REVIEW: Desmond, Poverty, by America

I once read a quote from the author Nick Hornby about how he regrets naming his About a Boy the way he did because it makes for awkward sentences like, "I'd like to ask about About a Boy." I wonder if this author feels the same way about his book Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond. Or perhaps it creates the opportunity for fun, like I can say this post is a review of Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond, by Brandon Minster. Then YOU can write a reply to a review of Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond, by Brandon Minster, by whoever you are. Eventually one of these will get the attention of Matthew Desmond himself, and if HE then replied.... But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

As someone interested in Millennial Social Thought (MST), I take an interest in poverty. The stated goal of economic zionism is the end of poverty. Desmond's book ends with three basic ideas of how to reduce, if not end, poverty in America. But the majority of the book makes an argument that what causes poverty in America is not so much the improvidence or fecklessness of the poor, and not even the indifference of the non-poor, but the actual carefully uninformed approval of the middle class. It's a bold take, given that most people who read the book are probably going to be in this group. But by the time you've read all of his argument, it's hard to disagree.

To begin with, Desmond would define poverty a little differently. Most folks would probably say poverty is a shortage of money, but Desmond writes, "Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that" (p.78). Just as the benefit of money comes from the opportunities and experiences it facilitates, the thing that matters about poverty isn't the small amount of cash in your hand but the exploitation that results. Desmond sets for himself the task of convincing exploiters that they exploit. Not some nebulous, "somewhere" rich person, but you in the suburbs. And to paraphrase the famous Upton Sinclair quote, it is difficult to get a man to understand his exploitative gains when his social position and self-regard depend on him not understanding it.

Hiding most of this from the prosperous is the duality of American life. The middle class think they understand the poor because their lives include the same basic activities: procuring housing, buying food, working for income. But the fact that these things have the same name doesn't mean they are the same activity. As Desmond explains (p. 78),

There is not just one banking sector. There are two--one for the poor and one for the rest of us--just as there are two housing markets and two labor markets. The duality of American life can make it difficult for some of us who benefit from the current arrangement to remember that the poor are exploited laborers, exploited consumers, and exploited borrowers, precisely because we are not. Many features of our society are not broken, just bifurcated. For some, a home creates wealth; for others, a home drains it. For some, access to cresit extends financial power; for others, it destroys it. It is quite understandable, then, that well-fed Americans can be perplexed by the poor, even disappointed in them, believing that they accept stupidly bad deals on impulse or because they don't know any better. But what if those deals are the only ones on offer? What good is financial literacy training for people forced to choose the best bad option?

I once had a job working for a firm that advised banks on schemes to increase financial literacy, but nowhere in those schemes was the underserving of poor neighborhoods addressed. You cash your paycheck at the check-cashing store when the bank branch is a multi-transfer transit ride away, not because you have been misled to think that the check-cashing store is better than the bank.

Desmond also seeks to undermine middle-class anti-welfarism by identifying the many ways the middle class benefit from welfare by a different name. The largest example is the home mortgage interest deduction, which results in a transfer many times that of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Desmond identifies three possible reasons for not seeing tax deductions as welfare. The first is just economic confusion--it can't be a government handout if it never came from the government's hands, right? He patiently explains how letting you keep a sum of money is financially identical to sending you a check for that amount. His second reason is that the well-off believe they are entitled to government assistance, but the poor are not. I guess this would be like looking on government as an insurance program, and if we have paid in through taxes we feel entitled to withdraw. If this is the case, then progressive taxation is actually shooting the poor in the foot, and they'd be better off with a flat-tax system that allows the poor equal claim on government resources because they paid into the system, as well. Finally, Desmond's third possibility is "we like it. It's the rudest explanation, I know, which is probably why we cloak it behind all sorts of justifications and quick evasions" (p. 102).

This is in line with Leo Tolstoy's conclusions in What Then Must We Do?, which Desmond quotes (p. 119).

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back.... It is really so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor.

But the self-awareness of Tolstoy is missing in the American discourse. We aren't on their backs, they have drug problems. We aren't choking them, no one wants to work anymore. Desmond writes, "If this is our design, our social contract, then we should at least own up to it. We should at least stand up and profess, Yes, this is the kind of nation we want. What we cannot do is look the American poor in the face and say, We'd love to help you, but we just can't afford to, because that is a lie" (p. 102).

