I'm listening to Charles Mingus"Blues and Roots" playing Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting and thinking about income inequality,Vermont Castings wood stoves and the blues of Alvin Lee. If I followed my Buddhist teachings more closely,I would be sitting silently on my red sofa watching my breath and practicing insight meditation(which I've done for 15 months months) and appreciate the snow that falls from heaven.I'm really doing all of the above and starting my insurrectionist playlist because that is where it's at today and I'm flowing with, instead of restricting,my reality in any way. I'm very open, free and in a zone like Amare carrying the Knicks. I wish the elites that made important decisions for the untouchables(lower 90% income level) were open and engulfed in empathy, awareness and compassion but they are socially vertical distant and blinded like Stevie Wonder at the Met.
Chris Hayes in his book "Twilight of the Elites" writes a lot about social vertical distance and the dire effects on the poor in our country. I saw it firsthand, in my own educational system, where administrators were too distant from the students and relied on secondhand information(from other administrators) to make decisions that were injurious to both the staff and students.They did so because they thought they were smarter than the average teacher or parent who interacted with the students on a daily basis.This viewpoint of being "smarter" than non-elites,according to Hayes, is a key component in the meritocratic perspective that has come to dominate the upper class in America today.Hayes writes about this perspective in his" Iron Law of Meritocracy" that states that eventually the inequality produced by the meritocratic system will grow large enough to subvert the mechanisms of mobility.Unequal outcomes(47% don't have to pay Fed. taxes due to low income levels) make equal opportunities impossible. The principle of difference will come to overwhelm the principle of mobility(only 6% of lowest quintile made it to the top quintile). Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them,or to selectively lower it down(admission policies) to allow their friends,allies and kin to scramble up. Whoever says meritocracy say oligarchy( even 60% of our representatives are millionaires).Germany is 1.5 times more mobile,Canada 2.5,Denmark 3 times more mobile than the U.S and it has 48.2% total tax rate of GNP( the U.S has a 24.8 rate)
Between 1979-2007, 88% of the entire economy's income gains went to the top 1%. The top .01% had a nine-fold increase in income from $4 million to $35 million. 400 of our richest taxpayers had an average income more than ten thousand times the average income of the bottom 90% of the taxpayers.The top 10% captured all the income gains while the bottom 90% declined.
One of the eight-fold pathway in Buddhism is right viewpoint.This viewpoint has others(body of life as equals) as the focus of our actions and decisions.If suffering is occurring,it is our obligation to help and alleviate it.This is the focus of every religion or humanistic perspective man has developed.Hayes has proposed that we listen to Mingus and move toward Wednesday Night Prayer Meetings in the halls our our elite institutions that are out of touch with the misery income inequality has created.Isolation,segregation and continuous self concern rewards nobody in the end.
More from this book soon.
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