I have heard that President Obama will focus on the economy during tonight’s state of the union address, purportedly because the economy is the number one issue concerning the majority of Americans recently polled by some polling organization or another. Harking back to President Clinton’s 1992 internal campaign motto, “It’s the economy, stupid,” our president seems to be focusing his address on the economy in an effort first to address a public concern and second to bolster his political well-being. That our people care deeply about the economy, according to this brief analysis, is a persistent trend.
And I get this. Abraham Maslow famously presented a pyramid of needs, on the bottom of which are life necessities rising to a crown of spirituality concerns, and argued that before a person can address more lofty or spiritual concerns (those on the top), she or he must first satisfy everyday concerns (those on the bottom), like having enough food to eat, having clothes to wear, having a place to live. After those bottom conditions are satisfied, a person can begin to consider one’s purpose and calling, or theological and philosophical questions. So our emphasis on things economic points to a pressing need to meet these basic necessities for our citizenry before we move on to a public concern for “intangibles” such as justice, and mercy, and compassion.
When President Clinton focused his successful 1992 presidential campaign on the economy, the unemployment rate in the United States was 7.5%. Today that rate is 9.5% or thereabouts. So I can understand 9.5% of those polled listing the economy as their number one concern: they’re unemployed, looking for work in a weak economy, probably looking at their unemployment compensation ending soon. I get this, too: I’ve been unemployed since June of 2008. Even though my wife and I live in such a way that being unemployed is a choice I’ve made rather than a predicament I’m in, I still feel at times useless, frustrated, unwanted, underutilized, simply because I’m not bringing home a regular paycheck.
What I don’t understand is why so many besides those of us who are unemployed would say the economy is their number one concern. This month, the Rasmussen Reports found that 87% of those they polled listed the economy as “a very important issue,” highest of ten pressing issues. So if I subtract 9.5%, representing those unemployed whom I consider have pressing reasons to list the economy as their number one concern, that leaves 77.5% of those polled who are concerned about the economy. Presumably, those 77.5% are employed, though I cannot speculate how well employed, if they have a crushing mortgage, if they’re uninsured, etc. But being employed, why is the economy still their most pressing issue?
Perhaps poverty plays a role here. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate rose to 14.3% in 2009 (which, interestingly, is 8.1% lower than it was in 1959, the year I was born), poverty being (a) a threshold of $22,000.00 in income and aid per year for a family of four and (b) certainly representing a much higher degree of material well-being in comparison to poverty in other nations, particularly in the two-thirds world. So, let’s add this percentage to that of the unemployed, ignoring any overlap that surely exists, and subtract 23.8% representing those who have righteous reasons to list concerns about our economy as number one from the 87% of all of us and that leaves 64% of us who are employed and not impoverished (even by Western economic scales) yet who still list the economy as their number one concern.
And I still don’t understand this. That 64% of us live in a staggering degree of comfort, unseen in all previous millennia. Almost every person in this country has a refrigerator and air conditioning, television and internet, at least three rooms per person in our houses, almost one car, and at least some form of assured retirement income (at the least, Social Security). And that 64% of us still are most concerned about economic issues.
Look, Maslow was right, but he didn’t extend his analysis far enough. He limited his analysis to necessity instead of perception. If a person does not have the necessities covered – housing, food, clothing – he will never rise to consider more spiritual matters. But as we see daily in our country, if a person does not wrench his perceptions away from having more and more food and clothing and housing, having more opulence, he, too, will never rise to consider more spiritual matters, such as truth, and beauty, and justice, and compassion, and love. And in this country, in our culture, you and I are convinced we never have enough, even when we have so much. So how can we expect our polity to step above this crass consumerism and commercialism to a higher plane where we actually advance our morals and ethics, our philosophies and theologies?
Sadly, I do not expect too much out of us: I know us for the shallow breed we’ve become, a breed that exalts value over principle, whose main sense of worth comes from purchasing, bred carefully through many generations to consider economics of prime importance. Of such creatures, one cannot expect more than ravenous consumption. But I do expect more from a leader, especially from our president. I fully appreciate that followers make leaders in their own image, but leaders, dammit, LEAD, they don’t simply follow their followers. I want our president to give us a good spanking, to tell us to stop whining about getting more and more stuff and to stand up and be adults for once instead of the spoiled children we’ve become, to show us how we can be a better commonwealth, not in terms of wealth, but in terms of common dignity and decency and compassion. I’m tired of bottom dwelling. Let’s rise. Thank you for reading.
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