I notice that train travel is going up in cost. The reason given is that capital formation is needed. There is a distinction between capital repair (when things wear out) and capital formation, capital which increases the capacity of the railways to provide services.
Where there is new capital formation there will be new streams of revenue. The railways, instead of charging present customers more, should borrow the money from the banks, which, of course, should only lend where they see profitability, sharing the risk, uncertainty and profit of the outcome.
As a matter of fact, when capital needs replacement the new investment may well embody improvements, less fuel consumption for example. One needs to make a distinction then. The current price being charged for fares ought to cover capital repair. Capital improvement should be financed by ‘capitalists’, banks and any others prepared to share the ‘risk’.
Such a distinction might be described as notional. Something notional though can express an understanding; the understanding can be true; what is true expresses reality; reality grounds morality, responsibility and justice, which includes commutative justice.
The commuters who have ‘inelastic demand’ since they must get to work will find that their disposable income after paying for fares is reduced. So beyond injustice to passengers, the fare rise, in a marginal way, works against the recovery from the slump, since such recovery must envisage consumer demand being able to pay for what the economy can produce, a situation which requires not ‘a fall in inflation’ but a fall in prices across the board.
Commutative justice has to do with where a situation has changed. It is largely neglected by the modern state, but even on its utilitarian principles, is conveniently neglected. Suppose for example the tax threshold was £10,000 per annum. (It is less than that, I am ashamed to say) Suppose in a year prices go up by 10%. If my maths is correct, commutative justice would automatically raise the threshold for tax to £11,000 per annum. Not to respect such an obligation makes the State, even the utilitarian State into a robber baron, St Augustine’s phrase, I think. Commutative justice is a notion that needs activating in a thousand dormant, cobwebby and corrupt corners of our Constitution, flowing in with a power similar to the waters of Baptism.
I have been reading Robert Peston’s book ‘Who Runs Britain’. There are these mega blighters who operate more in billions than millions (note, American billions). They sometimes might bring about an improvement in the performance of a firm but sometimes not, it seems. I applaud improvements of course. But these blighters who cream off millions, according to Peston, are reducing pensions. The State too has been robbing pensions, and the Conservatives were guilty of this, preparing the way for Labour. The huge accumulations for pensions attract the eyes not just of personal profiteers but of the Robber Barons who rule us.
There is the business of rationalisation. The Profiteers like to explain how they are benefitting humanity. The Robber Barons need hardly justify themselves so long as they win the next election. Rationalisations abound. The Pope reminds us, ‘it is good to have a job’, but not any job surely. When rationalisations abound, Lonergan says, ‘what can clear the air but faith’. It is what we give that matters, not what we receive. ‘Where hatred sees only evil love reveals values. At once it commands commitment and joyfully carries it out.’ (Third Collection, 106)
Monday, 2 February 2009
How to Base Historical Consciousness
From the nursery, by learning a language and attending to what people say, we move into a world mediated by meaning and motivated by value. But are the meanings true and are the values worthy of man?
So the history master is very keen on Agincourt, 1415, and on the excellence of the archers, and the message gets across that war is a good thing, especially if at the cost of 200 lives you slaughter 5000 Frenchmen. But from a Christian perspective this is a lamentable affray between Christian and Christian. The values being inculcated are not sound.
What then are sound values, and how does one find them? If one did find them would they mean the emasculation of man, so that never would he draw the longbow or pull the trigger? In the quest for genuine values ones personal authenticity is at stake. One finds, for example, over the use of force there is a considerable clash of position, ‘a dialectic’, and that the preparedness to use nuclear weapons on cities or dum-dum (explosive) bullets against terrorists means that our establishment has departed from just war theory and from human developments. A clash of values poses problems for conduct. Confucius said, ‘if you disagree with the government, change your country’. I sense that today that advice is not possible for many. In ones living, though, one has to consistently show forth the values one has come to recognise as vital.
Man’s own self, his sense of what he ought to care about, is caught up in his understanding of the world. That world might be cosmological (Babylonian, Ptolemaic, Evolutionary) but a considerable complexity gets added in to ones understanding of the world when one realises that the world of man is historical as well as cosmological. The self too gets correspondingly complex especially as our first formation in the way of meanings and values comes from parents and teachers who themselves are considerably shaped up by history. We take our first identity as well as our name from our background.
As a man leaves his parents and joins himself to his wife so a young person, whether consciously or not, faces a considerable challenge in finding their own way in the wide world. This may result in a considerable falling out and falling silent going on with parents when children are in their late teens. The resources for this great journey may be very limited. There is what they are studying which may be very mechano-morphic. There is the peer group which may be equally lost. In the process of achievement of independence a great deal in the way of faith and morals may be lost.
In a sort of clarification by contrast, I find myself thinking about the Franks who fearless in battle, combined the faith with their martial courage and did a great deal to promote Western Christendom, an achievement symbolised by the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor on Christmas Day 800AD. Gibbon ascribed the energy of the tribal people to their purity of morals. They got married without worrying about property conditions or earning capacity. They stayed faithful or the male was not able to attend the assemblies where things were decided. They had children and needed action to feed them. The fault they had was not being keen about manual labour! What one sees here is that the vital values informing the community are challenging and informing the individual at every stage.
It is worth noticing here the public nature of religion. It is not just what a person does with their privacy. It shapes up the people, whether they are feeling pious or not. Trollop’s Dr. Thorne is disgusted by the grace said at the Duke of Omnium’s table for most of the people aren’t paying any attention. What Dr. Thorne does not notice is that those present are being reminded that they are Christian, despite their egoistic concerns.
Emile Durkheim, the sociologist, thinks that man cannot really avoid religion which reinforces the basic commitments in a society. But perhaps today one moves from home where there are commitments to school where there are commitments into a sort of unsocial world of higher studies, and then perhaps to a rather narrow corporate world with its own ideology. So, perhaps, our adult life is marked with a relative ‘anomie’, a term derived from Greek, which Durkheim used to describe the individual sense of isolation which can drive a person to despair. What perhaps is happening is that corporate ideologies are taking over from religions and providing a somewhat limited meaning to human life, for so long as a person remains with the corporation. This looks like a sort of breakdown of wider society and therewith of religion.
If religion is so utterly related to society the problem of religious differences becomes problematic, for they would appear to indicate so many different societies living in the same terrain. Today the solution might be thought to have a sheerly secular state. What is required of members is spelt out by the dogmas of political correctness. There are realities to be dealt with and values to be espoused but they are consistently this worldly. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently declared that it would not be the end of the world if the Anglican Church were disestablished. It might though be the end of England or Britain feeling that it was a Christian country.
