Envy, Politics, Economy, Oh My!

I might think of envy, I might think of politics, and I might think about the economy but I'm not used to seeing all three together from a biblical perspective. Gary North ties all three together from a biblical point of view...

Envy and Poverty
by Gary North

For well over a thousand years, the church preached against the sin of envy. This preaching had a positive effect wherever it took hold in people’s thinking. Listeners were hesitant to indulge in the sin of envy. They had been warned of coming judgment against the envious....

Among those who demand equality, there are few who pursue it personally. The demand for equality today come from politicians who live in luxury or professors in elite universities, who are paid huge salaries for doing little work and who are protected for life by tenure contracts that prevent them from being fired.

As envy has increased, government intervention into the economy has followed in its wake. Yet economic inequality remains. The thousands of programs that were legislated because they would produce more equality have all failed to do so. These programs hamper production by substituting bureaucratic control (negative sanctions) for free market profitability (positive sanctions). They substitute fear for optimism. So, they lead to a smaller pie. Meanwhile, inequality remains or even increases, as it did in the Soviet Union. Yet the defenders of equality demand more of the same....

It is never a question of inequality vs. equality. It is always a question of which kind of equality, enforced by whom.

Politicians cannot safely say this. They must pretend to promote this or that program that is guaranteed to increase equality. (Note: there is no money-back guarantee.)...

Thanks to Lew rockwell.com website
Link to the whole thing http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north548.html