My wife and I are thankful for many things this year.
Good health is one. We both have secure jobs that pay us to do work we love. Our retirement funds hold their own. Our 109-year-old house has its quirks, but we love it. We have wonderful friends and neighbors. The car and the pickup ran fine all year. No big vacation, but we had a nice long weekend on the North Shore. I could go on and on.
Out of some 6.5 billion people in the world, we must fall in the upper 1/10th of 1 percent in terms of having our needs and wants met. So we really have much for which to give thanks this year, as do most people in our country, despite the harshest economic recession in decades.
However, many others are struggling right now.
There are the usual sorrows of illnesses, deaths and family members in trouble. Many more than usual are out of work, losing homes, seeing small businesses fail. Many don’t have the great medical coverage my wife and I do. Many worry more about their retirement than they did two years ago. It is not an easy time, at least in our nation’s recent history.
This contrast between prosperity and economic stress leads one to consider how our society views material success in life and how those who have plenty should act with regard to those who don’t.
Repeated surveys show that majorities of Americans see self-effort and merit as the prime reasons for succeeding. Circumstances beyond an individual’s control place a distant second. In Europe, the reverse is true. Europeans think external social, political and economic forces outweigh individual effort.
Europeans correspondingly place higher value on social solidarity. This translates to a larger role for government redistribution of wealth via in-kind health and social welfare programs and direct cash transfers. Private charity has less importance, in part because there is not the U.S. tradition of wealthy people named Carnegie, Rockefeller or Gates establishing charitable foundations. Contemporary Europe is much more secular and religious giving is much smaller there.
We in the United States are more leery of government programs compared with Europe and even compared with ourselves in the immediate post-war period. We worry about the injustice and perverse incentives of taking money from some to give to others. On the whole, we are less bothered by visible poverty or by unfavorable statistics on access to adequate health care or food. We have greater trust in religious and nonprofit organizations.
But while on average we favor less government redistribution, opinions within society vary widely. I personally am far enough toward the solidarity end of the scale that many readers describe me as a leftist liberal. My wife and I may work hard, but we also benefit from fortuitous or providential circumstances too numerous to list.
If we had been born in Bolivia or Botswana, we would not be so well off, even if we worked as hard. If we had not had the access to government-funded education, we would not have our earning power. If Social Security had not helped support our family after my father died the year I was born, my opportunities would have been more limited. If the Army had not sent me to Brazil, my life would have been less rewarding. Again, I could go on and on.
Yet I have good friends who see things differently. We all are never going to agree on individual versus social factors. But as we enjoy Thanksgiving it is good to think about the balance of such factors in our own lives.
© 2009 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.