As the world one lives in gets broader, the religion that can express everything needs to get more catholic. Different elements need to enter the admix. I gather that when Vikings became Christian they still said prayers to Thor when they went to sea. In the course of time those prayers would need to be picked up and rewritten with theological orthodoxy. The old prayers were meeting an exigency of the human spirit, the danger of the sea, the need for protection. This exigency still needs to be met, so long as men go to sea in small boats. Similarly there may be ‘Anglican’ expressions of faith which would need incorporating in a wider unity. It is up to the Anglicans to express what they are. Similarly though there might be English Catholic insights of importance for the wider Church, perhaps the interdependence of laity and clergy.
As one recognises the power of historical consciousness I find myself fearful that values around the sanctity of life get eroded. We already see this with modern, mass destructive warfare, with abortion and in certain old Christian countries, Euthanasia. This could then be extended to certain undesirable types. Contraception and indeed permissiveness are related. If one is referring here to the ‘de-ontological Natural Law’ does one in fact recognise this law and that it is binding without also recognising God? If the whole of reality is just made up of bodies, from sub atomic particles through billiard balls to man – the corpuscular idea – then would there be any reason to recognise the disorder of homosexual acts? True heterosexuality is the norm for having children, but if one does not want children, is there any reason beyond aesthetics for denying physical expression to homosexual affection?
I recall Bishop Grant saying that people would not recognise the wrongness of abortion unless they were converted to God. I suspect that this is true of the de-ontological natural law in toto. Also it is helpful to notice that we don’t arrive in the world with a de-ontological theory: rather we are dealing here with a true theory which is historically conditioned. So it was Salamanca in the sixteenth century which gave us the now neglected rules about the ‘just war’.
Recognising ‘de-ontological values’ is a matter of recognising that God’s will is expressed in his marvellous design. Some churches have slipped here when it comes to contraception, so the matter needs to be more clearly put. It is important to note too that not all values are deontological, for some are revealed, the necessity of baptism for example or the indissolubility and sacramentality of marriage between Christians.
If Durkheim is right and religion is the cement of order in society then it would seem that where there is a very strong business culture there needs too to be a very strong religious culture. I recall Alsace, full of churches and palaces where Popes came from. Despite this history, the Church is relatively moribund compared with the business culture around the vines. I took a businessman out to lunch – he was a good Catholic, but had several colleagues around - so when I said grace I got the impression he was embarrassed.
So the history master is very keen on Agincourt, 1415, and on the excellence of the archers, and the message gets across that war is a good thing, especially if at the cost of 200 lives you slaughter 5000 Frenchmen. But from a Christian perspective this is a lamentable affray between Christian and Christian. The values being inculcated are not sound.
What then are sound values, and how does one find them? If one did find them would they mean the emasculation of man, so that never would he draw the longbow or pull the trigger? In the quest for genuine values ones personal authenticity is at stake. One finds, for example, over the use of force there is a considerable clash of position, ‘a dialectic’, and that the preparedness to use nuclear weapons on cities or dum-dum (explosive) bullets against terrorists means that our establishment has departed from just war theory and from human developments. A clash of values poses problems for conduct. Confucius said, ‘if you disagree with the government, change your country’. I sense that today that advice is not possible for many. In ones living, though, one has to consistently show forth the values one has come to recognise as vital.
Man’s own self, his sense of what he ought to care about, is caught up in his understanding of the world. That world might be cosmological (Babylonian, Ptolemaic, Evolutionary) but a considerable complexity gets added in to ones understanding of the world when one realises that the world of man is historical as well as cosmological. The self too gets correspondingly complex especially as our first formation in the way of meanings and values comes from parents and teachers who themselves are considerably shaped up by history. We take our first identity as well as our name from our background.
As a man leaves his parents and joins himself to his wife so a young person, whether consciously or not, faces a considerable challenge in finding their own way in the wide world. This may result in a considerable falling out and falling silent going on with parents when children are in their late teens. The resources for this great journey may be very limited. There is what they are studying which may be very mechano-morphic. There is the peer group which may be equally lost. In the process of achievement of independence a great deal in the way of faith and morals may be lost.
In a sort of clarification by contrast, I find myself thinking about the Franks who fearless in battle, combined the faith with their martial courage and did a great deal to promote Western Christendom, an achievement symbolised by the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor on Christmas Day 800AD. Gibbon ascribed the energy of the tribal people to their purity of morals. They got married without worrying about property conditions or earning capacity. They stayed faithful or the male was not able to attend the assemblies where things were decided. They had children and needed action to feed them. The fault they had was not being keen about manual labour! What one sees here is that the vital values informing the community are challenging and informing the individual at every stage.
It is worth noticing here the public nature of religion. It is not just what a person does with their privacy. It shapes up the people, whether they are feeling pious or not. Trollop’s Dr. Thorne is disgusted by the grace said at the Duke of Omnium’s table for most of the people aren’t paying any attention. What Dr. Thorne does not notice is that those present are being reminded that they are Christian, despite their egoistic concerns.
Emile Durkheim, the sociologist, thinks that man cannot really avoid religion which reinforces the basic commitments in a society. But perhaps today one moves from home where there are commitments to school where there are commitments into a sort of unsocial world of higher studies, and then perhaps to a rather narrow corporate world with its own ideology. So, perhaps, our adult life is marked with a relative ‘anomie’, a term derived from Greek, which Durkheim used to describe the individual sense of isolation which can drive a person to despair. What perhaps is happening is that corporate ideologies are taking over from religions and providing a somewhat limited meaning to human life, for so long as a person remains with the corporation. This looks like a sort of breakdown of wider society and therewith of religion.
If religion is so utterly related to society the problem of religious differences becomes problematic, for they would appear to indicate so many different societies living in the same terrain. Today the solution might be thought to have a sheerly secular state. What is required of members is spelt out by the dogmas of political correctness. There are realities to be dealt with and values to be espoused but they are consistently this worldly. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently declared that it would not be the end of the world if the Anglican Church were disestablished. It might though be the end of England or Britain feeling that it was a Christian country.
As the world one lives in gets broader, the religion that can express everything needs to get more catholic. Different elements need to enter the admix. I gather that when Vikings became Christian they still said prayers to Thor when they went to sea. In the course of time those prayers would need to be picked up and rewritten with theological orthodoxy. The old prayers were meeting an exigency of the human spirit, the danger of the sea, the need for protection. This exigency still needs to be met, so long as men go to sea in small boats. Similarly there may be ‘Anglican’ expressions of faith which would need incorporating in a wider unity. It is up to the Anglicans to express what they are. Similarly though there might be English Catholic insights of importance for the wider Church, perhaps the interdependence of laity and clergy.
