The Judeo-Christian faith in which I was raised is pretty clear about this. Jesus says: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
economics
Description
Note: assignment 5 covers
Chapter 12 in Mankiw, on production and growth.
We now come to the most important
topic in all of economics – economic growth.
In our on-campus discussions about this
subject, I begin by making a couple of moral claims.
First, I argue that it is a
universal human value to want to help the poor have a better life. Every set of religious scriptures I know of
devotes considerable space arguing that we have a moral obligation to help the
poor. The Bible, for example, mentions
the poor over 2,100 times. As this guy
notes in this speech to President Bush at the National Prayer Breakfast,
“that’s a lot of airtime.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUdrYDk8rVA
One of the five pillars of Islam
is the Zakat, a requirement that all Muslims should donate 2.5% of their wealth
to the needy. A similar rule of thumb
from my culture is to tithe 10% of your income to the poor.
And it is not just religious folks
who care for the poor: one of my
favorite authors, the secular humanist Kurt Vonnegut, repeatedly and
consistently expresses concern for the poor, and often expresses contempt for
societies and people who blame the poor for their circumstances rather than
helping them. He often quotes another religious
skeptic, the early 20th Century American socialist Eugene V. Debs:
“While
there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of
it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
The second moral claim I make is
that not only is it a universal human value to want to help the poor; it is
also a modern universal human aspiration that we desire a higher standard of
living for ourselves. Every one of you
who reads these notes desires that your future will be materially better in
many ways. This aspiration for a better
future separates us from nearly every generation of humans that has preceded
us. For most of human history most
people expected that the world would not change, that their station in the
world was pre-determined and unchangeable.
We 21st Century humans not only expect our future will be
better – we demand from our leaders that they institute policies that will
enable us to make it better.
