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I. Introduction I have focused this discussion on neo-liberal economics because this is now the dominant form. It is dominant in universities in the United States, and it exercises a dominant influence on the institutions that support the global economy. This includes the government of the United States and the Bretton Woods Institutions — The …
Continue reading “A Buddhist-Christian Critique of Neo-Liberal Economics”
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I. There is a tension between short-term goals and long-term goals. This tension is felt particularly by youth. There is great pressure toward gaining the approval of those of one’s own age, and this often means acting in ways that will not support future success. Parents and teachers, on the other hand, emphasize the importance …
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NOTE: The International Conference on Globalisation for the Common Good and the Quest for Justice and Peace in Africa, held in Kericho, Kenya, April 21 – 24, 2005,was attended by many speakers representing governments, religions. business, academia, civil society, charity, the voluntary sector, media and young people. The Conference issued the following declaration and invited …
Continue reading “Africa and Globalisation for the Common Good: The Quest for Justice and Peace”
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Those of us on the left who the ideology of free trade are sometimes accused of having strange bedfellows, notably Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan. But this meeting of left and right may not be so surprising. The differences that once divided the major political parties have been superseded by new issues on which the …
Continue reading “Against Free Trade: A Meeting of Opposites”
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For those who remember the days of recession, high unemployment and high inflation in the 1970s, the state of the American economy in 1999 is remarkable. We are enjoying the longest peace-time recovery in U.S. history, a record low unemployment rate (4.3 percent in May), and few signs of inflation, despite rapid expansion of output …
Continue reading “An Economist’s Reflections In A Time Of Prosperity”
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On Good Shepherd Sunday, which points our attention to John 10, my attention is usually focused on the Shepherd himself, occasionally and less piously so on the sheep and their implications for a theology of the laity. Recently, however, I was forced to consider the hireling who, when he sees the wolf coming, abandons the …
Continue reading “Apology For The Hireling: A Work Ethic For the Global Marketplace”
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The basic agreement of all religions about core moral values is increasingly being recognized by religious leaders. It is urgent that these values are now translated into practical policies that will reduce the economic inequalities in our world, bring relief to the very poor, protect the environment and reduce the dangers of violence and terrorism. …
Continue reading “Bringing Economics and Theology Together Again”
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A Review Essay of John B. Cobb, Jr., Sustainability: Economics, Ecology and Justice (Maryknowl: Orbis Books, 1992). There is little doubt about it: ecological/environmental awareness is one the three great entrees into cross-cultural thinking today. Along with human rights and the emergence of a pervasive matrix of global economic interdependence, the issue of the future …
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In 1984 James Gustafson, in his eminent Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, jolted religious professionals with a blast against “ecclesiastical moralizing” and “intellectual flabbiness”: in church “pronouncements.” The usually gentle Gustafson accused churches of failure to recognize the complexities of social issues, neglect of “sound theological and ethical arguments” and dogmatic refusal to recognize “the …
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Calling for "a modern equivalent of Jubilee," signers of a proposal fundamentally to revise the property tax structure petitioned the endorsement of the 1984 General Conference of the United Methodist Church. The proposal, which the conference did endorse, sought to shift taxes from labor to land values. Combining good biblical theology with public policy insight, …
Continue reading “Combating Modern-day Feudalism: Land as God’s Gift”
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All across the nation a silent tragedy is taking place among blue-collar workers and their families: the tragedy of closing factories and lost jobs. But it is not just factory workers who are suffering. There is a ripple effect all through the economy. Mom-and-pop stores are being forced to close. Service workers are being fired. …
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PART I WHY ECONOMICS? The people of God live within the process of history. The Biblical history of the Old and the New Testaments, and church history testify to this reality. Furthermore, our faith that God created the whole world and all its peoples therein dictates that they are all people(s) of God.*) —————— *)Some …
Continue reading “Covenant with the Poor: Toward a New Concept of Economic Justice”
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I When we think of violence, what first comes to mind are violent acts by individuals or groups against individuals. We think of rapes and murders, lynchings and muggings, beatings and armed robberies. We want the police to protect us from this violence. Unfortunately, we know that police are tempted, in turn, to employ …
Continue reading “Economic Aspects of Social and Environmental Violence”
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My paper will be in large part a critique of the assumptions underlying the now dominant economic theory and a proposal of different assumptions. To many people this seems a remote and indirect way of approaching the issues of the common good. I hope that, as I proceed, that sense of remoteness will lessen. But …
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A Review of The Earthist Challenge to Economism: A Theological Critique of the World Bank, by John B.Cobb Jr., St. Martin’s, l92 pp. $65.00 Since the World Bank affects poor people around the globe more directly than any other social institution, John Cobb’s exploration is important for anyone concerned about how Christians can creatively engage …
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Issues of profound ethical import are sometimes put before us as technical economic policies. This is true today with respect to the Uruguay Round proposals for revision of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. They are presented as an extension of free trade, a principle that we have been taught to honor from our …
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Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done By Carol Lancaster University of Chicago Press. Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century By Michael Edwards. Earthscan Publications, London. For 50 years, foreign aid programs have been a standard feature of Western dealings with non-Western places, guided by seldom-questioned notions of assisting “modernization” …
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I. Basic Assumptions of Economic Theory I am honored to have been asked to address you with regard to the World Trade Organization and China. I am also aware of my limited qualifications. Many of you have far more detailed information than I about the history and policies of the General Agreement on Tariffs and …
Continue reading “Free Trade And The World Trade Organization”
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Soon after the financial scandal broke last year involving Ivan Boesky, the Wall Street arbitrager, I spoke with a dean of Harvard University’s Business School at a suburban Boston church. Not wanting to sound moralistic, .I wondered aloud if insider trading in ‘securities might be ethically ambiguous since some argue that it promotes market efficiency. …
Continue reading “Have Ethics Disappeared from Wall Street.?”
