Gen Eds P9: Social and Political Philosophy

Social, political, and economic philosophy are all ethics written large. The last post tried to cover the gamut of perspectives on individual ethics. This post addresses the more complex question of how the individual might relate to the many.

This is the eighth philosophy post in a series called, "General Education in a Nutshell." Philosophy is the first of ten subjects to overview in this series. These are the subjects a person normally takes in college (or high school) as part of a general education (most of them also make up what is sometimes called the "liberal arts").

The first eight philosophy posts were:

• Philosophy Overview
• Philosophy of Religion
• Epistemology
• Critical Thinking
• Philosophy of Science
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of the Person
• Ethics

1. There have been philosophers who have believed that living in society tends to make us happier and potentially better as humans. Then there are others who see society and social structure as an inevitably corrupting force. They suggest we should try our best to remove ourselves from society or, if necessary, live in as small a society as we can. [1]

So Aristotle (384-22BC) said that humanity is a "political animal," destined to live together in an orderly society. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) believed that society was a corrupting force and idealized the "noble savage," the Tarzan like individual uncorrupted by society. Karl Marx (1818-83) believed that society on its own would eventually arrive at a classless society, a position interestingly similar to anarcho-capitalists who believe an optimal economic situation will result if we just remove all restraint on economic systems altogether.

Sociologically, we can suggest that homo sapiens is essentially a herd animal. Western culture is somewhat unique in its individualism. Most cultures throughout history in most places and times have been collectivist or group cultures. We should not be surprised at political phenomena like nativism (hostility toward immigrants), states rights movements, Brexit, political party loyalties, and nationalism. We are built to gang up, especially in smaller "tribes."

The further you go in human history, however, the larger and larger the collections of empire and nation become. No doubt most historians would conclude that the United States would not have become nearly so strong nor its people have prospered so much if the earlier confederacy model had prevailed. So there tend to be twin forces at play in human history, the one of which pulls toward smaller human groupings according to clan and "tribe," and the other of which pushes toward empire and nation.

Some philosophers have taught that you can only be happy in a just society (e.g., Plato, Aristotle). Others have taught that you can be at peace in any society (e.g., Stoics, Paul, Victor Frankl). The Stoics taught that you should "love your fate" (amor fati). Paul told the Philippians that he had learned how to be content with any circumstance. Frankl said that "a man can live with any 'how' if he has a 'why.'"

2. Philosophers have endorsed different forms of government over the years, often in keeping with whatever governmental form was most in play at the time they lived. Plato suggested that a well-structured society would mirror a well-balanced person. Just as we have a head, a chest, and an abdomen whose virtues respectively are wisdom, courage, and self-control, so society is best governed by philosopher kings, who rule with wisdom a soldier class and a worker class.

Aristotle ranked the best and worse forms of the state depending on the quality of the ruler. Writing at the tail end of the age of the city-state, he suggested a benevolent monarchy had the most potential for goodness, while an evil dictatorship would be the worst. A rule by a few good men (a genuine aristocracy) would be second best, and by a few evil men the worst. A city-sized democracy, such as had just ended at Athens when he was there, the third best, a mob-rule the third worst.

Note that I have said men. Unlike Plato, who believed women had the same access to the ideal realm that men did, Aristotle did not believe that women were normally fit to be in charge. He set down household codes whose structure we find in the household codes of the New Testament. The household structures of Ephesians and Colossians are thus cultural in nature rather than distinctively Christian.

3. As the age of kings reached a climax in the 1600s just before it began to wane, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) gave a defense of monarchy as the best form of government. He described society as a social contract between a king and his people. The people surrendered their rights to a king and, in return, the king protected and nurtured them. Hobbes did not believe, however, that the people could take back that reign if the king failed to keep his end of the bargain.

But even as Hobbes' life reached its end, we had the English revolution and the ever increasing power of Parliament. Representational government was on the rise and would reach a crucial turning point with the political experiment we now call the United States of America. As Hobbes' life was entering its twilight, John Locke (1634-1704) was taking the idea of a social contract in a different direction.

For Locke, society is also a kind of social contract between its various members. We bind ourselves to each other to our mutual benefit. Each person has certain inalienable rights such as "life, liberty, and property." (Thomas Jefferson was thus drawing on Locke as he penned the Declaration of Independence.) Once we choose to remain in a society, we give "tacit consent" to agree by its contract.

Montesquieu (1689-1755) wisely suggested that the ideal government would have a "balance of powers" so that no one branch could have complete sway over the others. As Lord Acton (1834-1902) would later say, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But if the branches of government have a system of "checks and balances" against each other, it will help protect the state from one part taking over.

Montesquieu proposed three branches--an executive branch that served as the administrative lead, a legislative branch based upon representation from the populace, and a judicial branch that held the others accountable to the laws of the land. Obviously his thinking was of tremendous impact on the structure of the American government and of representational democracies ever since.

4. Modern governments build upon the strengths of the various ethical philosophies we looked at in the previous post. They are broadly utilitarian in many respects--the good of the many is meant to take priority over the good of the few. Yet in keeping with duty-based ethics, certain basic rights are considered inviolate. The rights of an individual cannot be superseded by the will of the majority. The majority doesn't just get what it wants if what it wants violates the rights of an individual or minority group within the society. This principle stands near the heart of the social contract.

Within this general framework, the individual is free to do whatever he or she wants. The tendency toward liberty allows a default space for the egoist who is looking out only for him or herself. The main challenge is virtue. You can create a system of this sort that does it's best to keep the selfishness and reckless ambition of individuals in check, but without an educated and virtuous populace, without just laws, the benefits of such a society are always in danger. Public, universal education is a key systematic way to push back against the default human tendency to unravel the balance.

5. Parallel to the rise of representational democracies is the rise of the capitalistic system and industrial societies. Without question, the rise of capitalism and industrialism has introduced an exponential growth in the total wealth of the world. It of course has not done so evenly. The wealthy class of the world is richer than it has ever been, and at times wealth has grown at the expense of those who serve as its machinery.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) is often called the father of capitalism. His intent was to create a free enterprise system where the laws of supply and demand would create an ideal balance where those selling goods would get as much as they could while those buying would pay as little as they could. [2] With both parties acting in their self-interest, a mid-point would be reached. Each would get the maximum advantage.

His intention was to improve the condition of the common person. His intention was to empower the "nobody" in society to be able to start a business and excel. He assumed the basic self-interest of human beings and saw competition as the key to maximizing human thriving.

