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Yesterday we welcomed new students to PLNU. The weather outside has gotten hot -- as usual. It is undeniable that what people in the rest of the United States call "fall" has started. I just got back from our distribution and driving the route to pick up bread. After a disruptive line last week in which a woman was threatened to be shot, today things seemed very fluid. I have learned to watch the line as an economic indicator within larger demographic shifts in San Diego. We have seen some more growth in the line and today seems to have leveled off some. Age-wise, one finds largely senior citizens on Social Security and then young families -- those for whom the so-called "recovery" happened.

This brings to mind several related items from this week. First, this morning while gleaning through "calculatedriskblog.com" -- a site with broad and non-technical economic analyses, I found an interest link. At http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/a-tale-of-two-economies-and-the-inequality-dragon/, a graph showing the inverse relationship between corporate profits and personal compensation that has developed in the last decade and is now at a higher discrepancy than ever. Of course this shows the importance of our food distribution. The need is there to re-distribute off the inefficiencies of the food distribution system that seeks to maximize profits by squeezing lower wage workers even more by decreasing their wage and benefits. This is a great structural problem with neo-liberal capitalism. In order to maximize profits, it cuts the ability of working people to pay for items, either by cutting jobs or if given jobs, keeping their compensation as low as possible. Ultimately, the "inequality dragon" will collapse inward, unable to provide necessary demand to keep profits flowing to those who have excess wealth to make their wealth. This is why the economy is so weak -- it is not because of high interest rates or government debt -- it is a lack of demand arising from what some are now calling "The Great Contraction" -- not the Great Recession.

How particular persons govern this collective with their own short-sightedness became clear to me today. In picking up the bread, I talked to the dock worker -- a friend. In San Diego there is the possibility of a grocery workers strike -- one similar to 8 years ago that caused great suffering. I asked to make sure that, if the strike occurred, if the worker minded us still picking up. As in other stores, he enthusiastically told me to keep picking up -- the workers wanted us to, and we talked about how we might re-distribute some of the goods to the workers in need. Then he proceeded to tell me about a meeting. The management of the store has provided all the sources for the news coverage of the strike. The workers have sounded petty. At the meeting of the union, a member asked why the union did not run an add in the paper to spell out the real details of the dispute. They were told that the San Diego Union-Tribune would not take their advertisement. The store management had told the Union-Trib that if they ran the add, they would withdraw their advertisements from the Union-Trib. The Union-Trib even ran a letter to the editor that criticized the union based on the inaccurate data circulated. My friend had written a corrective letter as an official of the union, but they had not published it. Such is what really happens with the liberal notion of "freedom of the press." These are specific persons who are making these decisions with patterns of behavior that represent particular social assemblages against others. It is not anonymous structures of power, but persons who have the resources to sustain networks and bend them against each other. In other words, the "inequality dragon" is not an "invisible hand" but the action of particular human and non-human collectives who work in terms of short term interest, though it leads to their long term ill -- and the ill of those around them upon whom they depend. The inequality gap will continue to "lower all boats" as the "trickle up" economy continues with populist support.

And this, of course, leads to one other piece. In my readings for class this summer, I discovered an interesting trend that was filled out more fully by a recent study. Poorer whites in the United States are rapidly abandoning the church and Christ and entering a post-Christian world, while college educated whites maintain more fully their church adherence. Of course, this is counter to what secularization theorist thought, but in line with a neo-liberal division between the poor and the rich with a hollowing out of the middle class -- one needs the abundance of cheap labor in the poor to sustain low wages and compensation, and one way to keep them poor is isolate them from social capital and the virtues and formation that comes with the church. One can find a summary of the report at http://www.christianpost.com/news/working-class-whites-not-so-faithful-in-church-attendance-54324/. The article says: In their study, "No Money, No Honey, No Church: The Deinstitutionalization of Religious Life Among the White Working Class," the authors attribute the dichotomy to "the deteriorating labor market position of the moderately educated, and cultural changes that have made non-marital family forms more acceptable."

The depths of irony is that the Protestant church in the United States, both mainline and evangelical, has embraced and advocated so much of the neo-liberal economic program of the past 30 years. In so doing, they have undercut the very social conditions that make church-adherence and Christian practices viable but withdrawing not only economic capital from the churches, but also the social capital and virtues required to participate in the church. As "church growth" marketers accepted neo-liberal economic principles for "church growth," they undercut the ability of other congregations to sustain their lives, particularly among the increasing less educated poor whites. In mainline congregations, as they adapted themselves to the wealthy undercutting of family and Christian sexual practices, the poor picked up these practices that undercut their ability to form stable marital relationships for the productive and procreative ends of marriage -- and thus, turned them over to the neo-liberal economic job market for the benefit of increased corporate profits. Such is the judgment of God.

All these are connected together through networks that are not impersonal "social processes" of "social forces"; they are particular ways that human beings, together with nonhumans, construct particular social assemblages together. As our Gospel reading tomorrow will remind us, it helps us understand us, we can see here why it is the in Christ's return, he will reward us "according to our works" (Matt. 16:27).

Posted by johnwright at 9:55 AM