Three Ways Economics Teaches Christians to Follow the Spirit, Not the Letter (Because Loving Others is Not Simple)

“Only a believer in the economic way of thinking can safely explore moral reflection in economics.”
– Alex Salter [1]

INTRODUCTION

Paul tells us, in 2 Corinthians 3:6, that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” (NIV). This summarizes an important teaching of Jesus Christ, according to Whom “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” (Mark 2:27, NIV). The Gospels recount that Jesus Christ acted according to the spirit of the law, unlike the Pharisees who emphasized obedience to every detail of every precept, even when it harmed people.

Christians believe that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8, NIV), and we are commanded to love other people.[2] The word “love” can be used to translate four Greek words, Agape (Agape), Eros (Eros), Pilia (Philia), and Storge (Storge), each of which was distinct from the other three, which is not clear in English.[3] The Greek word used most in the New Testament is Agape, so we know that Christian love is Agape, not the other three.[4] An essential characteristic of Agape is that it is for the good of the other person, the beloved, rather than for the good of the one who loves. With this in mind, we can judge if a love is truly Christian by the effect that it has on those who receive it. Paul explains that Christian love does not harm others.[5] If loving others harms them, then it is not Christian love, it is not Agape. If practicing what is called love harms others, then Christians should not love in that way.

This paper is similar to Schansberg (2020),[6] especially the second part, which deals with the justice or injustice of charging interest on loans. The third and fourth parts, however, are about charity, not justice. The distinction between justice and charity is important. Whereas justice, as Schansberg admits, is universally human, so all religions and even atheists are interested in it, charity is especially Christian, at least if it is understood to be the English translation of the Greek word Agape. As this article will show, charity is often used to mean something very different from the Greek word Agape, and this confusion is one of the reasons why Christians might erroneously think that they are doing what the Bible says they should even though they are not.

USURY[7]

Charging interest on loans is an important part of post-modern capitalism. Most middle-class families borrow money to buy houses and then repay it with interest for decades. Many pay interest on automobile loans, or credit cards. Most corporations have long-term debt on which they pay interest. The United States federal government is the largest debtor in the history of the world, and pays billions of dollars in interest. This extremely common practice has not always been accepted, or acceptable. Centuries of thought and development were required for the charging of interest to be reconciled with Christianity. “Questions of how to handle usury and interest are at the heart of explaining the modern development of economics.”[8]

Aristotle wrote that charging interest on loans is unnatural. Coins are not animals, so they cannot reproduce. If someone borrows two animals of the same species, they might multiply, so demanding that he return three animals though he borrowed only two would be justified. When someone borrows two coins, however, demanding that he return three would be unjust, because no matter how much time elapses, the two coins will never be more than two coins.[9]

Aristotle . . . created great trouble for the future by morally condemning the lending of money at interest as ‘unnatural’. Since money cannot be used directly, and is employed only to facilitate exchanges, it is ‘barren’ and cannot itself increase wealth. Therefore the charging of interest, which Aristotle incorrectly thought to imply a direct productivity of money, was strongly condemned as contrary to nature. Aristotle would have done better to avoid such hasty moral condemnation and to try to figure out why interest is, in fact, universally paid.[10]

The early Christian church adopted this teaching of Aristotle, despite what Jesus Christ says in the parable of the talents.[11] They were not all Aristotelian philosophers, but this teaching was easy to accept because it seemed to agree with the Old Testament which condemned lending money at interest, calling it usury.[12] To be precise, Jews were not to lend at interest to other Jews, but were allowed to lend at interest to Gentiles.[13] That precision was lost on the illiterate masses of early medieval Europe who were taught by their leaders and subsequently believed that usury was a serious sin.

