The New Math of Inequity and Wealth

Samuel Bowles, The New Economics of Inequality and Redistribution

Lost in the debate surrounding capitalism’s vast inequality structures has been the fact that inequality is as bad for the haves as the have-nots. As veteran economist Samuel Bowles demonstrates in his latest monograph, vast systemic inequity results in good-faith members of a free society operating below their economic potential. But implementing solutions will prove more difficult than pinpointing the problem.

Bowles has been at the forefront of innovative economics for decades (he name-drops Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy), during which time inequality has migrated from the margins of Marxist theory into the journalistic mainstream. The attention paid to massive inequity in the Presidential campaign just past makes Bowles’ theories, which have incubated for decades, all the more timely. And to his credit, he resists the desire for an ordinary partisan screed.

The debate, up to now, has turned on two contrasting points. Traditional conservatism holds that markets have a balancing effect, distributing rewards according to just principles of merit and reward. Progressives have countered that by saying that those who start out with more will receive greater rewards. Conservatives want the state to defend property rights and ownership, while progressives want government to redress injustices stemming from poverty and lack.

But Bowles asserts both these models omit important information. Market libertarianism and statist interventionism both assume a utopian system free from coordination failures. Yeah, right; we should live so long. Laissez faire only works if everyone plays by the same rules, which measurably happens too infrequently, while strict Keynesianism has been long-since overtaken by global technology. The old ways don’t work anymore.

Our problems arise from a perverse incentive structure. Consider the example of a factory, one Bowles explicates often and well. Owners have every incentive to resist modernization and demand workers do more, because they want to maximize profit on existing capital investments. Workers, by contrast, have no ownership stake in outcomes, and thus little incentive to obey owners’ expectations. Without governance structures, the two talk past each other.

Nor could they do otherwise. Because they have asymmetrical power (bosses have many reprimand mechanisms, while workers can only work or quit), no discussion can be truly frank and fair. Inequality therefore stretches beyond the realm of wealth, into distributions of power: the rich have many options, the poor have few. No wonder the poor stop participating in economic and political advancement. Diligence produces small, or no, reward.

Ownership, that conservative shibboleth, provides some answer. People work harder when they own the means of production. They care more for outcomes when they own the product of their work. But breaking into the world of ownership requires massive capital, which only the elites have. Bowles backs this up with graphs and charts, which make his math-rich narrative much more comprehensible, but it boils down to that old working-class proverb: Them that has, gets.

Credit markets compound this problem by limiting lending practices. Those already imbued with wealth need not borrow to finance new ventures, but the poor must borrow to finance anything new. And lenders, especially post-Great Recession, are notoriously averse to loaning money to those without a proven track record. Business loan interviews are more dreaded than dental exams. This creates material disincentive for innovators to try anything new, risky, and visionary.

The answer lies in redistribution, though not the methods traditionally arrayed. Conventional socialism and central planning have failed spectacularly. Direct capital transfers, as Bowles documents them, have not imploded with Kremlin-like flair, but have tended to die quietly, because giving the poor money and goods does not give them power, authority, or knowledge. We will only redress Twenty-First Century inequality with Twenty-First Century remedies.

This book is not for everybody. Bowles writes for fellow economists and political leaders, and his prose is dense with terminology. He provides definitions for some idioms, but not others. He’s particularly fond of the term “Nash equilibrium,” perhaps assuming we’ve all seen A Beautiful Mind. Alongside frequent allusions to other economists, Bowles’ jargon-rich prose makes for slow reading. This book could really use a glossary.

But for those eager to participate in the important discussions that will dominate economics in the coming years, Bowles does well. Not only does he lay out the terms that have defined the debate until now, he creates a persuasive third-way approach that defies doctrinaire thinking. His proactive proposals give activists something to speak for, and his charts offer ways to make it comprehensible. This slim, powerful book will help set the tone for years to come.

A Fun New Take on Christmas Music

Robin Harper & Marvin Goldstein, Simply Christmas

I admit it: I don’t like Christmas music. Many artists tear off Christmas albums to get something in under deadline, and apparently hope to score a crossover hit, so the music doesn’t get as much care as it deserves. Between the bland secular gruel and the pious pomp, I turn my radio off more at Christmas than any other time of the year. Which is why I like Robin Harper’s Christmas album, misleadingly entitled Simply Christmas.

Harper sings a selection of Christmas standards, including old hymns, recent chart toppers, and classics you probably heard on your uncle’s old 45’s. Though none of these songs are original compositions (the most recent is from 1993), Harper puts her own spin on them. She sings in a classic Broadway jazz-fusion style, backed by pianist Marvin Goldstein, whose playing recalls Richard Carpenter, or a more laid-back Vince Guaraldi.

