Joseph in the time of his distress kept the commandment, and became lord of Egypt.
Joseph is an example Scripture gives to us of the wise ruler; he listed to what God told him and followed through with it.God showed him that in the time of prosperity, he was to work to increase Egypt’s savings. Grain was not to be saved for the sake of being rich. It was to serve a purpose: to help the needy in a time of famine. That is, in a time of decline, he was shown that he must “spend” the saving and engage in deficits for the welfare of people everywhere (and not just Egypt). The grain he saved was to be given out and sold (equitably); the savings in a time of prosperity was to be used as a kind welfare program in a time of hardship.
I wonder what people would say if our government followed Joseph’s example today? Would they complain and suggest he was a socialist? Would they ask how he dare use up all the government’s resources when there is a major deficit going on? Would they tell him he should consider putting the poor to work if they want to live? Oh, that last one was indeed what many of the Egyptians felt, and they would make sure the poor Hebrews got such jobs soon enough! And since they were given living wages, why did they complain? Their bosses were generous in giving them work to do so they could live.
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Henry,
Money being spent now is money that’s been saved up, as grain had been saved in Joseph’s Egypt. It’s being borrowed; it’s as if Joseph promised another kingdom that Egypt would give all it’s food to them for the next 20 years if it got food from them for the present. Hardly the same thing. If God told him to do that, then I’d say trust God and do it. Is God speaking to Barack Obama? “Barack, I command you, spend $8,000,000,000 on high speed trains, and forgive the student loans of all government employees, who average $71,000 in wages and salaries, compared to $40,000 for non-government employees. And don’t forget to subsidize embryonic stem cell research!” Somehow, I think not.
Note that most states, unlike the federal government, do have a rainy day fund, and they have been tapping into those rather than cutting their budgets even further.
Maybe stories from the Bible are not quite so simple to extrapolate to the present? Or how should Joshua’s actions at Jericho inform our foreign policy?
Zak
I’m just asking the question — is Joseph a socialist? And is deficit spending always wrong? Of course we should save when we can; but you can’t save in times of drought, that’s the problem. The time to save is past, and we have to borrow from the future, alas.
It’s possibly the earliest example of what is now known as countercyclical policy – you save in good times, and you spend in bad times. This is common sense, to most people anyway.
The government forgot to save for a rainy day. Now, the rainy day is here. Our government does not have the luxury of borrowing from the future. Our government needs to change its habits so we can continue to survive as a nation.
Regarding your statement on ‘putting the poor to work’, what is bad about work?
Cathy
Two things — the Republicans didn’t do the saving when it was needed. Yet there are times, like when creating a business, people have to spend in advance on expected profits to get to those profits. Think it through: would you stop the creation of businesses and jobs when they are all created by borrowing from the future?
Second, so what was bad with the work the poor Hebrews did in Egypt?
“I’m just asking the question — is Joseph a socialist? And is deficit spending always wrong? Of course we should save when we can; but you can’t save in times of drought, that’s the problem. The time to save is past, and we have to borrow from the future, alas.”
Well I would not say Deficit system is always wrong. I also don’t think there is any real connection with the concept of deficit spending and socialism of course
JH
But there is more to the Joseph story than deficit spending; there was the social policy involved with what he did.
I did not blame Democrats or Republicans. I said the ‘government’ did not save for the future. Except for a few honest people, our leaders failed us.
I understand how a business operates and that it must sustain itself. Bad cash management and an over extension of credit will kill a business. I see good managers and bad managers and witness both types of situations. Continually borrowing funds to sustain an operation will kill the operation along with the jobs that the debt sustains.
Not all jobs are created by borrowing from the future. If an entity is strong enough to sustain its existence, borrowing can be minimal or unnecessary.
In Egypt, the Hebrews became slaves. We are not in Egypt. Work in the form of trading your services for payment is not wrong.
Cathy
Some responses:
Sure, bad cash management will affect things, and those who inherit the bad cash management of the past must work with what they have. Don’t give to them unfair expectations.