Christian leaders justified this doctrine not only by reference to Aristotle’s belief that usury is unnatural and therefore unjust, and not only by quoting the Old Testament, but also because it harmed poor men and women. In ancient and medieval times, most people were poor,[14] so if they borrowed money it was because they needed to buy food or some other necessity. Unscrupulous money-lenders could take advantage of poor borrowers who were just trying to survive; they could demand high rates of interest which the borrowers would never be able to repay. Debts would then grow until poor parents might have to sell their children into slavery, women might have to prostitute themselves, and small farmers might have to sell their land and thus lose their ability to provide for themselves. Rather than ruining lives, Christians were told to give to those in need and not demand repayment.[15] Charity, thus, replaces lending, for to lend without demanding repayment is not lending; it is charity.

In the late Middle Ages, some intelligent Christians began to realize that lending can help some people to live better. Life is uneven; there are times when people prosper and have more than they need to consume, and there are times when people need to consume more than they have. Bad weather might force a farming family to eat their seeds, or it might force a craftsman to sell his tools to buy food. Without seeds, the farming family cannot plant a crop the following year, so their plight will worsen even if the weather improves. Without tools, the craftsman cannot exercise his craft, so his plight will worsen. Charity might keep these people alive, but it will not restore them to their original self-sufficient condition. They will be poor forever and a constant drain on the community that must support them. Instead of producing and contributing to society, they will survive as parasites consuming what they did not produce. If, however, they could borrow money to buy food instead of selling their seeds or their tools, then they might be able to repay their debt in a more prosperous year and live well for the rest of their lives.

Thomas Aquinas[16] agreed with Aristotle, and the prevalent doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, that usury is unnatural and therefore sinful.[17] He also, however, explained that it is legitimate to earn a profit from a loan if the borrower profited from it. He thought, however, that money was not something that a borrower could profit from. If someone borrows a house, then he can profit from it and so demanding extra upon its return would be legitimate, but if someone borrow coins, then all he can do is spend those coins, so demanding extra in return would be wrong since the borrower did not use those coins to gain any profit.[18] We see here that Aquinas’ doctrine on usury was relevant only in a time and place where money could not be used profitably. Aquinas had great respect for Aristotle, and he would not disobey the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, so he condemned usury in the context of his situation, but left open the possibility of legitimately charging interest on loans if the money borrowed could be used profitably.

In the centuries that followed Thomas Aquinas, Christians continued to think about usury.[19]

More people were hurt by the unavailability of lenders than by the multiplicity of usurers. . . . Churches, widows, wards, the sick, and the disabled would be able to enjoy an income from lending; . . . There were some principles of the natural law which apply only conditionally. . . . The usury prohibition similarly applied only conditionally.[20]

Matthew J. Advent[21] explains well one way in which followers of Thomas Aquinas used his doctrine to allow charging interest on loans, even though he had forbidden it in most cases. If a lender suffers a loss because the loan is repaid late, the lender may justly demand an extra amount of money as compensation for the loss. For example, if someone needs money to buy seeds to plant a field in six months, and loans out money on a contract stating that the money will be repaid in six months, but the money is not repaid until seven months after the loan. The lender will suffer a loss because unable to buy the seeds needed to plant at the best time. The borrower should compensate the lender for that loss. Only a prudent lender who did nothing wrong but suffers a loss because the borrower repays late is eligible to receive compensation. In the centuries that followed, several thinkers used what Aquinas had written to justify charging interest on loans, because they said that giving up the use of money almost always entails a loss. After the discovery of America and the multiplication of profitable investment opportunities, almost all loans would harm lenders because depriving them of some opportunity. Therefore, they were entitled to receive compensation for their loss. They called this lucrum cessans. [22]