The “Simple” part of Harper and Goldstein’s title refers to their stripped-down style. With no overdubbing or ornate orchestration, they play with remarkable intimacy, like the star musicians at a wine-and-cheese party. You can imagine these two at your favorite fern bar, an impression amplified by the audible smile in Harper’s voice, and the playful embellishments Goldstein throws on his piano. Their music eschews hip studio trickery.

But do not assume this music is “Simple” because it lacks sophistication. Harper’s vocals recall the heyday of jazz pop, and while she doesn’t growl like Shirley Bassey, she could hold her own with the likes of Connie Francis or Dinah Shore. And when she takes on songs associated with particular artists (Eartha Kitt on “Santa Baby,” Kathy Mattea on “Mary Did You Know?”), she avoids the trap of merely mimicking the famous renditions.

Harper and Goldstein are not satisfied merely playing lounge classics; this is not somebody’s bland karaoke album. Interesting flourishes, like Harper’s accelerated take on “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” or her unexpectedly brisk “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” keep listeners guessing what she’ll do next. Behind her, Goldstein throws ornaments on his playing that keep his piano spirited, without overwhelming his vocalist.

Nor is Harper afraid to vary her tone. Her take on “Mary Did You Know?” captures the minor-key energy of Mattea’s classic recording, but in an urbane jazz style that deflects Mattea’s country original. Harper captures the fear Mary must have felt, knowing she’d birthed the Son of God. This remarkable detour into sonic darkness sustains the poignant edge that she begins with the almost political “Grown-Up Christmas List” and carries into her bold yet wistful “Silent Night.”

I especially appreciate that Harper’s repertoire is specifically Christmas-oriented. Between her use of religious songs, and secular tunes that specify Christmas, she maintains a thread that her music stands for something. No “Happy Holidays” here, thank you very much. Of her eleven tracks, only one, the jazz standard “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” doesn’t mention Christ or Christmas specifically.

Even “White Christmas” and “The Man With the Bag,” artifacts of seasonal sentimentality that usually bore me, have remarkable spirit in Harper’s renditions. Perhaps that’s because, instead of rendering them in the blandly inoffensive stylings of lounge singers everywhere, Harper sings them like they mean something to her personally. This results in tracks that feel like she’s sharing something intimate with us, like she’s invested a piece of herself in the product.

Harper bookends the album with two takes on Mel Tormé and Bob Wells’ “The Christmas Song,” which, in its combination of religious and secular images, sums up her album well. Of her many covers, this is probably the closest Harper comes to recreating the original, and she does a great job capturing Nat King Cole’s barely detectable syncopation. This track clearly situates Harper as part of an ongoing jazz Christmas tradition.

My only complaint with this album is its brevity: it runs just under thirty-five minutes, merely LP length, which by current standards is unusually short. Harper and Goldstein could have taken on many more tracks from the great Christmas tradition without losing the energy that makes this album so listenable. Maybe she figured less is more. But it ends much sooner than I would have liked.

This album probably won’t change my opinion of all Christmas music. As long as artists see the season as a chance to be insipidly sentimental, I’ll probably dodge Christmas songs. But Harper and Goldstein do well in an area where better-known artists fall flat, and craft a listenable album for the season.

Ken Davis, Christian Vagueness, and God's Full Life

Ken Davis, Fully Alive: Lighten Up and Live - A Journey that Will Change Your Life

About seventy years ago, George Orwell said that Christianity would suffer in the latter Twentieth Century, because while we were good at instilling a fear of hell, whenever we trod anywhere near heaven, we turned vague and elusive. Look it up: he repeats it several times in All Art Is Propaganda. When I first read that, I didn’t know what he meant, but as I grow older and more mature in my faith, I see it displayed around me every day.

Too often, unfortunately, we don’t know what we believe. We have grown accustomed to Christmas pageants featuring fifth grade girls in liturgical robes, pretending to be angels and proclaiming, “Do not be afraid.” Afraid of what? Indeed, we fear too little, and enjoy too little, and so much of what we call piety is an accrued shell of cultural mess. Because of that, we don’t really live, because we feel we have little to live for.

We Christians are moving into a season when we celebrate the humble birth of a King who came not to be served, but to serve. We celebrate His calling to exalt the poor, restore hope to the broken, and make ourselves an image of the God we proclaim. Yet looking around our churches, I see that enacted all too infrequently. We try to lure converts with highly programmed liturgy and a “worship high,” when the world really wants to see us live what we believe.

Nor do I hold myself exempt from that. I know I talk a much better game than I live. And an important part of that comes about because I’ve never successfully stated what I really believe.

Christian humorist and motivational speaker Ken Davis hits many of the right notes in his latest exhortation. By zeroing in on the ways in which we hold ourselves back from the life God made available to us in Jesus Christ, he makes a convincing case that we do our professed faith injustice when we live half-alive. But I think he tries to do too much, and parts of his book aren’t nearly as strong and confident as other parts.

