As John Mueller demonstrates in “Redeeming Economics,” the family (defined as a mother and father and their dependent children) is the engine of the economy. To oversimplify an elegant argument, it is not strict utilitarian calculation that causes people to act as they do, but “the weighing of persons,” Mueller says.
We work and distribute our goods for the benefit of those we love: family first, then neighbors, communities and institutions.
An economy which breaks down the family, loosening the bonds between persons, is sowing its own destruction.
Some facts:
• 2010 marked the first year the Social Security program began paying out more benefits than it is taking in revenues, so it is on course for bankruptcy.
• The independent Tax Foundation found that in 2004, 60% of American households were receiving more benefits from the government than they were paying in taxes. That number will rise this year to 70%.
• This means only 3 out of 10 families in this country will be supporting themselves — and they’ll be supporting or supplementing all the rest of us, too. On our present course, that number is likely to shrink to two or even one.
• The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects current spending levels will drive our debt to the equivalent of 90% of our economy — 90% of GDP — by 2020.
No one reputable — not on the Left and not on the Right — is such a social Darwinist as to be against a safety net for the support of citizens genuinely in need: the frail, the handicapped and victims of sudden disasters.
But when the government gets so large that it supports 70% (and rising) of our citizens, do we not have to ask ourselves whether the economy itself has become what the Catechism calls a “structure of sin?”