The greatest university of thinkers on this subject was Salamanca,[23] and the greatest individual who thought about this was a Spanish Dominican cardinal known as Cajetan (his real name was Thomas de Vio), who lived from 1469 to 1534.[24] Cajetan spoke with bankers to learn how they conducted their business, then he wrote a treatise named Cambio on the subject. He confirmed the Catholic Church’s doctrine that charging interest for nothing is a sin,[25] but he said that much of the interest that banks charge is not for nothing.[26] Banking requires work, as the banker must talk with those who want to borrow, learn about their needs and their ability to repay, and then negotiate the loan. Workers deserve to be paid for the work that they do,[27] so bankers can justly expect to profit for making loans. Banking involves risk, because some of the loans might not be repaid. Bankers therefore need to demand interest from those who repay them so as to make up for the money they lose on those who do not repay them. Finally, the value of money depends on what can be purchased with it. If prices rise, then the same amount of money can purchase less, which reduces its value. When there is inflation, charging interest on loans is reasonable because if only the quantity of money loaned out is returned, then the lender will lose value. Cajetan made it as clear as he could: usury is evil, so Christians should not do it, but charging a reasonable rate of interest on a loan is not usury, so Christians may do it.[28]

Cajetan supported banking in general, including the practice of exchanging one currency for another to facilitate international trade. Some had condemned earning a profit on currency exchanges, but Cajetan wrote that it is morally licit to earn a profit on exchanging one currency for another.

Cajetan denies that exchange was instituted to evade the usury laws. It is ‘laudable, as invented for purposes at once just and useful.’ Merchants are necessary to supply the needs of cities, and they cannot conveniently function without exchange. Exchange is consequently necessary for economic and political life. . . . (If exchange business is) ordained to the decent support of one’s family and status, it is licit, in the same manner as other businesses, for it can be that what considered in isolation does not seem fitting, can be rendered so from an added end,’ (c.5, n.248. This is the answer St. Thomas had given to Aristotle’s objections against all retail trade, but which he had not used to defend the specific case of the exchanges (see St. Thomas, S.T. II-II:77:4c).[29]

The discovery and colonization of America radically changed the economies of the whole world. Throughout Europe, and especially in Spain, gold and silver brought from America, and also silver mined in Germany, increased the money supply. Prices tripled in Spain.[30] Higher rates of interest were therefore necessary. Also, there were more business opportunities. No longer were most borrowers poor people who needed help surviving. More borrowers were business owners who wanted to use the money to do business and multiply it. Aristotle’s teaching that coins, unlike animals, do not multiply was no longer correct. Money used well does multiply.

The Protestant Reformation, likewise, contributed to the acceptance of charging interest on loans, as it made people more open to questioning traditional authorities. “The “priesthood of all believers” freed the Reformed tradition (and other non-Catholic, non-Anglican traditions) from clericalism but came with the requirement of significant instruction, especially in theology and the sacred languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), for believers to understand the intended meaning of the Bible.”[31] Unlike Aquinas, who had condemned charging interest on loans even though carrying his thoughts to their logical conclusion would make a reasonable person think that charging interest on loans is good except in some circumstances, Protestants did not accept doctrines just because authorities and tradition supported them, so they would not condemn charging interest on loans if they could not reasonably justify that condemnation.

While lenders, beginning in the early modern period, were allowed to charge interest on loans if the borrowers used the money to gain profits, charging interest on loans to the poor was still condemned by tradition, but reason teaches that loans to people who are temporarily poor because of some crisis can improve or even save their lives. Though Christians should be charitable, many are not, and even those who are charitable are limited in their ability to give. At a time when there was very little surplus wealth above what was required to survive, giving it away might mean going hungry. Helping others to feed their children might mean watching your own starve. Few people were so charitable that they would sacrifice the little they had to help poor people. Those few could do little good because, after giving away what they had, they would have nothing left to give away. If 5% of the people were willing to go hungry to help an equal number of poor, but 20% of the population were poor and needed help, then three-quarters of all poor people would die because there would be nobody both willing and able to help them. If, however, people were allowed to charge interest on loans, then more people would be motivated to make loans, and they could make more loans because they would have more wealth. Instead of 5% of the people willing to loan to the poor, 10% might be willing to loan to the poor. Those 10% would profit from their loans so that their wealth would grow and then they would be able to loan more. If, then, 20% of all men and women were poor and needed help, they could all receive what they needed, at least for a year until the next year’s crop was harvested, or until they sold the things that they made with their tools. Droughts that lasted several years, or disabilities that prevented a man from working, were problems that loans could not solve, but temporary crises could be solved by loans, and that would help more poor people than it would harm.

