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The Challenge of Inequality

The Crossroad Publishing Company

Globalization in Crisis

Statistics can help us understand the times in which we live. Currently more than 7 billion people are living on the earth, the highest number ever recorded. At the same time, 925 million people are suffering from hunger and starvation. In the United States alone, $50 billion was spent to feed domestic animals last year, the same amount of money that the G8 pledged in 2005 to the poorest countries in the world, a promise that has not yet been kept. In China, General Motors sells a car every twelve seconds, while every twelve seconds a child dies of starvation. Globalization has a lot of contradictions; it is complex and ambiguous.

The way in which we manage it is the key to our work and represents our responsibility to the future.

As Benedict XVI said, "Fighting poverty requires attentive consideration of the complex phenomenon of globalization." There is no question that globalization is bringing into being a new world, but is it a better world? The number of people living in extreme poverty has gone down over the past three decades, yet economic inequality has increased to levels never before seen. Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Caritas in veritate, said that "a more globalized society brings us closer but does not make us brothers" (no. 19). Globalization impacts everything: the economy, politics, cultures. All these are interconnected and reinforce one another throughout a globalized system. On the other hand, technological development and a neo-liberal economic system have brought along with them the hard reality of a gambling-casino financial market and an unregulated capitalism, where it is commonplace to place bets on securities and on the behavior of the market so as to realize profits unconnected to the real economy. But there is still another aspect of globalization, one that pertains to the global village where we are all connected to one another and therefore can influence and create change throughout the global community. Our movements have become global movements, and we have seen emerge a global citizenry. Globalization is a fact. Unlike the weather, it can be regulated and governed. But in which direction? Toward what end?

In Caritas in veritate, Benedict XVI says that globalization is not a negative phenomenon, but he writes, "The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value" (no. 9).

The Misery of the South, the Ennui of the North

Ours is an era of unprecedented changes, and yet we still live in a world full of obvious inequalities. We are creating a world in which the greed of a few is leaving the majority marginalized from history. Globalization seems more a myth than a reality. The logic of the financial markets has been globalized, and the absolutism of their capital is wreaking havoc. One might well say only the rich are globalized. Technology protects them while distancing them from the poor who must submit and work for them, since the system in many parts of the world requires poor people and keeps them in their place so that they might continue to produce on behalf of the rich.

We have not moved toward a more just system, even if that is what the marketing of "one world" promises us. Globalization is highly selective. The advantages that it produces are to the benefit of the same people as always, by way of the same distribution of wealth. It is long past time to put a halt to this scandal and to take steps toward a model of sustainability — humanizing globalization and transforming it into a genuinely universal reality.

Society is dehumanized to the extent it becomes a marketplace. Borders are indiscriminately opened for the exchange of goods and closed to people. The lack of development in many countries is producing an uncontrollable exodus of economic refugees and is leading the developed world to shut itself in behind physical and racial barriers. The urban violence of organized crime and narco-trafficking has turned Third World cities into today's jungle. Economic and social disparities divide our world between the ennui of rich countries and the subhuman life of the poor.

These days we talk a lot about quality of life, but it does not appear that globalization is generally contributing to it, for there will never been a true quality of life if we continue to fill ourselves with things, ignore the substantiality of what it means to be human, and in particular, overlook the spiritual dimension of life, which is essential to our humanity.

Living is not simply existing, but it is to exist in a certain way. This is what we are consistently invited to strive toward. The great Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said, "Life is not something, it is an opportunity to do something." The presence of meaning in life must be the origin of hope for the world.

Lessons from a Failed Model

The economic crisis that exploded throughout the world in 2008 and which continues even today has cast suspicion upon one of the fundamental notions of globalization: that the market would regulate itself and that a neoliberal capitalist system is ideal. In 2008 the global financial system was on the verge of collapse. The blind pursuit of profit at any cost without regard to any ethical regulation was a disaster for people and for our planet. The greedy and unsustainable lifestyle of the few created, in the words of Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve System, "a tsunami of credit only seen once a century."

The banks had to be bailed out. Unemployment rose. Many went out of business. Hundreds of millions of people were cast into extreme poverty. The global costs have been estimated at $25 trillion.