Desmond ends with three propositions: "Life the floor by rebalancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reigning in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation. That's how we end poverty in America" (p. 170). It's the second idea that I want to spend some more time pondering. Desmond advocates for replacing profit maximization with profit sufficiency, but what would we take as the idea of sufficient? The long-run growth rate? That's doable, but how do we still get the efficient allocation of resources without the availability of supernormal profits? Extremely high marginal rates? But then how do we undermine the view that government resources are for the wealthy because they paid for them with taxes?

While those questions might remain, Desmond's book is still worthwhile and important. The first step to correcting an unjust system is recognizing the injustice. Poverty, by America does just that, and goes a long way towards making the average American face up to it.

REVIEW: Mason, Restoration, Pt. 4

From my area of interest, the core of Mason's book is the two pages where he details Church members' current baggage with respect to economic inequality (pp. 65-67). This is more applicable to Millennial Social Thought (MST) than the later section recommending action on refugee and immigrant issues, social justice, and community (pp. 83-7), because those are Zion-adjacent projects that can only be approached once the average member's aversion to consecration is addressed.

Mason begins with the observation that "one of the most consistent targets of divine condemnation throughout Restoration scriptures is inequality" (p. 65). In the Book of Mormon this is mostly tangential--if you don't want to see the economic aspect of the pride cycle, you can pretty successfully ignore it. Even the Zion society built in 4 Nephi can be viewed as a result of the Savior's preceding visit. The reference to the Zion society built by Alma by the Waters of Mormon is a blink-and-miss-it moment (Mosiah 18:29). The only explicit discussion of economic inequality and its evil nature is in Jacob 2.

The Doctrine and Covenants, however, contains many sections with strong condemnation of inequality. Section 38 of the Doctrine and Covenants, received in January 1831, introduces the topic of economic inequality to the Church. It is in this section that we get the repeated instruction to "let every man esteem his brother as himself" (vv. 23-4). We can think of the rare instances that the Lord immediately repeats himself as Tyler Durden verses (from the man who devised the second rule of Fight Club). Another example of Tyler Durden verses is contained in Ezra Taft Benson's April 1989 General Conference talk "Beware of Pride," when he first says, "Pride is the universal sin, the great vice. Yes, pride is the universal sin, the great vice," and later says "Pride is the great stumbling block to Zion. I repeat: Pride is the great stumbling block to Zion." When the Lord or His prophets immediately repeat themselves, you can bet it is important counsel that is widely ignored.

Mason writes, "Jesus was not a capitalist" (p. 65), which to many (too many) members of the Church is fighting words. Perhaps recognizing that, Mason walks it back a little when he adds, "It may be that free market capitalism is the least bad economy that humans can devise and implement in a telestial world" (p. 66), but I disagree. Scriptural Zions were built by mortal people in this, the telestial world. I used to think Zion was something Jesus would bring back with Him, and all we had to do was be ready to enter it. The reality is that Zion is something we are to build that will be here to welcome Him. We can't cling to capitalism until Jesus shows up with its replacement. We must get over our capitalism fetish on our own. That is going to require us to acknowledge that it is NOT the least bad economy that humans can devise. We can do better. Mason mentions an 1875 denunciation of capitalism by the First Presidency (which will be my next project here), wherein the Church leaders called for "an alternative economic system based on the principle of cooperation, not competition" (p. 66). Mason recognizes this duty when he writes later

While the Restoration eagerly anticipates the return of Jesus, it also impels us not to wait until he comes to renovate the world. At the heart of the Restoration message is the clarion call to build Zion--here and now, not tomorrow and somewhere else. [p. 78]

When we adhere so tightly to American capitalism is it any wonder, then that "we picked up America's allergy to talking about inequality" (pp. 66-7), as Mason writes? He adds

At times we have even verged dangerously close to embracing a Latter-day Saint version of the "prosperity gospel," the operating assumptions of which are that God wants us to be rich and comfortable, and that wealth is a sign of his favor. [p. 67]

I will look later at how Jacob 2:19 and Doct. and Cov. 67:2 might support or refute the prosperity gospel. But let's start with an honest assessment of the responsibility we face. We aren't asked to be good capitalists until Jesus arrives with a better system. Recently we've heard more reminders in General Conference that the Restoration is an ongoing process, not something that happened in the 1820s. Mason writes it "will remain ongoing and incomplete so long as there are any poor or 'any manner of -ites' among us" (p. 20). Marion G. Romney once said

This welfare program was set up under inspiration in the days of President Grant. It was thoroughly analyzed and taught by his great counselor, J. Reuben Clark, Jr. It is in basic principle the same as the United Order. When we get so we can live it, we will be ready for the United Order. You brethren know that we will have to have a people ready for that order in order to receive the Savior when he comes.