Christian leaders were unwilling to admit that they had been wrong to forbid usury, but they could not continue to condemn a practice that was clearly good for many people, so they changed the definition of the word usury. It had meant charging interest on a loan. It came to mean charging excessive interest on a loan. A few writers, Catholic, Protestant, and other, continued to condemn all interest,[32] but most accepted charging interest on loans as a normal, non-sinful part of doing business. The spirit of Christian doctrine should be love; Christians modified their prohibition of interest because that prohibition was contrary to love. Technically, they adhered to the letter of the law, because they continued to condemn “usury”, but in reality they chose to change an old doctrine once they understood that it was wrong.[33]

FOREIGN AID

Much of the money and other valuable goods sent to developing nations as international aid is stolen or used inefficiently. This is an argument against international aid, but not a convincing one. If only 10% of the resources sent to developing countries is used efficiently, and another 20% is used inefficiently, while the other 70% is stolen, that might still be worthwhile. Wealthy nations can easily afford to give about 1% of their Gross Domestic Product to those who need it. A 1% decline in income is unnoticeable, whereas it could mean a significant windfall for people in a developing country. The G.D.P. of the United States in 2022 was $21.538 trillion. The G.D.P. of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2022 was $112.144 billion. The population of Congo is over 115 million, so very many could theoretically benefit from aid.[34] If 1% of U.S. G.D.P. ($215 billion) were sent to Congo, which would not significantly reduce American living standards, and 30% of it ($71.67 billion) actually arrived there, the G.D.P. of Congo would increase by almost 64%. Should not Americans accept a loss so slight that they will not notice it, so as to cause a benefit so great that the lives of people in Congo will be greatly improved? It seems that we should, but that is assuming that even though much of the money will be stolen or used inefficiently, it will do some good.

There is strong evidence, however, that foreign aid harms people in the countries that receive it. Several economists have published their research showing this. Some of their work will be mentioned later in this third section, but first let’s delve into the article written by Simeon Djankov, Jose G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Quero.[35] They found that foreign aid harms people in the countries that receive it. Before their research, it had been known that there is a positive correlation between poverty and receiving foreign aid. It was reasonable to think that the poverty of the countries caused them to receive foreign aid. Wealthy and middle-income countries do not receive foreign aid; the poorer the country, the greater its need, so the more foreign aid it would receive. That makes sense. Djankov et al. (2008), however, compared changes in the amount of foreign aid received with changes in democratic institutions, and other things that usually make life better. They found that when foreign aid increased, countries became less democratic. They did not then rise up out of poverty, but got more firmly entrenched in it. So, while some of the correlation between poverty and foreign aid is because poverty causes foreign aid, a significant amount of the correlation between foreign aid and poverty is because foreign aid causes poverty indirectly by harming democracy.

Without foreign aid, national governments prosper when their people prosper. Income taxes bring in more revenue when incomes are higher; tariffs and sales taxes bring in more revenue when there is more trade and people buy more things. There are incentives that motivate government leaders to promote the prosperity of their people. If, however, government revenue decreases when the people prosper, then the incentive is inverted. Government leaders who want to increase the revenue of the government which they control are motivated to impede prosperity, not encourage it. What is more, if the people protest or in any way demand changes, the government can ignore or suppress them because it has the resources it needs to violently maintain power against the people.

Large income from petroleum can have the same effect, as Djankov et al. (2008) show. When a government receives large revenues from selling oil, then it need not promote the prosperity of its people and can ignore or even violently oppress them. The statistics in this article show, however, that the negative effects of foreign aid are about three times as great as the negative effects of large oil revenues. This makes sense because, while large oil revenues might remove the necessity of promoting prosperity, they would not create a perverse incentive to impede prosperity as foreign aid does.

Djankov et al. (2008) gives statistical proof, not with absolute certainty because statistics can never do that, but beyond a reasonable doubt, that foreign aid harms people in the developing countries that receive it. What follows are statements from authorities on this matter, including three Nobel laureates in economics, to reinforce what the statistics indicate.