He could not have anticipated the scale on which capitalism would be implemented in society, nor the ways in which its abuse could actually enslave the very people he hoped this economic system would empower. Sweat shops, monopolies that stomped out competition, power that at times almost rose to the level of government itself--these were not the directions he thought the "unseen hand" of market forces would lead.

At a key moment of capitalism's history, Karl Marx (1818-83) thought he saw the writing on the wall. Capitalism would eventually lead to bloody revolutions when the workers (the proletariat) overthrew the bourgeoisie industries that oppressed them. Then a classless society would evolve. [3]

There were some revolutions to be sure. 1848 was a year of German economic revolution. Looking back, Marx considered the French Revolution of 1789 part of the process. 1917 saw the communist revolution in Russia and the mid-twentieth century saw similar revolutions in Cuba and South America.

However, places like England and the United States enacted reforms that staved off their societies reaching such boiling points. Marx himself conceded at least that his communist end point might be reached in more peaceful ways in some societies.

6. Of course history has not been kind to Marx's ultimate destination. True, capitalist societies where various protections have not been put in place have often ended in violent situations. These sorts of protections include anti-trust laws that ensure that competition can take place and that no one business control an entire market. Protections for workers who blow the whistle are key, as are protections for workers in relation to striking, health, etc. [4]

Here we have to step back again and remember the function of a social contract. It is for individuals to come together to bring about a greater good. Any capitalistic system that only maximizes the benefit for a few at the hands of the many is contradictory, in fact irrational. The benefit of the many supersedes the benefit of the few. In that sense, profit is not the ultimate goal. It is a means to a bigger end.

As far as communism is concerned, Marx's vision has proved to be a complete failure. Anywhere that communism has tried to go, it has failed to create anything but impoverishment. The Soviet Union failed and capitalistic reforms were implemented. Communist China is currently implementing measured capitalistic reforms. Just comparing pictures of East Berlin with West Berlin immediately reveals the failure of Marx's vision. North Korea is one of the most unhappy places to live on the globe, so much so that its people find unbelievable the idea that a store could be completely stocked at some time.

In fact, Marx's communism--a utopian, classless society where everything more or less runs on its own--has never been realized. Communist experiments have always resulted in autocratic, oppressive regimes and dictatorships that are socialist rather than truly communist. Socialism is when the state controls all the economic systems. The people work, as it were, for the state, which provides for the people.

There are, of course, socialist systems that are not oppressive. There is a spectrum of economic services provided or regulated by the state. Some European countries have far higher taxes but provide many more services to their people. The United States has much lower taxes and provides fewer services. It is a spectrum of more or less socialist, more or less capitalist. To implement one area of economic control does not make a country or a politician socialist, although it has sometimes been a useful rhetorical move in elections. :-)

7. In the early twenty-first century, we can wonder if the global economic system has entered a new phase of scale. The economic recession of 2008 suggests that the bundling of debt, betting against the market, the electronic buying and selling of stocks--these sorts of innovations require attention to ensure that the economic structure of society remains beneficial to the majority of the society. The rise of technology is finally eliminating the middle tier of employment, resulting in the polarization of society into a few who have fantastical amounts of wealth and an economic bottom that can hardly survive.

In this context, simply playing out debates between Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and Friedrick Hayek (1899-1992) probably won't do. [5] The greatest economic and philosophical minds need to envision how to adjust our economic systems so that they continue to do what they are meant to do, namely, to maximize human thriving and to economically empower every member of society.

Next week: Philosophy 10: Philosophy of History

Classic Reading

• Plato's Republic 
• Aristotle's Politics
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
• John Locke, Two Treatises of Government 
• Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
• Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• John Stuart Mill, The Principals of Political Economy
• Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

[1] I've often thought that you could probably correlate the respective personalities of each perspective with philosophers who were extroverts and those who were introverts.

[2] Other terms associated with "free enterprise" are "laissez faire" economics ("to allow to do") and classical liberalism, where "liberalism" here means "free" enterprise. "Liberalism" in economics around the year 1800 amounts to economic conservatism in the US today.

[3] Marx formulated his philosophy in his version of G. W. F. Hegel's dialectical philosophy of history. More on it in the next post.

[4] John Stuart Mill (1806-73) pushed back on the bare bones capitalism and utilitarianism of Smith, One of his most quoted statements of political philosophy is that, "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others" (On Liberty).

[5] Hayek argued for an extreme form of deregulation of economic systems. Keynes for a more regulatory approach that controlled prices and such to make sure the market didn't get out of whack.

Jerry Bowyer at IWU on Biblical Economics

KERN sponsored a visit by Jerry Bowyer to IWU these last couple days. Yesterday he presented on Biblical Economics Principles.

1. I substantially agreed with Bowyer on most things. Our own Tom Lehman might be surprised to know that I actually agree with him on many, many aspects of economic principles. Of course both of them are light years ahead of me on the math. They are truly economics scholars.

To set some background, Bowyer's conservative political credentials are solid. For example, he completely rejects Keynes as the purveyor of an atheistic system. More on that below. So any comment that might sound balanced should be taken in light of a joke he made about the Republican party: "It's my party and I can cry if I want to."

2. Here are some of his thoughts that I tweeted yesterday:

a. "I want both a pro-growth approach and a safety net that is more like a trampoline" (these are not exact quotes). Jerry Bowyer on the negatives of both political parties. The Republicans have the right economics, he was saying. But Democrats express Christian values when they want there to be a safety net.

Economically, Bowyer argued that only prosperous nations can afford a safety net. He heavily critiqued Bernie Sanders, whom he has debated, for wanting a 90% tax rate. That would kill the growth that affords a safety net. Bowyer advocates a safety net that is more of a trampoline, one that doesn't create dependence.

b. "My experience of the poor is not that they are sponges but that they usually have some sort of block."

His point here is that he finds that a lot of those who are dependent are not so by choice but because they either don't know how to get out of their rut or have something standing in their way.

c. "The Bible has a lot to say against hoarding but seems in favor of 'investment.'"

Wesley was invoked here--"Earn all you can, save all you can [in terms of being conservative in your spending], give all you can." Lehman also argued Wednesday at lunch that profit is a sign that demands are being met, that people are getting what they want.

3. So I agree with a lot of the economic fundamentals that both Bowyer and Lehman are suggesting here. For example, I agree with both that modern economics is not a zero-sum game today (the biblical authors thought of it in zero-sum terms in light of the culture of their day). Economic prosperity has the potential to create prosperity across the board.