The welfare program is the training ground. Capitalism is not.

REVIEW: Mason, Restoration, Pt. 2

In my previous post, I began a review of Restoration: God's Call to the 21st-Century World by Patrick Q. Mason. I ended with Mason's six areas of focus for the future. They are

1. re-enchantment
2. human identity
3. religious freedom
4. refugees and immigrants
5. social justice
6. community

Here's what he means by each of these.

RE-ENCHANTMENT (pp.79-80): Mason means returning a sense of the supernatural to a secular world that rejects all aspects of it. "Anytime we increase faith in the world, or encourage others to do the same, we are doing the work of restoring enchantment in a disenchanted age." Personally, I think the "I believe in science" crowd is ill-informed and thinks they are signaling advanced learning when they are really marking themselves as middling intellectuals. I'm no great scientific mind, but even in my limited reading in this area I have come across enough to know that there is more that surpasses our understanding than is commonly understood. Just in the past year I've read Stephen Hawking calmly claiming that there are around 11 or 12 dimensions and Govert Schilling's book summarizing the latest thinking in dark matter. "I only believe what I see" takes a major hit when science says we can't see most matter. The calm reversal of conventional wisdom on UFOs since early 2020 should help loosen up the disenchantment that held most "learned" people for the past 100 years.

HUMAN IDENTITY (pp. 80-1): In a world more willing to believe in unseen things, we can increase society's understanding of our origin as spirit children of Heavenly Parents. Mason claims that our theology is radical (it is) and that it deeply resonates with people (it does). Assuming when he writes "one remarkable gift the Latter-day Saints could give would be to more fully reveal our Mother to her children around the world" that he means just making this teaching more broadly known, I agree. However, there is not much we know TO reveal than that. Given our Church's cultural tendency to embrace speculation as doctrine, I worry that too much exposure of this doctrine will result in more confusion than clarity. But could it be appropriate for the general members of the Church to humbly but persistently ask for more information to be revealed? What's the worst that could happen? Get told "trouble me no more concerning this matter" (Doct. and Cov. 59:22)?

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM (pp.81-3): This has been an area of increasing focus for Church leadership. If we view this from the perspective of "whatever Church leaders spend a lot of time on is what will be society's main problem in 20 years" it is pretty disconcerting. But let's leave that alone for now. Mason writes our actions on religious freedom are "a model of how Latter-day Saints can ... mobilize in the service of others."

REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS (pp. 83-5): Mason begins from Elder Patrick Kearon's fantastic General Conference talk from April, 2016. I fear that many members of the Church whose politics leave them inclined to xenophobia decided to reduce their cognitive dissonance by just ignoring Elder Kearon. That is a terrible shame. This is an area where agreement should be easy.

SOCIAL JUSTICE (pp. 85-6): Here is another area where the political ideas of most members might cause some problems. (As an aside: do these people think Jesus is going to join their political party when He returns? They DO know He plans to come as King, right? That is a role currently absent from the American Constitution.) I was recently at a meeting where our stake's one Black member of the High Council suggested our stake create a community event to commemorate next year's Juneteenth. I think it's an excellent idea, but I'm afraid I don't know how a majority-white church can pull off something like that without seeming pandering or condescending. On the other hand, I've had family respond disparagingly when I've told them my work will be closed for Juneteenth. I said, "Slavery is wrong, so I can get behind a holiday that celebrates its end." There might not be room for the leadership of the Church to do much with a "political" issue, but there's plenty of room for each of us to do so as individuals.

