Ok, so those who know me know I am a Christian. Be that as it may, only recently have I started considering the reality that a sound economic structure can only be built with a strong moral foundation. Now don't get me wrong, I very strongly believe in the importance of morality in life, and in the absolute vitality of that morality being rooted in God's word, but while I have understood the "rightness" of various facets of economic thought (individual freedoms, property, self-determination, etc...) I had never really thought of economic thought as a whole in light of morality. Steve Landsburg, in his book "The Armchair Economist" addresses the idea that we can create all the positive (i.e. analytical) economic theories we want, but without a normative theory to instruct us as to the desirability of that result, all our positive theories are worthless. Without a moral foundation for what we do, economists are left merely saying "so we can get to any result a through z, but which one is best?" This particularly applies to macroeconomics.
Currently one of the faculty here at GMU is working on the economics of religion, using economic analysis to examine religious behavior, but I wonder what would happen if we used religious thought to analyze economics???
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