“The economy must serve people, not the other way around.”  That is the opening sentence of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers“.  Regardless of your religious beliefs, I encourage readers to look it up on the internet.  It’s easy to understand the values being taught but challenging to apply them in our lives, businesses and government.

Our individual work should provide for ourselves and others while fully developing our human potential.  Our collective responsibility is to assure that all of us have opportunities for that kind of work.  Not all work is paid.  It includes stay-at-home parents, coaches for kids’ teams, volunteer firefighters, and thousands of other unpaid workers who improve our lives.

Within our human nature lies the understanding of the Bishops’  teaching that the economy exists to serve people.  The United Methodist Church has a similar position statement, as do some other Christian groups.  Buddhist, Muslim, and Sikh traditions teach similar ideas.  The American Humanist Association (atheist) has adopted a statement that specifically agrees with Catholic teaching.

Our nation and world have a problem.  Record amounts of wealth are concentrated in the hands of a very few people; and jobs that pay enough to create upward mobility are fewer every year.  We’ve been here before.  The industrial revolution brought the “gilded age” to the US and Europe.  Wealth was concentrated among a tiny fraction of the population.  Family agriculture, crafts and small businesses were decimated.  Unemployment, family breakups, drug addiction, alcoholism and other social ills brought on by poverty reached devastating levels .

In that previous version of this crisis, the Germans wound up with Adolph Hitler after other extreme solutions didn’t work.  Russians had Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin.  Italians had Mussolini.  France nearly had a second revolution.  Spain had a civil war.  Fortunately, Americans followed FDR who insisted on maintaining constitutional and representative democracy while empowering labor, investing in human education and skill development, and funding a social safety net.  We came out of the depression and WWII as the world’s wealthiest nation and we enjoyed the “golden age” of our upwardly mobile middle class.

Today we’re in the early stages of an Information Technology/Artificial Intelligence revolution in which computer controlled machines are replacing not just manufacturing workers but also bank loan officers, cab drivers, and even a few physicians.  We are producing far more goods and services per hour worked and there is more wealth than ever before but it is concentrated in the hands of corporate owners.

This has happened many times before. Try re-reading the Old Testament with current conditions in mind.  The rich got richer, took advantage of the poor, and ignored the warnings of prophets. The poor had no money to buy things from the rich.  The rich were surprised when their wealth disappeared as their society collapsed.  Then when just about everyone was on the bottom together, they started rebuilding and repeated the cycle.

We responded to the 2008 recession with fiscal stimulus that kick-started our stalled economy.  But just as economic recovery was gaining steam, we assured that poverty would grow by de-funding schools and safety net programs  and passing laws that dis-empowered labor unions. (How do people miss the fact that the “golden age” of the American middle class was the era when labor unions forced wages up and taxes were high enough to balance our budgets?)

The remarkable thing is that there is plenty of wealth to go around.  Many corporations have so much cash that they are buying back their own stock because they have nothing better to do with the money.  Demand for their products is insufficient to require expansion because there are too many underemployed/underpaid people who lack funds to buy them.  Corporations have lost sight of the basic economic fact that it is demand that drives economic expansion.  If your customers are broke, you can’t sell anything to them.

Both economically and morally, we need actions similar to the ones we took in FDR’s days.  In business terms, we need to recognize that workers and customers are the same people!  If they have enough income for upward mobility everyone will benefit.  We’ll need excellent education to grow our skills and a  strong safety net so that those who are unfortunate or who make a mistake have a chance to recover economically.

The economy must serve the people.  Consider that our most important health service might be the lowest paid –  trash collection. Entire civilizations fell prey to plague and other diseases before we understood the value of sanitation and accepted it as a shared responsibility.  Justice dictates that any job worth doing merits a living wage.  FDR and the Bishops have a lot in common.

For Whom the Bell Tolls
by
John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.