"The sin of inflicting poverty" -- by Andrew Langan

I recently read an article about how the Vatican, in order to shore up the lagging sacrament of confession, was considering adding seven new deadly sins to the boring, outdated old ones (like, seriously priest-dudes, what does does “avarice” even mean?). Skimming the list, a cynic might take the opportunity to exercise the muscles that make one’s eyes roll (are all drugs–including tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol–verboten now, or just the reeeeeally evil ones like marijuana and Adderall?), and as a dedicated cynic (so “morally debatable” experiments are no longer, um, debatable?) this was my first reaction. (Does this 20-inch golden chalice count as “excessive wealth”, your holiness?) But then I noticed on something that made me take this project a little more seriously. Included in the list of new mortal sins was this one: “inflicting poverty”.

Now, even this initially elicited my scorn. Besides your garden variety mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash-type caricatures, the only instance of “inflicting poverty” I could think of was, perhaps, the collectivization of Ukrainian farms, and that’s not really a pressing theological concern for those of us who aren’t Soviet premiers. But the more I thought about what it might mean to “inflict poverty”, the more I thought back to this article –one that I’ve been intending to blog about here for some time–and to the time-worn maxim that ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions’.

The article linked above describes the reaction of Boston’s mayor, Thomas Menino, to a decision in January by a Massachusetts regulatory board to allow a major drug store chain to open up “MinuteClinics” in their stores where registered nurses or nurse practitioners would see patients on a walk-in basis to give basic preventative care and treat simple medical problems like poison ivy and colds.

According to the article, “the mayor said the decision yesterday by the state Public Health Council "jeopardizes patient safety. Limited service medical clinics run by merchants in for-profits corporations will seriously compromise quality of care and hygiene. Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong." Menino called on the city's Public Health Commission, which meets this afternoon, to "look closely at limited service medical clinics and see how we can ensure that all healthcare facilities in Boston offer a comprehensive approach to health and wellness."”

The MinuteClinics concept (one might even go so far as to call it a “business model”) seems to me to be a clever one. Because of a variety of break-downs in the proper functioning of the American market for health care (we can talk about what those are another time), poor people have a difficult time obtaining medical services. Seeing this, the people behind the MinuteClinics thought up a way to provide a work-around. The potential here is that the poor could get cheap, convenient, not-too-bad medical care in the MinuteClinic world, whereas in current situation, they’re faced with being shut out from expensive, inconvenient, really-good medical care. Is that trade-off worth it? If the MinuteClinics idea is successful, it would suggest that its customers think so. And isn’t some health care better than none?

So what’s Menino’s beef? From my standpoint as a classical liberal, it’s easy to write him off as a knee-jerk leftist with a deep antipathy to commercial exchange and a congenital distrust of any company with more than three outlets. (I won’t say that wasn’t my first reaction.) But as a Christian and as a human being, I must realize that he means what he says with all sincerity, and probably with the best of intentions (though one never knows with a politician). And I see his point. We have the technology and the knowledge to perform medical miracles. If we had America’s GDP to spend on it, we could give every sick person in the country a bastion of advanced tests in pristine, well-staffed hospitals and still have big piles of money left over. Surely we can, at the very least, “ensure that all healthcare facilities in Boston offer a comprehensive approach to health and wellness”?

This is where the sin part comes in.

It’s tempting for us as well-to-do, well-intentioned Americans to think that we can solve all other peoples’ problems through our generosity. It’s tempting to think that, if only our favorite politician can get his or her really really important bill through Congress [without too many amendments or earmarks attached, of course], no one in America will ever have to worry about health care again. It’s tempting to think that, if only we can convince people to “buy American”, the nation’s textile mills and auto plants will roar back to life and people will move back to the Rust Belt. It’s tempting to think that, if only we give a really impassioned presentation during the coffee hour on Sunday, we can raise enough money that our adopted village in Malaysia won’t have to open a factory, that they’ll be able to keep practicing their traditional ways, and all their kids will be able to go to college. It’s tempting to think those things, but it’s virtually always incorrect, and it’s arrogant. And it’s sinful: it inflicts poverty.