India has replaced China as the country with the largest population. If every person is a unique image of God, then India must be a great country because there are now almost one-and-a-half billion people living there. Decades ago, they could not produce enough food. Millions of Indians would have starved in the years after it gained independence had not tons of food arrived on ships from other countries. Much of the food that was sent to India was stolen. “In India, it is estimated that more than one-half of the wheat and over one-third of the rice get ‘lost’ along the way.”[36] Despite the huge losses to theft, it would seem that the foreign aid sent to India was worthwhile because it saved many lives. Banerjee and Duflo, who were both awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019, tell a different story, however. Foreign aid made it possible for the socialist government of India to last longer than it would have without foreign aid. Indians did not have enough food because their government was so bad. When researchers asked Indians if they had enough food to eat, 17% of them answered no in 1983. Since embracing capitalism in 1992, India has plenty of food. In 2004, Indians were asked if they had enough food to eat and only 2% said no.[37] We can never know with certainty what would have happened if less foreign aid, or none at all, had been sent to India, but these two Nobel laureates have a strong opinion about it:

Aid does more bad than good: It prevents people from searching for their own solutions, while corrupting and undermining local institutions and creating a self-perpetuating lobby of aid agencies.  The best bet for poor countries is to rely on one simple idea: When markets are free and the incentives are right, people can find ways to solve their problems. They do not need handouts, from foreigners or from their own governments.[38]

Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015, writes about the whole world what Banerjee and Duflo wrote about India.

The correlation between aid (as a share of national income) and growth remains negative even when other important causes of growth have been taken into account. . . . When similar studies look at the effects of investment – expenditures on machines, factories, computers, and infrastructure, the things that underpin future prosperity – the effect on growth is very easy to see. Aid, evidently, does not work like investment.[39]

Many people who support foreign aid, and even some who are willing to donate their own money, are clueless about what foreign aid actually does.

Donors have often deeply misunderstood what people needed or wanted. Population control is the worst case; to the donors it was obvious that if there were fewer people each person would be better off, while to the recipients, the opposite was just as obviously (and correctly) true. Western-led population control, often with the assistance of nondemocratic or well-rewarded recipient governments, is the most egregious example of antidemocratic and oppressive aid.[40]

No doubt most donors are people of good will; no doubt many of them are Christians who believe that they are practicing charity. The government officials who actually run the programs, on the other hand, know what they are doing. “The givers and the receivers of aid, the governments in both countries, are allied against their own peoples.”[41] The evil is not a secret, but people in wealthy countries choose to ignore the evidence and continue doing what makes them feel good.

The director of one national aid agency gave me a bloodcurdling account of how aid funds had gone to gangs of murderers – people who had already carried out one massacre and were training and arming themselves to return to finish the job. I asked him why he continued to supply aid. Because, he replied, the citizens of this country believe that it is their duty to give and will accept no argument that aid is hurting people.[42]

William Easterly has not yet been awarded a Nobel Prize, but he has a doctorate from M.I.T. and has written three books about the harm that foreign aid does.[43] He says that

The status quo – large international bureaucracies giving aid to large national government bureaucracies – is not getting money to the poor. . . . When you are in a hole, the top priority is to stop digging. Discard your patronizing confidence that you know how to solve other people’s problems better than they do. . . . The aim should be to make individuals better off, not to transform governments or societies. Once the West is willing to aid individuals rather than governments, some conundrums that tie foreign aid up in knots are resolved. . . . The West can end the pathetic spectacle of the IMF, World Bank, and other aid agencies coddling the warlords and kleptocrats. It can end the paternalism and hypocrisy. . . . Aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development based on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.[44]

