of Trade and Justice

Records show that the giant and ground-breaking office supply company Staples added tens of thousands of jobs during its relationship with Bain Capital, the venture capital concern of which Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now so famously associated.  He is, justifiably, proud of that result.

Which is entirely beside the point.

By which I mean to say, that it is not beside the point as a measure of either Mr. Romney’s capabilities as a capital manager nor of the Staples enterprise as a business model, but that it is entirely beside the point as a measure of capitalism as it is currently being practiced today.

For this is most certainly true: the addition of tens of thousands of jobs was neither the purpose of nor the measure of Bain Capital’s involvement with Staples.  They did not invest in the company to create jobs – they invested to increase their own wealth.  Period.  Whether Staples had grown and employed more people or not would have made no difference – they would have returned, and probably amply, on their investment, as they did in so many other similar instances.  Dade Behring medical testing returned more than 4 times an $85 million dollar investment but went bankrupt in a decade.  Stage Stores returned $100 million on a $5 million investment, as did American Pad and Paper.  Both went bankrupt, as did many others, but Bain still profited, and mightily at that. 

That is the point.

Capitalism, for all of what it may be in theory or hope, is in its current expression mostly the corrupt and greedy practice of seeking the gain of personal wealth without the burden of adding any value to the larger community.  The stock market is no longer a place to build a retirement nest egg or save for a child’s education, it is a giant casino where loathsome practices like short-selling are no longer cheating, but normative.  Corporations create stock dividends instead of goods and services that elevate our common standard of living, their executives are not properly rewarded for their hard work but blindly paid off with gluttonous compensation packages whether they succeed or fail.  Banks are not vaults of safety, protecting the hard earned savings of laborers or supporters of individuals, families and small businessmen pursuing their dreams, but corporate con men, packing their bad decisions for carefree marketplace swap meets. 

Which is only part of the point, too. 

This is not news.  For all of our idealistic pretension of freedom and opportunity and thrift and the American way, we have always known this about the marketplace.  No, it is not merely the system which is to blame, it is our willingness to unleash the beast in hopes that it will consume our enemies and, by some miraculous and impossible fate, bring in the ship of our own good fortune.  Did not Dr. Luther warn us centuries ago? 

“Among themselves the merchants have a common rule which is their chief maxim and the basis of all their sharp practices, where they say: ‘I may sell my goods as dear as I can.’ They think this is their right. Thus occasion is given for avarice, and every window and door to hell is opened.”   On Trade and Usury (LW 45:246)

In the end, it is not Capitalism that must be fettered, but us, not business that must be regulated, but us, not trade that must be ordered, but me.  Perhaps that is why we resist it so, because we see, however dimly, in the worst practices of modern business our own greed and corruption.  Capitalism is as it is because we are as we are.  We dare not confess its depravity aloud, because if it is wrong there, then it must be wrong in me, too. 

But perhaps, just perhaps, if we could bring ourselves to the hard choice, if we could find the courage to chain that great beast and tame it and bring it under yoke and turn its power to the betterment of all and not just the enrichment of a few, then we might in fact discover the possibility of realizing God’s vision of justice, even in the system of Capitalism itself.  For what the great Reformer spoke in the negative, we might see in the positive:

“Selling ought not to be an act that is entirely within your own power and discretion, without law or limit, as though you were a god and beholden to no one. Because your selling is an act performed toward your neighbor, it should rather be so governed by law and conscience that you do it without harm and injury to him.” Luther, Martin, On Trade and Usury (LW 45:248)

Perhaps never, at least on this side of the Kingdom, will we actually create a world where what is good and right and just permeate our whole life, spiritual and economic and political.  But perhaps, if we were wise enough and humble enough and brave enough, we could come closer.

Which, I think, is actually the point. 

Envy

Mitt Romney thinks I am jealous of him. 

He’s right.

I’d like to be able to fire service companies that don’t deliver according to my standards.  I’d like to be able to fire my insurance company if they won’t pay for a procedure or test I’d like to have done or for meds I’d like to have.  I can’t.  My insurance plan came with my job, chosen for me by someone else who decided what I could afford and what I could not.  I have no real say, and I surely can’t afford to go out and buy insurance on my own, affordable care act or no. 

Not that I’d get insurance from another company anyway, what with the whole pre-existing condition and all.  And it probably wouldn’t be much cheaper either.

I’d like to change a lot of things in my life.  I’d like to pay less for groceries, but commodity traders and other assorted corporate forces keep driving prices upward because they can.  I’d like to not go bankrupt sending my children to college, in fact, I’d like to be sending them to better colleges, but I can’t.  Of course, Mitt and his friends keep telling me that college is a privilege, not a right, and not everyone should get to go there after all. 

Mitt’s right.  I’m extremely jealous of him and of lots of other people who live in a world where they can get what they want and do what they want all the time. 

The question is whether or not that’s a good thing.

I understand perfectly well that it is the nature of a free society that some people will always have more than others – more money, more power, more control.  I get that, and at some level, I’m okay with it.  People are entitled to the fruits of their labors. 

But when does inequality stop becoming an incentive for aspiration and become a barrier to justice?  For that’s the real problem – not that I am jealous of Mitt Romney, who can run for political office now because he doesn’t have to worry about paying his mortgage while I can’t because I do, but that I have absolutely no opportunity to ever reach such a place in my life, nor do the other ninety-nine percent of people like me, and especially the many people even worse-off than I am.  The issue is not that some of us are richer than others, but that the benefits of wealth – success, power, control – have become the sole property of a very few, consolidated, restricted, secure behind gated communities and obscure tax loopholes. 

It’s not that I’m jealous that you got yours, Mitt.  It’s that you’ve got mine now, too.  And in this season of being told what is destroying America, let us clearly speak this one undeniable truth: as we watch old totalitarian regimes all over the world collapse because the many who were kept from power and wealth could take it no longer, let us not fail to observe the same log in our own eye.  Wealth and prosperity are not the same things.  Separating our society into those who have much and those who have some is not the same as separating it into those who have all and those who have none.

Do not scorn my jealousy, Mr. Romney.  If you want to lead this country, fix it.    

The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. Isaiah 3:14-15