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Green Zone
KFMG 99.1 FM, streaming at kfmg991.org
Des Moines, Iowa
Progressive
Magazine
The
September issue of The Progressive magazine has
an illuminating and thought-provoking article by Wendell
Berry. He posits that stimulus money won't fix America's
broken economy because it only creates more wants
instead of satisfying needs.
Berry writes: "A society in which every school child
'needs' a computer, and every 16-year-old 'needs' a
automobile, and every 18-year-old 'needs' to go to
college is already delusional and is well on its way to
being broke." A robust economy does not outsource its
needs (the manufacture of shoes, for example).
The fix? "An
authentic economy is based on renewable resources: land,
water, ecological health. The economic virtues are thus
honesty, thrift, care, good work, generosity,
imagination, compassion."
"A properly
ordered economy, putting nature first and consumption
last, would start with the subsistence or household
economy and proceed from that to the economy of markets.
It would be the means by which people provide to
themselves and to others the things necessary to support
life: goods coming from nature and human work. It would
distinguish between needs and mere wants, and it would
grant a firm precedence to needs.
"A proper
economy, moreover, would designate certain things as
priceless. This would not be, as now, the 'pricelessness'
of things that are extremely rare or expensive, but
would refer to things of absolute value, beyond and
above any price that could be set upon them by any
market. The things of absolute value would be fertile
land, clean water and air, ecological health, and the
capacity of nature to renew itself in the economic
landscape."
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