 That I'm, as I said before, I'm an Episcopalian, a progressive Episcopalian, and if you call that a Christian, I'm a Christian. So I'm very sympathetic with your motives, so to speak. I do think that, as you said at the beginning, to split a religious life and economic life is a mistake. Some day, in a couple of years, I'm going to do a book called God in Mammon, Economic Sermons. Mammon is the Aramaic for money, so God in money, and there'll be short Episcopal sermons, but I'll be making kind of the opposite argument that you're making. I'd like to know your reaction. The book God in Mammon will be arguing that you can have, in a way it's not opposed to you, but in some ways it is, it'll be arguing that you can be a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew or a Hindu or whatever, and still be a full participant in economic life. Because I think you would agree, maybe we're in more agreement here than I think, Jesus frequently draws on profane examples, economic examples, of course always to point up, but still it's not as if he's urging us, and here we should think, he's not urging us to be holy fools, he's not saying, he only said that once, you give away all your goods and follow me, but that's not his theme. So maybe our purposes are similar, I don't think I agree with a lot of your economic arguments, for example, I don't think that trickle up or trickle down is what economics is about. That's a Keynesian argument, that you'll hear the trickle up from the Democratic side, and then people allege that trickle down is from the Republican side. But anyway, on this matter of God and mammon, are we in agreement or not? Well we are in agreement that religion is not merely about a spiritual realm. It's not merely about spirituality, it is about the whole thing, and if you look at Jesus, he had all these material interests, so Jesus was not a fool saying, well I'll leave economics to somebody else. Actually, there's a story where they try to trick him, talking about paying taxes. They come and they show him that they ask him, should we pay taxes to the emperor? And everybody knows the story, so Jesus then says, well show me the coin, they show him the coin, and you have the emperor's image on the coin, and then Jesus responds, well then give to Caesar what is Caesar, and give to God what is God. Now except that for an ancient Jew at that time, the answer was pretty obvious. What belongs to God? Well, for a modern religious thinker, we sometimes think, well what belongs to God is religion. For a Jew at the time of Jesus, it was pretty clear what belongs to God, everything. God created heaven and earth, God created material things, so in that sense it's not a matter of either or, and that's the surprise here. Everything belongs to God, that's where the challenge comes in. Now the other problem then becomes once you've said that Jesus and Abrahamic religions all care about material reality, I try to argue there are different ways of conceiving of material reality, so it could be built from a worker's perspective, it could be built from a business perspective, it could be built from a community's perspective, from other perspectives, and that's a conversation I think that we haven't quite had yet, because we're assuming that economics is one perspective, I'm saying there are other valid perspectives here that we ought to be at least bringing into the discussion, because not everybody would agree as to what this whole material thing is all about. Plus when you say that Jesus is actually focusing on a profane reality, I think that's true, but it always focuses on that reality from a perspective. But also God being in the midst of it, so up in that comes down in the actual struggles. That's where you have the whole thing together, and the interesting discussion for all of us would be what does that mean for how we measure economics, how we talk about the flow of power, how we talk about the flow of money, and so on. On the other hand, where I think we more sharply do not agree is what you just said, that there's the labor perspective, the business perspective, and that they're distinct. There's a core argument in economics, now it could be false. Let's see, that the pursuit of profit is good for the poor, the pursuit of profits is good for the poor, which is to say that the economy is a positive sum game. It's not a zero sum game. So your assertion, which I think is false, let me be sharp here, the assertion that you made that we have weekends because of the labor movement is, I believe, incorrect. Now, I was a member of the faculty union at my university, and when I was a kid I was a member of the National Maritime Union, so I'm not against unions for some purposes. But unions are not why we're rich. Unions are not why we have 40 hour weeks. Unions are not why in some countries we have high wages and others low. But let me, as the Cromwell said to the Presbyterians, consider in the bowels of Christ that you may be mistaken about the idea that there is a divergence of interest between the workers and the bosses. In fact I would agree, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying, I would agree that the economy is not a zero sum game, but precisely for that reason I would say that gains for working people, and you know unions have actually produced gains for working people that are not disbeatable, you cannot say. It's not possible to say that unions have not accomplished anything, there's a history there that has to be taken seriously. Well we disagree on that one, but the point here being, if it's not a zero sum game, it may well be that if working people are doing better, everybody is doing better, and that's something we should consider. That's the argument that the economy is not a zero sum game. You accuse me of arguing that, I'm actually saying it isn't, and whether it's trickle up or trickle down, what I'm saying is if all of us are doing better, that's great for the world. I agree. And in that sense the other conversation we have to have then is about inequality as it currently stands and who benefits from that, because there's a very particular situation that has to be addressed. I'll say one more thing and then I promise you, I'll shut up, about equality, which you've just made a claim, which is very widely believed. It's on the TV, it's in the newspapers, inequality is a big problem, inequality has increased. I assert that it hasn't, that inequality of essential goods has gone down since, say, my childhood in the 1950s, when a much higher percentage of the labor force was in unions. In a few countries, I've got a 50 page review of