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The Western industrial nations have undergone an astonishing growth in prosperity since World War II. In the United States the living standard of the average family has doubled in the past three decades. But this unprecedented rapid growth in real income may now be ending, say some economic prophets, or at least ought not be …
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In the past few years, probably as an aftermath to the Watergate and post-Watergate disclosures of how the American business and political world is sometimes run, ethics has become of lively interest in business and professional schools and among both popular and seriously reflective writers. Most of the popular writings and the case materials used …
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Like others promoting a dialogue between religion and economics (such as Lorna Gold in The Sharing Economy), I believe that there must be a place for religion in our quest to find solutions to the deepening crises of injustice and inequality in the globalized economy. The relationship between economics and theology is one that needs …
Continue reading “Ideals into Practice: Reuniting Economics and Theology”
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Book Review: Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich. By Kevin Phillips. Broadway, 473 pp. The argument of Kevin Phillips’s provocative and disturbing new book could almost be rendered as a cliché: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. According to Phillips, the very rich in the U.S. have …
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Trade among human communities has been a part of normal human life for tens of thousands of years. Coastal tribes traded with those in the mountains and desserts, each gaining prized goods they could not otherwise have enjoyed. Trade encouraged peaceful communication and interchange; it broadened the horizons of thought and imagination; it stimulated technological …
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Jubilee 2000 is gaining momentum. Centers for the movement have arisen in more than 40 countries, and numerous churches and nongovernmental organizations have signed on to the campaign. The goals of this movement, which seems to have originated with the All Africa Conference of Churches and is now centered in the United Kingdom, are best …
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What is the biblical view of God’s will for economic relations among his people? For an answer, we shall look at the jubilee passage in Leviticus, at the new community of Jesus’ disciples, at the first church in Jerusalem, and at the Pauline collection. Text: To ask government to legislate what the church cannot persuade …
Continue reading “Sharing the Wealth: The Church as Biblical Model for Public Policy”
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Most Americans know Monopoly as a game: Parker Brothers’ famous entertainment has been a continuous favorite since the Great Depression. The game combines skill with a heavy dose of chance through dice and situation cards. The object of the game is to bankrupt your opponents by buying up so much real estate that they have …
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On the last day of August 1839, Henry David Thoreau, then 22 years old, and his brother, John, 24, set out in their homemade dory on Massachusetts’s Concord River for a week’s camping trip. Thoreau later wrote about the trip in his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. After passing through …
Continue reading “Teaching the Eco-Justice Ethic: The Parable of the Billerica Dam”
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A renowned economist who served for six years as senior adviser in the International Monetary Fund contends that capitalism is undergoing a crisis of epic proportions — a crisis rooted in what has until now been seen as the main strength of the system. In his important new book, Social Limits to Growth (Harvard University …
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I. The International Economy In one sense, there has been a global economy for a long time. For thousands of years caravans carried goods between China and Europe. There are indications of connections in very ancient times between the Eastern and the Western Hemispheres. Nevertheless, these trade connections played a very small role in the …
Continue reading “The Global Economy and its Theoretical Justification”
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In their views on public economic policy, mainline Protestant clergy tend to be more liberal than business executives. While it is commonplace to say that there is a gulf between pulpit and pew, most attempts to account for this gap fail to edify. In conversations with their colleagues, clergy often point to the faithlessness and …
Continue reading “The Gospel of Equality and the Gospel of Efficiency”
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Good economists know, from work carried out within their discipline, that the foundations of their subject are virtually non-existent . . . Conventional economics offer prescriptions for the problems of inflation and unemployment which are at best misleading and at worst dangerously wrong . . . Despite its powerful influence on public life, its achievements …
Continue reading “The Roots of Economics — And Why it has Gone So Wrong”
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The Federal Reserve Board reported some staggering news last summer: one-half of 1 per cent of American families (just 419,590 out of a total of about 87 million households) possess 35 per cent of this country’s privately held wealth. As it turns out, the board had to rescind its study because a major error had …
Continue reading “The Skewing of America: Disparities in Wealth and Income”
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Sometimes first impressions are surprisingly accurate: mine were. As happens with visitors to a new country my recent introduction to Zambia was the airport, with its huge, cavernous terminal. Yet I saw only a few employees and guards and virtually no passengers other than those of us who got off the flight from London. Many …
Continue reading “The Zambian Debt Dilemma: A Just Repayment Plan”
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We all believe in freedom. So if we are asked whether trade should be free, our spontaneous answer is likely to be “Sure.” But spontaneous answers are not always right. It is better to check out what is entailed. We don’t really want everybody to be free to do anything. We don’t want men to …
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The destiny of the planet is now being settled in relatively obscure negotiations called the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It is likely that the outcome of these negotiations will be more fateful than the Persian Gulf War, yet they are still discussed only in narrow circles. The negotiations …
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Everyone in Western society believes in growth — or at least almost everyone. There are a few who would like to keep things as they are or go back to an earlier, simpler, and smaller world. But they are few. Our culture for a long time has been oriented to making things better, toward leaving …
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The outsourcing of U.S. jobs overseas, the subject of much discussion in this year’s presidential campaign, is part of an economic movement that promises a better life — indeed, a new beginning — for many people in developing countries. It gives technologically savvy young people in countries like India livelihoods that move them into the …
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We live in a world in which the economic order reigns. National and international decisions are made primarily in terms of expected results for the economy. Even issues of national sovereignty are subordinated to economic considerations. This organization of the world’s life and institutions, together with the underlying belief system, I call “economism”. In an …
