What shall we do for our kids?

I have never read a more disturbing book than Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids.” Putnam is a Harvard sociologist who has written other books of note. This is his most significant and powerful work. I suspect it will become a reference point for Americans for decades.

In “Our Kids” Putnam chronicles the enormous gap that has developed between rich kids and poor kids. The gap has given millions of young American kids insurmountable barriers to a decent future. The subtitle of the book is “The American Dream in Crisis.”

The typical American attitude has been that if a kid worked hard and took advantage of public education he/she could achieve almost anything. Putnam makes the case that this is no longer true. The ideal is not simply in jeopardy. It is gone. His summary chapter is entitled “What Is to Be Done?”

This vast gap between the rich and the poor in America and its resulting impact on our kids did not happen overnight. It has been in the making for at least 50 years and came to full power in the 1980s. A sweeping economic change took place in America. The economic theory on which changes were made is called supply-side economics. The theories are traced to a group of economic professors at the University of Chicago. As applied to the American scene, the economic theory is referred to as Reaganomics or trickle-down economics.

According to the theory the wealth of the nation should be transferred to a super wealthy class of citizens. They then become the holders of the wealth of the nation. The super wealthy segment of society holds wealth rather than government. Government gains control of wealth through taxation. The wealthy elite gains control of wealth through profits that are taxed at lower rates. Tax loopholes that leave profits untaxed are also utilized. Under supply-side economics, government support programs for the poor are diminished and the needed economic help for needy people trickles down to the economic middle and lower classes from the wealthy. During the early 1980s taxation on wealthy persons and corporations were drastically cut. Government support programs for low income persons were also cut. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 is the watershed government action that set the economic future of the nation.

Before the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 the economy of the United States had fallen into the doldrums. The nation was plagued with high inflation and high unemployment rates. Supply-side economics worked a miracle economic recovery and in a short time the American economy was healthy and humming. Employment was up and inflation was down. Ronald Reagan became the most popular president in American history.

The longer term economic experience of the nation under supply-side theory is not so bright. The United States has now produced a super-rich upper class that could hardly have been imagined in 1981. Millionaires are common in almost every American community. Billionaires are multiplying and every major city in America has at least a few. Some have many. The problem is that wealth has not trickled down to either the economic middle class or the lower economic class. Supply-side economics has flopped. The American middle class has drastically shrunk and the rolls of the truly poor have ballooned.

As Putnam points out, the loss of an economic healthy middle class and the explosion of the economic poor class has resulted in other phenomenon. The former economic middle class is losing access to a college education. Tuition is no longer affordable. Loans have replaced scholarships. Housing patterns are increasingly segregated along economic lines rather than racial lines. The poor have been left in economic disarray. Crime rates are exploding. Poor kids have no hope of escaping their social, educational and economic poverty. Family structures have collapsed.

Putnam takes a stab at solutions in his chapter “What Is to be Done?” I was a bit disappointed in that he did not take on the economic system that has produced this great American debacle. He is very clear in describing the economics of the problem at hand, but he says almost nothing about economic changes that are demanded. In other areas he makes a lot of sense. He discusses what needs to happen in family structures, parenting practices, schools, and communities. Putnam does take some paragraphs to talk about moral obligation. He quotes Proverbs 29:7 from the Bible. “The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concerns.”

Christian moral teaching embraces special commitment to the poor. Jesus was from the impoverished town of Nazareth and in his teachings made it clear that he was on the side of the poor. Pope Francis has made eloquent statements in support of the poor.

My personal reaction to the book is that the starting point to an answer begins with the embracing of the poor children of our communities as “our own.” Putnam was prophetic when he titled the book “OUR Children.” Millions of American children are now being victimized by the foolishness of trickle-down economics. These are OUR children! What are we going to do about it?

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.