The crisis of 2008 is a costly, ongoing lesson we have not learned from. The global economy is yet again on the verge of falling apart. Fears of a debt crisis are spreading across the Eurozone. Financial markets are in turmoil. Growth has slowed. And in the end, the poor pay the highest price, and not only in the West. The financial contagion, austerity measures tightening aid budgets, rising tariffs impacting commercial trade — all strike at the poor in developing countries. In Asia, Vietnam and Cambodia are particularly vulnerable. And in addition to all this, the high cost of unemployment in Europe and North America means less work available for immigrant labor. The loss from emigration in Tajikistan represents 39 percent of the gross national product, 22 percent in Nepal, and 8 percent among all low-income countries.

The real fear is that we have learned the wrong lesson. Various governments have used the economic crisis as a reason to cut off aid. Aid from the main donor countries went down 3 percent in 2011 — and this, in the face of the need to increase aid, which, if spent well, would yield important results. One need only look at Cambodia, where nearly all children are now going to school, thanks to investments in making primary and secondary education accessible.

Benedict XVI offered the hope that "more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, thus respecting the obligations that the international community has undertaken in this regard."

Like communism and Nazism, any international system of organization that sacrifices the reality of human existence to blind ideology is to be condemned. Globalization has created the perception that consumption and enjoyment can be limitless. And when the means necessary to satisfy these needs diminish, then feelings of resentment and frustration grow.

A system that rewards the rich and excludes the poor creates divisions. It makes people doubt their worth, their potential, and their usefulness. Some — the weakest and most put upon — may well feel as if their very right to exist is in question. We have already seen the reaction to this system, which places the needs of 1 percent of the population ahead of the other 99 percent. We saw it in the streets of Athens, Washington, Port-au-Prince, Maputo, Mexico City, and Manila. As Pope Benedict stated, "When misery coexists alongside great wealth, a sense of injustice is born that can become a source of revolt. Thus, nations ought to take care such that social policies do not increase inequality and allow for every person to live with dignity!"

If all are to participate and injustice to end, access must be provided to social, cultural, and economic opportunities, and everyone must be empowered to decide the course of their own life, from which follows the responsibility that each of us has to stand in solidarity with all others. From a Christian point of view, freedom is a right that allows every human being to live a responsible life in community. However, this is only possible within a certain set of circumstances over which individual people themselves have no control. Adequate sanitary conditions, access to education, and freedom to fulfill one's potential are such conditions. It is society's duty to put into place a secure framework for the human life of its members.

The structural and material prerequisites of such a framework are not the only aspects to be included but nonmaterial conditions as well, such as freedom from discrimination. A society's ability to provide such a framework depends on its resources. Turning again to Pope Benedict: "Considering the person to be helped first means giving them back their role as a social protagonist and permits them to take their own future in hand, to occupy their proper place in society. ... A person's worth lies in what he is more than what he has."

Economic Crisis: A Chance to Reverse the Damage

The current crisis has exposed systemic failures generated by unscrupulous speculation by a handful of people at the cost of millions of families who struggle to get by. But the crisis also presents a unique opportunity to give a new form to globalization so that it may benefit the majority. Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff, said, "Let's not let a good crisis go to waste." Business and finance can work to the benefit of everyone and not just their stockholders. A return to a fair model based on collective responsibility is the key to narrowing the divide between rich and poor. We must act in such a way as to ensure that globalization and capital universally contribute to the common good.

After the 2008 economic crisis and the bailout of the banks, the pope said, "The world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail.' Surely the integral human development of the world's peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world's attention, that is truly 'too big to fail.'" I'm told that in Taiwan they have a saying, "A cow led off to Beijing is a still a cow," which means that someone with a bad habit has a hard time changing their behavior, regardless of their circumstances. It is also said that "the fish rots from the head down." Rich countries have led the world into a capitalism without regulation and are responsible for bringing the whole world to the brink of disaster twice within five years. Poor countries should not expect the West to behave in a responsible fashion and ought to act, now, on their own, to move toward the greater good.

