When Blessed John Paul II visited the United States in 1999, he noted that the whole world looked to America as a land of hope, where people could, with little more than determination and a strong work ethic, discover their own dreams.
However, The New York Times recently reported on studies that show it is harder to rise up the economic ladder in the United States than in other countries like Canada and Denmark. The reasons for this are, unfortunately, all too familiar.
For one thing, better-paying jobs tend to go to the more highly educated. However, getting a higher education has become an increasingly more expensive proposition, with undergrads, not to mention graduate students, increasingly saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt by the time they leave college to look for work.
Even if poorer students were able to afford higher education and take on that debt, they are more likely to have come from schools that have not properly prepared them. Recent documentaries like Waiting for “Superman” and The Lottery demonstrate the shockingly stark challenges that poor families face as they try to get their children into decent public elementary schools.
When it comes to high school, the competition is even more significant. Poor and middle-class families who wish to send their children to private preparatory high schools find these schools’ tuition prices skyrocketing. The average tuition for a private high school in New York City, for instance, is close to $40,000. The Big Apple’s market outpaces the rest of the country, but the trend is clear, and it’s a trend that increasingly leaves the poor hopelessly blocked from some of the best schools.
This leaves more and more families in competition for the limited number of spots at the better public schools. The days of working the extra job for the private-school education are over in parts of the country, a fact which reveals another problem.
While it is true that household income has increased significantly since the 1960s, for many, it now takes both parents working full-time jobs to reach that income level. Households may have made more over time, but individuals have not, and the breakdown of the family has only made matters worse.
Study after study has demonstrated the link between poverty and the breakdown of the family. Studies show that perhaps the single greatest antidote to poverty is a solid marriage. But with higher rates of deep family dysfunction among the poor and middle-class populations, more than at any other time in our history, one can begin to see just how difficult it can be for a student to find help doing homework or coaching for a test, much less a guiding hand through the storms of adolescence.
Not all the news is gloom and doom, of course. Relatively speaking, Americans’ lives are still phenomenally more prosperous and hopeful than the vast majority of the world, and certainly more than human history has ever known before. Immigrants continue to come to this country in droves for the chance to improve their lives. Still, the figures ought to give Catholics some serious pause.
The Church’s social teaching includes the principle of the universal destination of goods. This principle does not mean that all goods must be distributed equally in order to achieve justice. This is the error of some involved in the so-called “social justice” movement, and it is one condemned by the popes. Therefore, income gaps are not necessarily unjust.
What the principle of the universal destination of goods does mean, however, is that the poor must have access to the basic goods to which God has gifted us all. The principle requires that upward mobility is possible; that the poor can achieve the dignity rightfully theirs. More and more, however, a child born into poverty stays there.
Between a lack of good education, the breakdown of the family, high tuition costs and a lack of jobs, it is harder for the poor of our nation to succeed. This leads to the other great principle of the Church’s social teaching, solidarity.
Blessed Pope John Paul II taught in his encyclical On Social Concern that solidarity is more than just that vague feeling of concern for our neighbor. It is, rather, “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”
Rugged individualism may be an American trait, but it is not Catholic. We are all responsible for all, and especially the poor.
Political considerations, as the bishops tell us, must address not just economic inequality, but the very lack of access to basic goods like education and jobs. Policies that help to keep manufacturing jobs within the U.S. would go a long way to providing poor and middle-income families the opportunities they need. Addressing the poor performance of many of our public schools, as well as continuing the already great tradition of making Catholic education more accessible, can begin to address these problems.
This is not just a matter of government economic policy. There are deep cultural problems as well. Consumerism and educational loans have bred enormous personal debt. The dearth of “social capital” has meant a lack of skills necessary for building healthy relationships and thus healthy families. The example of strong families is more important now than ever. Volunteering to mentor children and/or their parents is a concrete way towards social healing.
Pope Benedict XVI would have us remember from his encyclical Charity in Truth that we must raise our arms to God in prayer for our society. Certainly one of the early and constant petitions for this year should be the wisdom to vote well and best inform our consciences, so that we might work for the common good with the full determination of a follower of Christ.
Omar Gutierrez works for the Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska.
He writes about culture and faith at RegnumNovum.com.