As one recognises the power of historical consciousness I find myself fearful that values around the sanctity of life get eroded. We already see this with modern, mass destructive warfare, with abortion and in certain old Christian countries, Euthanasia. This could then be extended to certain undesirable types. Contraception and indeed permissiveness are related. If one is referring here to the ‘de-ontological Natural Law’ does one in fact recognise this law and that it is binding without also recognising God? If the whole of reality is just made up of bodies, from sub atomic particles through billiard balls to man – the corpuscular idea – then would there be any reason to recognise the disorder of homosexual acts? True heterosexuality is the norm for having children, but if one does not want children, is there any reason beyond aesthetics for denying physical expression to homosexual affection?
I recall Bishop Grant saying that people would not recognise the wrongness of abortion unless they were converted to God. I suspect that this is true of the de-ontological natural law in toto. Also it is helpful to notice that we don’t arrive in the world with a de-ontological theory: rather we are dealing here with a true theory which is historically conditioned. So it was Salamanca in the sixteenth century which gave us the now neglected rules about the ‘just war’.
Recognising ‘de-ontological values’ is a matter of recognising that God’s will is expressed in his marvellous design. Some churches have slipped here when it comes to contraception, so the matter needs to be more clearly put. It is important to note too that not all values are deontological, for some are revealed, the necessity of baptism for example or the indissolubility and sacramentality of marriage between Christians.
If Durkheim is right and religion is the cement of order in society then it would seem that where there is a very strong business culture there needs too to be a very strong religious culture. I recall Alsace, full of churches and palaces where Popes came from. Despite this history, the Church is relatively moribund compared with the business culture around the vines. I took a businessman out to lunch – he was a good Catholic, but had several colleagues around - so when I said grace I got the impression he was embarrassed.
Economic Supplement 9:
Throwing Money at the Problem
I see that the printing of money which is in no way borrowed is seen as a solution to the slump.
After all is that not what banks do when they create credit? They have so much money, all of which is owed to someone, and so stable are the deposits that they can lend some of the money to a new business setting up, or a business expanding, or a new public works. (They can of course lend money to financial booms in houses or the stock market).
What happens if their investment fails? They have a gap in their books. They owe £x to depositors, and they possess £x-y, where £y is what they lent to the businessman. What if the businessman doubles his money? The bank then has assets of £x-y+2y, or £x+y. Because of creative risk taking the bank has increased not just the money in the economy but the total of enterprises by the successful enterprise the money has financed. The flow of money and goods has increased and with that real achievement, there has been an increase in the quantity of money.
I have suggested that the gold standard we need in bankers is not to finance purely speculative movements, but rather real enterprises with a real chance of success.
There is talk of ‘nationalising’ banks which I hope will be impossible because of the global context of banking, but one can see how a nationalised bank would be operating under political pressure, national and local, and therefore not free to apply a detached economic yardstick. Everyone suffers if new, more efficient industries fail to find finance. The credit crunch came about in some measure because banks came under pressure to lend to certain categories of persons. If banks moved out of speculative into productive loans then the great fall in house prices to perhaps a quarter of their recent levels would help most people over a lifetime to get hold of a house and be free of debt. A substantial, drastic fall in house prices is a boon to be hoped for for nearly everyone. If people have to spend far less on their mortgages they will have far more to spend on the High Street.
I noticed some people saying they would not spend more because VAT was down 2½%. True, they will not greatly notice the difference, but for every £100 spent they would have £2.50 left in their pocket – to buy a bar of chocolate or something.
I rather fear the government getting more and more obligated and paying its debts just by printing money. I don’t suppose the Germans intended a mega inflation in the 1920’s or Robert Mugabe more recently. This though at some stage is where the printing money solution leads.
The commentators fear deflation, for people will delay their purchases of some items. If the crossovers between households and firms are to grow equal so that demand can purchase possible output there probably needs to be a deflation of the order of 10 or 20%. When commentators talk about ‘a fall in the rate of inflation’ they mean continuing inflation of say 2 as opposed to 3%. The need for a fall in prices is nowhere appreciated.
I see that the printing of money which is in no way borrowed is seen as a solution to the slump.
After all is that not what banks do when they create credit? They have so much money, all of which is owed to someone, and so stable are the deposits that they can lend some of the money to a new business setting up, or a business expanding, or a new public works. (They can of course lend money to financial booms in houses or the stock market).
What happens if their investment fails? They have a gap in their books. They owe £x to depositors, and they possess £x-y, where £y is what they lent to the businessman. What if the businessman doubles his money? The bank then has assets of £x-y+2y, or £x+y. Because of creative risk taking the bank has increased not just the money in the economy but the total of enterprises by the successful enterprise the money has financed. The flow of money and goods has increased and with that real achievement, there has been an increase in the quantity of money.
I have suggested that the gold standard we need in bankers is not to finance purely speculative movements, but rather real enterprises with a real chance of success.
There is talk of ‘nationalising’ banks which I hope will be impossible because of the global context of banking, but one can see how a nationalised bank would be operating under political pressure, national and local, and therefore not free to apply a detached economic yardstick. Everyone suffers if new, more efficient industries fail to find finance. The credit crunch came about in some measure because banks came under pressure to lend to certain categories of persons. If banks moved out of speculative into productive loans then the great fall in house prices to perhaps a quarter of their recent levels would help most people over a lifetime to get hold of a house and be free of debt. A substantial, drastic fall in house prices is a boon to be hoped for for nearly everyone. If people have to spend far less on their mortgages they will have far more to spend on the High Street.
I noticed some people saying they would not spend more because VAT was down 2½%. True, they will not greatly notice the difference, but for every £100 spent they would have £2.50 left in their pocket – to buy a bar of chocolate or something.
I rather fear the government getting more and more obligated and paying its debts just by printing money. I don’t suppose the Germans intended a mega inflation in the 1920’s or Robert Mugabe more recently. This though at some stage is where the printing money solution leads.
The commentators fear deflation, for people will delay their purchases of some items. If the crossovers between households and firms are to grow equal so that demand can purchase possible output there probably needs to be a deflation of the order of 10 or 20%. When commentators talk about ‘a fall in the rate of inflation’ they mean continuing inflation of say 2 as opposed to 3%. The need for a fall in prices is nowhere appreciated.
The Universe Desacralised; Human Living Secularised
Man makes use of symbols, words, to express the meanings and values that inform his way of life, his self understanding and his understanding of the world.
