Rich in things, poor in time

Inside Story, 2019

Review of Andrew McGahan's The Rich Man's House published 19 November 2019

For almost all of history, people were extremely poor. Beginning in the seventeenth century, European countries (and their overseas extensions) began to grow extremely wealthy. Since World War II, enrichment has spread around the world with the " Asian Tigers " of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea becoming wealthy and with Chinese and Indian per capita income growing rapidly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Extensive research has emphasized the material and later the institutional underpinnings of economic growth, but McCloskey (2006, 2010, 2016) argues that changes in how we think, speak, and write about entrepreneurs and innovators explains what she calls the Great Enrichment. In this essay, we explore some of the " materialist " hypotheses for economic growth and explain how changing ideas about entrepreneurship led to modern prosperity. This essay is drawn from an ongoing collaborative project between Carden and McCloskey based on McCloskey's three volumes The Bourgeois Virtues (2006), Bourgeois Dignity (2010), and Bourgeois Equality (2016). In particular, the essay is drawn specifically from Carden's remarks to students and faculty members at

2022

In Luke 12:13-21, Jesus narrates the story of a rich, foolish farmer. In this paper, I will argue that the man is not condemned for being rich, but for misusing his wealth. He is described as a fool due to his greed. At first glance, the Gospel may appear to praise the poor and condemn the rich, leading the audience to attach negative connotations to the adjective "rich." However, the author's purpose in telling this story is to compare their characters, not their levels of wealth or poverty. Using wealth for the benefit of others is commended and is the way to become "rich with God.

At His Crossroad, 2018

's 1950s book The Affluent Society, the American economist pointed out that the ideas guiding the modern welfare state originated in the conditions of serious poverty that have prevailed since the dawn of man. The failure of society to adapt its underlying ideas to new conditions has caused a range of problems that may jeopardize the prosperity that has been acquired. Poverty and scarcity still exist in much of the world with the exception of a relatively small number of countries inhabited or claimed by Europeans. Until relatively recently, only Western Europe and North America could boast of prosperity. Poor and hungry people have limited choices and few can afford to focus on goals beyond survival. Only the rich face the question of what to do with their wealth. Thus it is more probable that the wealthy will engage in activities that will threaten their very position and prosperity. This is particularly true when the status of affluence came suddenly and represents a radical change from previous conditions. The question of how to live in affluence was new and challenging for politicians and social scientists in rich countries who found themselves in a situation they had not foreseen. To those of us who lived in scarcity, for example during the economic devastation that prevailed in Yugoslavia after World War II, these challenges seemed absurd and even insulting. Such problems hardly seemed serious or relevant to those of who lived in postwar Slovenia. The question of how to live in affluence could only be articulated by states that enjoyed a surplus: we would certainly know what to do in such a situation! The only question we needed to answer was how to free F. Bucar (Deceased)

Musings on Poverty, 2023

This compilation of short narratives delves into the subject of poverty and is penned by authors proficient in the Hausa language. Through the art of storytelling, these authors intricately illustrate the intricacies of poverty, its causal factors and propose diverse and distinctive approaches for its amelioration or mitigation. The crux of these narratives underscores the multifaceted nature of poverty, often arising from a complex interplay of various factors, some of which may stem from poverty itself. Many of these stories subtly insinuate the concept of intergenerational transmission of poverty (IGTP) and the potential for poverty to persist across generations within impoverished households or communities. These stories effectively foster a nuanced comprehension of the construct of poverty, notably within the context of Hausa societies.