Although we may have the best of intentions, anytime we boycott a company that pays its overseas workers less than what we think they should make or use our political power to preempt a discount chain-store clinic from offering so-so medical care, we’re inflicting poverty. We may well be liberating those foreign workers from dirty, bad-paying jobs, but unless we’ve got some great new money-making idea, we’re liberating them right into dirtier, worse-paying jobs. (Maybe that’s why the New York Times’ Nick Kristof discovered that the workers he spoke to in the developing world were often thrilled to get dirty, bad-paying jobs that few if any Americans would want.) And until the Congress can agree on an efficient, timely, politically satisfying solution to the health care problem, the poor in Boston, sadly, have either MinuteClinic basic care, or none at all. However much these half-measures may offend our aesthetic sensibilities, they’re bridging a gap. To deny the poor access to even these half-measures is to inflict poverty.

So looking back, I can appreciate the value in enumerating at least one of these new sins the Vatican has marked out for us. For what it’s worth, I think the old list of sins dovetails pretty well with the new: it’s prideful for me to fancy that my personal charity should be what saves the world, and greedy to want things done my way, to name just a couple. And it’s darn near blasphemous to think that God can’t bring good results out of an apparently bad situation without my good intentions directing the whole process. I’d just muck it up, anyway, and probably inflict some poverty, along the way.

Andrew Langan is an economist living in Arlington, Virginia. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006, and works in Washington, DC.

Economics and Faith

by Andrew Langan

I'm feeling a deep sense of trepidation at joining this team of bloggers. I've never travelled to the developing world. I have no real hands-on experience with the human tragedies at which the Millennium Development Goals aim. As a result, any experiences I relate will seem mundane in comparison to those of my colleagues, and any policy ideas I advocate will be necessarily modest. Furthermore, my own angle on the issues this blog addresses will require slightly more of an explanation than the others.

I never expected to become an economist. But almost from the moment I cracked the first textbook, I could tell it offered a revolutionary way of thinking about the world and understanding individuals' actions, and through those things a powerful set of tools for bringing about changes like those set forth in the Millennium Development Goals.

In addition to the analytical framework, economics can also be a world-view, a philosophy on life. Economics as a world-view shares many of its core values with our Christian faith. It applies those values, however, in ways that sometimes lead to unconventional conclusions about the world and how we ought to act to accomplish our goals. Before I discuss how I think economics can help make the world a better place, I'd like describe some of those values and note where they overlap with our values as people of faith.

The first thing that strikes me about economics as a world-view is its visceral attachment to human equality and individuality. This is demonstrated partly in the phenomenon that economics analyze - "the market". Like the Church, the market is not a monolithic, top-down organization. Like the church, the market is the natural result of people's coming together for a shared purpose. It's an unplanned, organic, and yet finely concerted network of individuals, each with their own abilities, needs, and desires.

Further displaying economists' attachment to individuality is their handling of human differences. When we find the actions of groups or individuals perplexing, economists seek explanations in those people's environment, rather than in some features of the people themselves. As much as possible, we try to assume away the complex interactions of culture, moral fiber, and personality quirks, and look at the external pressures acting on people. Though removing the focus from the individual in this way may seem dehumanizing at first glance, in reality it is anything but. It is instead a two-fold act of humility. First, it is an admission that each person and group is so complex that it would be the height of presumption for an economic researcher to think they could account for all of personality's influence on decision-making. Second, it is a realization that, by and large, people share the same broad goals and values -- most everyone loves their family and friends, and wants to enjoy their life in whatever way moves them. Bearing these two facts in mind helps economists avoid what psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error, and also, I find, helps me as a Christian to be less judgmental and more charitably inclined toward my neighbor.

It reminds me simultaneously that we are all unique children of God, but that we all share some basic, if not genuinely universal human traits.

