What is Money For?

The Beat of A Very Different Drummer

Given the relative wealth that washes around in New Zealand, and in the West generally, a question is begged that is seldom addressed.  What on earth is money for? 

The answer our pagan culture most often advances is that wealth is for self: self satisfaction, pleasure, self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence, living "the good life", and so forth.  The Puritans had a different answer: they believed, taught, and lived the doctrine that money is a social good, not a private possession. 

It is granted immediately that the doctrine of money being a social good is also widely believed in secular society today.  Money is to be taxed--as highly as the electorate will permit--to be dispersed by the State for whatever good the State determines.  Those who espouse this doctrine of money, however, tend to cover over its implications.  These include a belief that the real owner of all property is the State; that the role of citizens is to produce money, wealth and property to fuel the State's demands; and that the function of private citizens and corporations is akin to serfs or slaves. 

It is at this point we are confronted with the great divide between modern secular culture, on the one hand, and Puritan (or Christian) culture, on the other.  The Puritan ethic called for believing men and women to work hard, live modestly, and use their excess earnings for their neighbours' good and the good of society as a whole.  The present secular ethic is a perversion of this doctrine.  Modern secular society is confronted by the State's overtaking personal and private stewardship with taxes, imposts, rules, and regulations. 

The flip-side of this Statist aggression is for the citizen to avoid paying taxes whenever and wherever possible and use the squirrelled funds to spend upon themselves and their appetites.  After all, why should citizens be concerned about the welfare of their neighbours and community, when the State has taken over that responsibility?  At this point the modern State and the citizens resemble more the kleptocracy of the Roman Empire than the ethics and practices of the Christian faith.

William Perkins was one of the greatest Puritan theologians.  Here is his summary of how Christians ought to use their property, wealth, and income:

We must so use and possess the goods we have, that the use and possession of them may tend to God's glory, and the salvation of our souls. . . . Our riches must be employed to necessary uses. These are first, the maintenance of our own good estate and condition.  Secondly, the good of others, specially those that are of our family or kindred. . . . Thirdly, the relief of the poor. . . . Fourthly, the maintenance of the Church of God and true religion. . . . Fifth, the maintenance of the Commonwealth.  [Cited by Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Zondervan/Academie Books, 1986),  p.67.]

This sort of thinking came straight out of the Continental Reformation.  Calvin wrote fifty years earlier:

If we acquire possessions in gold and silver, it is our duty . . . to do good to our neighbours.   

And elsewhere:

All the rich, when they have property with which they can be of service to others, are here . . . to assist their neighbors. . . .  Those to whom God has given much grain and wine are to offer part of these goods to those who are in need of the same.  [Ryken, ibid.]

The money-ethic of so many in our materialist society has been summarized by a cynic:  money is a race and competition to:

Get all you can;
Can all you get; and,
Poison the rest.

This is the natural default position of the average secularist living in a society where the acquisitive State extracts citizens' wealth by force in an attempt to achieve social and economic "justice", or, more accurately, egalitarianism.  If the State is "taking care" of the poor and needy, why should we, the citizens, take any responsibility?

But Christians march to the beat of a different Drummer.  They know that they must give an account to God for all that God has given them.  They rejoice in that duty and responsibility. It is an honour.

Perspectives

Merrie England

We are accustomed to think of our present and recent centuries as the biggest and the brightest and the best of human civilization.  It behoves the dominant evolutionary world view so to assume and delve for corroboration at every turn.

Robert Tombs, however, produces a picture which would be at substantial variance to this established modern narrative. He writes that in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (post Black Plague) was a time of substantial economic growth.  The picture he paints is intriguing, if for no other reason than indirectly to recast our own times as somewhat less singular or exceptional.

