wealth and ethics
2008-Mar-26, Wednesday 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerIt's a topic that I've pondered many times over the course of my life. I suppose it's good to see others addressing the issue in a more scientific way. Specifically, a new study announces that conservative protestants are financially poor.
Similarly, it took me a few weeks of pondering during an incident about 8 years ago to finally decide that 401k was not something I would participate in at my workplace. I even considered playing stocks like I would a computer game, enjoying the mathematical complexity in trying to find maximum achievement. Still, it wasn't enough to soothe my worries about where all this stock "value" was coming from, which seemed like children playing with trading cards whose "value" had nothing to do with their indication of work produced. I can understand and approve a system in which stocks are issued with a fixed amount of "return" on the investment. Suppose a company could sell stocks at a value of $100 with promise of a total $200 return to the investor, then after the $200 is paid off, the stock simply "disappears". The company can continue to pay dividends as they are able, essentially making such stock into a very flexible loan. But stocks last forever, near as I can tell. Why should a stock I purchase on the market (where my money does not go to the company needing the cash for its own use) and I continue to siphon off funds that should be going to the workers who produced the real value? How much total money is being paid in dividends on stocks today in America? Dividends which should (by my logic anyway) belong to the people who made the company profitable, not to me who gets dibs on the profit because of some stupid piece of paper. I can see why the initial stock sale can benefit the company and its workers, but I can't see how stocks should ever be allowed to siphon off funds in perpetuity. It seems plainly unethical to me.
So no 401k "investments" for me. That money belongs to somebody else, and I'm not going to take it even though I could.
I understand that Muslims have even more strict standards on financial involvements than Christians do. I've thought more than once that I wish I knew where they did their banking here in America so I could examine it to see how it matched up to my own standards. It should be possible to create "ethical banking". I wish I knew where to find it, though.
"The direct influence stems from conservative Protestants’ unique approach to finances -- in particular the belief that people are managers of God’s money and excess accumulation of wealth should be avoided.I have, over the years, made financial decisions that I knew would leave me poorer than my contemporaries, but I made those choices anyway in an effort to live my ethical beliefs. For instance, I canceled my savings account about 15 years ago because I didn't like the answers I gave myself concerning where that "interest money" was coming from. It wasn't money that I had earned; it was money that somebody else once earned (other people paying interest on their home loans) and that somehow ended up in my bank account by methods that seemed rather shady to me (poor people using their paychecks to cover exorbitant fees on bounced checks). I decided that I would stop participating in that system of finances as much as I was able to extricate myself. I still have a checking account, but it "pays" no interest (meaning, it doesn't take money from somebody else to give it to me for reasons that I don't quite understand and certainly don't justify ethically).
In addition, conservative Protestants have tended to be less educated and have large families beginning at younger ages; and fewer conservative Protestant women work, all of which indirectly contribute to slow asset accumulation, Keister said."
- http://physorg.com/news125681068.html
Similarly, it took me a few weeks of pondering during an incident about 8 years ago to finally decide that 401k was not something I would participate in at my workplace. I even considered playing stocks like I would a computer game, enjoying the mathematical complexity in trying to find maximum achievement. Still, it wasn't enough to soothe my worries about where all this stock "value" was coming from, which seemed like children playing with trading cards whose "value" had nothing to do with their indication of work produced. I can understand and approve a system in which stocks are issued with a fixed amount of "return" on the investment. Suppose a company could sell stocks at a value of $100 with promise of a total $200 return to the investor, then after the $200 is paid off, the stock simply "disappears". The company can continue to pay dividends as they are able, essentially making such stock into a very flexible loan. But stocks last forever, near as I can tell. Why should a stock I purchase on the market (where my money does not go to the company needing the cash for its own use) and I continue to siphon off funds that should be going to the workers who produced the real value? How much total money is being paid in dividends on stocks today in America? Dividends which should (by my logic anyway) belong to the people who made the company profitable, not to me who gets dibs on the profit because of some stupid piece of paper. I can see why the initial stock sale can benefit the company and its workers, but I can't see how stocks should ever be allowed to siphon off funds in perpetuity. It seems plainly unethical to me.
So no 401k "investments" for me. That money belongs to somebody else, and I'm not going to take it even though I could.
I understand that Muslims have even more strict standards on financial involvements than Christians do. I've thought more than once that I wish I knew where they did their banking here in America so I could examine it to see how it matched up to my own standards. It should be possible to create "ethical banking". I wish I knew where to find it, though.