Those lines from West Side Story’s rollicking song, “Office Krupke” have come back to tease me over the decades since I first heard them. Are we depraved because we’re deformed? Or because we’re deprived? Some Christians, given their understanding of original sin and our fallen nature, would hold to “deformed.” I suspect that that’s an [...]
Posts under ‘Economy’
Guest Writer Pia Chaudhari: Remedying a Poverty of Love
A friend of mine shared this extraordinary video on Facebook recently, about a man in India, Narayanan Krishnan, who has followed his heart into a ministry of feeding and care-taking of some of the most desperately poor and vulnerable people in his home city. For me, watching it brought a host of emotions. It brought [...]
The Middle Class Dilemma: More or Enough?
Two seemingly unrelated stories led off NPR’s Morning Edition today. One was the story of an Arizona family who decided not just to live within their means, but to live within their needs. The other, more vexing story, was about an obscure bit of financial jargon: “Quantitative Easing.” For all you normal people out there, [...]
Niebuhr and Buddha – and Obama
With this blog, I’m jumping into water over my head. I may need someone to rescue me, or set me straight. I want to say something about Reinhold Niebuhr and Walter Rauschenbusch (about whom I am in no way specialized, whereas two of my colleagues here at Union, Jim Cone and Gary Dorrien, are) and [...]
A Buddhist-Christian Take on the Financial Crisis III
Last night, we brought our “Buddhist-Christian Dialogue on Global Greed” here in Chiang Mai to an end with the formulation of a “Common Word” on the economic mess the world is in and what we might do about it. That’s quite an achievement. Finding a common word about the economy between Buddhists and Christians who [...]
A Buddhist-Christian Take on the Financial Crisis II
“If you want to find the causes of the financial crisis that we are in, and if you want to come up with solutions for it, you’re going to have to deal with GREED.” That was the opening Buddhist contribution to our conference here in Chiang Mai, Thailand on Buddhist-Christian dialogue about the global economic [...]
A Buddhist-Christian Take on the Financial Crisis
I’m here in Chiang-Mai, Thailand, at Payap University for a rather extraordinary – some would say strange – gathering. We are a group of some 30 Buddhist and Christian scholars, leaders, and activists from around the world (mostly Asian; I’m one of two Americans). We’ve come together to talk about the financial tsunami that moved [...]
Is Obama “Whacking the Old Folks”??
I’ve just returned from a wonderful, nostalgic visit to my favorite city in the whole world: Rome. And I’ve been trying to catch up with national news. The latest issue of THE NATION has left me stunned, bewildered, unable to be incredulous. A column by William Greider, whose books, columns, and appearances on the Bill [...]
It’s the system, stupid!
From today’s New York Times, in a lead article on poverty in the US: “American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.” When I think on [...]