Economic Justice: What Should We Demand?

Third Quarter 2004

Fifth in a Series on Poverty, Wealth, and Globalization

by James W. Skillen

A presidential election campaign does not offer the best opportunity to learn how government should fulfill its responsibility for the economy. The rhetoric is shallow, the sound bites too brief. We know President Bush wants tax cuts so that business can flourish with minimum drag on profit-making, leading to more jobs and more goods to consume so the economy can grow. But while cutting taxes, the president has supported considerable growth in federal spending, leading to huge federal deficits that will become an increasing drag on the economy.

Senator John Kerry now sounds more concerned than President Bush about budget deficits, but economically conservative voters will have trouble believing that a Democrat wouldn't increase federal spending even more than Bush has done. Kerry wants jobs for those who don't have them, jobs that he says are being "outsourced—sent overseas—or are being lost because of Bush's economic policies. Kerry thinks government should do something more than just cut taxes to help create jobs. What that is, and how it will be funded is not clear.

Bush advocates free trade, but hasn't hesitated to violate free-trade principles to try to make American farmers and steel workers happy. Kerry is not opposed to free trade but wants to take more social and environmental factors into account, both domestically and internationally, in making trade decisions.

What does any of this have to do with economic justice? Is government's primary job simply to try to promote economic growth? Are there not other dimensions to economic justice than a growing economy? What good, for example, are sharper tax cuts if the federal debt is growing? What good are free trade and growing consumption at home if they produce higher trade deficits and greater American dependence on foreign investment? As one Wall Street Journal news report (1/15/04) explained, "Two decades ago, Americans sent more money abroad than foreigners invested here. But since then, the U.S. has essentially been living beyond its means, consuming more than it makes, investing more than it saves by borrowing from abroad." And what about the growing distance between the rich and the poor, both in this country and around the world? What about the long-term sustainability of our economy in relation to globalization, in relation to environmental limitations, and in relation to legal and illegal immigration?

It is probably too much to ask of our presidential and congressional candidates to explain how they would deal with all of these factors together, in relation to one another. But at the same time, it is tragic to think that this is too much to ask of them. Are they not the ones who are responsible for setting federal budgets; approving federal expenditures; establishing tax rates; balancing (or not balancing) budgets; determining immigration and environmental policies; legalizing incentives for business investments and for savings or indebtedness on the part of ordinary citizens; and looking to the future stability of Social Security and health care? Is it really too much to ask how all of these should hang together in a just way?

Part of the uncertainty of voters today about the future of the economy is that they have no assurance that justice will be done, that there will be any coherence or continuity on the part of the federal government's action. Even to ask for the articulation of principles to guide the long-term health and justice of the economy sounds silly to many in our fractured, politicized republic.

Our Conservative/Liberal Problem

One reason why it is difficult to get answers to questions about economic justice is because our kind of economy and political system do not lead us to ask the right questions. Americans generally believe that individuals should be free and that government should protect life and property, not interfere with market freedom. From that point of view, "justice" for the economy simply means restraining government interference. Anything that sounds like the minimizing of government—lower taxes, fewer regulations—supposedly makes individuals more free.

But this keeps us from noticing how crucial government is even for the maintenance of market freedom. The market, after all, is part of the public realm because government controls the money supply, determines the tax rates, regulates stock markets, enforces laws to prohibit monopolies, and establishes and enforces dozens of other rules and regulations that make possible an open and free market. Without such rules and enforcements there would be no market. Minimizing government, consequently, may do the opposite of making people free.

Economic justice, furthermore, has to do with more than the structure and rules of the market. If, in fact, international free trade is a positive thing for our economy, then we know that if America loses manufacturing jobs, its hope for future employment and economic growth depends on the education of its citizens and on innovations in products and technology. Those factors depend in turn on government's education policies and its investment in major scientific and technological research. Government, in other words, has never simply left the market alone. And therefore, we are forced again to ask, When does government act justly in making all the decisions it makes about the economy.

