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Religion and Riches

Posted by Paul Miller at 5:40pm on Thursday, 20th November 2003

Apparently religion makes you richer, well if you're a country anyway. There's an interesting article in the Economist (via aldaily.com) about the work of Harvard economists Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary. As the piece puts it: "The most striking conclusion is that belief in the afterlife, heaven and hell are good for economic growth. Of these, fear of hell is by far the most powerful, but all three indicators have a bigger impact on economic performance than merely turning up for church."

Comments

1
not always. i met an interesting guy recently who is a proponent of islamic finance which forbids the charging of interest. a similar idea to earlier christian ideas about usury. http://www.theproblemwithinterest.com/ a solution to world debt?
Posted by gillian gillian  at 5:51pm on Thursday, 20th November 2003
2
When mapping the social enterprise sector in Hackney, we found out that many of the muslim business people and shop owners pledge to donate a fixed percentage of their profits back to their mosque every year. The money raised is then used to finance new start-ups so the mosque becomes a social enterprise and the Imam a venture capitalist of sorts! The trick appears to be in getting people to pledge a percentage of their profits rather than a fixed amount! Anyway, many of the muslim businesses currently trading on Mare Street were financed in this way.
Posted by Lydia Howland  at 7:06pm on Thursday, 20th November 2003
3
I've always thought it's fascinating the way the relationship between capitalism and theology defines US conservatives and liberals. As the article points out, capitalism originally depended on a protestant ethic of delayed gratification. If people had been hedonistic through the 18th and 19th centuries, capital could never have accrued, which is what makes the US conservative position coherent. But from the 80s onwards, credit card culture took off, meaning that live-for-the-moment atheism (imagine Nietzsche with an Amex card) became an important source of economic growth for the US. If America was entirely protestant, and living for tomorrow, global demand would slump and we'd have had a global recession years ago. Hence, its the likes of Clinton and Kevin Spacey with their drugs and cigars that sustained capitalism, putting pious conservatism in a contradictory position. Anyway - good spot, Paul.
Posted by Will Davies  at 10:21am on Friday, 21st November 2003

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