Money decisions and Morality

 

I have spent the last couple weeks establishing a threshold for household income.  Anyone below that threshold has very little flexibility when it comes to making decisions on how to spend money. As one of the sites described the minimum household income as:

"That income would pay for rent and utilities, minimal food, healthcare, child care, and other basics."

The threshold income is not:

"But it’s not enough to cover DoorDash deliveries, restaurant meals, a deluxe apartment, vacations, or savings for retirement or a house."

As I have said previously living below these threshold has to be a difficult existence.  Imagine every penny being accounted for before you earn it.  Another way to look at it is that all of the decisions regarding money are made for you.  You really have few or no monetary choices.  What really interests me is the decisions made by those of us that enjoy incomes above the threshold.  Of especial interest is what those decisions reveal about our character.

At one point while writing and rewriting this post I started to look at this topic in terms of operational, tactical and strategic decisions.  There is definitely room for that type of analysis.  I would definitely rate decisions about our basic needs as operational.  The basics are what we need to survive.  Food, shelter minimal health care are some of the basic needs.  Decisions here are not rocket science.  We need them.  To label decisions above the threshold as tactical and strategic may be accurate but it does not address our character and how it affects our decisions.

Character, or morality can grow from many places.  One place it grows from for many people is a religious affiliation.  The one I am most familiar with is a traditional Christian doctrine.  This doctrine is based on the bible.  I am not going to debate scripture by scripture what the bible says about money and riches.  The graph at the top does indicate that the bible discusses money quite a lot.  So if your "morals" are based on any sect of a Judeo-Christian religion how you handle your money is very important.  Buddhist view money as neither good nor evil.  Money qualities are inherent in the way we use it.  After having taught a few Sunday school classes I would put forth the notion that the Christian view of money is similar.

Let me start the moral discussion this way.  If we here of a person that earns a wage below threshold spending money on non basics we would quickly condemn that person.  We would go as far as saying that they are making an immoral decision about money.  After all they need everything they earn to simply meet basic needs.  If their basic needs are not met they or their family members could suffer severe consequences.  So for those of us that have enough to meet and exceed our basic needs why do we get a free pass when we make bad (or immoral decisions) regarding money.  As the graph above implies money (by extension "riches") are important.  So would it not follow that wasting our wealth in any way would be considered immoral?

those of us that earn a living above our basic needs, need to seriously consider morality when making decisions about money.  I am not advocating a life of squalor nor am I interested in any type of communist utopia.  I remain a devote capitalist and firmly believe that it is the best way to meet the needs of our population.  However I also believe that we as individuals can have an enormous impact when we make rational decisions.  One such example would be the apparel industry.  This MSNBC article states that on average clothes are worn seven times before being discarded.  You read that correctly 7 times!  I have heard this value from several sources (bloggers, the Wall Street Journal etc.).  The MSNBC article goes on to link this fashion trend to cheap labor and poor environmental practices.  This wasteful practice results in the apparel industry producing 150 billion new clothing items each year.  As of 2021 the earth's population is 7.888 billion.  I would bet that not all 7.888 billion people are following this trend.  However to produce this many garments a lot of cheap labor and a lot of materials are needed.  The net result according to the article is that the apparel industry is responsible for 10% of the total global carbon footprint.  It also states that apparel is the second largest polluter of fresh water globally.

Results such as these are not the result of someone forgoing basic needs to buy a lottery ticket, they are the result of opulent and wasteful spending.  This is where I feel that our capitalist economy benefit us.  Only though, if we as consumers act with more character with our money.  What do we think the impact would be if we doubled or tripled the life span of our clothes.  Instead of wearing it 7 times and discarding it we wore it 21 or 28 times?  As most of our parents and grandparents said "waste not want not"