“Income inequality” is a fairly popular idea today. If we listen to the news, it’s a two-word buzz phrase often quoted by politicians. If we read the newspaper, whether that paper is the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, it appears in articles and editorials. It’s a rallying-cry kind of phrase, actually. Who can be against wanting to do something to solve “income inequality?” Identifying a genuine solution, on the other hand, is a completely different matter.
In his book, Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012), Charles Murray begins to explore the “why?” behind the concept that we know today as “income inequality.” The subtitle of this book, “the State of White America, 1960-2010” was disconcerting until I understood that Murray was basing his study on available data for one control group and, by the author’s admission, as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes are not exclusive to one particular race or ethnicity.
Coming Apart is exhaustive in its research and equally exhausting to read. It takes concentration to understand Murray’s argument, and it’s a lot of work plowing through 300 pages of charts, detailed analysis, and bar graphs. But he does have an important argument to make that is elegant in its simplicity but complicated in its application. In Murray’s analysis, there exists in America four “founding virtues” which help to determine the overall trajectory of one’s life and the stability of our republic. When the “founding virtues” of industriousness, honesty, marriage and religion are put into practice, generally speaking, one’s prospects for a life of happiness and fulfillment are good, and the future of our republic is hopeful. Where those virtues are lacking there is, at a minimum, economic pain and, as it pertains to our republic, it may seem as if we are “Coming Apart.” Take marriage for example. In a fictitious upper middle-class community known as Belmont, Murray’s virtue of marriage is not losing ground. In fact, over the last 20 years, the divorce rate has declined, reported happiness in marriage has increased, and non-marital childbearing is relatively rare. But there is a very different story to be told in struggling America which, in this case, is known as Fishtown. In Fishtown, divorce rates have risen, marital happiness has declined, and non-marital childbearing has substantially increased. Murray argues that there is a correlation between marriage as a kind of social contract and better prospects for a favorable future. And there is a similar story to be documented for working, abiding by the law, and faith.
The contribution that Coming Apart makes is that it challenges civic leaders and policy makers to seriously consider whether there are core virtues that help citizens to prosper and provide them with the framework to live fulfilled and meaningful lives. It encourages leaders to think about fundamental virtues that are required in order to craft policy that contributes to a lasting foundation upon which a just and prosperous republic can stand. Perhaps those virtues aren’t the same as Murray describes. Maybe economists, or social scientists, or business people view the data from a different lens. That’s fine. But certainly policy makers can begin to understand James Davison Hunter’s similar insight that character is formed through environments where intellectual and moral virtues are naturally interwoven within the structure of communities (The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good and Evil, 155). If so, not only is there a case to be made that the divide that exists between Belmont and Fishtown, upper middle-class America and struggling America, is very real, but there is an opportunity to discuss serious solutions which begin to close that divide. If that increasing divide is to be bridged, leadership solutions need to be proposed and practiced which support environments that create meaningful work which provides for a stable family life, healthy respect for cultural mores which strengthen moral and ethical living, relationships grounded in promises and commitment rather than convenience and obsolescence, and faith commitments that provide both meaning and purpose, and shape our naturally narcissistic tendencies to the greater good. Bridging the “income inequality” gap has much more to do with understanding who we are as a people, our values and our virtues, than it does with meaningless sound-bite proposals. Solutions to very real social challenges require policy makers who are attuned, both in understanding and compassion. One won’t do without the other.