Here is the general picture of economic and social progress in England, post Plague, painted by Tombs:

"You Considered Yourself Lucky"

Outwardly Wealthy, Desperately Impoverished

Here is a description of what it was like to live in a council house in Britain in the nineteen fifties. Remember that council houses were often found on special housing estates where houses sprung up like mushrooms after the war in an effort to house people--many of whom had lost their houses or accommodation through the Blitz.  In other words, they were relatively modern houses for their day.

The front door opened directly on to the pavement and you walked straight into the front room, which was only used on special occasions.  My mum said it was 'to be kept for best'.  You then passed into the living room, where there was a dining table and chairs and a couple of armchairs around a big black coal-fire stove.  A huge black kettle, full of hot water, would always be resting there.  The living room was also the setting for my Friday night scrub-down in an old tin bath . . . . A door opening on to the stairs took you up to two bedrooms.

There was no bathroom or indoor toilet.  If you were caught short during the night, you used a chamber pot under the bed . . . . . Downstairs, the room at the back of the house had a gas stove and a large sink where clothes were scrubbed clean by hand.  The back yard was shares with three other families and the only toilet was at the end of the yard, with a bolt on the inside of a rickety wooden door.  [Quoted in David Kynaston's Family Britain 1951-1957  (New York: Walker and Co, 2009), p. 165.]

To the superficial modern Western mindset, such living conditions today would be regarded not just as appalling,  but a breach of human rights.

Poverty and Famine Beckon

Living On Borrowed Time

Classical economics tell us that the two key contributors to the production of goods and services are labour and capital.  Without both being used and deployed, a society will remain in grinding poverty.  Nothing much will be produced.  People will live from hand to mouth, and often hand will not be able to produce enough to satisfy mouth.  Famine and starvation beckon.  

It's a long, long time since famine stalked the land in Western countries.  In other places and nations, however, famine remains a latent threat, always a risk.  What makes the difference between famine being no threat at all, and it being a latent, stalking beast is the nature of the civilisation that sits atop the land.  The wealth of a nation resides in what its citizens collectively know and in how effectively they work and apply existing capital stock to exploit the latent opportunity present in all nations and lands.

Wealth effectively depends upon, and in large measure resides in, the space between our collective two ears.  The Bible contains the only belief system which explains why this is the case.

Prosperity

What Is It, and Where Can It Be Found?

In his book The Character of Nations, Angelo Codevilla asks an interesting question: exactly what is "prosperity"?  And, once it is defined properly, how can nations achieve and maintain prosperity?

Macro-economists and some politicians favour quantitative answers to the question.  Prosperity is a matter of Gross Domestic Product or some other quantitative measure of production.  Other politicians favour answers related to the quality of life and (these days) an egalitarian twist: wealth--and the quality of life which it enables--cannot be disparate.  There must be little or no gap between the wealthy and the poor.  To such folk, prosperity exists when everyone's socio-economic circumstances are pretty much the same.

Prosperity, then, largely is a matter of what lies between our two ears.  That is, prosperity is a matter of what people consider valuable, or of value.  John Kenneth Galbraith--the famous Harvard economist--considered the Soviet Union a truly prosperous society.  With his elitist set of values, Galbraith had walked the streets of Soviet cities and found there a vibrant, prosperous society.  Why?  Soviet towns were festooned with images, sculptures, and grand buildings--you know, the kind of things which impress those who think such things are of great value.

The Potency of Title

Civilisation is Skin Deep

Sometimes the most profound realities stare us in the face every day and we fail to see them for what they are.  Property and property rights are one of these profundities.  In the West, we take them for granted.

When ordinary people have few or no property rights, they are stripped, vulnerable, and naked--subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune--and to the depredations of tyrants.  A recent movie which illustrates this most powerfully is Leviathan,  Set in Russia, it is one of those masterpieces which haunt you for weeks afterwards.  Central to its plot is the issue of property rights, or the lack of them in Putin's Russia.

Westerners live in societies so grounded in fundamental and derived property rights that we scarcely think of them.  It takes an outsider to point out what we all take for granted.