Since man is intelligent his understanding of things and the symbolism that expresses it is in development. New words enter our vocabulary – the human genome project – and empower our conduct – the motor car. To drive carefully becomes a new moral requirement. One could be too scrupulous about tyre pressures or too careless. To keep the car regularly serviced helps ensure safety. Our integrity is at stake, our authenticity, but in a secular environment.
Unless one is very technically minded the requirement ‘Drive Safely’ throws one into the hands of other people who know what they are doing, to check the brakes for example. A new ‘symbolism’, a new understanding, brings a new dimension to brotherhood, as people with complementary understanding help each other.
Lonergan has brought about a new understanding about the human subject and with that a new symbolism usually in the sense that a familiar word comes to be used in a very precise way. So ‘deliberation’ is a word known by everyone but it gets used very precisely about weighing up different courses of action.
So do we have here a further instance of secularisation owing to an advance in understanding and symbolism? I think not for Lonergan draws our attention to ‘religious experience’ as an element in our human make up, a substructural element capable of becoming superstructural.
Let me refresh our memory on this distinction between substructure and superstructure. A substructure is an element of our experience which can become understood, and the understanding can then be expressed in concepts and words and come to be valued appropriately in relation to other elements of the substructure or of the world we live in.
A good example is judgement whereby we affirm that some understanding is true. Everyone of course is making judgements all the time. For example last week I mentioned a physicist called Eddington and all of us would accept that in the early twentieth century there was a physicist called Eddington. It is a true statement, a metaphysical statement, an ontological statement. ‘Ens et verum convertuntur’. By some true statements, man ceases to live just in his animal habitat and comes to live in the real world just as it is, not just a physical world but also an historical world, and not just a physical and historical world, but a world called and blessed by God the redeemer from all evil.
Still, not all in the world judge that God is our Saviour, but I think everyone would agree that Eddington existed. The most acute philosopher in the world makes judgements about his bank balance and his current expenditure. Judgement is seen by Gadamer as the conclusion following from a more general principle. So, in Aristotelian fashion one could make a general utterance and then subsume a particular happening and make a judgement. Lonergan though would have us review everything before we come to a judgement, for by a judgement we are posing actuality, something that binds or liberates us, something which sets a context for deliberation and action. Judgement rests on experiential evidence, though in addition to the evidence of sense data, we have the evidence of conscious data.
Someone said, ‘everyone complains about their memory, but no one complains about their judgement’ for to complain about judgement is to admit a sort of madness. The madness might be reaching conclusions when the evidence is not in or it might be failing to reach conclusions when the evidence is in.
We can claim that ‘judgement’ is part of everyone’s experiential infrastructure but it is adverted to in a superstructural way by very few. Once accurately adverted to, since truth converts onto being, we have also a metaphysics of a sort, an ontology. A great deal follows upon building up an accurate superstructure with an awareness of responsibility about this key area of human being – namely that we make judgements.
Lonergan suggests that religious experience is part of our experiential infrastructure. he sees this flowing because God gives all men sufficient grace for salvation. He admits though that religious experience may in some cases vanish completely. It may clash with other elements of consciousness. In some it becomes quite central; and continuous. In this context he speaks of the purgative way, where what is contrary to religion is overcome, and the illuminative way in which ‘the significance and implications of religious commitment are more fully apprehended and understood’ (3rd Collection: 125), and the unitive way where in mortal beings can be seen the fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self control.
Religious experience, if it is like other elements of consciousness, may be a feeling which is a cause of dismay or disorientation. Client centred therapy following Karl Rogers would help by naming the feeling, relating it to life and other feelings, understanding its occasions and significance. Such a therapy is surely working towards the building up of a suitable superstructure.
Karen Horney has several thoughts operative at the same time including repressed thoughts which the person knows about. One wonders whether the repression of the thought of God gives energy to the keenness of the atheists. Wilhelm Stekel has several thoughts in a polyphony which crowds out certain thoughts. I wonder if what makes for the dominance of a thought is not only its intelligible content but also feeling? Feeling is a major component in certain apprehensions, for example the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Maslow writes about Peak Experiences. There may be a strong religious component here as in a wedding service.
Lonergan discusses these psychologists in his chapter on religious experience, so one may presume he thinks they may be helpful. It is strange to reflect that we may have areas of ‘thought’ which we do not think about, so that they lack the appropriate ‘superstructure’.
In Method in Theology, without using the term superstructure he suggests that the appropriate structure is ‘faith’. ‘Faith is further knowledge when the love is God’s love flooding our hearts’ (Method: 115). A faculty psychology, dealing with intellect (truth) and will (love) confines love to what is known. ‘What the eye does not see the heart can’t grieve over’. Following a faculty psychology then the path to God is first faith, believing his revelation, and then love. So we work away, practising our faith, and if we are very diligent God might give us a hint of his love. Such mystic experience must be rare, so while we praise the saints, it would seem somewhat boastful to claim any personal knowledge or experience of what they were on about.
Lonergan replaced faculty psychology (sense experience, intellect, will) with intentionality analysis, which he later described as cognitional theory, and later as a form of phenomenology. This was not a deliberate ploy or an attempt to be clever or awkward. He found as he wrote Insight, that he was doing intentionality analysis. As he went on, he found that man’s life of love was so important that, as with sense experience, it was a source of intelligibility. He quotes with approval Pascal: ‘the heart has its reasons which reason does not know’. The reasons of the heart he calls values, or since right reason can give rise to values (vital, social, cultural, personal) he speaks of a transvaluation of values in the light of love. One is reminded of the phrase ‘post conventional morality’ when one hears of a transvaluation of values. So in Our Lord’s day conventional religious values would attend to the Sabbath in a strict way.
So attending to the data of consciousness in a phenomenological way one finds sense data, schematic images, duties and so forth and then one comes across this area of love which deals with family and mankind as well as God, and this area is so significant that it is a further ground for judgement, deliberation and decision.
The world religions witness to this area in the mythological ages where time and space were dominated by collective religious ideas. So Ayer’s Cliff was a sort of omphalos. So you get religious traditions and leaders and follies. Alongside Pope John XXIII’s teaching that the Church is always in need of reform one might posit that ‘all religious traditions are in need of reform’. The devoted and cruel suicide bomber reminds us how great that reform may need to be, but to be persuasive that reform will normally need to come from the tradition itself.
The daring suggestion, always tentative I think in Lonergan, is that religious experience in any tradition is from the grace of God and so an effect of the redemption wrought in Christ, that all traditions may need reform, do need reform, poses an endless historical task on man, historical in the way of understanding things past, but historical too in releasing a better future.