Piketty's book that you can read if you want. In a few countries inequality of wealth has gone up, but wealth isn't the same thing as essential consumption. We have better healthcare, more people going to higher education, improved food, improved housing, air conditioning, even from lots of poor people, and in those respects, those ones that you and I agree are the Fundament, those are more equal than they've ever been internationally and inside most countries. When inequality has increased in wealth, it's been largely because of housing policy and housing disasters, so that's my claim. Let me briefly respond. I think that's another argument that we could have, that there are actually places where inequality may have gone down. What concerns me, though, is the numbers I quoted, that you have upwards of 33% of children living in poverty, and that's not so much a matter simply of material goods, that's a matter of, you know, education, that's a matter of health, that's a matter of possibilities where you can move in life, and so it's that conversation that I think we still need to be having. Also I would argue, here's a political component, in a short presentation one cannot say everything. Economics and politics are linked at that point if you look at how power is distributed. I'm very proud that in America we have strong democratic traditions, but I'm worried that a growing sort of inequality that may be different than what you're describing is actually hurting our democracy in such a way that we do not have one person, one vote anymore, but we may have now one dollar, one vote, and that concerns me. Yeah. Do you want me to go? I have a question. Sure. Can I ask a question? Sure. Please. I have a question that is, that changes the subject somewhat. The, it may not draw a great applause, we'll see. I know Bob Nelson who you quoted in your talk, Bob was a graduate student at Princeton in economics and had a remarkable job for many years at the Department of Interior dealing with environmental issues, now I think still teaches at the University of Maryland, but I asked him once why he worked on other things and then became interested in studying religion and the connection with economics and I asked him why he did that and what he said was that when he worked on environmental issues he came to realize that most of the proposals that economists make that would be sensible, rational, cost effective, in the words for example instead of saying that you have 3,000 regulations about what kind of fuel you use to affect pollution instead you might have attacks on pollution directly, it's kind of a, most economists would think that's a sensible thing to do. That whenever he encountered environmental groups they completely and hostily opposed this and would not listen to any discussions about efficiency at all. He came to believe that the only way he could ever understand them was through understanding how people get their beliefs and he thought religion was the way to go. So I'm curious if you think that's true, do you have insights about how people, because it is true that most religious people say in the end you must believe in God, that the belief is nothing that you test, there's no evidence. So I've always wondered whether maybe understanding why people are prepared to say that would tell you something about what other things they might be prepared to do. What do you think of that? Yes. Religion, tell us about that. Thank you for that question. I would argue that of course there is one way of looking at religion and precisely this way to say this is held, believes held that are not tested. The one example I gave and there are other examples in these ancient traditions, there's often times testing, there's often times doubt. In the Psalms for instance you have this question, how long do we have to wait, oh God. So in that sense there's a hope that God will eventually come through and that believes will be verified that they can be tested. What I talked about of course, I mean compared what I said about economics as religion to your work, you're dealing with data, you're not dealing with these big ideas and principles. So there's different ways of going about this. There is, however as Nelson points out, people whose main job is to keep the big ideas alive. I mean we could talk about specific individuals who are doing just that. Now that also happens in other fields like environmentalism like you mentioned. I would not argue that this sort of environmentalism is necessarily the most helpful way of approaching it. So in that sense I would say if you go with another tradition that looks at believe not just as something that you have to assume and then you have to sit still but as believe as something that can be tested even though it may take a while for that test to run through, it may take a while for God to come through. If you go with that tradition I think you have some options to think about religion differently and that's what I was proposing. You can think about religion as practices, you can think about religion as habits, you can think about religion even as organizing. So when Christians talk about discipleship for instance we think that may have to do with Wednesday night chicken fellowship dinners and singing in the choir but what Jesus was doing with his disciples, discipling them, discipleship really meant organizing, teaching them and also bringing them together in such a way that they would be leading a different life and that too is something that I think we have to take seriously in the debate. What I would argue though is that is a distinct approach to religion that we're not always paying much attention to. Belief is not propositional and that's crucial. Atheists who make the new atheists think that religion is about believing six impossible things before breakfast. It's not about proposition, it's as you say, it's about practice, it's about a way of life. 613 commandments in Orthodox Judaism, they're not propositions, they're not E equals MC squared, I'm sorry. Chris did you want to go? So I just sometimes would discuss about what is economics and how much of this discussion is driven by in the United States we have economic entrepreneurs largely out of think tanks and based in Washington DC or think tanks around the country that have a political orientation that have kind of dominated what we think about as economics but while you were talking I kept thinking well I know it's a heterodox profession, there's lots of disagreement about the things that you're saying but at the same time in our public discourse what you were saying is not that controversial