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In the coming two months, there will be debate in Congress about the fiscal budget for 2013-14, and in our New York State Legislature about increasing the minimum wage.

To assure what is best for our nation and state, I believe it is important to put these issues in context.

One of the greatest concerns facing our nation today is the economy. Decades of growth in income for the middle class, from World War II until the 1980s, has gradually been reversed by the selfishness and greed that produced the deep recession from which we are still emerging.

America has been in this state twice before: during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and during the Roaring '20s. In each case, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few was the result of rapid technological change, global integration, laissez-faire government policy and "creative financial innovation."

The result has been growing economic disparity. For example, between 1945 and 1979, the median income in our nation grew by 100 percent. Since 1980, income distribution has grown by less than 25 percent.

Disturbing trends
To demonstrate what has happened, a recent study by Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale University, and Paul Pierson, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkley, concludes that we have experienced a 30-year war in which the long, slow struggle throughout much of the 20th century for greater equality of income and wealth in our nation has been reversed.

What a reversal it has been! The authors document that, from 1979 until the eve of the Great Recession, the top one percent of Americans received 36 percent of all gains, while the median income of non-elderly households actually fell. In fact, the top one-tenth of the one percent received more than 20 percent of all after-tax income between 1979 to 2005, compared to 13.5 percent enjoyed by the bottom 60 percent of households.

In other words, the total of new income going to roughly 300,000 people was one-and-a-half times the size of the total going to roughly 180 million people.

The authors conclude that, in the past three decades, our democracy has become the most economically-unequal nation in the advanced world.

Similarly, a recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates that three decades of trickle-down economic theory, "see no evil" deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution whereby we have become wealthy overall, but the new riches have bypassed most Americans and, instead, flowed mainly to the affluent.

More specifically, this report found that from 1979 to 2007, after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the one percent of the population with the highest income. More startling still, out of this small group of one percent - namely, the richest one-thousandth of the population, or 0.1 percent - it rose by 400 percent.

No wonder the Occupy Wall Street movement, however undefined its goals, sprung up across our nation this past fall.

Today, unfortunately, we have more than 46 million Americans living below the federal poverty level. The poverty level has risen by 15.6 percent in the past year - the highest number in the 52 years the U.S. Census Bureau has been keeping statistics on this issue. Another 51 million are in the next category, termed the "near poor."

Minorities have been hit the hardest. Blacks experience the highest rate at 27 percent; Hispanics follow at 26 percent. Poverty has also swallowed up more children, with 16.4 million in its ranks.

Joblessness is the main culprit for pushing more and more Americans into poverty. Last year, for example, 48 million people in our nation ages 18 to 64 did not work even one week out of the year.

Nearly 43 million Americans are receiving food stamps; a million more are eligible but not receiving this needed benefit, either because of lack of knowledge of its availability or because of the stigma associated with it. Further, there are 49.9 million Americans who lack health insurance.

What we need today in our increasingly interdependent world is not only national economic reform, but global economic reform, as well.

Last year, the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace recounted how 40 years of international-free market capitalism have produced repeated economic crises - first in the developing countries of Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe, and now in Western Europe and the United States.

The Vatican document warned ominously that "if no solutions are found to these various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic levels will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions."

A big part of the problem that has landed us in this dire situation, I believe, is a loss of the social contract. As Rev. James Massaro, a professor of social ethics at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, opines: "We so easily fall into lines that view political and economic systems as mere mechanisms that operate without reference to values and morality. Markets and public policies churn out and distribute benefits in ways that respond to power, talent, and perhaps luck; but need not serve ultimate ends.

"There is no particular moral meaning to the taxes we pay or to the wages our corporations offer. Ethical principles like progressive taxation and a living wage are nuisances at best, serious liabilities in international competition at worst. In a world governed by nothing more enlightened than the bottom line, there is scant room for social concern."

Why we're here
Father Massaro concludes that "today we fail to understand and appreciate the central purpose of our economy: namely, to meet the basic material needs of all the members of society. Needs should take preference over wants, necessities over luxuries. Insisting on a fairer sharing of social burdens and benefits may not be popular but it is the right thing to do."

What is even worse is that the rise of poverty in our country has occurred as corporate CEO compensation ballooned from 24 times the average worker's wages to 300 times that amount. Just six members of the Walton family alone, whose patriarch founded Walmart, now have as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of the entire U.S. population.

Our Catholic social teaching is not opposed to wealth, private property or free markets, but their value is beneficial only to the extent they contribute to the good of all, creating a widely-shared prosperity. Church social teaching consistently cites equality as a core measure of economic well-being, warning that growing disparities of wealth not only violate the basic principles of justice, but create a concentration of power that threatens social cohesion and democratic integrity.

We cannot have a tax code and public policy which allows this to happen. That is why, I believe, we must embrace the idea of the common good, which is at the heart of Catholic social teaching and which Pope Benedict XVI underscores in his 2009 encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth").

This common good of which the pope speaks is not to be confused with the public good or the total good, but it stands in opposition to the prevailing culture of individualism and autonomy we find in the U.S.: the supposition (usually assumed to be obvious) that no other considerations beyond my personal wants are relevant to my welfare.

This is often coupled with an exaggerated emphasis on individual human rights, stripped of the responsibilities that go with them. In such a world, there is no room for collective rights, and no room for the common good.

For many today, autonomy represents the extension of the free-market principle into all other aspects of everyday life: namely, that if everyone pursues his or her own private interests, then, thanks to an invisible guiding hand, the whole of society will benefit.

Watch out
That is why we should be following carefully the debate in Congress about what government regulatory measures need to be enacted to correct the risky and unethical Wall Street practices which have wrought such devastating economic havoc nationally and globally.

We should also be asking about the federal budget for the fiscal year 2013-14, recently adopted by the House of Representatives, which, if accepted by both houses, would reduce spending on Medicaid and other health programs by $770 billion.

Cuts to other programs, including services to the poor, are also severe. While tax reform and reducing long-term deficits by reining in entitlement spending have to be addressed, there must be better ways than taking food aid from desperate people and WIC [the Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program] from hungry kids.

We should be following, as well, the debate in the State Legislature about raising the minimum wage. In New York State, a full-time worker earning minimum wage will earn $15,080, living below the poverty level for a family of three.

When full-time workers cannot afford to purchase healthy food, pay rent and access vital health care, their wages are unjust. When workers must labor day and night in multiple jobs to piece together a livable income as the fabric of family and community life is torn apart, their wages are unjust. When workers suffer the enduring consequences of poverty - ill health, impeded educational achievement and housing instability - even as company executives amass extraordinary wealth, their wages are unjust. It is time to raise New York's minimum wage.

Faith and conscience call us to be alert to these critical economic issues, especially as they impact the most vulnerable within our society, and lead us to stand up for policies that value every member of society.[[In-content Ad]]

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