Economic inequality doesn't just threaten our economy.

The problem with Charles Lane’s analysis of Sanders and the Pope’s concern regarding income inequality and global poverty (Washington Post 4-14-16)  is how he limits his perspective to economics.  His stats are correct, but if he looks at national security threats to the US posed by the remaining global poverty that capitalism and free trade have not helped, he might change his tune.  

Remaining deficits in global economic development still cause the deaths of over 17,000 child deaths and 42,000 new refugees every day as a result of war, hunger, extreme weather conditions, infectious disease, terrorism, genocide and the persistent violation of other human rights.  Each threat is a result of capitalism and free trade’s failure to prevent.  

Recent Senate testimony by Retired Marine Corps General, (former) White House National Security Adviser and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, James Jones confirms what a 1980 bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger concluded. 

“In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar.  Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late.  Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world.  Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”. 

 President Jimmy Carter’s Commission went on to warn about the rise in terrorism, environmental degradation, wars and revolutions we could expect if we failed to make ending hunger and the worst aspects of global poverty a top US national security priority.  

General Jones, Bono the musician, and even Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Appropriations agree.  Unless we make global development a far higher national security priority and make the resources available we won’t be able to afford the economic consequences.   Even Mr. Lane must be aware that this global deficit of crisis prevention funding will be bad for everyone.