In “The President, the Pope and the People” Mr. Blow says the idea that honest work should pay an honest wage is part of the American social contract — and one that is in danger of disintegrating. Mr. Kristof considers “Today’s Hatfields and McCoys” and says old hatreds and new weaponry are creating dangers in the Pacific, and drawing in America. Ms. Collins takes a look at “Cultural War Games” and says once again, social conservatives are out in force and feeling picked on over trying to protect the Christian holiday. Here’s Mr. Blow:
On Wednesday, while delivering a speech largely about income inequality and economic mobility, a populist president invoked a populist pope. After rattling off a laundry list of dire statistics, President Obama cited Pope Francis:
“Since 1979, when I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent, but the income of the typical family has increased by less than 8 percent. Since 1979, our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of that growth has flowed to a fortunate few. The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income — it now takes half. Whereas in the past, the average C.E.O. made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today’s C.E.O. now makes 273 times more. And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country. So the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed. In fact, this trend towards growing inequality is not unique to America’s market economy. Across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. ‘How can it be,’ he wrote, ‘that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?’”
This is a worldwide problem, as the pope made clear, but in this country it’s particularly pernicious.
A study released last month by the World Economic Forum surveyed nearly 1,600 world leaders from academia, business, government and the nonprofit sector and found that of the top 10 trends facing the world in 2014, income inequality was second on the list. (According to the report, the top concern was “rising societal tensions in the Middle East and North Africa.”)
And although in America 51 percent of all income earned went to the wealthiest fifth of the population while only 3 percent went to the poorest fifth of the population, Americans were among the least likely to view inequality as a serious problem in the spring 2013 Pew Global Attitudes Project Survey.
And yet, it looms as a central problem in this country, but one that is often invisible from ground level. We remain ensconced in our enclaves of sameness: subdivisions planned by price point and urban oases of affluence set amid vast deserts of urban poverty.
We are not likely to recognize the ravages of inequity because of our isolation from one another, but they are there.
In addition, there is less economic mobility in America than in many other wealthy countries.
As the president pointed out:
“The problem is, that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished levels of upward mobility in recent years. A child born in the top 20 percent has about a two in three chance of staying at or near the top. A child born into the bottom 20 percent has a less than one in 20 shot at making it to the top. He’s 10 times likelier to stay where he is.”
The Economic Policy Institute’s “State of Working American, 12th Edition,” released last year, echoed that sentiment, finding that “U.S. mobility is among the lowest of major industrialized economies.”
And that mobility gap is compounded by a gender gap. According to a 2008 Brookings Institution report, “Close to half (47 percent) of low-income girls compared to 35 percent of low-income boys end up in the bottom fifth upon adulthood.”
And NPR reported last month that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women’s share of minimum wage workers is nearly twice that of men.
That is why it was important for the president to use his speech to support raising the minimum wage, saying, “It’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that, in real terms right now, is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office.”
Arguments against addressing income inequality often focus on the possibility of undermining incentives for those at the top. But what happens if and when inequality begins to undermine incentives for those in the middle and at the bottom? Honest work should pay an honest wage. That idea is part of the American social contract and one in danger of disintegrating.
We must ensure that our society rewards innovation, ideas and initiative while also ensuring equal access to opportunity and more equitable pay for workers. The American identity depends on it.
This is not an us-versus-them argument, but an all-of-us one.
Next up we have Mr. Kristof:
When I studied Chinese many years ago, my teacher in Beijing explained to me the meaning of the word “hen” for hatred: It’s the way we Chinese feel about Japan.
And, a couple of times over the years, I’ve had Chinese tell me that America’s big mistake after World War II was failing to exterminate the entire Japanese population.
This loathing for Japan, now harnessed to a growing military power, forms the backdrop for dangerous tensions in the East China Sea. Nobody wants war over a handful of uninhabited rocks in the Pacific Ocean, but there’s a risk of an accident spinning out of control. Moreover, Japan, China and the United States have botched their handling of these enormously sensitive territorial disputes, and we now have nationalists at the helm of Japan and China.
This is a chance for everyone to take a deep breath and think about the rise of China — the most important geopolitical trend of our time. China is projected to surpass the United States to become the world’s largest economy, after allowing for price differences, in about three years, according to estimates of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, group that includes the world’s industrialized countries. China’s currency has just overtaken the euro as the second most used in trade finance, after the dollar.
China’s government is investing heavily in its military, including a blue water navy, and plenty of Chinese believe that their government has been too conciliatory and wimpish. Indeed, a more democratic China might well be more assertive and more challenging to its neighbors — particularly Japan.
China actually has a reasonable claim to the Diaoyu Islands, as it calls them, although it is increasingly ham-handed in asserting those claims. The strongest evidence comes from Japanese government documents of the Meiji era, referring to the islands as China’s and scheming to grab them — which is what Japan did when China was weak in 1895. It renamed the islands the Senkakus.
After World War II, the United States controlled the islands, and, in 1972, it handed over “administration” to its ally Japan without taking position on who owns them. Conflict has grown with rising nationalism in both China and Japan (Taiwan, which also claims the islands, has been most levelheaded).
Japan erred last year when it bought the islands from a private landowner — nationalizing them — despite strong warnings from both China and America. Likewise, the Obama administration was wrong to say explicitly that it would back Japan in any war over the islands.
Really? We’re ready to fight over uninhabited rocks when we don’t even take a position on their ownership? If Washington’s intention was to get Beijing to back off, this was counterproductive. The move just inflamed Chinese opinion.