This section would be lacking if there was nothing from anyone who was actually from a developing country. A great intellectual who was born in sub-Saharan Africa confirms what Banerjee, Duflo, Deaton, and Easterly wrote. Dambisa Moyo was born in Zambia in 1969. After studying at the University of Zambia, she came to America and earned a master’ degree from Harvard and then went to England where she earned a doctorate from Oxford. The first of five books that she wrote is all about how foreign aid harms poor people in Africa.[45] Her argument against foreign aid was explained in one sentence by the Financial Times: “Limitless development assistance to African governments, [Moyo] argues, has fostered dependency, encouraged corruption and ultimately perpetuated poor governance and poverty.”[46] In 2022, Queen Elizabeth II recognized the great work Moyo had done in economics and made her a baroness.[47]

Sending aid to foreign countries is easy. People in wealthy nations can afford it. Working hard to create wealth, and then investing in poor countries, would be much better for millions of people living in developing nations, but that would be difficult, so most folks choose not to do that.

Is charity giving to others? The Google definitions of charity are “an organization set up to provide help and raise money for those in need,” and “the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need.”[48] If that is the definition of charity, then foreign aid is charity, but it is contrary to Christian love.

THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT[49]

In some ways, disabled Americans are poorer than people who live in developing nations. Some would say that a human being’s greatest asset is his or her own body. It is easier for a strong, healthy, beautiful person to live well and be happy in a poor country than it is for a disabled person to live well and be happy in a prosperous country. With this in mind, it seems obvious that disabled people, more than anyone else, should receive charity. The four Gospels give us numerous examples of Jesus Christ helping disabled people.[50] If Christians should follow the example of Jesus Christ as given in the four Gospels, then there can be no doubt that we should do good for disabled people.

In 1990, 86.7% of the members of the Unite States House of Representatives,[51] most of whom were Christian, and 91% of Senators,[52] most of whom were Christian, passed the Americans with Disabilities Act. President George H.W. Bush, who was Christian, signed the A.D.A. into law. On the surface, passing a law to help disabled people seemed perfectly consistent with Christianity. In truth, however, it was not.

The A.D.A. made employing handicapped workers about 6-10% more expensive.[53] Rational business owners and managers, who wanted to keep their costs as low as possible, were thus given a disincentive to employing disabled workers. What is more, the added costs were difficult to predict; unscrupulous lawyers convinced disabled workers to sue their employers for technical violations of the A.D.A. so as to extort large amounts of money from innocent business owners.[54] The fine for failing to comply with the A.D.A. could be as much as $300,000.[55]

Below is a graph that shows supply and demand in the labor market and how the A.D.A. could reduce employment for disabled individuals. In this graph, a handicapped worker before the A.D.A. would be employed 6 hours a day and be paid $16 an hour, which would be an annual amount of $24,000, assuming a 5-day work week and a 50-week work year. We find those numbers by looking at the point where the supply of labor and the demand for disabled workers intersect. The A.D.A. increased the cost of employing disabled workers, which shifted the supply line to the left and up. Even though the disabled workers did not change, the law made them more expensive, which made it seem as if they required higher pay, even though they did not. Next, we see that the demand for disabled workers declined because the A.D.A. created risk for employers. Most people are risk averse; all other things equal, they prefer a sure thing to a risky venture. The added risk made disabled workers less attractive to employers, which shifted the demand for their work to the left and down. Now we look at where the cost to employers and the demand for disabled workers after the A.D.A. intersect. The hours worked each day is 5, the cost to employers is $16, and the hourly wage received by the disabled worker is only $14, because some of the cost to employers is for complying with the A.D.A. rather than paying the workers. The annual pay received by the average disabled worker declines from $24,000 to $17,500. That is a loss of 27%.

