Transcript Inequality - Neighborhood Partnerships

Inequality & Equity
From individual circumstance
to collective challenge
Patrick Bresette – [email protected]
Anika Fassia – [email protected]
www.publicworks.org
Inequality – a Tough Subject for Americans
Defending the Dream: Why Income
Inequality Doesn’t Threaten Opportunity
The real American Dream is first and foremost
about hard work and the opportunities created by a
free economy. Stemming from our founding
principles, it can be summed up by a simple
equation:
Economic Freedom + Culture of Work =
Prosperity and Opportunity
- Heritage Foundation
The Triumphant
Individual
With Pluck and Luck
“Self-Made Man” – Irene Ritter
Independence
From Rags to Riches
The Individual Actor Economy
Implications:
Moral qualities and personal
choices shape economic actions
and outcomes
Identifying Up
“Most Americans strongly believe in
working hard and moving up the ladder of
success. They "identify up" with people
more rich, famous, and lucky than they,
rather than “identifying down" with people
more poor, obscure, and unlucky.”
12/3/2010 The Chauffeur's Dilemma
http://motherjones.com/print/12442 2/5
The Morality of Reward & Punishment
Tax the Rich?
“Here’s the problem with fairness: Fair is never really fair.
In order to put everyone on an equal footing, you have to
take from one group to give to the other. That means
penalizing those who excel, those who have put forth the
most effort, those who often have made the biggest
sacrifices and taken the biggest risks, and rewarding those
who have done the least. It sends the message that
achievement will be punished while apathy will be
praised. That’s hardly the spirit of innovation that built
this nation, and it’s not the kind of attitude that will
continue propelling it forward through the 21st century.”
http://www.tindog.com/2009/07/28/the-problem-with-fairness/
Fairness . . . Its Complicated
We cannot just
tell a morality
tale; we need to
talk about
inequality as a
structural
problem that
requires structural
solutions
Spike in Attention to Economic
Inequality (Thanks #OWS)
References to “income inequality
Growing sense that the game is rigged
“. . . I have always been fascinated by the apparent tolerance in
the United States for a huge gap between rich and poor. Survey
data from a few years ago show that this tolerance has been
due to the American public’s strong belief that you can be poor
today but rich tomorrow, that your children will do better than
you, and that anyone who works hard and has a certain
amount of talent can make it in America . . .
Now it seems many Americans have decided that playing by
the rules doesn’t work . . .
It is not the outcomes they complain about but the fact that
the game itself is not fair.”
- Isabel Sawhill, Brookings
http://www.democracyjournal.org/arguments/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-andthe-demise-of-the-american-dream.php
Americans’ Perceptions of Inequality
Americans would prefer
Sweden’s Level of Inequality
Top Quintile has 84% of Wealth
Top Quintile has 36% of Wealth
http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf
Summary of Grady/Aubrun
Challenges:
• Unequal outcomes don’t indicate a problem
• Individual responsibility is a deeply ingrained
value
• Cognitive blindness to systemic factors
• Historical perspectives offer little help
• Us/Them thinking
• “Rhetorical mode” = closed minds
• Guilt and denial
• Compassion fatigue
• Powerlessness
Anat Shenker-Osorio
At minimum, we need INEQUALITY to convey:
1. intentionality
2. unfairness
3. detectability
4. alterability
5. not inevitable.
In other words, differences are a product of
deliberate action, caused by unequal
conditions, measurable and changeable.
Anat Shenker-Osorio
Inequality is a Barrier, not a Gap
Inequality as a “Barrier”
• An obstacle for:
• “access to resources”, “access
to opportunities”“participating
fully in the economy”
• Holds people back
Inequality as a “Barrier”
• It implies all people are equally capable and
deserving
• It suggests inequality has structural and
deliberate causes; “barriers” are generally
understood as man-made, not natural
• It suggests a role for the audience, you can
further develop and specify, in breaking down
barriers
• It’s tangible and part of lived experience,
we’ve all faced impediments
Avoid: inequality as a “gap”, inequality as top/bottom
Narrowing the Gap, Leveling the Field: How We Talk About Economic Inequality
Anat Shenker-Osorio, May 2010
Inequality as Vertigo
Inequality as Vertigo
“An economy that has gotten off-kilter”
“Excessive inequality leads to instability”
• It implies there’s an economic system that
can be externally swayed or put o# its axis
• It’s tangible and part of lived experience,
we’ve all lost our balance
Summary of Grady/Aubrun
Recommendations:
• Highlight practical steps that can be taken
• Find ways to link the issue to “all of us.”
• Talk about the harms of Inequality itself – ways in
which gaps are inherently corrosive of overall
wellbeing
• Be careful to explain the causes in ways that are
hard to tie to individual choices and behavior
• Depict affected parties in language and pictures
that help audiences identify with them rather
than creating distance between them
“Ultimately, Inequality is about our society, not
individuals. It needs to be seen as a structural problem: a
matter of public policy, not just personal behavior. When
some have a lot and others have little, the tendency is to
attribute this circumstance to individual effort. But most
sources of Inequality are rooted in the way that we have
organized our society, and how that organization ends up
favoring one group over another. To accelerate progress
in eliminating structural inequalities we have to talk
more effectively about structures, say why they matter,
and offer tangible solutions for transforming them.”
From: Provoking Thought, Changing Talk: Putting it into Practice
Lori Dorfman, Dr.P.H., Berkeley Media Studies Group & Lawrence Wallack,
Dr.P.H., College of Urban & Public Affairs, Portland State University
Application and Discussion:
How can we talk about
Inequality effectively?