In his early sixties, Davis, who has been making people laugh for the Lord for decades, had a real “come to Jesus” moment when he saw a photograph of himself on the beach with his granddaughter. By then, he had ballooned to over 240 pounds, and his physical and mental health were in a spiral. He knew that, if he wanted to enjoy his grandchildren, he needed to get back on track, or else he was going to die.

Davis embarked on a journey intended not only to restore his health, but to reconnect him to the Source of all life and meaning. He spends several chapters detailing the processes he took to regain control of his body, and all the ways in which his life is improved now that his “Temple of the Lord” is capable of greater acts of worship. Looking back, I wish he’d written a spiritual memoir of his health; I would have enjoyed that book.

Instead, Davis tries to tackle the whole Christian experience, and all the ways in which our short-sighted choices cut us off from the source of real life. And because Davis attempts so much, he accomplishes too little. Whole chapters have a stultifying vagueness that saps them of their vigor. Make new friends? Shed the baggage that holds you back? These are easier said than done, and they lack the specificity that makes Davis’ health-related chapters so electric.

Davis essentially spreads himself too thin, and in the process, he trots out the superficial vagueness that has become Christianity’s tragic hallmark. While he dissects the mistakes all Christians make when we try to go it alone, his solutions too often turn into bland bromides. I really wish he’d stuck with the health memoir. “I started out here, did this to correct, and learned these lessons.” Those are the best, and also most specific, parts of his book.

Early on, Davis quotes Saint Irenaeus, one of the post-apostolic Church Fathers, who wrote: “God’s glory is the earthly creature made fully and eternally alive with the life of the Spirit.” Davis makes this the thesis of his book, and returns to this point several times. I couldn’t agree more. But because Davis tries to address too many parts of life, few of them appear full. I like Davis’ point, but his execution falls short of his effusion.

Bob Roberts Calls All Faiths To Gather At God's Table

Bob Roberts, Jr., Bold as Love: What Can Happen When We See People the Way God Does

Once upon a time, people chose religions much the same way they chose football teams: they rooted for the same team their neighbors did. But today’s unprecedented mass migration has resulted in diverse, powerful world religions living next door to one another. Picking our faith passively, or throwing our hands in the air, is not an option. We must speak frankly, but lovingly, with all religions in today’s compact world.

When Dallas megachurch pastor Bob Roberts, Jr., met a Saudi prince who asked him what he had done to promote dialog, he felt overwhelmed. Dallas is the capital of Jesusland! Yet when he got home, he noticed mosques, synagogues, temples, and more, right on his doorstep. The supposed Bible Belt has as much religious diversity as any American region. So he took the logical step, reaching out to imams and rabbis for his city’s first multifaith sit-down.

This book combines anecdotes of Roberts’ personal discoveries, lessons he learned about his own and others’ beliefs, and suggestions to build similar experiences across America. Roberts’ suggestions are both timely and relevant. The Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) share a call to love our neighbors, a call shared by most faiths and philosophies. But it’s hard to love one another when we don’t know one another.

Like me, Roberts distrusts the sort of “interfaith” meetings that enjoyed hip cachet in the 1990s. Too often, these descended into huggy, syncretic pablum in which nobody stood for anything. No wonder interfaith outreach dwindled after 9/11. Roberts prefers the term “multifaith,” which reflects his real goal: people who passionately believe their own faith, and passionately want to know their neighbors as real people.

Roberts expected initial hostility from his congregation, and to an extent, he got it. Some people have a fortress mentality, only talking to others of like mind, seeing outsiders as a besieging enemy. A certain subset of American religious and political discourse drums up the idea that we only retain our ideological purity if we keep diversity at arm’s length. Some families left Roberts’ congregation rather than sit down with Jews and Muslims.

Bob Roberts, Jr.

But far more families stayed. People with intensely different theologies found they could discuss their beliefs without muddying themselves. Indeed, Roberts says how frank, respectful dialog with believers of multiple faiths urged him to refine his own beliefs. Creation makes more sense after you’ve explained your beliefs to atheists; the Trinity comes into sharp detail when you define the doctrine for Muslims.

Roberts says, “The strength of a religion or faith is not what it is when left alone but what it is when challenged. Hard times make for strong faith, deep learning, and moving closer to God.” Participants in Roberts’ multifaith encounters emerged with a deeper understanding of their own beliefs, and cast off trappings that were merely cultural, not true to the faith.

Often, sincere believers of good character fall into the trap of seeing other faiths’ adherents as prospective converts. We proselytize without bothering to learn each other’s hopes and aspirations. But God does not call us to keep a scorecard. We love one another when we know each other’s names and hearts. We have the best hope of reaching each other when the world sees us live the true tenets of our faith.