All jobs are founded upon some beliefs and expectations about the future.
And if you read Papal Encyclicals, you will note one of the many reasons they reject a pure “free market” without restriction is that the “contracts” for labor are not fair, that those who give jobs dictate with too much power — the contracts are not enforceable because of the inequality involved. The poor are often known as wage slaves for a reason — and the kind of abuses Steinbeck wrote against continue to exist in the system itself.
54% of the federal budget is devoted to military spending. http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
The notion that domestic expenditures are the primary cause of the U.S. deficit is just flat out wrong. But how many people in Congress are in favor of cutting our military expenses? Probably three: Ron Paul, Denis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders.
In your neighborhood, you may see ‘slaves’. In my neighborhood, I see ‘employees’. People that I know are not afraid to work for a living – dirty hands and all. Some have even started businesses of their own.
The free market puts people in the same starting position so they may use their talents to the best of their abilities and allows them to compete fairly with others. God gave us all talents and the free market allows us to use them.
Regarding the unfair expectations, some of our current leaders created these problems. Take a look at the length of service held by many members in Congress. If taxes from our wages are to pay for their salaries, they and all branches of government should have expectations. These expectations are not unrealistic.
59. The teaching set forth by Our predecessor Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum is still valid today: when two parties are in very unequal positions, their mutual consent alone does not guarantee a fair contract; the rule of free consent remains subservient to the demands of the natural law. (57) In Rerum Novarum this principle was set down with regard to a just wage for the individual worker; but it should be applied with equal force to contracts made between nations: trade relations can no longer be based solely on the principle of free, unchecked competition, for it very often creates an economic dictatorship. Free trade can be called just only when it conforms to the demands of social justice.
POPULORUM PROGRESSIO
9. The rapid advance towards the globalization of economic and financial systems also illustrates the urgent need to establish who is responsible for guaranteeing the global common good and the exercise of economic and social rights. The free market by itself cannot do this, because in fact there are many human needs which have no place in the market. “Even prior to the logic of a fair exchange of goods and the forms of justice appropriate to it, there exists something which is due to man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity”.(9)
MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE, 1 JANUARY 1999.
In other words, the purely free market is abusive, and doesn’t help, and contracts which are done on unequal footing tend to be abusive.
“But there is more to the Joseph story than deficit spending; there was the social policy involved with what he did.”
I have no problems helping people out when the need arises. Of courses I don’t think what happened in Egytp of elsewhere that we see in the Old Testament was a blueprint for a long term social policy. THey seemed to be mostly stop gap emergency measures
The problem here is we do have a incredible problem of how we are going to pay for all this stuff and at some point borrowing becomes counterproductive. What happens if we borrow so much then people start really wondering if we will default one day
I agree, the free market alone will not guarantee economic and social rights. Therefore, we must look to God to guide our actions. Your statement does not instruct us to look to government to guide our actions nor does it give the government rights to restrict our actions.
My employer looks to God when he offers fees based on a customer’s ability to pay. Excessive government regulation could prevent this freedom from happening. If government imposes its will on us by establishing regulations, we do not have the ability to fight these regulations when they become abusive.
If my employer becomes abusive to me, I can leave and find another job in the free market. No, the free market will not prevent my employer from becoming abusive. However, I may look to God, in a free market, to determine my actions.
Regarding your statement on contracts, they are not fair if they are not done on equal footing. Therefore, our laws allow them to be void if they are formed if one party is under duress. The same with employment, an employee may quit and find another job if an employer is abusive.
Laws in our country might not be so bad.
“So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s, and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other.”
- Genesis 47:20-21 (NIV) –
Joseph did pretty well by Pharaoh, and if the plan was to enslave a formerly free Egyptian society, it worked real good. Whatever God’s reasons were for wanting to build up Pharaoh, we have no reason to think God wants us now to do the same for the U.S. government.
