeremiah 22:13-17 speaks directly to the issue:

Woe for the one who builds his palacethrough unrighteousness, his upper rooms through injustice,who makes his fellow man serve without payand will not give him his wages, who says: I will build myself a massive palace,with spacious upper rooms. He will cut windows in it, and it will be paneled with cedar and painted with vermilion.

Are you a king because you excel in cedar? Your own father, did he not eat and drink? He administered justice and righteousness, then it went well with him.

He took up the case of the poor and needy, then it went well. Is this not what it means to know Me? [This is] the LORD's declaration.

But you have eyes and heart for nothing except your own unjust gain, shedding innocent blood and committing extortion and oppression.