Nathan Key

I went to a website yesterday at my pastor’s prompting and was instructed to enter my annual salary. Based on my yearly earnings, I’m apparently in the top 1.43% of the world’s richness scale. After showing me how many people in the world live significantly below my own standard of living, they politely asked me to consider giving some of my “new found riches” to others who are in need.

It was a pretty cool thing and a good reminder to be generous.

However, it got me thinking about the fact that if someone else here in the United States, making minimum wage, took the test- they’d probably pop up on this indicator as one of the richest people in the world, too. But they’re struggling. Really struggling. They’re probably wondering if they’re going to be able to pay their rent and eat (and still have enough left over to leverage transportation to and from work.

Someone making the same yearly amount in a third world (or even second world) country would be the king of the neighborhood. OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but they wouldn’t be wondering where their next meal is coming from. You see, richness is relative.

This makes sense to anyone who has gone between cities/states/countries and realized that the a gallon of milk is a dollar in one city, four dollars in another, and ten cents in the third. And if all prices in the market are congruent to the milk- a person living in the city where milk costs four dollars per gallon is going to need to make 40x the amount that the person makes who is living in conditions where the milk only costs 10 cents per gallon.

Person one would need to make 40 dollars for every 1 dollar made by person two (or to put it in annual salaries, person one would need to make $80,000 a year to be considered in similar living conditions to person two making $2,000 a year).

Perhaps in dollars and cents, we'd consider person one to be "richer" than person two. But in quality of life, they’re technically equals. They both have the same buying power with comparable to their income.

This is why it’s hard to just make a blanket statement that one person is richer than another or that someone making a certain amount per year has an obligation to help out another person making less. If we’re not careful, we can end up guilting those who really don’t make a lot into feeling some sort of unachievable burden to help out those who may actually be comparatively similar to them in economic terms.

Instead of merely looking at raw data, you really have to look at disposable income rather than simply how much is made per year. Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to coach people on generosity.

And I'm pretty sure this is why Paul said- "Let each man decide in his heart what he should give." Otherwise, it's just too complicated when we try to impose a mandated amount on anyone.

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