The Growing Gap between the Rich and the Poor

            We all know there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor; we see it all the time with big corporate heads driving around in $80,000 cars while a growing number ride the bus. Some might think this is something new, but it isn’t. It happened before the revolutionary war. We see it both now a days and during the 1700s because of economic shifts. During the 1700s, the British milked the colonies for the money and the people who were struggling became poor, while the rich were able to stay afloat. It was also because of growing enterprises putting small businesses out of business. Now a days it is because of the recession; many businesses are laying people off and using the saved money to pay the corporate workers more.

            During the late 1700s life in the colonies was flourishing, for some people. It was a rough time, economically, for those who came from Europe to the colonies because many had trouble finding jobs. A substantial amount of people came over as indentured servants, but were not able to find work because many colonists had turned to slave labor. Slave labor helped many plantation owners become rich because they had a reproducing work force that could never quit and that were never paid. All the profits went straight to the plantation owner.

            People who came to the colonies to get into the tobacco growing industry also had a rough time. There wasn’t a lot of land available for use and as a new business most of your products will be more expensive than a business that has been around for many years, which will make it hard to find buyers. This all made it increasingly hard for new colonists to get started and become prosperous in the new land. Most who were rich were those who had been in the colonies for a few decades. But that is how the free market works, some fail and some exceed.

            Cities built workhouses to help the poor get jobs and get paid. Towns also collected money for the poor in greater amounts than ever before. Many of the poor were old or sick with no family to help them out. Poverty in the colonies was not even close to being as worse as it was in England or any other European countries. As much as one third of England was in poverty while only one tenth of the population in the colonies was needed public assistance in the worst of times. This was because, unlike in England, the colonies had a very large surplus of land, mainly taken from the Natives. Many people saw the widening gap between the rich and the poor as a good thing because it meant that the country was maturing and would become more stable and prosperous.

            This decade has been crippled by the economic downturn that has been witnessed by probably every country on the globe. Here in America we see it as more and more people lose their jobs and can’t find any others. The rich, though, have been able to survive and even prosper during this economic downturn. Many companies outsource and by outsourcing they are able to pay employees less money and therefore make more money for themselves. Corporate jobs are never outsourced, though, so the rich have their jobs secured.

            Our economy cannot grow with only the rich making money, and so we will be stuck in this economic downturn until someone can figure out how to get jobs for the poor. This is the main topic covered by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.  Many large corporations are eating up the smaller ones because the smaller ones cannot survive this economic downturn while the larger ones have millions of dollars in reserve and have been around long enough that they know how to survive economic shifts. According to a 2010 analysis of Internal Revenue Service tax data by economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, the top 1% of families in America took in 52% of total income gains from 1993 to 2010.

            Tons more people are on food stamps and welfare then ever before. Many people think that the welfare system needs to be run by the state government rather than the national government so the welfare will better serve the people it was made for. Many people who are poor are old, sick, handicapped, or hooked on drugs. There are others who worked hard all their life but lost their job and have slipped into poverty. In this decade the poverty population has become more and more diverse.

            Many immigrants, who come into our country, are poor and are looking for a better life, and most find it. What they find is not exactly great in our eyes, but it is better than what it is like their countries. Many immigrants take jobs that normal Americans wouldn’t take, like sanitation jobs, lawn care, and other jobs. These jobs do not pay a lot and so many immigrants still live in poverty, but they are okay with it because it is better than their old life. Other immigrants who come to America looking for jobs can’t find any either because there aren’t any available or because of racial differences.

            Looking over these past paragraphs one can come to the realization that the economy in the late 1700s is much like that of the economy of today. In both times America is in poverty, but it is better than other countries so it still gets an influx of immigrants. During the late 1700s the poor was made up of old, sick, and laborers who couldn’t find jobs. Today the poor is made up of about the same people. The laborers in the 1700s couldn’t get jobs because a new cheaper labor source was available, slavery. In our economy, outsourcing to countries where we can pay them almost nothing is the new cheaper labor source.

            As like plantation owners of the 1700s, big business eats up its competitors and makes it very hard for a small business to start up and become prosperous. Where in the 1700s towns collected money for the poor and built workhouses, today the national government just gives money to the poor and look where that’s landed us. Welfare should be handled on a state level so that the people running it know the needs of the poor better. Immigrants back then came for a better life and often couldn’t find job, and immigrants now come in search for a better life and often cannot find jobs, but still more come anyway. This just adds to the population of the poor while the rich population stays about the same.

            The economy today is much as it was right before the Revolutionary War. With big business making no room for the little guy, immigrants not finding jobs, and the old having no one to take care of them. Back then the Revolutionary War helped solve this problem, while today a politicians promise will supposedly help solve the problem. In a few years if the economy is not getting any better, I am betting there will be some major changes in leadership. Although some might argue that this is just the way the capitalist economy works.    

