The great American philosopher Woody Allen once said, “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
That is a good insight to remember on a day when tradition says we should reflect on what we have that is important to us and to give thanks for such blessings.
Money — and the goods and services that it can buy — is not a sufficient condition for a happy life or even a necessary one. But as Allen suggests, on the whole, life is easier when one has a substantial level of material well being than when one has little.
Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist whose bequest sends Americans to study in England each year, reportedly once told someone: “Remember that you are an Englishman, and have therefore won first prize in the lottery of life.”
Fast-forward to the 21st century, substitute “American” for “Englishman,” and you accurately describe contemporary conditions in the view of many around the globe.
The average American has a materially easier life than even upper class Britons a century ago. More importantly, we have more material wealth than 85 percent or so of other people on the globe.
People from countries around the world struggle to move to the United States, legally or illegally. Some are attracted to our liberty, some to our affluence or economic opportunity and some to our diversity and relative openness to people from other cultures. Many are drawn for all those reasons.
Other industrialized countries have material standards of living that are as high as that in the United States. Many of them have more equal income distributions and higher levels of transfer to poor people. If you travel to Japan, Australia, Canada or Western Europe, it is hard to argue that the citizens of those nations live deprived lives compared to ours.
Yet, we are not necessarily happy nor does material wealth remove all pain from people’s lives. Physical and mental health, together with relationships with family and friends, are important components of our happiness and sense of well being. We are particularly aware of this when our households have suffered — or been threatened by — illness or strife.
For some of us, the material well being of others also is important. Four centuries have passed since John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire of its self.” It is important not only that we have our needs and wants met, but also that other humans not suffer extreme necessity.
Such concern for others always has been hard for economists to handle, not because they think Donne — or other Christian, Jewish and Islamic writers who make the same argument – are necessarily wrong. It’s because such interdependent utility is hard to include in formal mathematical theorizing about how humans conduct their lives so as to maximize the satisfaction they get from life.
It is easier to assume that each person’s satisfaction depends on how his or her own needs are met directly and then add up the satisfaction of all individuals in a country to get some sort of aggregate “social welfare function.” The math gets sticky and outcomes indeterminate if you let everyone’s satisfaction depend on what happens to all others as well as what happens to self.
Some economists respond to the theoretical complications of humans caring about one another by assuming that such interdependence simply does not exist, that Donne and others who assert the same simply are wrong about human nature.
Non-economists need not worry here. It is those economists who clearly are wrong, and the average person who has concerns about justice is right. When we consider what we should be thankful for, we can consider the blessings we have personally as well as what U.S. and global society enjoy.
At the same time, Thanksgiving also is an appropriate time to reflect on the unmet needs of many fellow human beings. The Torah, Bible and Quran all warn of the danger of the complacency that comes with material wealth. Expressing thanks for what we have is also a good time to recommit ourselves to meeting the needs of others.
© 2003 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.