And I believe it’s going to cost us a lot more than 20%.
WJ, we spend 1/5 (ballpark) of our budget on each of the following: Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, interest, domestic spending, and military spending. So that’s 54% of domestic+military that goes to the military.
Thanks for the article! It’s a good lesson for us all. :)
Pinky, I’m not sure what you’re claiming. But if you read the explanation on the bottom of the page to which I linked, you’ll see that the *actual* percentage of money spent on defense is far greater than the 20% claimed for this purpose by the Congressional Budgetary Office. But the main point, of course, is that deficit hawks, always ready to cut social programs on the grounds of the evilness of “big” government, are the same people who are in favor of an ever increasing military budget, which consolidates the power and reach of the state far more than any of the social programs do.
Agim, so you’re saying that under under Joseph’s socialism, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer?
As Agim notes, Joseph’s policy was to double the grain tax during good years and then, when famine occurred, force the Jews to sell themselves into slavery in order to get the grain back. Is this really an example of wise countercyclical policy? If so, then perhaps we should be skeptical of such a policy.
Pinky:
Elegantly stated! Why, it’s almost as if, whatever the political or economic system, the tendency of the powerful to seek more power is inherent in the nature of man. It’s almost as if there were some sort of radical depravity at work, or, for you non-Calvinists, we might call it a by-product of original sin.
Regards,
AZ
WJ, your link arrives at the 54% number by not counting Social Security or Medicare. It includes non-DoD military spending, but doesn’t exclude DoD non-military spending (education, housing, DARPA) and non-DoD non-military spending (health care benefits for veterans 65 and older). It also includes humanitarian DoD projects like Haiti, and Army Corps of Engineers domestic construction projects.
Regarding your statement on contracts, they are not fair if they are not done on equal footing. Therefore, our laws allow them to be void if they are formed if one party is under duress.
Even the most liberal activist judge in the world, you do not get to nullify a legal contract just because it is “unfair.”
The same with employment, an employee may quit and find another job if an employer is abusive.
But if an employee abuses an employer, rather than just walk away from the relationship, he goes to jail.
Henry,
Might the question not be slightly anachronistic? If the point is chiefly to expose the silliness of knee-jerk accusations of socialism and anti-government demagoguery, then I agree with you. If it’s to say that there are worthwhile public policy lessons to be drawn and that the situation Joseph was in is applicable to ours in more than a common sense, “counter-cyclical policies are good” manner, then I think you’re off-base.
It seems like there’s a large group of people who assume that the Church’s teachings regarding social justice empower (necessitate?) any state intervention imagined, and don’t believe that each intervention should be examined prudentially, which means considering the possible negative second order effects it might have. People criticize government spending programs, which are often inefficient and DO NOT provide the help promised, and your response is “Joseph employed deficit spending.” That’s just as unproductive for political discourse as accusing Democrats of socialism all time.
If the point is chiefly to expose the silliness of knee-jerk accusations of socialism and anti-government demagoguery, then I agree with you.
I think you got the major point of the post. The whole “it’s socialism” or “big government” or “taxation” etc — is used often just to silence the discussion, and so the point was rather simple — for someone to ponder how such arguments and methodology for political debate would work in other settings, showing how absurd it is.
Blackadder: I don’t think the Jews were the target of the scheme; scripture specifically states that it was the Egyptians that were forced into servitude. One interesting aspect of this story hadn’t occurred to me: you can’t sell yourself to someone if you’re already owned by somebody else. The Egyptians before this time must have been relatively free, and this famine was used by Pharaoh’s government to increase its power over its own people.
Yeah, I think you’re right that skepticism is appropriate.
Rgds,
AZ
Henry, don’t worry, even the densest of us (that’d be me) got the point. Still, I’d love to see the reaction if President Obama’s State of the Union speech revolved around dream interpretation.
Henry, You are a coward and a thug.
[ed. I am letting this comment through so people know the kind of things Ruse is saying in the background ]