On the other side of "The Trap"

I just finished Daniel Brook's first book, "The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America."

There are several good reviews floating around online already that detail Brook's argument and, sadly and predictably, take sides according to the economic bent of the critic. Liberals who favor redistributive taxation like The Trap; small-government conservatives and libertarians think he's a whiner.

A few points from the book struck me hard:
1) Income inequality in New York - on pg. 20, Brook cites 2000 census data suggesting that in New York, the top fifth of earners make $365,826 per year; the bottom fifth make $7,047. This disparity puts New Yorkers in the company of Namibians--the most unequal country in the world according to the United Nations Human Development Report. We are living in a time and place in which income inequality is not just uncomfortable--it's inhumane.

2) The futility of "progressive consumerism" as a technique for social reform - on pg. 54 Brook chides "materialism disguised as progressivism." He calls progressive consumerism the last gasp of liberals who watched the egalitarian revolutions of the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement wither and fail during the last 20+ years of conservative ascendancy. Consumer idealism is a futile attempt to re-make the world in the last space in which progressives have control--their own home. This is an example of on of many of Brook's nice supporting points, and it (unfortunately) nails a lot of New York's current "progressive" ethos as I've experienced it. Buy organic... hope for the rest.

3) Brook writes with exacting accuracy about how economic pressures have transformed real-estate markets in large metropolitan areas, effectively ensuring the demise of middle-class urban neighborhoods. Now there are only "rich" and "poor" neighborhoods. Any day-long tour of New York City will show the same thing. My wife and I still struggle over whether to try and raise our kids here as two pastors--what kind of life can we afford to live here compared to what our life could be like elsewhere? Brook also calls out Brooklyn as "the most housing poor community in America"--Brooklynites pay a larger percentage of their incomes on housing than in any other community in America. This resonates with my friends who live there--it is not the "cheap" borough. And housing costs hit rich and poor alike.

4) Brook's philosophical statement that freedom and equality are not opposing political ideals is the book's most durable "big idea." He makes a strong case from historical precedent that in periods of massive income inequality and wealth accumulation, economic want and the obligation to do whatever one must to house, feed, and clothe oneself and one's family actually restricts the effective freedom of large segments of the population. Brook's thesis is that the mounting cost of basic goods like housing, health care, and child care is restricting the vocational choices of educated young people. While we could smirk (and I did, too, at first) about the "poor Yale grad" who has to choose between making feminist films and making six figures as a corporate hack, Brook's larger point is not to elicit sympathy for the individual decision-maker. Instead, Brook argues, it is society as a whole that suffers when educated and idealistic young people are not able to pursue entrepreneurship, the arts, nonprofit work, and teaching. Our best minds are dedicated to private, not public, ends.

5) The stats Brook provides to support his points are terrific. Who knew, for example, that corporate law is a recent invention? In 1972, Brook says, starting salaries in corporate firms in Manhattan were $16,000; but $13,300 for government lawyers and $12,500 for Legal Aid attorneys! Now the gap between corporate and Legal Aid is at least $100K. He shows exactly how uncompetitive teacher salaries are today compared with 40 years ago and how teaching often looks like a laughable career choice for someone who has just paid $120,000 for a bachelor's degree. And Brook reminds us that in living memory, there was such a thing as a 90% tax for the highest income brackets (today's highest hovers in the 30s)--and that FDR actually proposed a 100% tax for anyone earning today's equivalent of $300,000!

I would make two personal comments about The Trap:

The first is that Brook has put his finger on the large-scale social and economic shifts that create disincentives for young people to enter public service. I know dozens of people who have wrestled with exactly the paradoxes that Brook's characters wrestle with--and these are sympathetic stories... people who would have loved to teach children, but school debt and cost of living precluded that possibility. Where Brook's book seems to be catching the most crap from conservative reviewers is from those who choose to focus on the personal anecdotes like the feminist film studies major who can't make a living doing that work in San Francisco. But Brook's point is not to dramatize or even analyze the "saint-sellout" crisis that so many young people now face. Brook wants to show not that these young people are suffering--but rather that the choice they face is both unnecessary and ultimately harmful to a democracy. The market is winning--the creep of corporate wealth is creating too many (and too large) incentives that lure public-spirited young people away from vocations in public service and into jobs that only serve to create more private wealth--exacerbating the need for more public-spirited young people to step in and help.

Brook describes exactly what I observed on graduating from Yale 10 years ago this past May: so many people with whom I had shared time volunteering in schools and for social causes dispatched those interests when it came time to choose a vocation. Brilliant people lined up for work at i-banks and consulting firms. I don't begrudge them this decision--people do what they need to do, and our world as it's presently constituted needs some good, talented, conscientious i-bankers. But I do begrudge a system that doesn't honor and compensate vocations in the public interest like teaching or nonprofit work and accord them even somewhat comparable economic value.

My second and last comment about The Trap is that I'm proof that it's possible to live through it. I chose public service and nonprofit work and, along with several of my friends, am showing that living with integrity and living with enough can be done. I worked for 5 years after college in nonprofits and never made more than $28,000 in any of those years. I lived cheaply--shared apartments in tough neighborhoods, limited myself to inexpensive entertainment, travelled less than I would have liked, drank domestic beer in cans. I also put myself through three years of a master's program by taking out student loans. I'm paying them back slowly, but I don't regret doing it. The learning to live with less was such a gift to me. Learning to live according to values and paradigms other than those concerned with accumulating or spending money transformed me.

I've lived for 10 years now pursuing jobs that are deeply meaningful to me. And while some might say that I've made sacrifices to do this, I've never felt so. I always felt like the real sacrifice would be to do anything less than what God called me to do--anything less that the work that leads me to the intersection of my deep passion and the world's deepest needs.

The Trap makes a sound and thorough economic argument. But life--and vocation--is about much more than economics. There is a way through "the trap"--and the life of faith shows it clearly.