Poverty

Poverty, what many people in today’s world live in. Some people believe that those in poverty are lazy or uneducated bums, well the truth is, some are, but there are a lot who are not. What defines poverty? Is it living day by day, just trying to get what’s necessary to survive that day? Is it working several jobs just to keep the house over your roof? Or is it living on the streets knowing that you will never get back to wear to were before, knowing that this is now your life because no matter what job you had before, everyone will now label you as a useless vagabond.

            Let’s say a lawyer loses his job and makes some bad spending choices. He didn’t save a lot of money because he never thought he would go without a job for a while, but now it’s been a few years since he’s had a job. His friends have been helping him out but there is only so much they can do for him, and now he is on his own. Because he hasn’t had a job for a few years, no one will hire him, and he stays in poverty. He starts living on the street where people who make a lot less than he did when he was in his prime, look at him like he’s a blemish on the face of society that needs to be covered up with a little make up.

            This is the story of today’s society. Everyone is in a way on “the edge,” because losing your job can happen to anyone and with this economy that could lead to homelessness no matter how rich you are. This is something that needs to be fixed, and with projects like Cardboard City, we can make a difference that will help the homeless. Politicians always talk about helping the middle class, but they forget about those who are homeless, because most do not vote and therefore are not very important in a politician’s campaign. Also because many believe that we need to help the middle class so they don’t drop into poverty, and then once we get the middle class stabilized we can worry about the very poor.

            The church teaches us to practice preferential treatment for the poor and vulnerable. Which is where we “put the needs of the poor and vulnerable at the forefront of our agendas.” Jesus teaches us that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” Jesus often teaches us to help the poor, to give up our material possessions to help the poor, and to teach the poor the word of God. These missions are still being done by many Christians throughout the world. The church is what helps the poor, if you look around at all the homeless shelters and donations drives, they are mostly done by churches or communities of Christians who want to live out Jesus’ mission. In today’s society it seems that the government has given the job of helping the poor to the churches of our country.

            I believe that we need to help the poor, not by just giving them food and helping them live day by day, but helping them get their life back together and helping them get a job and live independently again. I think that a state government should put in place a law that says that businesses that hire people who haven’t had a job for over a year, get some sort tax cut. This would encourage businesses to hire people who are stuck in poverty, like the make believe lawyer I talked about earlier. I also think that there should be a community started for homeless people over 70, which only runs of donations and volunteer work and sells goods made by the homeless. I would not impose that this community be run by taxes because not everything has to be fixed by the government. 

In the Dominican Republic there was a pregnant teen who had leukemia and died because of a ban on abortion. In the Dominican Republic it is illegal to have an abortion, and there are no special cases where one can have an abortion. Rosa Hernandez’s 16-year-old daughter was 13 weeks pregnant and was suffering from leukemia. She needed treatment for the leukemia, but because of the ban on abortion, the doctors were hesitant about giving it to her because it might kill the baby. The mother knew that abortion was illegal and a sin but she believed that her daughter’s life came first and so tried convincing the government and hospital to make an exception.

            After a delay of 20 days, in which the family and hospital discussed the procedure, the doctors finally started treating the young girl for leukemia, but it was too late. Her body rejected a blood transfusion and didn’t respond to chemotherapy, and the next day she had a miscarriage then died of cardiac arrest. Her mother was devastated saying that she was now nothing, that her life had no meaning anymore. This caused a huge uproar with people who wanted the abortion ban to be fixed. According to Article 37 of the Dominican Constitution, “the right to life is inviolable from the moment of conception and until death.” So the death penalty is also illegal in the Dominican Republic.

            The church teaches that in cases like this, it is okay to have a procedure that would indirectly cause the baby to die. “You shall not kill” Exodus 20:13. This is why the church is against abortion, God told the Israelites, after they escaped Egypt, that killing was against His law. It is also why euthanasia and capitol punishment is wrong in Catholics eyes. But having a procedure to fix something wrong with you that indirectly kills someone is okay because the intentions are not to kill, the outcome just might happen to be that though.  

            This is the only time that the church allows for the killing of a baby, because it is not the point of the procedure. There’s no other scenario where something like this could happen. It is because we look at an unborn baby’s life differently than a person who has been alive for a while. We relate to the older person more than to the unborn baby. If we had to choose between the lives of two adults it would be much harder than choosing between the lives of an unborn baby and an adult. This is because we do not know if the baby will even survive till birth, we cannot communicate in any way with the baby, we do not know the baby personally, we don’t know if the baby will survive the procedure, and many more things. Basically, we relate more to a living person more than we do an unborn child, and we normally will choose the life of the person we can relate to better, it’s just the way our minds work.

            The CCC says, “It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.” (CCC, n. 1756.) They say that the only time we can choose a woman’s life over a baby’s is if the baby is going to die. My opinion is that it is ultimately the mother’s choice. But if this ever happened to me and I had to choose between the life of my wife and my unborn child, I would choose my wife because ultimately I can relate to her more than my baby.