By looking at the graph, one might imagine that all disabled workers had their working hours reduced, but that is not what happened. Disabled workers who were employed worked the same number of hours as they had before, but many disabled adults who would have been employed were not employed because of the A.D.A. “The ADA had no effect on the wages of disabled workers, which are still approximately 40 percent below those of the non-disabled. On the other hand, employment rates for disabled men in all age categories, and disabled women under the age of 40, fell sharply after the ADA.”[56]

In 1984, before the A.D.A., and in 1993, after the A.D.A., 93% of American adults who were not disabled and who wanted jobs were employed. For American adults with minor disabilities, those numbers were 88% and 85%. We see that in both years, it was slightly more difficult for Americans with minor disabilities to get jobs than for Americans who were not disabled in any way. This is not surprising, since a disability would limit the person to fewer options. The important fact related to the A.D.A. is not that disabled adults were slightly less employed than adults who were not disabled. The important fact is that the percentage of American adults with minor disabilities who were employed decreased, though there was no decrease among American adults without disabilities. That is bad, but not tragic. The plight of Americans with severe disabilities, however, was much worse. In 1984, 49% of severely disabled American adults who wanted jobs were employed, but in 1993 only 33% of severely disabled American adults who wanted jobs were employed.[57] About 16% of all severely disabled American adults who wanted jobs were unable to get jobs because of something that happened between 1984 and 1993.

An economist named Julie Hotchkiss claims that non-employment among disabled Americans increased since the A.D.A. was passed because people are now classified as disabled who were not so classified before. According to her, the A.D.A. did not make it more difficult for disabled Americans to obtain employment. The A.D.A. created incentives for more people to want to be classified as disabled. According to her, millions of American adults who did not want to work became disabled after the A.D.A. was passed. They did not really change, but their classification changed, and that made it seem as if a much smaller percentage of disabled adults was employed.[58] This is plausible. The A.D.A. created incentives for more people to want to be classified as disabled, and because of that the percentage of American adults classified as disabled increased significantly. It is difficult to say how much of the increase was caused by the A.D.A., because some of the increase might have been caused by the aging of America (more Americans are elderly than ever before), and there are other factors to consider, but an educated guess would be that the number of Americans classified as disabled doubled because of the A.D.A.[59]

Hotchkiss’s argument is plausible, but not convincing, because if it were true then the percentage of adults with minor disabilities who did not have jobs would have increased more than the percentage of adults with severe disabilities who did not have jobs. People with minor disabilities would probably not have been classified as disabled before the A.D.A., whereas they would probably be classified as disabled after the A.D.A. Severely disabled adults, on the other hand, would have been classified as disabled already before the A.D.A. The numbers indicate that the decline in employment for adults with minor disabilities was only 3.4%, from 88% to 85%, whereas the decline in employment for adults with severe disabilities was 32.7%, from 49% to 33%. The decline in employment was almost ten times as great for adults with severe disabilities than it was for adults with minor disabilities. The economists Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist, a Nobel laureate, wrote that the A.D.A. was probably the cause of significant loss of employment for disabled men aged 21 to 58 and for disabled women aged 21 to 39.[60]

In the past, the worst part of unemployment was lack of income. Without a job, people could not purchase the things they needed to survive. That is no longer the case in the United States. If a disabled person does not work, the government will provide all that is needed to survive. If a disabled human being were less than human, equal to a cow, then unemployment would no longer be much of a problem. If, however, a disabled person is fully human, which I believe to be consistent with Christianity, then we must reject the notion that providing just enough to keep the person alive is enough. Preventing someone from working productively can ruin a person’s life. “Social cohesion, cooperation, mutual respect, and above-all, self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship – all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when the ‘psychological’ structures are gravely damaged.  A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness.”[61]