The issue I mentioned before -- about "enjoying life in whatever way moves you" -- is another important point of intersection between faith and economics. People often accuse economists of being more than a little heartless: of knowing "the price of everything and the value of nothing." Nothing could be further from the truth. Economics is a science that really truly gets that there's more to life than money. That in fact, there's even more to life than happiness. Economists view individuals as decision makers aiming to maximize their own "utility." This word is antiseptic and technical, but only because it must encompass every positive aspect of the human experience.

People sometimes mistranslate utility from econ-jargon to English as "happiness," which makes it seem as though economists view people as vapid, consumption-crazed herd animals. A much closer, though still insufficient, English translation of utility would be "satisfaction." Many things bring utility besides the Roman poet Juvenal's bread and circuses. Utility comes from loving relationships, from a sense of belonging, from moving experiences, from bringing true joy to others, from the knowledge that you've done the right thing even though it was painful and difficult -- the list goes on and on. The Church on earth increases peoples' utility in many, many ways, and points us to what we Christians believe are newer, better, more important sources of utility -- drawing closer to our neighbors and to God. Economics appreciates the centrality of all kinds of utility in individual and communal life. It respects the manifold ways in which people pursue their own and others' utility. And though all sciences are agnostic with regard to metaphysical questions about God, economics honors the church, along with many other institutions, as a source -- and an expression -- of deep, mysterious, utility-giving aspects of the human experience.

Finally, economics is fundamentally a study of human decision-making. As such, it holds human will -- the freedom to choose one's own path -- in high regard. Just as a psychiatrist refrains from passing judgment on a patient's potentially scandalous thoughts, economists as scientists have little interest in assessing the moral righteousness of other peoples' choices. Nor do we seek to play Monday-morning quarterback. Instead we ask why they act like they do. What incentives do they face? What relevant information do they have about the decision? What is their range of realistic options? What outcomes will result from those options, and if more than one outcome is possible, what is the likelihood of each? What values do people bring to the table to judge the preferability of each outcome?

This value-neutral analysis of the others' choices ties together economists' respect for each individual's quest for their own utility and the exhortation to "judge not, lest ye be judged." Just as a person's choices about what church (if any) to attend are ultimately between them and God, so are their decisions about how to spend their money, where to shop, and under what conditions they're willing to work.

Now, we can legitimately try to alter others' decision-making in a number of ways. We can provide them with more information if we think they're ill-informed. We can try to convince them that making a different choice or adopting a different set of preferences will give bring them higher utility. We can, out of our charitable care for them, try to increase their range of options at our own expense. But most economists would agree that in all cases, unless some objective harm is being done to parties not privy to the decision, the final choice must rest with the individual and their conscience.

This is, as it happens, an almost perfect description of how religious life works in our United States. How each religion "competes for souls," one might say. And as a result, our nation has one of the -- if not the -- most vibrant, varied religious environments in the world. We have a multitude of sects and denominations, each person, rich or poor, is free to determine if, how, and how intensely they will be involved in spiritual life. There is even less inter-denominational strife here than in other liberal democracies, not to mention theocracies like Iran or a state with an official religion like Saudi Arabia and Burma (these last being the religious equivalent of a Soviet planned economy). This vibrance and amicable interfaith environment results from having a "market for religion" which operates on an economist-like respect for the opinions and decisions of others.

Certainly, economics is not the only valid world-view. Indeed, it would be against the spirit of that world-view to say so! But it is my deeply held belief as a student of economics and as a person of faith that it is an extremely useful way of thinking about others' actions and how I can influence them. Thinking about the world economically helps illuminate what kind of things we can do to help achieve aims like the Millennium Development Goals and, just as importantly, how we can go about doing them most effectively. I see this, in addition to the intrinsic value of the economic world-view, as the primary contribution economics can make to bringing about a world where the tragedy of Baby Jean's story will be only a sad memory, never to be repeated.

Andrew Langan is an economist living in Arlington, Virginia. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006, and works in Washington, DC.