The Game of Life

For many Americans ourcurrent housing crisis, banking meltdown and global recession is increasingtheir risk of falling into poverty. You can't turn on the television withouthearing both about who is being impacted and why they are being impacted. WhatI find interesting about these discussions is the consistent emphasis on thefailure of the 'system'. We're not blaming the everyday American for his or hercurrent situation, but instead putting a lot of attention on the systems that have changed the world around us.

Now don't get me wrong, Ithink it's good for us to analyze these systems, since they played such asignificant role in the collapse of our economy. I just wish we placed thismuch attention on the 'system' when discussing the lives of the millions ofAmericans who found themselves in poverty before the global recession and whowill find themselves in poverty after the economy recovers.

Historically, when trying to understand poverty in America we spend aconsiderable amount of time analyzing the individual attributes ordemographic/social characteristics that might lead to an individual's increasedrisk of impoverishment. We vilify those with less education, fewer job skillsor health problems. We characterize entire groups of people like single mothersor minorities living in the inner city as at fault for their own poverty. Ourlack of collective response to the issues of poverty is often due to our seeingthe problem as impacting a few select groups of people plagued with moralfailing or individual inadequacies.

We're good at critiquing thepeople who are experiencing poverty and spend much less time critiquing thesystem that can so often ensnare or even create the situations in the firstplace. We're good at identifying WHO is more likely to experience poverty in America, but we do notconsistently journey into looking at WHY poverty occurs in the first place.

If life was a game, it couldbe said that we like to analyze the players (the winners and the losers) of thegame, rather than the game itself. In my mind, we would do well to dedicateequal attention and resources on both sides of this problem.

Mark Robert Rank utilizes agreat metaphor while painting a picture of poverty in America in his book, "OneNation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects us All".

Rank sets the table fordiscussion with this image:

Now let us imagine amodified game of Monopoly, in which players start out with quite differentadvantages and disadvantages, much as they would in life. Player 1 begins with$5000 and several Monopoly properties on which houses have already been built.Player 2 starts out with the standard $1500 and no properties. Finally, player3 begins the game with only $250.

Who will be thewinners and losers in this modified game of Monopoly?

In this new game, luck andskill are still involved, but are deemphasized because of the varied set ofresources and assets that each player begins the game with. Of course, Player 1could still lose and Player 3 could still win, but it would be much moredifficult. Played out over hundreds of games, Player 1 would come out on topmany more times than Player 3. More importantly though might be the way thatthese new rules would impact how each player is forced to play the game. Inthis modified game, Player 1 can take more risks, while one wrong move couldend the game for Player 3. And lastly, Player 1 can more easily build upontheir assets, leading to greater possibility of future income.

What's true about both thismodified game of Monopoly and America is that we're not all beginning our livesat the same starting point. Where one begins one's life has a powerful impactthroughout your life. And where you start out in life has a lot to do withwhere your parents started out.

In 1994 the median whitefamily held assets worth more than seven times those of the median nonwhitefamily. In order to understand a family's well being and the life chances oftheir children, we must also take into account their accumulated wealth (Conley1999). If you are non-white, your parents were held back from accumulating thesame levels of wealth that white families have been able to build in America.