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs[62] is perhaps the most widely accepted model of what a human person needs to be happy. Not all agree about the details, but most who have thought about these matters agree with Maslow that the fundamental needs of a beast are necessary for survival, but for human happiness more spiritual needs must be satisfied. The lowest level of needs, which can be provided for by government hand-outs, are physiological needs such as food. The next higher level are needs related to safety and security. Employment is on this level, because if survival depends on receiving from the government, then there is little security since the government changes with each election.[63] The next higher level is love and belonging, which involve family and friendship. Everybody is born into a family, but if an adult never marries, then there is something lacking to family because the person will forever occupy the role of a child even though old enough to occupy the role of parent. Marriage and parenthood are very expensive, and the amounts that disabled people receive from the government are not enough to pay the expenses of marriage and family. Long-term unemployment, therefore, prevents people from having families. Friendship, also, can be impeded if a person has never been employed. Adult friendship, unlike the friendships between children, requires respect. Respect must be earned. It is hard to imagine how adults who never work can earn respect. The highest two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy are self-esteem and self-actualization. The precise distinction between these two highest levels is not obvious, but for this article that is unimportant, because work is necessary for both self-esteem and self-actualization. “Labor gives workers a sense of their own value.”[64] To simplify matters, we may say that the top two levels involve achieving some purpose. To be truly, fully, perfectly happy, a human being must achieve some purpose. Most adults achieve the purpose of their lives by working productively. Either the work itself fulfills their purpose in life, or the way they spend the money they earn fulfills their purpose in life.

The second part of this article began with a mistake that Aristotle made. This fourth part ends with something that Aristotle got right. Throughout his many writings, Aristotle expresses his strong belief that everything has a purpose. This is most important in his book The Nicomachean Ethics in which he writes that a mature adult human person can only be happy by achieving the purpose of life.[65] Aristotle thus said what Maslow said over two thousand years before Maslow said it. Both Aristotle and Maslow would agree that a law such as the A.D.A. which prevents adults from obtaining employment harms them a great deal even if the government provides everything needed to survive.

CONCLUSION

In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote that sickly and genetically handicapped people should voluntarily choose to adopt and raise strong, healthy orphans, rather than procreating, and they should be honored for making that choice. “It is not a disgrace but only a regrettable misfortune to be sick and weakly, but . . . it is a crime and therefore at the same time a disgrace to dishonor this misfortune by one’s egoism by burdening it again upon an innocent being; that in the face of this it gives proof of a nobility of the highest mind and of most admirable humaneness if the innocently sick, by renouncing his own child, gives his love and tenderness to an unknown, poor young descendant of his nationality, whose health promises that one day he will become a vigorous member of a powerful community.”[66]

History showed that Hitler was insincere; when the time came, he did not allow handicapped adults to adopt orphans, and he did not honor them; he murdered them. “Victor Brack, a friend of Himmler, the organizer and manager of the euthanasia program in Germany, had perfectly succeeded in making more than two hundred thousand sick and handicapped people in hospitals and institutions disappear . . . from retirement homes also, since this man, who had killed his wife with his own hands ‘for the good of humanity,’ had old veterans wounded in World War I put to death. The Reich reused their beds, saved money on their pensions, and closed forever their useless mouths.”[67]

Quoting Hitler in no way manifests agreement with him; his words are included here just to show the complexity of the issues and warn against wolves in sheep’s clothing, which on this issue would be those who, like Hitler, speak nice words but make government policies that gravely harm people. Rather than practicing an emotional altruism motivated by pernicious egalitarianism, we should mitigate problems by promoting free-market capitalism, treating adults as adults, and fighting against government programs that harm people.

Satan can quote Scripture just like Hitler could say nice words.[68] All people of good will, especially but not exclusively Christians, should eschew their simple solutions to complex problems. Protecting some poor people from foolishly borrowing too much and then finding themselves unable to pay the interest, sending aid to developing countries, and making laws to help disabled people live better might seem charitable, and thus perfectly consistent with Christianity, but when understood rightly, we know that all three of these harm those whom they are supposed to help, so true love for poor people, people in developing nations, and disabled people should cause us to eschew such things. “Economists’ theories, especially those concerning the relationship between the government and the economy, are adaptively successful for reasons other than truth.”[69] Some economic practices continue not because they are good but because they have been adapted to fulfill some purpose. This article has shown that some economic practices harm the poor whom they claim to help, but because they make Church leaders and wealthy people feel good without costing them any great sacrifice, they are done anyway (or were done in the past).

Endnotes

Source: https://libertarianchristians.com/2024/09/22/three-ways-economics-teaches-christians-to-follow-the-spirit-not-the-letter-because-loving-others-is-not-simple/