Inequality & Equity From individual circumst a nce to collective challenge

Inequality & EquityFrom individual circumstance

to collective challenge

www.publicworks.org

Patrick Bresette – [email protected] Fassia – [email protected]

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

With Pluck and Luck

The Triumphant Individual

Independence

From Rags to Riches

“Self-Made Man” – Irene Ritter

The Individual Actor Economy

Implications:Moral qualities and personal choices shape economic actions and outcomes

“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 Dilemmahttp://motherjones.com/print/12442 2/5

Identifying Up

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

“. . . 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-and-the-demise-of-the-american-dream.php

Growing sense that the game is rigged

Americans’ Perceptions of Inequality

Americans would prefer Sweden’s Level of

Inequality

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf

Top Quintile has 84% of Wealth Top Quintile has 36% of Wealth

Summary of Grady/AubrunChallenges:• 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

At minimum, we need INEQUALITY to convey:1. intentionality 2. unfairness3. detectability 4. alterability5. not inevitable.

In other words, differences are a product of deliberate action, caused by unequal conditions, measurable and changeable.

Anat Shenker-Osorio

Anat Shenker-OsorioInequality 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

Narrowing the Gap, Leveling the Field: How We Talk About Economic InequalityAnat Shenker-Osorio, May 2010

Avoid: inequality as a “gap”, inequality as top/bottom

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/AubrunRecommendations:• 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?