Another Evil Money Launderer

Emma Watson Exposed

Sagacity, Care, and Prudence: the Benefits of Blind Offshore Trusts

Emma Watson denied avoiding tax after becoming the latest high-profile name listed in the Panama Papers offshore data leak.  The actress, currently taking a break from acting to campaign for feminism, is listed as a beneficiary of a company based in the British Virgin Islands.

But Watson said the account was set up for the sole purpose of "protecting her anonymity and safety".  A spokesman for the 26-year-old Harry Potter star said: "Emma receives absolutely no tax or monetary advantages from this offshore company whatsoever, only privacy."

Her account came to light after data collated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was published online for the first time.  [Note: the data was hacked--that is, stolen.  But when "evil capitalists and money launderers are the target, all's fair--apparently.  Who quibbles about such details--that greater good and all that.  Ed.]

More than 200,000 offshore account details from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm, are now available.

"UK companies are required to publicly publish details of their shareholders and therefore do not give her the necessary anonymity required to protect her personal safety, which has been jeopardised in the past owing to such information being publicly available," Watson's spokesman said.  "Offshore companies do not publish these shareholder details."

Other famous names listed in the papers include the Duchess of York, The X Factor's Simon Cowell and Paul Burrell, the former butler to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.  [NZ Herald]

We note that Emma Watson is a wealthy woman; therefore she belongs to the exploitative classes who oppress the poor.  The capital allegedly owned by Watson means that less money is available to the poor.  In the mind of the Left, to attack Watson is not only a moral thing to do.  It is a civic duty.

Slinking Out the Back Door

Rising Envy

These days the Commentariat and the chattering classes don't talk so much about poverty.  They focus upon economic inequality.  Rising inequality.  (It's always rising.)  This is a classic case of misdirection.  It is also another indication of the intellectual dishonesty of many and legerdemain that passes for truth.

We see this kind of vacuous nonsense every day:

More than 300,000 Kiwi kids now in relative poverty

 The number of Kiwi children in relative poverty has jumped over 300,000 for the first time since 2010 - but it's because of record inequality, despite falling absolute hardship.  The Ministry of Social Development's annual household incomes report shows that the numbers below a European standard measure of absolute hardship, based on measures such as not having a warm home or two pairs of shoes, fell from 165,000 in 2013 to 145,000 (8 per cent of all children) last year, the lowest number since 2007.

Children in benefit-dependent families also dwindled from a recent peak of 235,000 (22 per cent) in 2011, and 202,000 (19 per cent) in 2013, to just 180,000 (17 per cent) last year - the lowest proportion of children living on benefits since the late 1980s.  But inequality worsened because average incomes for working families increased much faster at high and middle-income levels than for lower-paid workers.

The net result was that the number of children living in households earning below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs jumped from a five-year low of 260,000 in 2013 to 305,000 last year, the highest since a peak of 315,000 at the worst point of the global financial crisis in 2010.  [NZ Herald]

Consider a model society that consists of ten households.  One household lives in squalor: it is dirty, and unkempt.  Its occupants are usually sick.  No-body works, except one who spends his days begging the other nine households for food.  Another household lives in comparative luxury.   The earnings and net worth of this household increased by two hundred percent in the last twelve months.  The remaining eight households experienced no change over the same period.  According to the egalitarians, this society has just got worse (more evil and unjust), because inequality has increased.

Most morally clear-sighted people would think it a good development if at least one household greatly increased their net worth.  But the egalitarians regard it as an evil outcome, unless every other household increased commensurately.

There are two philosophical and religious axioms underlying the cult of economic equality.

Daily Devotional

What It Means to Love Money

The love of money is the root of all evils. (1 Timothy 6:10)

John Piper

What did Paul mean when he wrote this? He couldn’t have meant that money is always on your mind when you sin. A lot of sin happens when we are not thinking about money.  My suggestion is this: he meant that all the evils in the world come from a certain kind of heart, namely, the kind of heart that loves money.