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It is improper to make direct comparisons of the economic opportunities that existed even this short dozen years ago with the wholly artificial lack of economic opportunities existing at present. To be specific while the US Economy was undergoing significant “structural” changes when Blessed John Paul II visited in 1999 it was still coasting on the inertial forces of the past. Yes the Manufacturing Sector had been brutalized by Clinton’s one sided NAFTA “free trade” agreement and had already shed half of it’s numbers when JPII of blessed memory visited compared to what existed in 1980 ... and yes American workers and American firms were forced to meet every whim invented by an EPA dominated by Malthusian Environmental Zealots was just begining to feel the full force of competition with the slaves of China, Pakistan, Indonesia, India etc. American automobile manufacturers were saddled with some of the most hostile intransigent socialist local government leaders to be found anywhere including Chicago but the plants had been built and paid for. Significantly there was not the albatross of Obamacare - a huge hurdle to employment. Crony capitalism had not yet fully “metastasized” into indirect subsidies of the few e.g. as AARP, McDonalds etc. - the entire State of Nevada were granted “waivers” from Obamcare, while everyone else pays full freight; never mind the Solyndra’s ad nauseum. So when the manufacturing middle has been “structurally” gutted from the old list of middle class opportunities and you are increasingly left with only two economic paths ... either that of the educated or that of what these oligarics consider the great unwashed you will get the statistics cited.
What of the near future? It will only get worse. Now in 2012 from the 4 corners to the East Coast the EPA has outlawed by fiat a full 10% of the existing Electrical Generator Capacity of this Country. If there is a heat wave this summer some of the elderly poor will die; the very life blood of manufacturing economical electricity will drive even more manufacturers off shore to China where they are building a new coal fired power plant every two weeks. The unnecessary and unjustified hardship the inevitable rate increases these actions will cause to the poor and those on fixed incomes here in America is both heartless and inexcusable. Meanwhile the refusal to respect borders has led to such lawlessness in Mexico that the murder toll essentially matches all American deaths in the Vietnam war. This instability in Mexico endangers the education of an entire generation of Mexicans and worse is leading to a loss of religious training and belief for that same generation. Whose fault is that?
The lack of a good education, the breakdown of the family, high tuition costs, and a lack of jobs are all a result of failed government policies. The lack of competition in public schooling produces a substandard education, much as the cars manufactured in communist Eastern Europe could barely run. The breakdown of the family among the poorest occurred, not because of poverty, but because of the unintended (but easily predicted) consequences of welfare policies that could not have more effectively destroyed the makeup of the family if they had been specifically designed to do so. High tuition costs are a product of easily obtained cheap student loans, and the ways in which the government hamper the job market are too numerous to even count. The LAST place any Catholic should turn to solve any of these problems is the government. Why anyone would suppose that the government, which doesnt even possess the most elementary wisdom on the position of life would have any wisdom in any of these othrt areas is beyond me.regarding abortion is any different on these other issues is beyond me. Government policies designed to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S., whether through coercion or positive incentives, will only make this country poorer. And by the way, the New York Times is the LAST paper anyone would want to turn to for unbiased analysis of the ills of the economy.
Lizzie you are so right! Nothing screams VOUCHERS!, VOUCHERS!, VOUCHERS! more than the villainous results of Monopolistic Government Run Education ... Obama is telling us that increased “investment” in this “black hole” will lead to more and better jobs.
Well lets examine the “Performance Measures” of the giant social experiment that has used the whole of the USA, from sea to shining sea, as it’s own special “laboratory test tube” for the last 60 years!
Adjusting for inflation the total tax dollars spent on on “Monopoly” Government Education has increased almost 13-fold from 1951 to 2009!
Have we seen a 13 corresponding 13 fold increase in prosperity? Ok, well have we seen a tripling? ... a doubling? ... just what is the economic return on the already gargantuan “investment” in “Monopoly” Government Education?
In a recent article in Forbes, Louis Woodhill documents the results of our giant Social Experiment using the last 2 generations as “guinea pigs”. He shows that in the “test tube” of the USA our GDP has tracked ONLY physical assets, and NOT the sum of physical assets and Monopoly Government Secular Educational “assets”. Moreover he shows that the ratio of GDP to nonresidential produced assets has been essentially Flat, Flat, Flat over the last 59 years 1951–2009; oscillating with the business cycle around a midpoint of 48.2%.
Experiment Over and Lesson learned ... massive “investments” in Monopoly Government “Education” has produced NO measurable economic return. Average scores on standardized tests have NOT risen in the last 60 years so what bumpkin thinks they would suddenly change now? It is clear that giving this failed and failing Monopoly any more borrowed Chinese Dollars will not create any additional “human” capital.
So what have we gotten for all this treasure? More Math and “real” Science? No we have gotten STD’s and the false lie of “Global Warming”; and we will get more ... take a look at what Nancy Pelosi’s neighborhood Monopoly High School did on Saint Valentines Day. Did they hear why he was martyred for his Christian Faith? No ... students at Galileo High School in San Francisco celebrated Saint Valentine by simulating drunkenness and placing condoms on a wooden penis; they got extra credit for participating in mock homosexual weddings in events sponsored by the Gay Straight Alliance. Glad they could raise their GPA’s and make it into Stanford or Harvard and buddy up with the Brown or Pelosi or Kennedy children. VOUCHERS!, VOUCHERS!, VOUCHERS!
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