Since man is intelligent his understanding of things and the symbolism that expresses it is in development. New words enter our vocabulary – the human genome project – and empower our conduct – the motor car. To drive carefully becomes a new moral requirement. One could be too scrupulous about tyre pressures or too careless. To keep the car regularly serviced helps ensure safety. Our integrity is at stake, our authenticity, but in a secular environment.
Unless one is very technically minded the requirement ‘Drive Safely’ throws one into the hands of other people who know what they are doing, to check the brakes for example. A new ‘symbolism’, a new understanding, brings a new dimension to brotherhood, as people with complementary understanding help each other.
Lonergan has brought about a new understanding about the human subject and with that a new symbolism usually in the sense that a familiar word comes to be used in a very precise way. So ‘deliberation’ is a word known by everyone but it gets used very precisely about weighing up different courses of action.
So do we have here a further instance of secularisation owing to an advance in understanding and symbolism? I think not for Lonergan draws our attention to ‘religious experience’ as an element in our human make up, a substructural element capable of becoming superstructural.
Let me refresh our memory on this distinction between substructure and superstructure. A substructure is an element of our experience which can become understood, and the understanding can then be expressed in concepts and words and come to be valued appropriately in relation to other elements of the substructure or of the world we live in.
A good example is judgement whereby we affirm that some understanding is true. Everyone of course is making judgements all the time. For example last week I mentioned a physicist called Eddington and all of us would accept that in the early twentieth century there was a physicist called Eddington. It is a true statement, a metaphysical statement, an ontological statement. ‘Ens et verum convertuntur’. By some true statements, man ceases to live just in his animal habitat and comes to live in the real world just as it is, not just a physical world but also an historical world, and not just a physical and historical world, but a world called and blessed by God the redeemer from all evil.
Still, not all in the world judge that God is our Saviour, but I think everyone would agree that Eddington existed. The most acute philosopher in the world makes judgements about his bank balance and his current expenditure. Judgement is seen by Gadamer as the conclusion following from a more general principle. So, in Aristotelian fashion one could make a general utterance and then subsume a particular happening and make a judgement. Lonergan though would have us review everything before we come to a judgement, for by a judgement we are posing actuality, something that binds or liberates us, something which sets a context for deliberation and action. Judgement rests on experiential evidence, though in addition to the evidence of sense data, we have the evidence of conscious data.
Someone said, ‘everyone complains about their memory, but no one complains about their judgement’ for to complain about judgement is to admit a sort of madness. The madness might be reaching conclusions when the evidence is not in or it might be failing to reach conclusions when the evidence is in.
We can claim that ‘judgement’ is part of everyone’s experiential infrastructure but it is adverted to in a superstructural way by very few. Once accurately adverted to, since truth converts onto being, we have also a metaphysics of a sort, an ontology. A great deal follows upon building up an accurate superstructure with an awareness of responsibility about this key area of human being – namely that we make judgements.
Lonergan suggests that religious experience is part of our experiential infrastructure. he sees this flowing because God gives all men sufficient grace for salvation. He admits though that religious experience may in some cases vanish completely. It may clash with other elements of consciousness. In some it becomes quite central; and continuous. In this context he speaks of the purgative way, where what is contrary to religion is overcome, and the illuminative way in which ‘the significance and implications of religious commitment are more fully apprehended and understood’ (3rd Collection: 125), and the unitive way where in mortal beings can be seen the fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self control.
Religious experience, if it is like other elements of consciousness, may be a feeling which is a cause of dismay or disorientation. Client centred therapy following Karl Rogers would help by naming the feeling, relating it to life and other feelings, understanding its occasions and significance. Such a therapy is surely working towards the building up of a suitable superstructure.
Karen Horney has several thoughts operative at the same time including repressed thoughts which the person knows about. One wonders whether the repression of the thought of God gives energy to the keenness of the atheists. Wilhelm Stekel has several thoughts in a polyphony which crowds out certain thoughts. I wonder if what makes for the dominance of a thought is not only its intelligible content but also feeling? Feeling is a major component in certain apprehensions, for example the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Maslow writes about Peak Experiences. There may be a strong religious component here as in a wedding service.
Lonergan discusses these psychologists in his chapter on religious experience, so one may presume he thinks they may be helpful. It is strange to reflect that we may have areas of ‘thought’ which we do not think about, so that they lack the appropriate ‘superstructure’.
In Method in Theology, without using the term superstructure he suggests that the appropriate structure is ‘faith’. ‘Faith is further knowledge when the love is God’s love flooding our hearts’ (Method: 115). A faculty psychology, dealing with intellect (truth) and will (love) confines love to what is known. ‘What the eye does not see the heart can’t grieve over’. Following a faculty psychology then the path to God is first faith, believing his revelation, and then love. So we work away, practising our faith, and if we are very diligent God might give us a hint of his love. Such mystic experience must be rare, so while we praise the saints, it would seem somewhat boastful to claim any personal knowledge or experience of what they were on about.
Lonergan replaced faculty psychology (sense experience, intellect, will) with intentionality analysis, which he later described as cognitional theory, and later as a form of phenomenology. This was not a deliberate ploy or an attempt to be clever or awkward. He found as he wrote Insight, that he was doing intentionality analysis. As he went on, he found that man’s life of love was so important that, as with sense experience, it was a source of intelligibility. He quotes with approval Pascal: ‘the heart has its reasons which reason does not know’. The reasons of the heart he calls values, or since right reason can give rise to values (vital, social, cultural, personal) he speaks of a transvaluation of values in the light of love. One is reminded of the phrase ‘post conventional morality’ when one hears of a transvaluation of values. So in Our Lord’s day conventional religious values would attend to the Sabbath in a strict way.
So attending to the data of consciousness in a phenomenological way one finds sense data, schematic images, duties and so forth and then one comes across this area of love which deals with family and mankind as well as God, and this area is so significant that it is a further ground for judgement, deliberation and decision.
The world religions witness to this area in the mythological ages where time and space were dominated by collective religious ideas. So Ayer’s Cliff was a sort of omphalos. So you get religious traditions and leaders and follies. Alongside Pope John XXIII’s teaching that the Church is always in need of reform one might posit that ‘all religious traditions are in need of reform’. The devoted and cruel suicide bomber reminds us how great that reform may need to be, but to be persuasive that reform will normally need to come from the tradition itself.
The daring suggestion, always tentative I think in Lonergan, is that religious experience in any tradition is from the grace of God and so an effect of the redemption wrought in Christ, that all traditions may need reform, do need reform, poses an endless historical task on man, historical in the way of understanding things past, but historical too in releasing a better future.