If the sun is setting in the West, it is rising in the East. In 1820 Asia represented two-thirds of the global economy. With Western industrialization, Asian countries have now experienced two centuries of steady decline. Today, this trend is reversed. The rapid growth of many Asian countries beginning in 1950 is one of the greatest success stories of development in recent history.

Half a century ago, South Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia had levels of poverty on par with other developing countries. Taiwan, for example, had a standard of living similar to that of Zambia in 1950, as gauged by its gross domestic product. Fifty years later, the GDP of Zambia is the same, while that of Taiwan is thirty-two times greater. The percentage of people in eastern Asia living on less than one euro per day dropped to 14 percent in 2008 from 77 percent in 1981. In the last five years, the number of people in Asia living in poverty dropped by 430 million.

This century may well see something on the order of 3 billion people in Asia achieve the same standard of living as people in European countries, with Asia perhaps producing fully one-half of the world's gross international product by the year 2050. Some might say that this success is due to the free market. This is partly true; as South Korea and Taiwan have shown us, by providing labor and opening their business to foreign investment, they are protecting the most developed of their own industries and providing them the space to become engines of growth. In other words, they employ protectionist policies when it suits them, just as the West places value on a "free market" above all others.

Growth in Asia is impressive but uneven. Economic prosperity is not reaching the poorest people in those countries. This area of the world's most rapid economic growth is still where half of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. Five hundred million Asians do not have secure access to drinking water. In India, Indonesia, and China, the gulf between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, and millions of people have been left behind. In India and China, the difference in income between the top 10 percent of the population and the bottom 10 percent of the population is 50 to 1. One-fifth of their GDP is in the hands of 5 percent of their population, while the poor are denied fair access to education, health care, and other services. The child of a poor family is ten times more likely to die at birth than the child of an affluent family.

Humanity as Family: A Dream or a Practical Possibility?

"One human family, zero poverty" was the theme of a recent Caritas International general assembly. Taiwan had a great deal to teach us about reaching this goal, since only 1 percent of its population lives in poverty, which an analyst suggested might well be the lowest percentage ever achieved in all of human history. But even there, the crisis of the last few years has exacted a price.

The globalized economy always seems to create winners and losers, exacerbating the inequalities that exist. We cannot accept any political or social system in which the rich exploit the poor. Our challenge is to build a world of brotherhood, in which we live together as one family in peace. Globalization is nothing new for the Catholic Church, of course. Our church is one universal people united in sacrament and solidarity. Concern for social justice and human rights is obviously not the only task of the church, but it is an essential part of it and an indispensible dimension of koinonia. The challenges ahead of us are real and sometimes discouraging. In the crisis we are now passing through, certain statements bring light and hope and encourage us to use globalization for uniting all of humanity into one family.

The papal encyclical Spes salvi says, "The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through 'com-passion' is a cruel and inhuman society" (no. 38).

When we say, "Our Father, who art in heaven," we pray with the whole human family. Jesus's prayer becomes our own, and it is the prayer of every single individual as a brother or sister in Christ as members of the whole human family. In this one prayer we make real our faith, and we share it universally. If we human beings are a family, we cannot allow there to be a Second, Third, or Fourth World. This is nonnegotiable. We cannot allow one brother or sister to be lost, lest we fail at our own call to salvation. If we seek to channel the forces of globalization toward this end, indeed our only motto can be, "One human family, zero poverty."

The Rights and Duties of a Common Destiny

To choose justice and to overcome poverty require a revision of priorities for countries and for politics. One does not need a whole lot of theory to know the direction in which we should be moving. Providing for basic needs, both "active" and "passive," are what we call the "common good," a phrase politicians seeking election to "public service" tend to use even if, in the end, in many cases, they end up only serving their own good and not the public's.

Human beings have basic needs that are of a "passive" nature, and for these, the state cannot fail to be of assistance. These are food, health, clothing, and housing — the things upon which life depends and which should be the starting point for an examination of political conscience on the part of a government and of a social conscience on the part of a community. These conditions are the basis for justice and the place where one begins to overcome poverty.

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Excerpted from The Challenge of Inequality by Óscar Andres Cardinal Rodrigue Maradiaga, Emanuele Criterio, Robert H. Hopke. Copyright © 2015 The Crossroad Publishing Company. Excerpted by permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.
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