A convergence of stories on the growing economic inequality born of globalization.  Walter Kirn in the NYT Magazine has a short piece reflecting, somewhat shallowly, on the cultural meaning of the exploding income gap between the richest CEOs and the average Joes.  This chart accompanied the story:

     The fat cats make over 400 times the salary of the average workers.  And, right on cue, we have a concrete example: Exxon-Mobil announced last week that its chief executive will walk away with a retirement package valued at close to $400 million.  I can hear the libertarians tut-tutting now: well, if that is what the market can bear, then he is "worth it."  To which the only rational response is: bullshit.  These kinds of deals of reflections of power, the power to control large organizations that generate extraordinary wealth and concentrate it in the hands a few at the very top, not some value-neutral product of a "free market."  These are man-made outcomes, made by the men who benefit from them.

     And this is not just an American problem.  The urban-rural divide grows in China; and Japan, as it emerges from a long period of low growth, is also experiencing greater income inequality.

     This apparent universality of inequality suggests that Mencius is right: inequality is in the very nature of things.  But Mencius, and Taoists as well, would recoil at the extent of the income gaps we are seeing today.  For these thinkers, while there may never be perfect equality, there must be limits on inequality.

    To be more pointed: If the Exxon-Mobil CEO were a noble-minded man, he would create modest trust funds for his immediate family members (wouldn’t $1 million each suffice?) and directly give the rest away to public interests, preferably local or national government agencies that have some means of determining the most pressing public needs, like elementary and secondary education.  Otherwise he is simply, as Confucius would say, a stooge with a whip (7.12).

     Mencius is quite clear about the obligation of the rich and powerful to limit their own accumulation and consumption in the interest of those worse off.  In speaking to Emperor Hui of Liang, he says:

"There’s plenty of juicy meat in your kitchen and plenty of well-fed horses in your stable," continued Mencius, "but the people here look hungry, and in the countryside they’re starving to death.  You’re feeding humans to animals.  Everyone hates to see animals eat each other, and an emperor is the people’s father and mother – but if his government feeds humans to animals, how can he claim to the people’s father and mother?" (7)

     There’s a stark image for you: "feeding humans to animals."  The rich care more for their animals – in contemporary America, their pets – then they do for those fellow humans who do not have enough to eat.  The libertarians will counter, no doubt, with the observation that people are not "starving to death" in the US.  Granted.  But there are many who struggle to get enough to eat.  Here’s something from The America’s Second Harvest web site:

The America’s Second Harvest Network provides emergency
food assistance to more than 25 million Americans in need every year.

Our Network secures and distributes more than
2 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually; and supports
approximately 50,000 local charitable agencies operating more than 94,000
programs including after-school programs, emergency shelters, food pantries,
Kids Cafes and soup kitchens.

FACT: One in four people in a soup kitchen line is
a child.

Americans we help:      
      

• Children (9 million)
• Seniors (2.5 million)
• Families   
• Homeless
• Newly Unemployed   
• Disabled
• Mentally Ill
• Working Poor
• Victims of Disaster

FACT: More than 38
million Americans are food insecure, hungry or at risk of hunger.

    America’s Second Harvest "Hunger Study, 2006" can be found here.

     Mencius would tell the super-rich CEOs, the emperors of our time, to give their money to the food banks and maybe even to put in a few of their retirement hours working there as well.

     Taoism, too, recognizes a certain inevitability in inequality but rejects as immoral the exacerbation of inequality by powerful individuals.  In passage 77 of the Tao Te Ching, the "way of humankind" is discussed, and it’s not pretty:

The way of heaven takes away where there’s abundance and restores where there’s want, but the way of humankind isn’t like that: it takes away where there is want and gives where there’s abundance.

 If people are naturally selfish and bad – the "way of humankind" – then, perhaps we should not expect anything but the most obscene disparities of wealth.  But the TTC is uncomfortable with this outcome.  It believes that people can do better and should do better.  The ideal ruler, and we might say the ideal moral individual, can come closer to the justice of the way of heaven, as the end of passage 77 suggests:

Only a master of Way can give abundance to all beneath heaven.  Such a sage acts without presumption and never dwells on success:

great worth has no need to be seen.

    We have to resist the man-made temptations of vast concentrations of wealth and power, which will skew our understandings away from the way of heaven, and forget about our own success.  Then, we will be able to "take away where there’s abundance and restore where there’s want."  The parallels to Christian morality are obvious: it is church-based groups, after all, that run most of those food pantries.  But, clearly, neither Christianity nor Taoism nor Confucianism, as systems of belief, seem able to overcome the political-economic power of the CEOs.

    And, just in case there is any doubt about the moral judgment of Taoism toward the wealthy, let’s keep passage 53 in mind:

Understanding sparse and sparser still I travel the great Way, nothing to fear unless I stray.

The great Way is open and smooth, but people adore twisty paths: Government in ruins, fields overgrown, and granaries bare, they indulge in elegant robes and sharp swords, lavish food and drink, all those trappings of luxury.

It’s vainglorious thievery – not the Way, not the Way at all.

    Exxon-Mobil: vainglorious thievery.