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Economic Supplement 8
Subsidiarity and the Economy
Lonergan wanted to find a solution to the slump which would come ‘from below’, from the banks and businesses, from the workers and from the consumers. He wanted to avoid placing the economy in the hands of expert economists and the State. For this reason he was opposed to John Maynard Keynes who would deal with a slump by deficit spending. He thought dependence that way would harm human welfare, reducing the actual flow of goods and services. He praised Capitalism for seeking to meet effective demand, seeking to supply what people wanted and could pay for.
In the 1940’s he saw the problem as emerging from a lack of investment. In the 1970’s he followed critics of the multinational firms, but he did not produce a major work on the matter. He urged a creative collaboration from many disciplines.
One way of solving the lack of investment problem is of course to bring about a great new investment in a needed area, and I would suggest that energy supply is exactly an area which, with old plants failing, calls for heavy investment.
I am not for various reasons suggesting nuclear energy but I believe Iceland has beyond banks some thermal conditions which would allow the supply of a deal of energy. The financing of this could be a private, should be private. The capital injected would go out in wages and stimulate demand. Properly designed our future energy requirements would be met. Something similar could be done with the Wash and the Bristol Channel.
Of course, for a global economy to recover by way of investment there would need to be similar projects everywhere.
Howsoever, let us suppose we extend the boom this way for 20 years, when it comes to an end we would face the same problem again.
In the absence of such major investment my solution to the credit crunch is tax cuts on business, no VAT, and a care to charge only a reasonable mark up.
Sitting in the Presbytery the truth is I have no clear idea of what a reasonable mark up should be. Companies will need to repair their equipment, they may need new investment. May I suggest the mark up should just cover repairs? The banks are there to create credit for vast new projects. So if the water board is making a new reservoir it should not raise the money from the customer, except when by increasing supplies it increases revenues. It is not the task of the customer to be forced to be a capitalist as well, and without the benefit which comes from taking a well judged risk.
Lonergan wanted to find a solution to the slump which would come ‘from below’, from the banks and businesses, from the workers and from the consumers. He wanted to avoid placing the economy in the hands of expert economists and the State. For this reason he was opposed to John Maynard Keynes who would deal with a slump by deficit spending. He thought dependence that way would harm human welfare, reducing the actual flow of goods and services. He praised Capitalism for seeking to meet effective demand, seeking to supply what people wanted and could pay for.
In the 1940’s he saw the problem as emerging from a lack of investment. In the 1970’s he followed critics of the multinational firms, but he did not produce a major work on the matter. He urged a creative collaboration from many disciplines.
One way of solving the lack of investment problem is of course to bring about a great new investment in a needed area, and I would suggest that energy supply is exactly an area which, with old plants failing, calls for heavy investment.
I am not for various reasons suggesting nuclear energy but I believe Iceland has beyond banks some thermal conditions which would allow the supply of a deal of energy. The financing of this could be a private, should be private. The capital injected would go out in wages and stimulate demand. Properly designed our future energy requirements would be met. Something similar could be done with the Wash and the Bristol Channel.
Of course, for a global economy to recover by way of investment there would need to be similar projects everywhere.
Howsoever, let us suppose we extend the boom this way for 20 years, when it comes to an end we would face the same problem again.
In the absence of such major investment my solution to the credit crunch is tax cuts on business, no VAT, and a care to charge only a reasonable mark up.
Sitting in the Presbytery the truth is I have no clear idea of what a reasonable mark up should be. Companies will need to repair their equipment, they may need new investment. May I suggest the mark up should just cover repairs? The banks are there to create credit for vast new projects. So if the water board is making a new reservoir it should not raise the money from the customer, except when by increasing supplies it increases revenues. It is not the task of the customer to be forced to be a capitalist as well, and without the benefit which comes from taking a well judged risk.
Meanings and Values
Someone was speaking about ‘Catholic values’ and I felt I might be in the realm of pious platitudes. Could one say, from a personal stance, values are dearly held commitments? So that a Catholic value would be the dearly held commitment to get myself to Mass on a Sunday, if possible, even when one is on holiday?
The valuing, the personal commitment, does not make the value. The value is valuable in its own right. I recall at university in the 1960s coming across some paper about the likely effect of a nuclear war. Whole territories would be wiped out. I found myself desolated at such a prospect, and committed if possible to find another way. I was recognising the value of human life and agreeing with the teaching of the Church which condemned the mass destruction of cities. The same value can be expressed as a principle and deeply held as a conviction, as a commitment. As an insight leads to conceptualisation, commitment may lead to expression in principles. It seems to me though that commitment may bind one without it being expressed in abstract principles. A parent might be committed to his daughter’s education without abstracting about the matter.
Values are expressed in commitments and lived. Good people are not all ethicists or moral theologians. A good person though might confront a dilemma and be helped to reach a decision by someone who has studied the matter. We meet here the idea of substructure and superstructure. One person has the substructure of a good will in operation. The expert though is able to help by having a reflective superstructure, rather as human life is lived with meanings and values by one group and thematised by historians. One concludes that though we don’t all have to be experts in morals it is helpful to all if there are some such experts around in the community in a vital and interactive way.
There needs to be ‘a teaching’ if those who are living in a substructural way, without too much analysis, are to be guided, and the ‘good will’ of the good person needs to move confidently to the advice and instruction of those who are expert. There is a submissiveness here but it is for the sake of life, excellence and achievement of some sort.
I have the sense that there needs to be some restoration of confidence in this area. I me someone recently who was talking about a person who was a good Christian as well as a Catholic, as if Catholicism was a sort of drag, contained a bias, against being a good Christian.
Fr Lonergan in his Third Collection writes about authenticity, about self transcendence and about norms belonging to attentiveness, intelligence, rationality and conduct so that we live with truth, reality and the excellence of goodness, the happiness of a clear conscience.
The values we have to recognise are not simply deontological but also, to coin a term, dehistorical. We need to recognise that we have a body which is alive and that life is always a divine gift, so we should not bump people off, ourselves or other people (deontological values). We need to recognise that we are historically conditioned and that issues have emerged which it is a duty to address, racialism for example or the way through the present ‘credit crunch’. Current permissiveness and abortion might seem to be simply ‘deontological’ issues, but the issue seems to stand with historical ideas, like the woman’s right to choose, or the way ‘a civilised society’ deals with private sexual morality or ‘human rights’. Civilised values, to be truly civilised, need the realism to recognise their deontological base.