Now what does it mean to love money? It doesn’t mean to admire the green paper or the copper coins or the silver shekels. To know what it means to love money, you have to ask, What is money? I would answer that question like this: Money is simply a symbol that stands for human resources. Money stands for what you can get from man instead of God.

God deals in the currency of grace, not money: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!” (Isaiah 55:1). Money is the currency of human resources. So the heart that loves money is a heart that pins its hopes, and pursues its pleasures, and puts its trust in what human resources can offer.

So the love of money is virtually the same as faith in money — belief (trust, confidence, assurance) that money will meet your needs and make you happy.  Love of money is the alternative to faith in God’s future grace. It is faith in future human resources. Therefore the love of money, or trust in money, is the underside of unbelief in the promises of God. Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and money.”

You can’t trust in God and in money at the same time. Belief in one is unbelief in the other. A heart that loves money — that banks on money for happiness — is not banking on the future grace of God for satisfaction.

Letter From America (About Essential Truths)

10 Essential Economic Truths Liberals Need to Learn

Jeffrey Dorfman

Forbes

5th June 2014

Jeffrey Dorfman teaches economics at the University of Georgia.  In this article he presents ten economic principles or verities, which, he says, "liberals" need to learn.  Synonyms for "liberal" would be "left wing", "progressive", or, in the case of New Zealand, an apt synonym would be "general population", such is our adulation of bad economic principles.

1) Government cannot create wealth, jobs, or income. Because government has to take money from somebody before it can spend it, there is no economic gain from anything the government does. Money collected in taxes or borrowed would have been either spent or invested in the private sector. Any jobs government claims to have created are only in place of other jobs the same money would have produced if people had been allowed to spend it themselves.

It is possible for government to own businesses which trade like any other company in the private sector.  These may make profits, can, therefore, grow in size and capital base and add jobs as a result.  These are truly exceptions to the general maxim that governments cannot create wealth, jobs or income.  And Dorfman's general point remains true: government enterprise comes into existence by expropriating property from citizens in the first place.  Governments are unable to create wealth from nothing; in the first instance governments must appropriate property from tax payers.  

2) Income inequality does not affect the economy. Poor people do spend more (or all) of their income while people with higher earnings save some of their income. However, saving is as good for the economy as consumer spending (or better). The basic identity is that national income equals consumer spending plus investment plus government spending on goods and services plus net exports. To make investments, money first must be saved; so savings contribute to national income, too. In fact, savings that lead to increased capital (a company borrows it to build a factory, for example) will lead to higher national income in the long run because the capital can produce income year after year.

Holding the Centre

Joyful Puritans

There has been much made and unmade about the Protestant work ethic.  However, what is sometimes overlooked is that this social work ethic, together with its economic and industrial impacts, was essentially a Puritan affect.  Historian Christopher Dawson makes this claim in his book about religion and progress.

Historians like Troeltsch and Max Weber have shown how much the industrial movement owes to the moral and social ideals of Puritanism.  The Protestant asceticism of the 17th and 18th centuries did not lead men to fly from the world and to give up all the goods to the poor and the Church, as in the Middle Ages.  It inculcated the duty of unremitting industry and thrift, while at the same time it discouraged rigorously every kind of self-indulgence and extravagance in the expenditure of what had been gained.

The result was extensive capital formation--capital that was not subsequently applied to consumption and gross displays of wealth and flippant expenditure, but to further commerce and industrial and trade activities.

Thus there grew up a new social type, the hard-working, conscientious, abstemious man of business, whose only interests were in his counting-house and in the meeting house of his sect; men who spared themselves no more than their employees, and who looked on their work as a kind of religious vocation.

We believe Dawson overstates the case here.