Perhaps unlike Lehman, however, I don't think this is automatic. Care has to be taken that production is done in a just way. And I suspect some safeguards need to be in place in relation to the hoarding of prosperity.

Bowyer argued that most of the wealthy do not hoard beyond about 5 million, if I remember correctly. It's just hard to increase one's standard of living beyond that point, he suggested. I was impressed with Bowyer's Christian values.

4. There was one theme that I would significantly nuance myself. It's the suggestion that, somehow, biblical economic values didn't really get put into play until the Industrial Revolution. It reminds me of oneness Pentecostals who claim that their understanding of the Bible is the correct one, yet their movement started in 1916. The idea that 1500 years or more passed before someone finally implemented the true biblical teaching on economics seems highly suspect to me.

Yes, I believe that a regulated capitalism currently is the economic system with the best shot at bringing about the core Christian value of love on the largest scale (that could change in some future yet to come). But to suggest that it wasn't until modern times that true biblical values were played out seems suspicious, and I think it's absurd to suggest that the Church from 100-1500 was somehow "pagan" or at least based on pagan presuppositions.

The core values of Christianity were incarnated to begin with in the cultural thinking of the biblical authors and audiences. That's how revelation works. I agree with Bowyer that they were translated into more hard core Platonic and Aristotelian forms in the first 1500 years of Christianity. And I agree with him that these philosophical translations did not lead to economic flourishing or the flourishing of knowledge.

But here's my central claim. What changed in the late Middle Ages was the rise of modernism as the culture into which Christian values were translated. First, there was the rise of nominalism, which broke up the absolutism of Platonism and Aristotelianism. This coincided with the rise of the individual datum and the individual person. So we have the rise of empirical method and individualism.

So Christian values were applied in a new way, and it is these modernist presuppositions in combination with Christian values that gave rise to modern flourishing. As individuals gained in significance, the Christian value of the individual rose. Capitalism and democracy rose. The result is a world that has flourished as never before in human history.

So it would seem that Christian values have always played themselves out against the backdrop of other philosophical frameworks that are cultural. This fits with the incarnated nature of revelation.

5. Let me also repeat what I have repeatedly said. If worldview talk is limited to ideas, it is absurd. The Bible is clear that our actions play out our deep seated desires. Even to take the biblical word "mind" in a purely ideological sense is to read the Bible anachronistically in the light of certain modern categories.

If we are to use worldview language in a robust way, we have to talk about beliefs that go down to our bones or, as Jesus said, the heart (Mark 7). The NT is full of language about our "lusts" and "desires," not to mention our "flesh."

So if we are to ask what the impact of Keynesian economics is, then we must look at its effect, not Keynes as a person or even his underlying presuppositions. Does his approach result in an effect that "loves neighbor" best? I certainly would not claim so. But to dismiss his approach we need to look at its results, not the person (ad hominem fallacy) or his reasons for formulating it (genetic fallacy).

Actually, it's ironically Platonic to dismiss his system because of its ideological starting point. This approach sees concrete economic realia as a kind of embodiment of his ideas.

Biblical View of Economics 2

Yesterday I posted a worldview framework for my talk on a biblical view of economics. Here were more of my thoughts:

1. God created humanity to flourish, which included work and striving for excellence, for humanity to "be all it could be." God put Adam and Eve in the Garden and gave them the task of tending it. In Genesis 1, God gave Adam and Eve the charge to be fruitful and multiply, to excel on the earth. Psalm 8 speaks of the glory God created humanity to have in the creation.

How is it that Adam could sin when he didn't have a sin nature? How is it that Christ could be tempted when he didn't have a sin nature?

The best answer I can think of is that the desire for knowledge, the desire to excel, perhaps all human drives are not evil in themselves. They become evil when they are expressed in relation to an improper object or are expressed in an improper context, remembering that temptation itself is not sin.

So the drive to excel, even the competitive drive is not unchristian. You could argue that God created us with a drive to advance.

2. I really believe that communism might have worked prior to the Fall--"From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." Humanity was created with the drive to work. Before the Fall, they would have worked without need for reward. Before the Fall, they would have given without payment.

After the Fall, humanity's drive to work was marred. Now, some don't want to work at all. Others not only want to advance, but often advance over the backs of others. They sometimes even enjoy running other people over.

Capitalism was invented as an economic system by Adam Smith in the age of utilitarianism in England in the 1700s. The idea was that as sellers charged as much as they could in their own self-interest and buyers paid as little as they had to in their own self-interest, a system would develop "as if by an unseen hand" in which everyone's happiness was maximized.

Capitalism thus works best in a fallen world. It is based on human selfishness, as Ayn Rand wrote in The Virtue of Selfishness. She considered altruism immoral because it messed up a system that only maximized happiness when everyone acted in their own self-interest.

3. It is a strange thing, to suggest that a system based on fallen human nature might actually hold promise to bring about human thriving. But capitalism was designed to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number. In this fallen world, it is a structure that has the potential of maximizing "love for our neighbor."

[There are important caveats, however. Unbridled capitalism has not always proven to maximize happiness. As the Industrial Revolution took capitalism into new territory, instead of maximizing happiness, it made a few people very rich off the backs of a whole lot of workers. The Great Depression, the recent recession, are both examples of how unstable capitalism can be, especially if certain safeguards aren't put into place.]

[We are now entering new economic territory again in the age of artificial intelligence. IMO, the growing income disparity is just a small symptom of what is coming. Like the late 1800s, the new conditions will not only make a very few incomprehensibly wealthy, but the menial jobs that were available in the late 1800s won't exist any more even for the common person to be exploited. Those who own the intelligent machines that are coming will have all the wealth and there will be few jobs for the average person needed.]

[Those last two paragraphs weren't things I said yesterday.]

Of course the attempts at communism were arguably far worse. I was in Berlin in the mid-90s, and the difference between the vibrant West Berlin and the depressing East Berlin was more than obvious. The Soviet Union, North Korea, Eastern Europe are all testaments to the failure of communism as a modern system to achieve its intended goals. Even among Christian groups, communal experiences did not last much more than a generation.

So it would seem that the most "loving structure" in this current age, at least potentially, is ironically a capitalistic one based on selfishness, but with controls to make sure it does indeed bring about the greatest good for the greatest number.

4. An important caveat to this overall utilitarian structure is that the value of each individual must be taken into account. From a biblical, a Christian, and an American perspective (e.g., the Bill of Rights), every individual has worth. A benefit cannot be brought to the majority off the oppression of a minority any more than the Hutu can kill off the Tutsi tribe to maximize the majority's happiness.