COMMUNITY (pp. 86-7): Mason thinks our Church's "you get what you get and you don't get upset" approach to ward membership and leadership is a good model for building community with anyone around. I would caution that many Latter-day Saints have discovered how to game that system by aiming to live in wards they like. My ward shares a building with the "good" ward of the stake, and our stake as a whole is the poor relation of the next stake to the north of us. In his April 2013 General Conference talk, Elder Stanley G. Ellis shared this tale of "community building":

For 16 years I served in the presidency of the Houston Texas North Stake. Many moved to our area during those years. We would often receive a phone call announcing someone moving in and asking which was the best ward. Only once in 16 years did I receive a call asking, “Which ward needs a good family? Where can we help?”

We can do much better on this issue.

So those are Mason's six goals for the Church in its third hundred years. From my perspective of millennial social thought (MST), the last three seem directly related to my area of interest. Building Zion will definitely involve elevating our thinking and behavior on issues of refugees and immigrants, social justice, and community. What is standing between us and meeting these challenges in a "higher and holier" way? Mason identifies six items of cultural baggage the Church must address. They are

1. racism
2. patriarchy
3. nationalism
4. cultural colonialism
5. inequality
6. fundamentalism

In my next post, I will look into these stumbling blocks in more detail.

REVIEW: Restoration: God's Call to the 21st-Century World, by Patrick Q. Mason

I read this book six months ago and I have been literally carrying the physical book with me since then, figuring I would be more likely to blog my review if I always have the book available. (Don't feel bad for my back; it's a very light 100-page book--Amazon says it weighs 5.6 ounces, whereas my back is usually carrying around more than 4,000 ounces.) So if I've had the book with me night and day for six months why haven't I already blogged about it? Let me just say this: my church calling is hard. Like, really hard. I wouldn't recommend this calling to anyone.

So here's my review: There's one big idea to this book, and I think it's a good one. There are a few little particulars related to that idea, and I think they are bad. The book is bright yellow, and weighs 5.6 ounces. The end.

First, the good big idea. Mason sees a greatly expanded role for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the world, not in a proselyting sense, but in a humanitarian one. He starts by identifying the Church's historical withdrawal from society as a defensive response to persecution. He calls this idea the "fortress church" (p.2). He reviews early Church statements and teachings to find what the original generation of Church members thought the word "restoration" meant. Mason argues that what was being restored wasn't necessarily Christ's church or priesthood authority, but Israel (p. 13). "God's great restoration project seeks to unite all generations of the human family from the beginning to the present and onward all the way to the end of time" (pp. 16-7). God wants to restore people, not things.

This is my understanding of the idea of God having a covenant people. Not that some people are better in the sight of God--we're all His children and he is no respecter of persons (Romans 2:11). Rather, God's house is a house of order (Doct. and Cov. 132:8), and He only called Abraham His son for the purpose of using Abraham's seed to bless the rest of His children. This is what Jesus meant when he said God was able to make children of Abraham from stones (Matt. 3:9): being God's chosen people is an assignment, not an honor. From my reading, it seems Mason would agree with these points. He writes, "The purpose of the Restoration is to fulfill the ancient promises that all of God's children, regardless of the nation or clan they find themselves born into, can and will be 'heirs to the kingdom of God'" (p. 18).

This is where Mason's book crosses path with my interest in millennial social thought (MST), and my main reason for reviewing this book in this space. Mason calls Jesus "the Messiah of the marginalized" (p. 19), and writes, "any restoration we claim to participate in must therefore be primarily oriented toward those who have suffered on the margins of history and currently suffer on the margin of society." Here he's starting to get pretty bold--we tend to think of socioeconomic issues as political issues. "I think he ought to keep his mouth shut about old age assistance," right? But I agree with Mason. After all, if our task is to build Zion we aren't going to do that without some large socioeconomic changes among us. Some Church members who are most opposed to taxation plans they would call "socialist" are in for a shock when they realize what it means to "have all things common" (4 Ne. 1:3). I've had temple-endowed members tell me before, "We aren't being asked to live the Law of Consecration right now." Elder Dale G. Renlund has said, "In the endowment, we covenant ... to dedicate ourselves and everything the Lord blesses us with to build up His Church" (Renlund, Apr. 2023). We've not only been asked to live it, we have accepted the challenge.

Mason identifies six areas of focus where Latter-day Saints should focus on changing the world, and six items of baggage we must address to allow us to do so. I don't even think these 12 things are where Mason goes wrong, but it's in the presentation of some of them that he errs, and I fear that members of the "fortress church" who are already distrustful of calls to do anything except live like a 1950s white middle-class American will ignore the good when rightly identifying the bad here.