Choice Reviews Online, 2014

This book reflects on poverty and poor people. It looks at constancy and change in how people experience want. It is not a history of poverty, nor is it part of an extensive academic literature on the poor. I have simply wondered how poverty has managed to survive both rigorous punishment of the poor and the accumulation of the most spectacular riches the world has ever seen. It consists of a series of questions, to which any answers I suggest are only tentative and provisional. How did sufficiency cease to represent enough? Why have distinctions between the 'bashful' poor and the 'aggressive' poor, the respectable and the rough, been so difficult to sustain? Why did the proportion of poor people increase with the growing wealth of Britain? Is the desire for more really an expression of human nature, or does it tell us more about the nature of capitalism? How did poverty cease to be a 'natural' condition and become a cause for shame? And when did wealth stop being a temptation to which it was foolish to succumb? What is the fate of limitless accumulation in a finite world? Far from the least of these questions is where do the attitudes which animate popular resentment of the poor come from? The utterances of contemporary politicians, commentators and observers are never without precedent. The remedies and policies advocated by today's government, think-tanks and policy reviews have all been rehearsed for centuries. It is a rarely remarked upon irony that, given the waste and extravagance of the contemporary world, the one thing that is perpetually recycled is our own history, nowhere more so than in the repetition of ancient strictures upon the poor. Ideas that are flourished as novelty by conservatives and radicals alike are usually found to have been slumbering within a torpid consciousness which cannot wait to forget the past, in order to rediscover it and propose its failed responses as the latest expedient for dealing with poverty. For this reason, a good proportion of this book is devoted to historical precedents, legislation and attitudes which illuminate, not so much how far we have come in the increase of wealth-for that is indisputable-but how short a road we have travelled in our reactions to the poor and excluded. 'Mankind, it seems, hates nothing so much as its own prosperity. Menaced with an access of riches that would lighten its toil, it makes haste to redouble its labours and to pour away the precious stuff, which might deprive of plausibility the complaint that it is poor.' These words of R. H. Tawney in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, referred to the increased wealth of Europe in the sixteenth century, wealth squandered on warfare. 1 Tawney's observation has not been invalidated by posterity. For the modern world has learned, with the help of wealth such as it had never seen, a poverty so profound and immitigable, that no one can foresee an end to it. A feeling of impoverishment gnaws away, not only at those surviving on the edge of subsistence, but also at people who, in a more innocent time, might have been called rich. How such a condition has come about is rarely debated; perhaps because of its central importance to what we commonly understand as 'our way of life'. An experience of insufficiency is natural when permanent economic growth takes priority over everything else. In the presence of limitless expansion, everyone feels under-rewarded, deprived or robbed of the recognition they think they deserve; none more so than the already wealthy, since they measure riches, not against what they have, but against the multitude of treasures, material and spiritual, they do not yet possess. Our 'worth' is assessed in relation, not to any known human satisfaction, but rather to the power of production of an economy which is, in theory, boundless. Who could expect to fulfil desires prompted by this profane version of the infinite? This is why it is vain to protest at greed, to rail at the super-rich, to censure the excesses of those who administer themselves exorbitant rewards, since their work is considered vital for the alleviation of a nearly universal sense of privation. The income of bankers is often described as 'compensation'; as though they were the victims of some terrible calamity, for which no reparation can ever suffice. If people feel diminished and powerless, pitifully remunerated, constantly unrecognised, this is because capitalism is the keeper of a dangerous, but highly profitable, secret-it knows how to promote a sense of universal neediness, to set up a wanting without end, a cult and culture of desire which must not be thwarted. Human longing, formerly expressed, sometimes contained, often held captive, by the consolations of religion, is now simply another business opportunity; and because even the wealthiest can gain only a fraction of the plenitude of a global market, they become frustrated by what they do not have. This does not, of course, prevent them from flourishing what they do have in the company of those who have less; but they persist in pining for all that remains, tantalisingly, just beyond the reach of their outstretched hands and overstretched means. So it has come about that no one can now define the meaning of 'enough'. Confronting this riddle, we are all poor. Great philanthropists are poor-imagine all the good works foregone for the want of a few billions more? Bankers are poor, since the solace of their millions still fails to satisfy their mysterious cravings. Russian oligarchs are poor, since, having appropriated the assets of the state, they must go into exile to protect themselves from the envious and vengeful. The great landowners of Britain are poor, under the responsibility