The Economy
At some point in the latter part of the twentieth century in the United States, the phrase The Economy achieved that capitalized status previously reserved for an entity such as God—the utterly powerful One who controls all destinies. Whereas God, dwelling as He does in the Eternal and taking a Very Long View, does not have to concern Himself with the ups and downs of human enterprises, The Economy is all about those ups and downs and can, accordingly, be subjected to a scrutiny that would make God blanch. As in pagan times, innumerable sages and omen readers make pronouncements about fortunes. Rather than examining the innards of animals like the Roman haruspices, the modern prognosticators use data, spot trends, analyze all manner of phenomena, and preach at length to the converted.
To say that The Economy replaced God would be rash but there is some truth to the equation. God is duly recognized on American money but I wonder if that is good with God. It seems a terrible descent to be linked with something as inherently mean and haggling as commerce. However well-intentioned it may be (or prideful), such recognition smacks more of belittlement than esteem. Though the Bible contains forthright statements—“you shall not exact usury from him”—God does not care about intervening in our banking system or monetary policy. In the Protestant scheme of things that is perfectly acceptable: people go to church on Sunday; the other days are the other days.
The rule of the saints that the early Puritans of New England treasured was soon challenged by the rule of the merchants who outfoxed the saints: a person could be both godly and wealthy. Wealth was an attribute that signified God’s favor. To prosper was to be blessed. And someone had to pay the clergyman’s salary, to say nothing of building the church. However plain-spoken it might have looked in its white clapboards, it still cost money to erect.
Founded as the United States was, in part, on the quicksand of theological anxiety—am I saved or damned?—and having suffered from numerous busts and booms to say nothing of the Great Depression and Great Recession (typically American adjective uses), making an idol of The Economy is understandable. The inherent uncertainty of finance capitalism is turned into something that seems more or less rational. The relentless focus on The Economy (what did the Federal Reserve, the Dow Jones, Nasdaq do today?) offers a perverse sense of calm and well-being. This well-being is not rooted in any sense of economical living where people use only what they need and aim for a balanced approach to the resources that sustain life. Although the Natives of North America could be as wasteful as any group of human beings—at times killing, for instance, many more buffalo than they could use—it is not romanticism to say that within a given tribe, they practiced a discernible economy. What the white people sought, which went along with the settling and exploitation of the “new” continent, was unlimited growth.
This was, and remains, a strange and largely unchecked vision, at once greedy, optimistic, irresponsible, and childlike. As the continent was “won” and its native inhabitants either extirpated or moved onto “reservations,” The Economy rose as a permanent sort of frontier. Spurred by the heady fumes of modern technology, this frontier, for many, still seems endless. Something new will be invented tomorrow that will result in new profits. Meanwhile, the government can push and pull The Economy as necessary, calibrating the interest rate with fussbudget attentiveness.
Cozy as this view is—All God’s Children Are Making Money—there are serious hazards. The Economy, as represented by the Bottom Line, becomes the avaricious measure of all aspects of life. Art is reported in terms of high-priced art sales. Health is managed so that surgeries, medicines, and visits to doctors have to do with profit and loss. Sport is obsessed with the huge contracts the players get. Death figures into this, too, since living too long can be ruinous to a person’s finances. A more honest society would offer public suicide on the part of the elderly as a reminder of what is occurring each day. That might get in the way, however, of the vigorous, upbeat hubbub of finance. The suffering that utter allegiance to The Economy produces is not a wanted sight.
Since most people simply do their jobs—repairing autos or teaching children or tending to broken bones—who cares so deeply about profit and loss? Why does it matter? Isn’t it better to live a simple life rather than a complicated one? The questions go on but are rarely, if ever, asked. The engines that drive The Economy—banks, stock exchanges, credit mechanisms—are in the hands of the few not the many. That the people in those jobs are not necessarily rational or upright, goes without saying, as the Crash of 2008 (to say nothing of bubbles, panics, and slumps) illustrated. What is more important is that at the center of all that begetting and losing is sheer emptiness, much ado about nothing. The essential human activities—loving, caring, respecting, honoring, nurturing—dwell elsewhere: they aren’t hollering orders on the floor of the stock exchange or paying attention to the rise and fall of fractions of percentages of bonds.
If you live with abstractions for a long time, they become real. Though wealth translates into tangibles—houses, cars, yachts—the attention devoted to The Economy is demented. A desperation lies not very far under the surface; a fear that none of this hullabaloo matters and that efforts must be redoubled to pretend it does matter. A spurious excitement must enliven the enterprise: something unforeseen is always on the horizon. The deep rhythms of life—the balanced tides within us and outside of us—have nothing to do with the turns, plunges, and rises of The Economy. That is the great lure of The Economy. Our mooring in those diurnal tides is, for some, insufficient. Better to feel life is febrile: Up and down the percentages go! Fortunes can be gained and lost and regained, but the fortune of our being alive is beneath notice.