A Heck of a Note

Boss pay in the U.S. in 1982 was forty two times that of the average worker pay. In a 2007 report it was 364 times greater. The U.S. has the greatest gap between the rich and the poor of the developed nations. Its middle class is the smallest and the U.S. suffers the greatest concentration of both income and wealth in the hands of the few when compared with other affluent democracies. Income inequality has significantly increased in the last thirty years. Recent tax cuts overwhelmingly benefited the rich and increased further inequality. The extent of poverty in a nation is measured by the United Nations Development Program using the poverty index. Among the developed nations for which statistics are available, the U.S. has the worst poverty and ranks seventeenth in the world.

How can this possibly be a fair system? And what executive in the U.S. is worth bonuses of millions of dollars?

Economic well being is central to a peaceful world. And poverty is the worst form of violence. A people of God will want to work to abolish poverty among themselves and in the wider world.