For instance, Roberts describes one early meeting between his congregation and local Muslims. His congregation forgot to put away their Sunday stuff, and Roberts was astonished to see several Muslims signing up to join his members on an inner-city work retreat. Think about that. What better way to learn what another religion believes than to sweat side-by-side with true believers? Even if we never make converts, we make friends.

Roberts tells touching, funny stories about his multifaith friendships. His wife joined a multifaith cooking club. Not only did the women learn about each other’s cuisine and culture, but the Muslim women made new friends around whom they could take off their hijabs. Roberts also describes halal turkey hunting with his good friend, Imam Zia. He sees these encounters as metaphors for what’s possible when faiths talk with, not past, each other.

If we want to know members of other world faiths, we must abandon the fuzzy dream of ignoring our differences. Bob Roberts makes a persuasive case that, if we just talk to one another in love, we will not only make inroads toward lasting peace, but we will know the belief our faith has called us to for a long time.

Tyler Dilts' New California Noir

Tyler Dilts, The Pain Scale

A Congressman’s daughter-in-law and grandchildren are murdered in a manner both gratuitous and pointless. Long Beach homicide detective Danny Beckett thinks he’s seen everything, but even this is more than he expected. Just back from a year-long medical leave, Beckett has survived a disfiguring attack that leaves him in constant racking pain. But at least his physical pain gives him something to think about, besides his psychological pain.

Tyler Dilts makes good use of traditional noir boilerplates, upending readers’ expectations in ways that keep us wanting to pay attention. Instead of relying on our familiarity with traditions, like the sarcastic loner hero and the villain for hire, he creates them anew, giving us characters who want to rejoin the human race, but for whatever reason cannot. His attempts to imbue old stereotypes with new motivations revive the noir tradition for today’s generation.

Detective Beckett doesn’t want to hold the human race at arm’s length. He remains friends with an old case witness, tries to keep good working relations with his fellow LBPD detectives, and has a puckish sense of humor. And he isn’t a conscious “man outside his time.” He reads widely, savvies technology, and gets liberal arts in-jokes. His learned indie hipster persona resembles nothing so much as, well, me.

But his personal history is studded with suffering. He lost both his father and his wife violently, which plagues him, but also gives him remarkable sympathy for the victims he must investigate. His last major case left him a scar running the length of his left arm, so pain marks every moment of his life. In other words, unlike your typical smart-mouthed noir hero, Beckett has unusual cause to fend off the world with sarcasm and arrogance.

Also unlike typical noir heroes, Beckett understands himself as damaged. Where Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe think themselves honorable for alienating others and nursing grudges, Beckett realizes the trials he puts others through. He tries to make amends, but finds himself impeded by his constant pain, which prompts him to lash out at the worst possible moments. This alternating presence and absence of awareness gives Beckett’s edge real human dimension.

Dilts writes with a striking tenor that shows at once his familiarity with mystery standards, and his refusal to be bound. For one, his chapters are unusually long for genre fiction. He offsets this, however, by subdividing each chapter into short, action-driven scenes, many of which flash past with the urgency of a 1980s TV drama. This lets him linger on important developments as long as he needs, while still keeping the pace brisk.

He also numbers his chapters, not sequentially, but according to where Beckett stands on the titular pain scale: from one to ten, how bad is it? The worse Beckett’s pain, the more terse his language, so that, in chapters numbered above seven, sentences are often little more than noun-verb. Lower-numbered chapters have more introspection, studded with sudden moments of touching humor.

In the best noir tradition, Dilts avoids the simplest answer. After all, his murder victim is related to a Congressman, so how could anything be merely straightforward? Dilts’ intricate layering of conspiracy with psychological depth gives us three false endings, because each solution only opens more problems. I know I keep mentioning Sam Spade, but not without reason: this story has more cantilevered threads than anything I’ve read since The Maltese Falcon.

Some parts of this story will certainly bother certain readers. Beckett’s remarkable frankness can be off-putting. Though there’s no sex, his descriptions of violence spare no particulars. This comes across especially in the crime that drives the novel, a triple murder, including two child victims. Beckett spells out details with a clinical detachment that thankfully prevents him getting needlessly florid. Dilts essentially warns the squeamish to get off this train right now.

If I had to fault one issue, I’d pick Dilts’ strange reliance on brand names to set the tone. It gets overwhelming. In one scene, discussing a Porsche Panamera, Beckett keeps calling it a “Panera.” His partner corrects him, reminding him that Panera is a bakery chain, which Beckett calls “Starbucks for bread.” Layering works well for story elements, not so well for hipster nods.

But of you push past his brutal frankness and brand name dropping, Dilts crafts a story melding noir storytelling with New Millennium accuracy. Call it “noir procedural.”. Dilts both keeps within his genre, and stakes out territory entirely his own. In a crowded field, that makes him distinctive.