From a Christian perspective, every life counts. Jesus wants to redeem every person and cares about every area of their existence, including their economic existence. For Christians in this age, justice is redemptive and protective. The wrath form of justice is God's business.

So there is no space for the Christian of this age to say, "They made their [economic] bed. Let them lie in it." There is a time for letting people experience the consequences of their actions, but only so that they might learn not to do it again or to protect those they might harm. There is no space for the Christian to watch someone die of hunger because "they deserve it."

So if a person is starving to death, we are obligated as Christians to give them a fish. Far more significant though is to teach them to fish or, as one person said, to provide them with a pond in which to fish. In many cases today, people need to be motivated to fish. Others have said we need to change their perspective toward fishing.

5. So here is an attempt to end with some basic guidelines for macro-economic structures that work toward a culture that maximizes human flourishing. [Note: This is different from what God expects of us as individuals or as churches.]

• All individuals who are able should contribute something. Dependency may be temporarily necessary, but it becomes bondage if it is long-term. 
• There are many paths of motivation. The baser ones have to do with self-interest and selfishness. Preferred are motivations based on common vision and a sense of identity.
• No one should fall through the cracks. Everyone is important.
• The goal of economic systems is the flourishing of all, not the wealth of a few.

Biblical View of Economics 1

I'm speaking this morning in Michigan on "Biblical Foundations for Faith, Work, and Economics: Human Flourishing and the Kingdom of God."

I start off with the basics of a Biblical Worldview, using some material I developed to present to a graduate class of Orthopedic Therapists at IWU. Here is the basic worldview piece of my presentation:

1. God exists and is involved in the world.
2. All human beings have intrinsic worth.
3. The world is not as it should be.
4. God has fixed, is fixing, and will fix the world through Christ--history has a direction.
5. In Scripture, God has revealed two foundational ethical absolutes.

My second slide then emphasizes that we should not think of worldviews here as ideas in a weak sense. By "views" I mean perspectives that are expressions of deep seated values and drives, what Jesus calls the "heart" in Mark 7. James 2 indicates how "dead" mere ideas are, even ideas about God. "Faith without works is dead" or we might say, "Belief that doesn't come from the heart is dead."

Our behaviors and habits flow from our loves, which we often try to express in words and ideas. There are also other very significant components to our view of the world--the way we tell our stories and the stories of others, as well as the key symbols and "rituals" of our lives.

I'll post more later...

Obama and Two Free Years of College

I thought it was clever to release some short teasers in relation to the upcoming State of the Union address. The first is apparently a proposal to give two free years of community college to all Americans who are willing to work for it.

1. My first thought of course was, "Not going to happen." Even if they liked it, where would Congress find the money for a project like this one?

My second thought was, "Clever, knowing that Congress will never go for something like this. It sets up the next Democratic candidate for President as a potential selling or "get out the vote" point.

My third thought was, "It's probably a bad idea when you get into the implications."

2. For one thing, for something like this really to pay off, whoever the planners were (and that in itself is a major problem--no one, Republican or Democrat--ever agrees on what the outcomes of education are really supposed to be) would need to be very specific about what these two years of education were supposed to achieve. That is to say, what are the outcomes America is looking for with these two years.

A good basic education, with courses like writing and psychology, certainly adds value to any person. Basic math skills, a sense of history--all good stuff for anyone to have rattling around in their heads. Basically, we're looking to give the least educated segment of the American population what they should have received in high school but didn't because they dropped out. That would be a good thing, if they would go for it.

Of course many adjuncts at community colleges are not as high up on the academic totem pole as those who teach at a private or more public institution (you usually get what you pay for). So we're talking about adding value in some cases, rather than a state of the art education, IMO. Nevertheless, community colleges are a good thing and serve a wide range of people (of all capacities). And I want to be clear that I believe there are gems of teachers at community colleges who give more value than Harvard.

3. But, money changes things. If community colleges were suddenly where the money was, then the quality of teachers at community colleges would improve over time.

But more questionable is the fact that this would effectively kill large numbers of private colleges, unless they could get in on the dough as well. I can see "school voucher" programs develop so that private schools could get this money too.

Private colleges are already endangered because of community schools. I wouldn't be surprised if some schools in the near future go to a two-tier tuition rate, one of which applies to general education courses and another of which applies to major classes. So you would take psychology online for a price comparable to Ivy Tech but you would then pay a higher tuition (with smaller classes) to take a course like Anatomy and Physiology.

Bottom line: This proposal would create immense and I think ultimately very unhealthy upheaval in American higher education, with harmful unintended consequences.

4. What I would support are free vocational training and placement programs that could be associated with community colleges. In order to receive welfare, you would have to enroll in these programs, successfully graduate from them, and then take a placement in an appropriate workplace.

Indeed, I would be delighted to see grocery stores and work places develop, whose main source of income is money redirected from current welfare programs into a channel of help that requires training and work to receive.

Like Obama's proposal, I doubt this idea will ever see the light of day...

Conservative is relative...

I sat on a plane recently next to a Chinese student from Beijing who was attending college in the US. We were talking about newspapers and I suggested that The Wall Street Journal was a relatively conservative newspaper. He looked at me really funny.

It turns out that, since conservative means resistant to change or slow to change, in China the conservatives are those who do not want communism to change. To favor capitalistic reforms is progressive or "liberal" in China. Of course in America, capitalism is conservative and any movement toward Keynesian economics is considered liberal.

It shows that what is conservative depends on what tradition you are trying to preserve, that you do not want to change. For Wesleyans, the affirmation of women in ministry is conservative. For a Baptist, it's progressive.

"Conservative" and "progressive" are inevitably relative terms. So in China, Ted Cruz would be a flaming liberal on economics.

The Race to Cooperate

I'll be giving out an award on Friday to whichever party in Washington cooperates the most to avoid the sequester.  I want to give the award in a three-way tie between Republicans, Democrats, and the President.  I'm more expecting that I won't be able to give out the award at all.

The Fiscal Cliff and Church Leadership

I thought there were a number of lessons for church leadership that can be drawn from the fiscal cliff crisis.

1. "Be wise as serpents..."
I thought there was some clever maneuvering through the crisis. Boehner had to keep House Republicans happy enough to re-elect him as Speaker (we'll find out today if it worked), while working toward the goal.  Even his Majority Leader (Cantor) and Majority Whip (McCarthy) were against him.