“We are dealing with an extremely delicate situation,” notes Cheng Li, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. He worries that Americans may not always appreciate the sensitivities involved.
China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, is a complicated figure and a self-confident nationalist who has ties to some of the fiery ultranationalists in the People’s Liberation Army but also wants good relations with Washington. He presumably is behind China’s declaration last month of an air defense identification zone that overlaps with disputed territory.
Xi badly overplayed his hand. There’s nothing wrong with China declaring such a zone (the United States and Japan both have them), but it was done in a bellicose way that echoed similarly belligerence in the South China Sea. And the world doesn’t have much sympathy for China’s leaders when they bully neighbors, blockade news and social media websites, and imprison a Nobel Peace Prize winner like Liu Xiaobo.
China’s Foreign Ministry officials offer Xi sensible counsel, but they are often outmaneuvered by hawks in the military. I once asked a Chinese general about moderate Foreign Ministry statements on the South China Sea. The general scoffed: “That’s the Foreign Ministry’s position, not China’s position.”
One risk is of a military accident like the 2001 collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter aircraft. The Chinese leader at the time, Jiang Zemin, returned the American plane and crew, but Xi might not be so conciliatory.
The upshot is that we need crisis hotlines so we can manage a crisis if it happens. The Obama administration also needs a senior point person for China, which it doesn’t really have now.
For his part, Xi should realize that saber-rattling distracts from economic development and that an emerging great power like China cannot harness modern weaponry to old and almost tribal hatreds. Those of us who admire China’s accomplishments need to make the point that nationalist propaganda, muscle-flexing and demonizing Japan are dangerous games. As a Chinese saying goes, it’s easier to ride a tiger than to dismount.
And now here’s Ms. Collins:
In its ongoing effort to protect the American public from the War on Christmas, Fox News has a special online map highlighting current reported atrocities. I am looking at it now, and the message is clear: as problems go, this one is imaginary.
Some social conservatives embrace a seasonal victimhood this time of year, complaining that Christians are continually being mugged by anti-Christmas atheists bearing court orders. But the map pinpoints only a handful of alleged secular assaults, one of which is titled: “Salvation Army Volunteer Using Smaller Bell After Business Owner Complains.”
This year’s big book on the subject is by Sarah Palin, which makes it both best-selling and instantly passé. The title (“Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas”) is an attempt to spin a warm and fuzzy view of the War on the War, but I say, if you’re going there, go all the way. Like Fox’s John Gibson, who wrote “The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.”
Palin does paint all attempts to remove religion from any aspect of the season as “the tip of the spear in a larger battle to secularize our culture and make true religious freedom a thing of America’s past.” She also takes a minute to lash out at “snickering” pundits who feel the whole “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas” issue is not a big deal. Such as the one who wrote a column in The Times under the headline “My Favorite War.” Which, O.K., was me.
“Good Tidings” is a rather small book, but it still needs a lot of filler: recipes, including one for smoked salmon spread, and family anecdotes. (When Bristol announced she was pregnant, Sarah initially wanted to make her get married, but Todd said no.) Then there was the year Granddad was taken off to the hospital for what everybody feared was a heart attack, but it turned out to be salmon poisoning.
As the teenaged Sarah Heath, Palin spent one Christmas hoping to get a mini-tape recorder. Her parents forced her to wait until the very end to unwrap her big present, which, she discovered while the rest of the family watched and chortled, was actually a dictionary. The moral, as Palin tells it, is that her parents wanted her to know that “words matter.” It sounds to me as though there was a mean streak in the Heath clan, which perhaps explains a lot.
Led by the American Family Association and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, conservative Christians have been encouraging boycotts of stores that do not directly connect their aim to sell massive amounts of clothes, toys, electronics and linens over the month of December with the birth of Christ. In her book, Palin recounts the sins and redemption of Walmart, which also gives her a chance to mention that, in 2003, the chain gave its Wasilla outlet a special award for selling 325 miles of duct tape, which averaged out to 314 feet per resident. It’s the kind of detail I appreciate.
This year, the American Family Association has been declaring war on Radio Shack for an alleged failure to mention Christmas enough, and celebrating a victory over Gap Inc. (“Complete turnaround!”) A spokeswoman for Gap said in a phone interview that the company instructs its staff to cry “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy Hanukkah!” and “Joyous Kwanzaa!” to customers, which seems like a lot of effort at an already stressful time of the year. She also volunteered that the company’s Old Navy brand ran TV ads last year “featuring the Griswold family from National Lampoon’s ‘Christmas Vacation.’ ”
So, more mentions of the birth of the Savior while promoting sweaters for the whole family.
We’d be a slightly happier nation if we could just feel good about the ways that Americans make this swell-but-stressful season work. Palin brags about her role as Christmas Warrior when she was mayor of Wasilla. “I knew I’d be criticized and challenged for sanctioning the Nativity scene. … But I didn’t care,” she writes. This was perhaps, in part, because there actually appeared to be no criticism or challenge whatsoever.
Given the fact that approximately three-quarters of the American population is Christian, it seems highly unlikely that anyone will be in danger of forgetting that Dec. 25 commemorates the birth of Christ. But you can’t make the entire period running from Thanksgiving to New Year a religious occasion. The holidays are for everyone: nearly six weeks of assorted celebrations, many of them simultaneously sacred and secular.
The season makes room for the complexity of our far-flung lives. You can rendezvous with long-separated siblings at SeaWorld one weekend, take your spouse’s parents to church the next. You can make a tradition out of anything from football to family dinners to re-running “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Some years you might have a better time than others, but the point is that everybody will be back to do it again in 12 months.
Happy holidays.