By authenticity, Lonergan means something cumulative over time. So Newman at one stage thought he ought to be an angel and there had been a mistake, that he ought to be an evangelist, that he ought to be a Catholic (but not a Roman Catholic) and then that he ought to be a Roman Catholic. These are changes of position (should we call them ‘conversions’?) whereby he moves from thinking he is an angel entrapped in flesh to accepting that he has the down to earth dignity of a human being combined with the baptismal grace which made him a child of God. A secular example of authenticity is that of Eddington who before the First War got interested in Einstein, who during the war stayed loyal to that interest despite strong pressure against because Einstein was German, and who after the war, verified his theory at some expense. (I have seen it said that the cloud cover on the occasion of the eclipse was so great that Eddington could not have verified the theory. If so that would be inauthenticity, showing that the cumulative product can be rare.)
Authenticity issues in self transcendence. Perhaps self transcendence is not a perfect term for it rather implies that the self is left behind, whereas the point is that the life of the self requires going beyond the self but in a way which involves the self with another of some sort.
There is a problem here for we cannot avoid being the central figure in our flesh and blood experiences. The problem was solved by the Greeks in that we choose what is more excellent and we do choose what is most excellent, wisdom, by which we recognise another.
Lonergan has us oriented to self transcendence by the dreams of the morning in which, though as victims, we are in symbolic mood facing the challenge of the day and of life. He has us waking to a world of sensible stimuli, like toothpaste and cups of coffee, and I recognise here the world of animal extroversion which stays with us all the time since we are animals, set to jump if there is a big bang. As shaped up by our parents, by human history, by our personal splash we find ourselves living beyond animal extroversion in a world mediated by meaning and motivated by values.
Between the dream and consciousness symbols have the difference that they can become utterly precise and demanding. At Downside the bell rang and though still half asleep we had to get up and go through our hygienic ablutions in preparation for Holy Mass. By symbol we are oriented to action and so to the mighty stage of history. If the bell is a symbol mediating meaning and value, life thereafter included systems of symbols coming at one to be mastered, the language, mathematics, physics, chemistry, the game of rugby. In Easter and Summer terms I found relief in catching trout which I suppose was a near return to the world of animal extroversion. Nothing was ever more surprising and exciting.
Still by work and signs and examples one came to know the world one lived in and how one should conduct oneself, meanings and values. Truth to tell, meanings and disvalues as well. There was the public school world and the rest of the world and was not Downside the Eton of the Catholic Schools? About growing in wisdom there is a lot of unlearning the tradition one has received, so that coming to live in the real world is a continuous conversion helped by symbolic structures and also by other people in the richness and also the poverty of their living.
Undergirding authenticity and self transcendence Lonergan has the term normative. ‘Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible.’ There are norms at each level, so if there is cloud cover one should not pretend to astronomical observations. The norms around the precept ‘be responsible’ are different from the others, for ‘be responsible’ requires that there be options. The precept is concerned with how one should use one’s freedom. The self transcendence of knowing brings the self into knowledge of the world. How one should act though, except in extraordinary circumstances, gives one a set of options and so you get deliberation and choice. By free choice one changes the world, other people and above all ones own self.
There is a dreaming self transcendence of a sort, a sensitive self transcendence, a cognitive self transcendence and a performative self transcendence but these all occur in the context of an affective self transcendence which may be more in potency than act. Our living finds its meaning in love, at the heart of which is or is not the love of God. In a world of distractions and biases, of cares and worries, the awareness of the centrality of God’s love needs to be reflected upon, understood and assiduously cared about. You get the world of religion with morning prayer and night prayer. You get intimacy with the sacrament and sacramentality of marriage. You get a relevant loyalty with sincere and effective love of neighbour even across the sea, even in the distant future.
The valuing, the personal commitment, does not make the value. The value is valuable in its own right. I recall at university in the 1960s coming across some paper about the likely effect of a nuclear war. Whole territories would be wiped out. I found myself desolated at such a prospect, and committed if possible to find another way. I was recognising the value of human life and agreeing with the teaching of the Church which condemned the mass destruction of cities. The same value can be expressed as a principle and deeply held as a conviction, as a commitment. As an insight leads to conceptualisation, commitment may lead to expression in principles. It seems to me though that commitment may bind one without it being expressed in abstract principles. A parent might be committed to his daughter’s education without abstracting about the matter.
Values are expressed in commitments and lived. Good people are not all ethicists or moral theologians. A good person though might confront a dilemma and be helped to reach a decision by someone who has studied the matter. We meet here the idea of substructure and superstructure. One person has the substructure of a good will in operation. The expert though is able to help by having a reflective superstructure, rather as human life is lived with meanings and values by one group and thematised by historians. One concludes that though we don’t all have to be experts in morals it is helpful to all if there are some such experts around in the community in a vital and interactive way.
There needs to be ‘a teaching’ if those who are living in a substructural way, without too much analysis, are to be guided, and the ‘good will’ of the good person needs to move confidently to the advice and instruction of those who are expert. There is a submissiveness here but it is for the sake of life, excellence and achievement of some sort.
I have the sense that there needs to be some restoration of confidence in this area. I me someone recently who was talking about a person who was a good Christian as well as a Catholic, as if Catholicism was a sort of drag, contained a bias, against being a good Christian.
Fr Lonergan in his Third Collection writes about authenticity, about self transcendence and about norms belonging to attentiveness, intelligence, rationality and conduct so that we live with truth, reality and the excellence of goodness, the happiness of a clear conscience.
The values we have to recognise are not simply deontological but also, to coin a term, dehistorical. We need to recognise that we have a body which is alive and that life is always a divine gift, so we should not bump people off, ourselves or other people (deontological values). We need to recognise that we are historically conditioned and that issues have emerged which it is a duty to address, racialism for example or the way through the present ‘credit crunch’. Current permissiveness and abortion might seem to be simply ‘deontological’ issues, but the issue seems to stand with historical ideas, like the woman’s right to choose, or the way ‘a civilised society’ deals with private sexual morality or ‘human rights’. Civilised values, to be truly civilised, need the realism to recognise their deontological base.
By authenticity, Lonergan means something cumulative over time. So Newman at one stage thought he ought to be an angel and there had been a mistake, that he ought to be an evangelist, that he ought to be a Catholic (but not a Roman Catholic) and then that he ought to be a Roman Catholic. These are changes of position (should we call them ‘conversions’?) whereby he moves from thinking he is an angel entrapped in flesh to accepting that he has the down to earth dignity of a human being combined with the baptismal grace which made him a child of God. A secular example of authenticity is that of Eddington who before the First War got interested in Einstein, who during the war stayed loyal to that interest despite strong pressure against because Einstein was German, and who after the war, verified his theory at some expense. (I have seen it said that the cloud cover on the occasion of the eclipse was so great that Eddington could not have verified the theory. If so that would be inauthenticity, showing that the cumulative product can be rare.)
