Poor Richard's Principle
Wuthnow, Robert
Getting & spending Poor Richard's Principle Recovering the American Dream through the Moral Dimension of Work, Business, and Money Robert Wuthnow Princeton University Press, $24.95,426...
...Our patterns of consumption are determined by the range of commodities available in a capitalist economy for someone at our level of income...
...These two modes of discourse, Wuthnow writes, are still widely shared and are "among the most viable alternatives" to purely economistic thinking in American life...
...Catholic social teachings start with a search for the common good, with the expectation that, since the dignity of the human person is realized in community with others, a better society will produce better persons...
...The boundaries that define one's patterns of frugality or splurging are the fingerprint of one's personality...
...Utilizing a survey of a national sample of 2,000 Americans, supplemented by 200 in-depth, qualitative interviews, Wuthnow shows us how we actually do look at economic life, and on this basis builds a normative vision of how we ought to see it...
...But as long as one gains and spends one's money legally and without directly hurtling anyone, Americans think it is no one else's business how one etches the patterns of one's personality-because what freedom is about is choosing what you want to be...
...They are less concerned about how much you or I individually give to charity than about whether our social institutions enable most people to participate in the economy to the degree that they would not need any private charity...
...In one of his most interesting chapters, Wuthnow discusses the American taboo against talking about money...
...For example, our choices of how and where to work are determined by the demands of corporations and the dynamics of the market...
...Indeed, "people in our society seem capable of terrorizing themselves with deep-seated financial worries, no matter how much money they have...
...Particularly vexing is the choice people must increasingly make between putting more energy into their work or into caring for their families and loved ones...
...A job is meaningful because it has been chosen out of a variety of options and because doing the job entails the regular exercise of choice...
...According to Wuthnow, most Americans would agree that economic life is not ultimately about making money but about realizing human values...
...Changes in the economy make the choices presented to us more and more complex and even painful...
...The Catholic bishops start from a different perspective: from the perspective of the economy as a whole...
...Building upon either the ascetic or expressive mode of discourse would, however, yield a rather different perspective on the economy than that in the Catholic bishops' pastoral letter...
...how do people participate in it...
...In general, the value most sought after through the use of money is freedom, and freedom is defined, once again, in terms of the ability to choose among a variety of options...
...However, as Wuthnow points out, in American culture the horizons of freedom are much more limited than people at first assume...
...To resort to a metaphor that Wuthnow uses for describing how people rely on culture to make sense of things, this is a "ragbag" of a book: a somewhat jumbled, eclectic collection of theories and data...
...According to Wuthnow's interpretation of his interviews, money is not seen as an end in itself...
...This tradition challenges individuals to restrain their getting and spending in the name of certain objective (but in this day and age, flexibly interpreted) moral principles: for instance, don't be greedy, earn the respect of your community, be honest...
...Should I demonstrate my frugality by buying that cheap but functional car...
...Following is my attempt to trace the key threads...
...As the imperatives of the economy come to seem more and more unavoidable we are under greater pressure to make tradeoffs between work and family...
...Robert Wuthnow's new book does the same, but with less eloquence and from a somewhat different perspective...
...In the end Wuthnow's book is a very Protestant approach to economic morality, an important contribution to an ecumenical dialogue in which Catholics could contribute best by speaking clearly and strongly in their distinctive voice.heir distinctive voice...
...They define their basic values through how they spend their money, but these values are seen as private, not for public discussion...
...They ask: what does the economy do for and to people...
...Nonetheless, American culture has kept alive remnants of certain moral traditions that undergird the discourse about how to use money...
...The problem is, though, that Americans are unwilling to talk publicly about what money actually is for...
...And for Americans, those choices must be made in private, without any public consensus about how or what to choose...
...Both ascetic and expressive moralism start from the individual...
...Catholic bishops eloquently reminded us of the moral context for economic life...
...They are worried that the pressures of the market present some people with impossible choices between struggling to keep their job and paying adequate attention to their family...
...But there is no substantive agreement on the proper content of these choices...
...One is "ascetic moralism," derived from the Puritans, and exemplified in such self-disciplined, well-balanced entrepreneurs as Benjamin Franklin ("Poor Richard's Principle...
...Richard Nadsen In their 1986 economic pas- toral letter, Economic Justice for All, the U.S...
...Another tradition, "expressive moralism," is derived from such nineteenth-century thinkers such as Thoreau, Emerson, and Henry Ward Beecher, and uses the feeling of personal satisfaction as the standard for economic conduct: don't try to make more money if it makes you feel too much stress or robs you of a satisfying family life...
...Each speaks to the question of how individuals should look at their jobs and use their money...
...When people tell the stories of their working lives, it is a story of reaching for freedom, defined in terms of variety and choice...
...The bishops are concerned that the economy as a whole makes it necessary for some people to ponder whether to splurge or to save while others have barely enough to survive...
...Even though work is not done primarily for the money, most Americans say that money is extremely important to them, and even the affluent usually say they wish they had more money...
...Work is good not because of the pay, but because of the variety and choice it provides...
...Wuthnow argues that religious institutions should draw upon and develop these modes of discourse so that the churches can speak in clearer and more persuasive ways about the moral goals of work and money...
...They want a society-wide "preferential option for the poor...
...The more money you have, the more choices you have...
...The bishops told us how we should look at the economy...
...Getting & spending Poor Richard's Principle Recovering the American Dream through the Moral Dimension of Work, Business, and Money Robert Wuthnow Princeton University Press, $24.95,426 pp...
...Americans are much more willing to talk candidly about their sex lives than about how much money they make and exactly how they make use of it...
...The bishops are not primarily concerned with providing guidance to help you or me decide whether to save or splurge when buying a new car, or even with how to balance work and family life, or how much of our income to give to charity...
...Even apparently dull jobs are given meaning because they give the worker variety-"every day is a little different"-and people feel successful insofar as they have attained a position or career that provides more variety than other jobs to which they could have been consigned...
...People do not work to get rich but to "give a legitimate account of themselves...
...or should I express my sense of adventure by splurging on that fancy model...
...Ascetic and expressive moralism start with a search for the individual good with the expectation that good individuals will lead to a good society...
...It could have benefited from more shaping and stitching, and I must confess that I sometimes found the argument difficult to follow...
Vol. 123 • December 1996 • No. 22