I thought it was clever for Obama to turn to the Senate when the House fell apart. Frankly, I never thought they'd pull it off after the House recessed New Year's Eve. But then again, I thought it was clever for the Senate to wait until after midnight on New Year's so that it was technically a tax cut rather than tax hike.

Being a church leader can call for some clever maneuvering, especially when people are being stubborn and the normal route is blocked... and sometimes you have to be clever or someone else with power will out-maneuver you.

2. Clever maneuvering usually ticks people off.
Obama and the Democrats felt this wrath when they used clever maneuvering to get the Affordable Care Act through.  Most people are relieved that Congress got this current deal done, but very few are sitting back admiring their savvy.  Most are pretty ticked at a "do nothing" Congress.

So a church leader spends chips of clout when he or she uses cleverness or politics to get things done.  There's definitely a time to do it, but you spend capital when you do.  Choose your battles, because political and power maneuvering can be an act of leadership martyrdom. It can be worth it, just as self-sacrifice can be worth it.  But choose when to use your stinger wisely (because it's the last thing you'll do as a bee).

3. Power always wins.
... even over the right, unless God intervenes.  Of course to a large extent I mean power wins over what you think is right, because all the different sides imagine themselves standing up for what is right. The Republicans think they are fighting for justice, maybe even God. The Democrats think they are fighting for justice, maybe even God.

But secondly, God rarely rides in on a horse to save your cause.  Most of the time, God lets power play itself out.  I had to laugh at Bobby Clinton's aha moment in The Making of Leader when, surprise, surprise, he had this incredible insight one day well into his leadership career: "In a power conflict the leader with higher power will usually win regardless of rightness of issue" (188).  Duh!

Yet, some church leaders don't get this.  They think everyone will eventually see that they're right if they just keep talking or stonewalling long enough. Some people don't know when they've lost or when to give up. There's a time when you just don't have the votes, and it's pointless to keep talking. In such instances it doesn't matter how hard you bang your head against the wall.  The wall doesn't care.

4. There are very few "victory or death" situations. 
I believe there are causes worth dying for... but there aren't a lot of them.  Not raising taxes at all?  Not cutting entitlements at all?  These are far from absolute moral principles.  I'm pretty sure most economic experts would say the choices we've faced this last Congress have been between significant economic crisis and giving in a little on your absolutism of choice.

Try this "win or die" approach in a church and you're toast.  You're fired.  You're out of the ministry.  You're out of leadership.  In fact, say good bye to your marriage and any friends other than your wolf pack if you're a "my way or the highway" type person.  Don't cry persecution when you are the one who ends up packing. In real life, you almost always have to meet people somewhere in the middle, even if they are stubborn donkeys.

5. Something is better than nothing.
The choice in this gridlock was not "taxes or no taxes." The choice was "some taxes or a massive amount of taxes."  Thankfully, a majority of Congress in the end realized time was up and most compromised.  No one on either side is happy, but progress was made.

As a church leader, as a spouse, as a parent, you often can't get everything you think you should.  It's the difference between a teenager who daydreams about dating someone and actually dating someone who has thoughts and desires of her own.  Sometimes they don't say back what you daydreamed.

But you can often get something.  You can move things in the right direction.  You can argue and argue over it all and end up with nothing.  Or you can get something. You may not get the church to move locations, but you might get a new venue offsite in the meantime.  You might not get the full membership rules of the denomination changed, but you might get a new category of community membership in the meantime.

Government and the Poor 7

... continued from yesterday
_____________
... Christians can only justify capitalism if they think it is an economic system that can help the most people while not oppressing the rest.

Another question that is sometimes brought up today is whether it is the task of the church or the government to help those in need. Certainly it is our task.  That is to say, "to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17). We have seen that the New Testament unanimously expects those who are able to help those who are in need.

Should the church help those in need?  It seems common sense.  If we can organize our individual efforts as believers to help others, why wouldn't we?  Certainly the churches of the New Testament did.  Acts 6 tells of an incident when a certain segment of the church was being neglected in the daily distribution of food.  These were widows within the Greek-speaking Jewish immigrant community in Jerusalem. The incident tells us that there was a daily distribution, and that it was a Christian value to reach everyone in need within the community.

When Paul met with James and Peter for their first real sit down, their main request of Paul was that he remember the poor (Gal. 2:10). Accordingly, Paul expended great efforts some years later collecting an offering from the churches he founded to take back to Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8-9).  Paul himself primarily worked so that he would not get entangled with the strings of patronage--taking the support of a church like Corinth would have indebted himself to them in his mind. The giving of the Philippian church was more about them doing what they should do rather than about his need (Phil. 4:17).

1 Timothy 5 would later speak of a well developed system of taking care of widows within the churches of Ephesus. It was thus a Christian value of the early church to take care not only of those within each Christian community but within other Christian communities as well.  Acts 2 pictures an early church that even sold its excess property to give to those who had need (Acts 2:45). While most of this good was done within Christian communities, Paul says, "as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers" (Gal. 6:10). Doing good is not limited to the church.

But what of governments?  Is it the business of government to help the poor? Here again we get into arguments about economics and political theory, with some arguing that government involvement is counterproductive. Some would argue that governments do not help others well but instead make matters worse. Many of these arguments involve expertise in areas beyond the scope of this book.

What we can do in this book is describe the overall Christian values. The first is that there is nothing in Scripture that opposes human authorities helping those in need. Indeed, the Old Testament considers it to be a virtue of the king to take care of the poor.  Psalm 72 implores the king to "take pity on the weak and needy and save the needy from death" (72:13). Romans 13 describes the Roman state as a potential agent for the good of the citizens of Rome (13:4) and does not set limits on what good the state might do.

The question is thus one of whether in fact a particular system of doing good for those in need truly helps them in the long run or not.  Christians will no doubt disagree on how effective governments are at such things.  But if a government could effectively help those in need without bringing other harm in the process, Christian values would say that it was a good thing. And certainly no individual or church is normally in a position to help as many people as a well organized government. [1] The Bible indicates it is a Christian value to try to help. If the powers that be could help as well, nothing in Scripture prohibits it in theory.

[1] If we take the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, no individual or church was equipped to bring help to the area with the speed or effectiveness that the United States government did.  In fact, most help organizations in the United States would have difficulty surviving without financial assistance from the government.

Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman

My attempt to overview these three in brief:
__________
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was perhaps the most influential economist of the twentieth century, and his perspective was that the government frequently needs to intervene into economic matters in order to avert or alleviate financial crisis. [1] For example, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama largely followed the advice of Keynesian economists when they spent massive amounts of money in the 2008 world economic crisis order to keep major banks and businesses from failing, while also pumping money into the system.   Although not all economists agree, most also believe that the New Deal projects of Franklin Roosevelt along similar lines helped speed the American recovery from the Great Depression.

Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) is often placed at the other end of the economic spectrum, although Hayek and Keynes did not disagree on everything. [2] He and the “Austrian school” of economics reflect a minority position among economists, but nevertheless one that has had significant impact. While Keynes advocated intense involvement of government during times of economic crisis, Hayek was more to blame government involvement for economic crisis in the first place.  A key cause of the Great Depression for Hayek was the fact that the Federal Reserve Bank (in the 1920’s artificially allowed more money into the market than it should have, leading to an inevitable contraction later.

While Hayek’s theories have occasionally had great influence, the Austrian School is considered to be “heterodox” by most economic experts, outside the mainstream.  Along with Keynesian economics, the other main approach to economics is the monetary approach, with Milton Friedman as its best known proponent. [3] Monetarism can be seen both as a development and critique of the Keynesian approach.  For Keynes, the key factor in a stable economy was to make sure the total of government and private spending are in equilibrium with the total demand for goods and services at any particular time and price level.  When the private sector stops spending, the government has to pick up the slack, even when it causes deficit spending.

By contrast, Friedman (like Hayek) thought governments more often than not compounded problems when they intervened in economic crises.  He did believe in government involvement in the economy, but it was largely to make sure the money supply always kept in equilibrium with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP—the total value of the goods and services produced in a nation).  In his view, this policy would keep prices relatively stable.  Since this approach is purely mathematical, it requires no value judgments on the part of economic leaders.  Nothing special should be done in an economic crisis because he believed systems would eventually reach equilibrium on their own.

[1] Keynes’ key work was The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).

[2] Hayek’s key work was The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1944).

[3] Friedman’s key work here, which he co-wrote with Anna Schwartz, is A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1963).

Occupy your brain

Trying to get a feel for this "Occupy" movement.  We saw the police out in big force in Munich today, where I guess there was a march.  Didn't see the march, but there was a lady sitting next to me on the bus with some placard about taxes.  I think she was late, might have missed it ;-)  The bus driver finally told us all to get off because he couldn't get any closer. She filed out with the rest of us.

My sense is that there are both some similar and some very dissimilar characteristics to the Tea Party protests of some time ago.  For one, of course, these protests are a lot angrier and in Rome went violent.  Of course I get the feeling that any protest in Italy is bound to go violent.  The Occupy protests are left (anti-capitalist) while the Tea Party protests were right (anti-communist).  Both are against corporate bail-outs, one for anti-capitalist reasons and the other for libertarian reasons.

I think the best course is in the middle.  The libertarian Tea Party approach leads to violent revolt by those who aren't self-sufficient.  The anti-capitalist Occupy approach runs everything into the ground economically (and burns a lot of cars in the process).

But I'm not sure where the centrists are.  Maybe we should protest the Tea Party and the Occupy people.  I'll make the signs.  Better yet, let's just go to Starbucks and talk philosophy.

State of the German Nation...

I spent a day of orientation here in Göttingen.  The afternoon was about what's going on right now in German politics and such.  Very interesting.  The Fulbrighters here are not a uniform group and so there were various fairly obvious hints at different political positions in the room.  I continue to consider myself a centrist, although if I were a German I suspect they would consider me somewhat right of center.

You might find the rundown interesting.  Here they have 20% sales tax.  43% of the Gross Domestic Product is in the state sector, which I think means that almost half of the jobs (in terms of money) are state related (of course university professors are usually employees of the state here--and students go to university for free).  The large taxes thus come back in free education and free health care.  Parents of unmarried children under 25 also get 6000 Euros per child back from their taxes.  The population is declining, so this is also partly meant to motivate having children.

The leader of the session this morning mentioned that most Germans do not want less taxes as long as Germany has such high debt. They also feel a sense of corporate responsibility that everyone have health care, although they also recognize the importance of motivating individuals to work rather than live off the system (the leader suggested there are perhaps a million people in Germany who are content simply to live off the social safety net).

A great number of changes have gone into effect in recent years.  They are tending to abolish the old system that sent budding auto mechanics to loser school.  They have broken their college system down into something the rest of the world can understand (with bachelor's and master's degrees).  They are ramping up how much work university students are expected to do (it used to be very leisurely indeed, taking up to 7 or 8 years).  Younger age schools are increasingly going to a full day as opposed to the old half day and come home at 1 to mama.

Obama enjoys a 75% approval rating in Europe in general in terms of his foreign policy (80 something percent in Germany).  While many Germans don't want to bail out Greece (much as many Americans opposed the TARP bailouts), the leader of the presentation thought it was inevitable that the EU would navigate a way through the crisis, for the sake of an EU that eventually was something like the United States of Europe. His hunch was that much of the debt in places like Greece, Italy, and Spain would be forgiven in return from some budgetary control and restructuring of their economic system.

I was not aware that I was coming at such an interesting time of change in Germany.  Just this past summer, Germany did away with compulsory military service.  Just this past summer, Germany switched from 9 year higher school (13 grades) to 8 years (12 grades like ours).

There are of course all the usual German funnities.  They are massively into recycling (e.g., paper, organic, the rest) and we have three trash cans to separate things.  But the truth is, the city people have sophisticated machines that separate it anyway.  All the stuff from the houses is poured together in the truck. ;-)  It's just a cultural reminder (and profit to the people who sell the different cans) to have individual households continue to separate.

Pets are taxed, but are allowed in restaurants.  There was a court ruling that stated that noise was a natural phenomenon from children.  It is thus against the law to complain too much about how loud children are.  Interesting comments on how views on balanced budgets and debt levels relate to growing economies.  It was mentioned that Japanese debt is 200% of GDP... and that the Yen continues to grow in value. ;-)

It would be nice if people in countries like the US could go abroad to places like England and Germany for a bit.  Germans who resent America usually soften when they come to the States and see what it's really like.  By the same token, I suspect a lot of popular feeling in America on a host of issues would soften if we just got out a little bit more.

The Last Ten Years (Part 2)

In memory of 9-11, I started a look back at the last 10 years yesterday.  I didn't feel like yesterdays run from 2000-2007 would cause that much of a stir.  We've had a little time to cool down.  When I was blogging through these things at the time I got some pretty strong reactions.

