How Do We Value Human Beings?

Unfortunately the most common way we determine a person’s value to society is by how much money they make. We may say a lot of other things but that is also how most of us value our own worth. If we get a raise we feel better about ourselves, as it shows people have expressed the confidence in our work. For me it is another example of the counter culture nature of religion versus secular society and as I best under the teachings of Jesus that God sees all people equally or of the same value. One could argue that if we applied those religious values to our economic society, everyone would receive the same wage. The task then of employing people would be to find the most fulfilling and appropriate place for them to work. This would be an attempt to combine vocations and avocations. I also realize this is a “when pigs fly” concept.

But when an economic system of value is completely out of whack we see huge differences in the distribution of wealth as we see it now in our society where 1/10^th of the upper 1% of people (1,400) people have half the wealth of the country. Frankly they just are not that valuable to society and this shows a serious breakdown of our economic system.

CEO’s are incredible examples of overvalued people. CEO’s is our society earn 380 times the average worker in our society. Are they that much smarter, harder working, and adept that the average worker (even given monetary values systems)? Of course not, but in our efficacious ethic system in society they can get away with it. Here is the list of the top 10 CEO’s according to Forbes Magazine:

Rank	Name	Company	1-Year Pay ($mil)	5 Year Pay ($mil)	Shares Owned ($mil)	Age	Efficiency
1	John H Hammergren	McKesson	131.19	285.02	51.9	53	121
2	Ralph Lauren	Ralph Lauren	66.65	204.06	5,010.4	72	84
3	Michael D Fascitelli	Vornado Realty	64.405	-	171.7	55	-
4	Richard D Kinder	Kinder Morgan	60.94	60.94	8,582.3	67	-
5	David M Cote	Honeywell	55.79	96.11	21.5	59	138
6	George Paz	Express Scripts	51.525	100.21	47.3	57	36
7	Jeffery H Boyd	Priceline.com	50.185	90.3	128.2	55	12
8	Stephen J Hemsley	UnitedHealth Group	48.835	169.3	155.8	59	-
9	Clarence P Cazalot Jr	Marathon Oil	43.71	67.23	30.3	61	91
10	John C Martin	Gilead Sciences	43.19	214.92	90.9	60	131

The word I have for those and most of the list the follows is obscene. Obscene means without socially redeeming value. Or, in other words, they are highly overvalued.

What frequently amazes me is how condemning we are of folk on the low end of the scale, people living in poverty and needed government aid just to survive. They are loudly condemned and lazy, stupid, unproductive members of our society but on the other hand we hear almost no condemnation of those who earn far more than their worth. It is the Protestant Ethic gone awry or more appropriately at its worst: God values and rewards good people and punishes (with poverty) bad people. The wisdom writers of the Old Testament took a look at a similar way of thinking in their time and said, “Horse puckey!” or words to that effect. Solomon saw and lot of good old boys riding around the town square with the newest and fanciest camel and with great herds of sheep and goats and whatever who were real bad dudes while a bunch of really good folk were living in poverty and they said, that is just not right. The major and minor prophets were always harping on that subject of treating people properly and with dignity. They have a lot to say to our society and our modern prophets do but they do not seem to have much clout.

It is often the case of the ability to walk in another person’s shoes and see life from their perspective. The working poor, say an average Wal-Mart worker earns $8.81 per hour and is not allowed to work fulltime so Wal-Mart does not have to pay them benefits, so they have to get food stamps and other government aid from the tax payers. They are not bad people or lazy, they have just taken advantage of by folk who can do it, such as the CEO’s of Wal-Mart. If they would just charge 1 percent more per product sold, and employed their workers full time, these individuals would no longer be at the poverty level and the entire society would benefit. But what do we do? We give subsidies and inducements to such companies. I have written before how the sporting goods mega store, Cabella, demands that if they will condescend to build a business in a community that community much guarantee them tax benefits and the like. Or, they demand that tax payers subsidize them. That’s whako.

Another major case in point is our medical system which is known to be by far the most expensive on earth and does not provide as good of care for the populace as other developed countries. Why? It is a profit based system where it is easy for doctors and those in the medical field to take their eyes off their purpose – health care – and put it on making the biggest bucks. Frankly I think the old country doctors of old had more fulfilling lives even if they didn’t have as many benefits, they had the respect of the communities.

Capitalist countries always need safeguards built into them, meaning governmental controls to keep them from getting out of balance. Adam Smith knew that, John Maynard Keynes knew that and when we implemented their recommendations the country was very productive and the middle class was strong and the America dream flourished. But for the last 35 years government has abdicated their role in macroeconomics and we end up with the situation we have now. We are beginning to repeat the 19^th century all over again and that boom or bust economy is not good for the country.

Those who support our broken system, the toadies of the rich and unethical have lost sight of each human beings value. They are materialists of the first order. Jesus never said it was blessed to be poor, he believed in the abundant life for all, economically as well as spiritually. We need to take him more seriously in our daily lives.