Camels and Needles

Inglorious Rich Man Trying to Pass Muster

Every so often Unbelief pulls of its particular mask and shows itself in all its ignoble vainglory.  Big Nanny Michael Bloomberg served as the fall guy recently.  Bloomberg, you recall, has become exceptionally wealthy owning and developing Bloomberg News.  He served as a three-time mayor of New York City.  During his tenure he became infamous for his nannying controls over what people eat and inhale: sugar, fat, and tobacco.  Mike has a plan for our good, whether we like it to not.  Mike knows best.  Mike for Saviour.

Bloomberg is also famous for his record of donations--to all kinds causes, but most often to doppelganger Bloomberg favourites.  The most recent is gun control in the United States.

Our Lord declared that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Clearly, our Lord would not have said that had He met up with Michael Bloomberg, who clearly regards himself as the exception to our Lord's warning.   This, from the New York Times:

A Few Left Wing Moral Contradictions

Potemkin Fakes

Left wing ideologues tend to hate people with money.  More accurately they hate other people with money, particularly if the selfsame other people have more moolah than they. The ratiocination to arrive at this rather sophisticated position is complex and turgid.  It runs like this: rich people can only become rich by exploiting the weak and the dispossessed.  Therefore, their wealth is evidence of immoral usury.  Moreover, it proves their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Sophisticated reasoning.

Now of course when left wing folk manage to garner some money of their own, their money is righteous (by definition).  Their money has been earned whilst they have been standing up for the poor and downtrodden, so their money is clean, laundered money.  Everybody else's is corrupt and evil--presumably because it was earned in trade, rather than from taxpayer funded salaries paid out to politicians.  A classic example was provided by the last Labour administration in New Zealand.

Modern Aristo-Plutocrats

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Marie Antoinette's infamous, "Let them eat cake" has entered the popular lexicon as a byword for sociopathic disdain for the poor.  There is some serious doubt as to whether poor old Marie ever uttered the phrase.  It was attributed to her by one Jean Jacques Rousseau who never let the facts get in the way of a ripping slander. 

Rousseau's Confessions (in which the slander appears) was written in 1768--two years before Marie Antoinette moved to France.  The line also appears in Rousseau's journal notes "years before Antoinette was born."  Ouch.  But it proved a useful pretext and propaganda tool to stir up envy and anger, inciting the odd riot or two.  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.172.]

The picture of an uncaring, wealthy aristocracy who hate the poor abides.  It appeals to our baser instincts.  It certainly appealed to Rousseau who, himself, was an acute despiser of the poor and a "suck-up-to-nobility-kind-of-chap".  If Rousseau could not join the aristocracy, he hated them; when he was welcomed and celebrated in their circles, he fawned over them.  He was a pathetic fellow in so many ways. 

But his bitter word, falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette, lives on.  Ironically, it is amongst modern democrats and socialists that the sentiment conveyed by Rousseau has the most traction.  Uber-wealth and gaudy displays are the hallmark of the modern celebrity culture, along with a fashionable assuaging commitment to socialism.  The latter serves to salve the conscience for all that wealth so ostentatiously on display.  Marie Antoinette had nothing on our modern aristo-plutocrats.

Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow, Idaho

Honoring His Stuff

Posted on Monday, August 12, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

A friend pointed me to an important truth about property and giving that is found in Deuteronomy 26.

“And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, O Lord, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God: And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you” (Dt. 26:10-11).

Note that the worshiper is told that he must include the Levite and the stranger in his worship of God — he must share as he worships with his tithe — but that the foundation of this sharing is the fact of property ownership. He is called to share “every good thing” which the Lord his God “hath given” unto him. God gave every good thing to him, and to his house.

This is the answer to those who think that any assertion of robust property rights is to absolutize them. The only absolute property ownership is God — the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof — but it is precisely for this reason that we may have robust private property rights. The absolute owner gives.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Mammon Is Like Gravity

Posted on Tuesday, July 23, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

 

Many years ago, somewhere in the seventies, I was working for a Christian bookstore called Crossroads. One day we were visited by a young and zealous member of a group called the Children of God, and I vividly remember our conversation on the sidewalk outside the store. He asked if I had a job, a car, etc. I said that I did. He told me that I was not a real Christian because Jesus said that whoever did not give up absolutely everything could not be His disciple (Luke 14:33).