of maintaining their estates and transmitting them to posterity. Chief executives are poor, for how can money cure the ulcers, heart conditions and health ruined in monastic dedication to the doctrines of wealth creationism? Showbusiness and sporting celebrities are poor, since noone fully acknowledges the extent of their talent or the burn-out of living and loving in the fast lane? Even footballers are poor, because the period of their agility is brief and their careers are soon abridged by time. Professional women and men are poor, overtaken, both in salary and social prestige, by more showy occupations. Bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers are poor, since they fight constantly to keep up the living standards to which their skills entitle them. Carers and service personnel are poor, because their contribution to society is undervalued. Domestic servants, cleaners and retail workers are poor, since their presence is scarcely acknowledged by those who employ them. Beggars are poor. The homeless are poor. Alcoholics and those enslaved to addictions are poor. Under the universal flail of poverty, governments are poor, compelled to cut public expenditure with heavy hearts, a course of action they can contemplate only in the superior light of the national interest. Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky in How Much is Enough? 2 , argue that capitalism was 'founded on a Faustian pact'. The devils of avarice and usury were given free rein, on the understanding that, having lifted humanity out of poverty, they would quit the scene for good. A paradise of plenty would ensue, with all men free to live as only the happy few had lived. The promise that all wants may be fulfilled by economic magic has robbed humanity of the very power that wealth was expected to bestow: an awareness of what would constitute a secure sustenance. The objective of almost everyone is to acquire a greater share of the wealth of the world. This is a relatively recent development, since the poor have traditionally scarcely dared even to dream of subsistence. It is also a major contributor to social peace, since what could be a greater source of unity between all classes and conditions of people than their unity in a shared desire to relieve their common affliction? The riots in England of August 2011 disturbed this carefully crafted equilibrium, for it strained the ideological harmony between rich and poor, who make common cause against a shared feeling of insufficiency. The rioters were presented by the government as examples of 'pure criminality', since to succumb to the proposition that they were caused by 'deprivation' would shatter the joint project of a people dedicated to a constant increase in their 'purchasing power', not in theory, but in the practice and experience of daily life. How easily whatever disposable income we have slips through our fingers, and what a pitiful shortage it represents of what is necessary for a half-decent life. When economic consciousness crowds out its social and moral equivalents, the consequences are unlikely to be benign. Individuals cannot be blamed for reflecting the dominant ideology of the age. Economic necessity has been assimilated and now appears as more or less identical with human needs. The people have adopted as their own the requirement of the economy for permanent growth: its impersonality has been 'humanised', and we tenderly articulate its iron compulsions, as though these were an expression of our deepest longings. The rehabilitation of the rich is a major consequence of these developments; and is the principal reason why bankers have gone largely unpunished for their role in the crisis of the early twenty-first century. Their lack of humility shows they are keenly aware of their indispensability to the sorcery of wealth generation. They are untouchable, and they live in a world of their own, which is not this one, for it is a place of myth; a fortress where billiondollar decisions are made, fortunes are created and rivals vanquished by a single stroke of the keyboard. They occupy the crystal spheres, a modern version of the Fates or Norns, engineers of human destiny, gods endowed with human jealousies: at the first hint of punitive measures against...

The distribution of income has confounded people since the dawn of currency. At times, various methods of explanation have been used from theological to philosophical. Economists have been limited to measuring and analyzing the distribution of wealth rather than projecting it. The course of this study has been to understand the nature of poverty and income distribution from an epidemiological perspective. In this model, the goal was to understand the prevalence of poverty regardless of a variety of targeted economic interventions over the millennia. Some policies have aimed for the stability of whoever has resources, and others have sought to bring others out of poverty. Yet other policies have sought to prevent the descent into poverty, thus abandoning some to that fate. The presence of a population in poverty regardless of intervention or non-intervention confuses policy makers and analysts alike. In order to reflect this state of affairs, the mathematical model developed, in economic terms, is Malthusian. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was an early economist (Thomas Robert Malthus). He was not interested in how the human species dies, but in how the human species persists in the face of overwhelming obstacles to its existence. Famously, he projected that the ability for humans to increase food production is arithmetic, but the growth of human populations is geometric. This would inevitably lead to food shortages and massive amounts of death and