Authenticity issues in self transcendence. Perhaps self transcendence is not a perfect term for it rather implies that the self is left behind, whereas the point is that the life of the self requires going beyond the self but in a way which involves the self with another of some sort.
There is a problem here for we cannot avoid being the central figure in our flesh and blood experiences. The problem was solved by the Greeks in that we choose what is more excellent and we do choose what is most excellent, wisdom, by which we recognise another.
Lonergan has us oriented to self transcendence by the dreams of the morning in which, though as victims, we are in symbolic mood facing the challenge of the day and of life. He has us waking to a world of sensible stimuli, like toothpaste and cups of coffee, and I recognise here the world of animal extroversion which stays with us all the time since we are animals, set to jump if there is a big bang. As shaped up by our parents, by human history, by our personal splash we find ourselves living beyond animal extroversion in a world mediated by meaning and motivated by values.
Between the dream and consciousness symbols have the difference that they can become utterly precise and demanding. At Downside the bell rang and though still half asleep we had to get up and go through our hygienic ablutions in preparation for Holy Mass. By symbol we are oriented to action and so to the mighty stage of history. If the bell is a symbol mediating meaning and value, life thereafter included systems of symbols coming at one to be mastered, the language, mathematics, physics, chemistry, the game of rugby. In Easter and Summer terms I found relief in catching trout which I suppose was a near return to the world of animal extroversion. Nothing was ever more surprising and exciting.
Still by work and signs and examples one came to know the world one lived in and how one should conduct oneself, meanings and values. Truth to tell, meanings and disvalues as well. There was the public school world and the rest of the world and was not Downside the Eton of the Catholic Schools? About growing in wisdom there is a lot of unlearning the tradition one has received, so that coming to live in the real world is a continuous conversion helped by symbolic structures and also by other people in the richness and also the poverty of their living.
Undergirding authenticity and self transcendence Lonergan has the term normative. ‘Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible.’ There are norms at each level, so if there is cloud cover one should not pretend to astronomical observations. The norms around the precept ‘be responsible’ are different from the others, for ‘be responsible’ requires that there be options. The precept is concerned with how one should use one’s freedom. The self transcendence of knowing brings the self into knowledge of the world. How one should act though, except in extraordinary circumstances, gives one a set of options and so you get deliberation and choice. By free choice one changes the world, other people and above all ones own self.
There is a dreaming self transcendence of a sort, a sensitive self transcendence, a cognitive self transcendence and a performative self transcendence but these all occur in the context of an affective self transcendence which may be more in potency than act. Our living finds its meaning in love, at the heart of which is or is not the love of God. In a world of distractions and biases, of cares and worries, the awareness of the centrality of God’s love needs to be reflected upon, understood and assiduously cared about. You get the world of religion with morning prayer and night prayer. You get intimacy with the sacrament and sacramentality of marriage. You get a relevant loyalty with sincere and effective love of neighbour even across the sea, even in the distant future.
Economic Supplement 7
Reducing VAT
The purpose of an economy is to organise work upon the potencies of nature so that goods and services may stream forth to supply man’s needs.
When there is a deal of investment going on then there is a division of resources so that some are going, not directly to produce goods and services for households (for government and people), but to provide equipment for future production or education for future services.
G.D.P., Gross Domestic Product, is a familiar term but it lumps together current output for consumption and output sold to raise productivity in the future, concrete investment. So GDP is equal to output for consumption plus output for concrete investment. If investment is high people will be consuming less. Nevertheless it will be experienced as a boom time. People are employed. Prices are high, but everyone can afford something.
In a so called slump time, since investment has fallen away, output for consumption could increase. The trouble is that at current prices, only so much output can be afforded. With unemployment rising, the welfare state is likely to get into debt preventing dire poverty.
If the government reduces VAT then it may hope that prices may fall, more will be purchased as so what it loses in VAT it may recoup by less payments for unemployment benefit. For as more ‘output for consumption’ is sold so more people will be needed to work to make these things.
It could not be done overnight, but I would like VAT to be reduced to zero and corporation tax likewise. The task of business is to produce goods and services as cheaply as possible.
It is true that, if government requires 45% of the total output for consumption then income tax will need to be, on average, 45% of income, but the need for taxation is at the heart of politics and it is a good thing if the quantities can be seen clearly. ‘No taxation without representation’ is an ancient principle.
Apart from war, there are two ways of avoiding slump. The first is a widespread fall, not in inflation but in actual prices for consumers. The other is major new investment. I guess, actually, we need major new investment in energy provision. If the electricity goes off nothing in this house works and I hade best go to bed and perhaps expire. I gather there is energy in Iceland in the way of thermal activity. If the government assisted private investment in this area I think it would be promoting the common good and considerably easing the slump.
The purpose of an economy is to organise work upon the potencies of nature so that goods and services may stream forth to supply man’s needs.
When there is a deal of investment going on then there is a division of resources so that some are going, not directly to produce goods and services for households (for government and people), but to provide equipment for future production or education for future services.
G.D.P., Gross Domestic Product, is a familiar term but it lumps together current output for consumption and output sold to raise productivity in the future, concrete investment. So GDP is equal to output for consumption plus output for concrete investment. If investment is high people will be consuming less. Nevertheless it will be experienced as a boom time. People are employed. Prices are high, but everyone can afford something.
In a so called slump time, since investment has fallen away, output for consumption could increase. The trouble is that at current prices, only so much output can be afforded. With unemployment rising, the welfare state is likely to get into debt preventing dire poverty.
If the government reduces VAT then it may hope that prices may fall, more will be purchased as so what it loses in VAT it may recoup by less payments for unemployment benefit. For as more ‘output for consumption’ is sold so more people will be needed to work to make these things.
It could not be done overnight, but I would like VAT to be reduced to zero and corporation tax likewise. The task of business is to produce goods and services as cheaply as possible.
It is true that, if government requires 45% of the total output for consumption then income tax will need to be, on average, 45% of income, but the need for taxation is at the heart of politics and it is a good thing if the quantities can be seen clearly. ‘No taxation without representation’ is an ancient principle.
Apart from war, there are two ways of avoiding slump. The first is a widespread fall, not in inflation but in actual prices for consumers. The other is major new investment. I guess, actually, we need major new investment in energy provision. If the electricity goes off nothing in this house works and I hade best go to bed and perhaps expire. I gather there is energy in Iceland in the way of thermal activity. If the government assisted private investment in this area I think it would be promoting the common good and considerably easing the slump.
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