Instead of arguing the exegesis with him, I reached over and tugged on his sweater (for he was clothed, contrary to what he had just said Jesus required), and asked, “Who’s is this?” He was startled, not expecting any questions of that nature. I asked again. “Who does this belong to?” He said nothing because he didn’t know what to say, and so I helped him out. I said, “This belongs to Jesus, right? And He is letting your borrow it? Is that how it works?” He was greatly relieved, and said yes, he was borrowing it. I said that was how it was with my job and my car. I was borrowing them from Jesus.

I also remember that at one point in the conversation, he asked if we could give him a Bible. Crossroads was a Christian bookstore literature ministry, so I said sure thing. I went inside, got one for him, and brought it back out. But the Bible I brought him wasn’t good enough. He asked if he could have a nice one, you know, leather-bound? And I don’t think I have trusted people who glibly cite Luke 14:33 ever since.

* * *

For you see, they are never (in my experience) citing that passage in order to explain why they have just given everything away to the poor. They are always citing it because they need for you to do something. Leather would be nice.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Lot More of the Old 

Money, Love, Desire - The Good of Affluence
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 05 February 2013

As I listen to cultural analysts bemoaning the current state of American consumerism, and comparing it (to a disadvantage) to unnamed halcyon days of yore, I am struck by an inability to see the largest and most obvious feature of the whole set-up.

The issue is not that Americans uniquely consume like nobody's business, but rather that they have the wherewithal to consume. They behave like people with discretionary wealth have always behaved -- only now there are way more of us. Every pathology that we now see is a pathology with a long track record . . . among those who have had the wealth to behave that way.

In short, the problem we have that is unique is that everybody is now rich. The old scriptural warnings to the wealthy to not set their hope on riches, but rather on God, were warnings which, when delivered, applied to a tiny sliver of the church. Now, in countless churches, the warnings apply to virtually everyone in the sanctuary.

The "Invisible Hand" At Work

 Vlad the Impaler Whacks France

Providence has a way of trammelling the avarice and humbling the hubris of  the New Model Man.  Believing he answers to no-one but himself, the Great Humanist Man steps forth to create, as if ex-nihilo, the perfected human society.  His key tool is law--the laws of command and control. 

At that point, all of creation seems to conspire against our pathetic Hero, making nugatory his grand designs and utopian schemes.  We call this the work of Providence--or what Adam Smith termed the Invisible Hand.  Christians know and believe it to be the Hand of the Living God, governing the world to secure His purposes, not those of our pathetic Hero.

Taxing the rich more has become fashionable again in the envy-dripping drawing rooms of our modern Don Quixotes.

Catching Australia, Part I

New Zealand's Slope is Steep and Slippery

Catching up with Australia (in terms of relative GDP and overall material prosperity) has long been a dream of successive governments in New Zealand.  It has come up again in the current election.  The field of debate roughly falls out into four camps.

The first camp's (centre right) dream has to do with out competing Australia and producing our way to relative prosperity.  The second camp (centre left) views it as a matter of legislating parity in things like wages, income levels, and living standards.  The view is that if you first create by fiat legislation, economic reality will kick in to match it.  Put wages up by law and suddenly everyone becomes more productive.  (Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds, but there you go).

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The King of Missions

Church Government - Theses on Missions
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, August 08, 2011

Missionaries should know the gospel, and be trained in the great doctrinal themes of the Bible. They should also be good-hearted people, but the good-heartedness does not supplant the need for craft competence. This is also true of the other areas that surround mission activity. Missionary pilots should be really good pilots. It is not enough that they "love Jesus."