Today's post I suspect will be much more sensitive, not because it deals with more momentous topics.  What could be more momentous than 9-11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?  It is because we are still living through it and emotions are still charged.  I don't know if I'll write a 15 or 20 year look back, but today's post will not be particularly controversial in 5 years, because our emotions will have moved on.  This is a great lesson to learn in the midst of political heat.

So I present my sense of the last 5 years or so.  And so that you can read my feelings, I am trying not to write them in with emotion, but in an attempt to be as objective as possible (knowing that no one can be completely objective).

2008
In 2008, America entered into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  Bush was still in office. When voting today we will have a tendency to blame Obama since he is the one in office right now, but he cannot be blamed for causing the current economic crisis, although you might accuse him of worsening it or not helping the recovery enough. 

Which of these you think is correct will depend on your sense of whether his stimulus package helped, hurt, or didn't do anything.  Certainly the stimulus package added a significant amount to our national debt, so those who view our current state through this lens see Obama as worsening the crisis.  Others say it didn't help or didn't help much.

These are more matters for the experts than for people like you and me.  There is no question that the economy has improved significantly from what it was in 2008, although the recent debt ceiling crisis and downgrade of the US credit rating has left us with a bit of a roller coaster these last weeks. And of course President Bush passed a couple stimulus packages like this, so to distinguish themselves from Obama on this issue, the Republican party has had to move to the right and oppose a position it once had.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Pretty much everyone agrees that the "Great Recession" that came on in 2008 was a result of the collapse of the housing bubble.  People had been saying it was coming for years.  Although it happened on Bush's watch, and although I'm not willing to completely absolve his administration of blame, something much bigger than his presidency stands behind this crisis.

Materialism.  I was tempted to say "greed," but I do not mean to use a word that might allow us ordinary people to absolve ourselves too easily.  Depending on your political flavor, you will tend to blame one end or the other.  One side wants to blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--and thus blame poor people who wanted to live in a house but couldn't afford one.  The other side wants to blame greedy traders and hedge fund brokers who bet against the market and, most significantly, bundled up massive amounts of debt and then played with them like they were a volley ball.

One side would say our problem was that we were not living within our means.  I believe this is indeed true.    Those who are militant capitalists tend to say only this.  But it was also, in my opinion, a good example of what happens when capitalism is left uncontrolled.  We did not and still do not have a good sense of the kinds of regulations we need in this electronic age to help capitalism do what it is supposed to do without causing these sorts of crises.  I vigorously disagree with that economic philosophy (libertarian, Ron Paul) that says the problem is that we have regulations at all.  History, in my opinion, begs to differ.

I think it is significant that it was a Republican President who triggered all the TARP bailouts.  To me, this--along of course with the majority of economists--demonstrates their necessity.  "Too big to fail" was something the Bush administration understood as reality.  In the end, the bailouts did not end up causing as much debt as initially thought.  GM and Chrysler paid their loans back.  Some of the banks paid back significant amounts.

The consequence, very interesting to watch, is that in order to oppose the bail-outs, Republicans have had to move to the economic right of President Bush.  The result is a quite dramatic shift in the Republican party these last three years toward libertarianism, which historically of course is a quite different political party.

2009
Obama's first year in office involved continued work to pull our economy out of its nose dive.  Obama, with the Democrats having taken both houses in reaction to the Iraq War and economic crisis, passed a stimulus package in February to try to bolster the economy.  We will have to let the economists debate whether this is the correct approach.  Major economists like Martin Feldstein and Paul Krugman urged it.  It was not some Democratic desire to spend, spend, spend.  It was pushed by a dominant economic perspective--one that President Bush and the Republican party of the first decade of the 2000s accepted.

2010
Ironically, the death of Ted Kennedy kept a Democratically controlled House and Senate from passing the kind of health care bill they had been trying for 50 years to pass.  But they were able to pass a modified health care plan that involved the free market.  Individuals would be required to buy health care and the resulting system would make it possible for most Americans to be covered.

The Democrats were not able to get a "public option" in which the government would provide health care to everyone.  The compromise was a mandate for all Americans to buy health care, much as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts.  The result is that Republicans have had to move further to the right in order to oppose "Obamacare," as it is derisively called.  What used to be libertarian values have gained dominance in the Republican party.

Many have done so by a "strict constructionist" reading of the commerce clause of the Constitution after many, many decades of a broader interpretation.  The clause has been used for 70 years to allow for things such as this mandate in the health care plan.  But idealists in the Republican party are now--somewhat ironically--finding in the current economic crisis reasons to try to turn the American economic system back to the time before the New Deal, which was brought on by the Great Depression.

2009 also saw the rise of the power of the "Tea Party," a group of libertarians who resonate strongly with the revolutionary actions of various colonists in New England against English taxation in the lead up to the Revolutionary War.  The group strongly opposes government "intrusion" into local life, as well as taxation--particularly taxation at a different rate for larger incomes than for lower ones.

The Republican party recognized the power of this group as Republican candidates with this flavor were elected in troves, while traditional Republicans were voted out.  The result was that the Republicans retook the House of Representatives with a vengeance, and not with traditional Republicans, but Tea Party Republicans.

2011
American anger against Obama's health care overhaul was perhaps the major presenting reason for the massive vote of Democrats out of the House.  But it was probably also the perception that the Democratically controlled Congress used political manipulation to get it through, despite strong objections from a very vocal part of the populace. Now, a strongly controlled Republican House came into office with common goals--to reduce the size and power of the federal government and to lower the overwhelming amount of American debt.

The result was a loggerheads over budget and the ensuing crisis over raising the debt ceiling.  While the Tea Party did not get as much as it wanted, the resulting deals tipped very heavily toward their boundaries rather than those of President Obama, who himself was strongly criticized by his own party for giving away the kitchen sink.  Traditional Republicans like John Boehner found themselves unable to broker deals that prior Republicans would have considered quite pleasing.

The inability of Congress to get things done was viewed very negatively by the American people.  Congress' approval rating dipped to the lowest in its history and Obama's also dipped to his lowest ever. Standard and Poor for the first time in history downgraded America's credit rating, partially because the debt was not lowered more, partially because of the inability of Congress and the President to get necessary things done.