But first the focus items and the baggage we should acknowledge. His six areas of focus for the future are

1. re-enchantment
2. human identity
3. religious freedom
4. refugees and immigrants
5. social justice
6. community

My next post will detail what he means by each of these.

Different Names for the Same (?) Thing

In my last post, I wrote about "collectivist/communalist/communitarianist" societies. That definitely is NOT an incredibly convenient and easy-to-use name. But my problem is that there isn't really a term for what I want. Here I'll discuss the definitions provided by Google for several related terms and why each doesn't work.

• COLLECTIVISM: prioritizing the group over the individual; the ownership of land and the means of production by the people or the state.

In the type of society mentioned in Acts 4, the group is not prioritized over the individual. Prioritizing the group would mean that something that raised the welfare of the group (however you want to try to measure that) while lowering the welfare of an individual would be good. In the early Christian community, however, welfare was not aggregated. There was no single welfare function that was being maximized, but a separate function for each community member. Also, ownership still exists. (Acts 4 is incredibly brief in its description of the society, so other scriptural sources of other such societies must be used to see some of these points, and later I will introduce those texts and the societies they describe.)

• COMMUNALISM: political organization based on federated communes; allegiance to one's own ethnic group.

The first half of this definition deals more with how two or more instances of such a society would interact, not with the nature of the society itself. The second half is completely unrelated to what I want--ethnicity doesn't even begin to factor into an Acts 4 society.

• COMMUNISM: class warfare and the public ownership of all property.

This term brings with it the most baggage of any of them, but even leaving that aside, this isn't what we want. Early Christians weren't divided by class--alongside destitute followers of Christ are ones who can afford newly-finished private tombs.

• COMMUNITARIANISM: social organization based on small, self-governing communities; stressing the responsibility of the individual to the community and the social importance of the family.

This isn't so off-base, but it also leaves a lot unmentioned. While Christians in Acts 4 definitely have a responsibility to their community, and probably are organized around family units, there's a lot more involved in being of "one heart and soul" and having "everything in common."

• SOCIALISM: the means of production and exchange are regulated by the community; a stage between capitalism and communism.

The means of production aren't the concern, but the products produced. One person can control all the resources in an Acts 4 society, if they only distribute the income the resources produce.

• ZIONISM: the establishment and development of the Jewish nation.

To someone outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this term probably appears to be the least apt. Within the Church, though, an Acts 4 society is often called Zion, and so it would be tempting to call the system that creates such a society Zionism. However, like "communism," this word already has a long-established use and trying to co-opt it for something else would create more confusion than it could solve.

From a Latter-day Saint tradition, talking of "building Zion" describes the creation of an Acts 4 society, but from an economic perspective the available terms that approximate having "everything in common" all have major flaws.

What I Want to Do

We visited my parents for Thanksgiving last week. On my dad's whiteboard he had written "IKIGAI" and underneath it was "the reason you get up in the morning." I spent a long time trying to figure out what the acronym meant. The best I could come up with was "I Know I Got An..." but I didn't know what the end would be. I asked my dad and he said, "You're overthinking this. It's a Japanese word: 'ikigai'" (Wikipedia, "Ikigai").I asked, "What does it mean?" He said, "It says it right there." So what I took to be some cryptic message was in fact as clear as could be.

Others call this idea a "massive transformative purpose." I get an e-mail newsletter from Peter Diamandis and he had something a couple weeks ago about finding others with similar passions (Wikipedia, "Peter Diamandis"). So what is it that I want to do? What is my ikigai?

In the fourth chapter of the Book of the Acts we read "And the whole gathering of believers was of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of his belongings were his own, but they had everything in common" (Wayment, p. 216). Other scripture tells us of other such societies, but scripture doesn't meet the modern historian's standard for sources, and they are quite reticent regarding how these societies came to be. What's more, modern economic theory tells us that such societies are not stable equilibria. People are motivated by self-interest, not altruism.

I want to understand what assumptions and motivations are necessary to create voluntary collectivist/communalist/communitarianist societies. That is my ikigai, my massive transformative purpose. That's why I became an economist and that's what I think about when I don't have to think about anything. I want to discover the economic principles that will allow such a society to exist, grow, and thrive.

Wayment, Thomas A. The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, Deseret Book: 2019.