Humility and Gratitude as Democratic Virtues

Ian handed me a copy of today's EJ Dionne column and I am thankful he did.  EJ Dionne cites a study done by a former economic advisor to the president to remind us that no matter how hard we work there is always an element of luck in our good fortune, which is why, in our more honest moments we think ‘there but for the grace of god go I’ when we see or hear about a former classmate or neighbor who has fallen on very hard times.

Dionne reminds us that income inequality is extreme and getting worse in America.  That the social mobility we expect to generate innovation and we cite as evidence that the poor are just lazy is nearly absent in the US when compared to allies like Finland, Sweden, Germany or New Zealand.  Then Dionne refers to the study of twins.

 “On the one hand, he found that ‘on average, twins with higher education tend to earn more than their other half with less education.’ So schooling really matters. But he also found that among identical twins with the same level of education, ‘earnings differed by 25 percent or more . . . in half our sample’ and by ‘more than 50 percent in a quarter of identical twins with identical school levels.’

‘These discrepancies for such similar workers,’ he concludes, ‘suggest that luck is an important factor in the labor market, as well as in the music industry.’

I confess: I love any economist willing to say straight out that luck plays a large part in how well we do. The prosperous are especially disinclined to acknowledge that however hard they worked or ingenious they were, they were also lucky. The role of good fortune in determining success provides a powerful moral underpinning for more egalitarian policies.”

The affluent do indeed resist recognizing the role of good fortune, legacy or racial or gender or geographic privilege, in making sense of their individual success.  This attitude stands as an important obstacle to seeing and defending the moral and instrumental imperative behind egalitarian policies like public education, national health care, equality before the law, and functioning democratic forms of decision making.