The problem in trying to understand what government ought to do in all of these non-economic areas of life is that the American tradition of market freedom and minimal government has no principles of justice to guide government's decision making in these areas. Since government is to be kept to a minimum, then any action by government to try to improve society or the economy has to be justified on pragmatic grounds. This means demonstrating that the good to be done justifies the cost and makes a significant number of Americans happier and more free. Yet pragmatism of this kind leads not to a principled conception of public economic justice but simply to interest-group lobbying for government's support of one cause or another. Businesses lobby for tax cuts; labor unions lobby for trade restrictions. Sugar growers lobby for sugar subsidies; health insurance companies lobby for rules that favor them. Each interest group looks after its own interests, and public officials become interest-group brokers rather than independent public servants responsible for public justice and the common good.

This is why Kerry is able to get away with campaigning for the presidency without offering coherent answers to our questions. This is why Bush could campaign in 2000, promising to balance the budget and pay down the federal debt and then refuse to veto budget-busting bills sent to him by Congress. Since 2001, the federal debt "has ballooned from $5.7 trillion to $7.1 trillion. And annual non-defense discretionary spending has swollen from $319 billion to $433 billion" (David Baumann, "Accounting for the Deficit," National Journal 6/12/04). And Bush is now campaigning as the optimist about the economy.

What Does a Christian Perspective Contribute?

Among the contributions that a Christian approach to economic life can offer is one of situating economic activity and measurement in a larger context of human responsibility to God and neighbors. Creative, entrepreneurial activity belongs to human stewardship of God's creation, including human society. Organizing people together in companies and firms to produce and exchange goods can be a healthy human activity. From a Christian point of view, however, humans are not merely individual producers and consumers. An "economy" can never be isolated from the families, schools, governments, and nongovernment organizations of society. Government has its own, definite, God-given responsibility to do justice to human creatures in all of their relationships, and not only to try to promote economic growth.

To approach economic life from this point of view means recognizing the importance of freedom for market exchanges at the same time that we recognize the importance of laws that make for a just market and a just relation between economic activities and other human responsibilities. Government should not be totalitarian in trying to control economic life, but neither should government allow everything in society to be determined by what happens in the marketplace.

Among the places one might go to explore contemporary Christian thinking about the economy are three journals. The first and the oldest is the semiannual review published by the Association of Christian Economists, Faith & Economics (978-867-4421), which contains essays and book reviews from a variety of Christian perspectives. The second, about six years old, is the semi-annual journal Markets and Morality, published by the Acton Institute (800-345-2286). This journal also publishes essays and book reviews and reveals a distinctly libertarian point of view. The third journal, which was just inaugurated this year and deals with more than economic life is the Journal of Catholic Social Thought, published semiannually at Villanova University.

The value of these journals is that they explore questions of justice, morality, and stewardship that are not typically raised in political debates and by the marketplace decisions of our consumer culture. The limits of these journals, on the other hand, is the extent to which the essays and reviews simply defend capitalism or communitarian morality as expressions of a "Christian" economics. For example, both Markets and Morality and the first issue of the Journal of Catholic Social Thought indicate that they depend on Catholic social teaching, which emphasizes the dignity of the person, solidarity, social justice, subsidiarity, and the common good. Yet, just as in Protestant thought, these two journals manifest quite different interpretations of Catholic social teaching for economic life. The first is very much supportive of minimum-government capitalism; the second is much more in favor of government-assured economic and social justice.

All of this is to say that coming up with a "Christian" interpretation of economic justice cannot be done simply by tapping into the one big Christian tradition of economic thought and practice. There is no such tradition. There have been "Christian" socialists and Marxists just as there have been "Christian" capitalists and libertarians. If we wish to work, consume, do business, and vote in a Christian way, therefore, we will need to engage in the debates now taking place among Christians of different economic perspectives to understand the issues and the questions. Even more important for the long run, we must be willing to invest in the Christian educational nurturing of youngsters who will become the entrepreneurs, workers, and public officials shaping the economic life of the future.