As I write today on September 11, 2011, we enter into an election season in which Obama faces a difficult road to re-election, and all the leading Republican candidates are courting Tea Party values.  Rick Perry, if elected, seems to want to return America back to some of its pre-Great Depression economic structures.  But if this look at the last 10 years says anything, it says that a very, very lot can change in a year's time.

We'll see what happens...

Budget Thoughts...

I know few of you are interested in my thoughts on economics or the budget--and it is especially a shame to speak of such things in the middle of Holy Week--but I am sitting here watching Hannity interview Sarah Palin and thought I would jot down my thoughts.

1. The S & P announcement, whatever the politics behind it, confirms to me that Obama's budget proposal is not enough.  We should be looking at something more extensive like the bipartisan budget commission's recommendations this past Fall.

2. The debt ceiling has to be raised.  I think almost everyone recognizes this, and it is really too serious of an issue to use for political bargaining.  Anyone who votes against it is a danger to the US, almost on the level of impeachment.  We should immediately eliminate from our minds any candidate who suggests we should not do so--these are very, very dangerous, loony people.

3. Ryan's proposal to privatize Medicare and push Medicaid down to the states is a non-starter.  Not only does it have no chance of passing--I get so annoyed with people who can't handle reality and prefer to beat their heads against the wall until they knock themselves out--it seems to deconstruct the very purpose of these programs, which was to provide medical care for the most vulnerable in our society--the elderly and those unable to take care of themselves.  Instead, it likely lops off these in favor of those partially able to take care of themselves.  Cut it we must, finance it some other way we must.  But Ryan's idea is DOA, period.

4. We should increase revenues at the same time we make deep cuts.  Perhaps we could compromise by only  returning to pre-Bush rates for those who earn over 500,000.  Or perhaps we could institute a flat tax on these individuals without any exemptions.  I am as unconvinced as ever that tax breaks at this level for this group return more economically than the taxes do, and there is no moral argument to be made here that stands up against even the smallest scrutiny.

My thoughts in troubling times...  It's compromise, compromise, compromise.  The fear that Congress and the President will not be able to compromise, more than anything else, stands behind the S&P statement.

Making Ethical Decisions: Minimum Wage

The Indiana House apparently voted to cap minimum wage yesterday, apparently so that local cities and counties cannot hinder business by requiring larger amounts.  I don't know the specifics, so this is a theoretical exercise rather than a clear critique.

As usual, the ethical calculus involves two primary considerations: fundamental principles and consequences, with a check on motivations.

Principles
The fundamental principle behind a social contract such as the US Constitution is mutual benefit.  The driving force behind the origins of capitalism was utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number.  Philosophically, we might call this cocktail: universal ethical egoism.  Western systems aim at the greatest good for all individuals.

This amounts to a system that aims at the greatest good for the greatest number, with protections for the individual.  I consider this the most fundamental principled framework for a secular society.  By a happy correlation, it also fits well with the fundamental Christian value of loving one's neighbor.

The goal of social structure is thus not to make a few very rich at the expense of the majority.  The best social structure is one that tends to result in as many people as prosperous as possible while protecting the individual from the prosperity of others, in fact aiming to empower every individual at least to self-subsistence.  Again, this is the fundamental ethical value of the United States and Western society in general.

Consequences
So given the goal, how does the minimum wage debate connect?

First, the goal in business--from the standpoint of societal structure--must be to prosper everyone in connection to that business as much as possible.  This obviously is not the business owner but the employees and people who benefit from the business.  Although it's easy to lose sight of it, this actually was the founding purpose of capitalism.

Capitalism holds that a system of competition will result in the greatest benefit both to buyer and seller.  The buyer will seek out the lowest price and the seller will charge as high as they can.  Ideally, they will meet in the middle with the most beneficial middle ground.  But the goal of capitalism was not originally to make the owner of a business as rich as possible, which is why protections evolved for individuals like minimum wage and anti-trust laws.

Without those laws, capitalism had gone counter to its very founding purposes--mangling everyone it could in the service of the filthy rich.  In my opinion, this is the trajectory we are on again, the Tea Party trajectory.  We are now in the process of trying to peal back the protections of the individual, put in place at the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s against capitalism gone amok.  Unbridled capitalism does not accomplish its founding goals.  This is the lesson of history.  Only a moderately regulated capitalism does.

Minimum wage ensures that an individual worker can earn at least a subsistence level income.  It would seem to be a fundamental value.  Capitalism left alone will not evolve a fair wage because of the collusion of business.  Places without minimum wages--Mexico, China--demonstrate the condition of their workers.  Eventually, the global economy will evolve a world-wide minimum wage.  We are in the throes of the transition, where American companies have temporarily shipped jobs elsewhere to get around the protections of the more evolved American system.  But of course, that's an issue of union wages rather than minimum wage.

But it's not as simple as business versus worker.  Low prices benefit the consumer, so the "greatest good for the greatest number" is not simply a calculus between business owner and employee.  A thriving business benefits the broader economy.  It benefits the people who buy the product in lower cost.

So the best minimum wage will be 1) one that reasonably allows an employee to live while 2) maximizing the benefit to consumers in the resultant prices and 3) does not demotivate the business owner from running the business.  You can't put a precise number on these, unfortunately.  The number changes from time to time and involves a significant element of cultural subjectivity.

But the last paragraph, in my opinion, is the ethical calculus for an optimal society.

Economics and Ethics

I was listening to a piece on NPR about a move to introduce some sort of code of ethics into the guild of economists.  Many economists resist this sort of thing because they view their trade as a science, a matter of "fact" rather than "value," a matter of "this is how it works" rather than "this is what we should do."

Actually, it is this last contrast where some economists contradict themselves.  I agree that economics is a science--if you do this, such and such will happen in consequence.  An economist can thus suggest that "if you do such and such," "such and such will happen."  Of course there are different schools and so we cannot speak of a consensus on many things, but the basic sense of the discipline as science is clear.

It is when the question of "should" that ethics inevitably becomes part of the process.  Boyer, in his Idea of the Christian University, wisely suggested that it was at this point that a person's Christian values became a part of the equation.  For example, an economist might say--this particular course of deregulation or this particular bank failure will create great economic crisis in the short term, but will result in a more stable market sooner, while more moderate regulation and a bailout will result in a slower and less substantial recovery, but fewer people will commit suicide, so to speak.  (I'm not speaking to the specifics of recent events or the Depression, only trying to give a general impression).

It is at this point that those implementing economic principles, whether it is economists suggesting a particular course of action or the political system, bring ethics into the equation.  The implementation of economic theory always and inevitably involves ethics.