although I think if you talk to economic historians and you talk to different groups of the economists there's a lot of stuff where they were actually what's your problem, I don't have an issue with what you're saying or much of what you're saying. I think that's right and so my task is simply reclaiming something that you're rightly saying is already in the popular discourse and also then to say maybe there's different places where we have to gather our economic wisdom so if you're gathering economic wisdom it's still a good idea to listen and to pay attention to top economists but if you want to know what's really happening in the economy it may also be good to have a long conversation with a homeless person, it may be good to have a long conversation with a Wal-Mart worker. This is where I keep learning a few things because not only is it that there are people who are making low wages and whatever they can tell us much more about how they got there, how their communities relate to them, how religion functions in that context, how politics functions in that context and so in that sense all I'm doing is really not reinventing the wheel but bringing these things back into the conversation. Now for me primarily my discourse is religious studies, theology, so I'm not so much trying to change the field of economics but to bring some of these conversations back home to say let's talk about stuff that actually matters and where difference is already being made and where things shape up in a different way that we're not expecting. Some of that I think has to do with the large amounts of money that is flowing into these think tanks and into the media that's the other problem with inequality that some people actually have much more of a podium than others to make their arguments. I think economics does need to change, I think conventional economics is a very crude characterization of what a person is. Really, I mean we have to be honest about it, right? What is a person is infinite wants which are exogenous, we don't explain where they come from, they're just infinite wants and there's stuff that we want and it's the relationship between this individual with infinite wants and stuff and that is hopelessly inadequate, not just with religion but modern psychology, neuroscience, the lot. Human beings are not like that and economics is a deeply conservative subject so we're desperately clinging onto this rational selfish individual and stuff. We need a revolution, the one subject we really respect is physics so let me use an analogy. Economics wishes desperately that the world will like physics but the world of physics that we worship is 19th century classical mechanics. There are billiard balls and force and the force is greed and the billiard balls are people and so it's all very predictable. That's our world, I'm afraid, the rational billiard ball. And then 100 years ago physics went through a massive intellectual revolution. It abandoned classical mechanics because it was wrong and it replaced it with quantum mechanics and the building blocks of quantum mechanics were utterly different. They looked weird to classical physicists and there are really two building blocks. One was that it wasn't stuff that mattered, it was interactions and I think economics needs that move. It's not individual people, it's interactions between people. People are social animals first. We are born into social networks, we get our identities from social networks, our preferences, our values from the society we're in before we get rationality. And so that's one thing, so let me finish up. The other component to quantum mechanics as well as interactions of fundamental not stuff is that things come in packages. Quantum and mental constructs come in packages. People's beliefs, people's values, where they come from, they come from participation in a social network so all the people in a social network are exposed to the same narratives, the same values, the same norms so they're packaged there and the values and norms and narratives that people hold are packaged in an individual head because we try and avoid cognitive dissonance, we try and hold beliefs which kind of hang together and so I fear we need to reformulate economics with a richer sense of behaviors where we learn not from direct observation of the world, we learn from the narratives that we hear, we're motivated not just by greed for stuff but by the concern for the norms of other people, we want peer esteem and we want self esteem and we get that by enacting an identity that we've absorbed from a social network and our desire for stuff individually is traded off with our desire for self esteem and peer esteem and that would give us a much richer view of society, it would be more complicated, a richer view of behavior and it would I think chime much more with both a religious view of what people are like and what ordinary people know that people are like which rivalled the view of mankind. I call it, this morning when you weren't here I introduced the word humanomics, that's what you're talking about. It seems to me in terms of what you just said this relationship is really the fundamental question and if we thought about economic inequality in that sense then it weren't simply a matter of how much things do people have but what kinds of relationships are we living how does power shape up in these relationships so in that sense question of power of course is also a question of physics and it's not the billiard balls so in that sense relationship power what I also suggested was this whole question of measuring the health of the economy in terms of the contributions that people make to it so it's not just what do I get out of it but how do I plug into it so how do I function as a worker am I simply a little cock in a wheel or do I have a place where I can actually contribute something that's good for relationships that's good for community that's the environmental question ultimately how does that help the globe how does that help the planet so in that sense I think that's where we're agreed that was my question about the numbers the very interesting numbers we saw in the earlier lecture about you know global wage differentials how does the McDonald's example now fit into the broader economy and once we have that conversation the difficult part of the conversation then is to say maybe in this relationship some people are more equal than others and some people are sort of distorting these relationships or preventing us from living these relationships more fully and that's always the tough part because now it seems like we're pointing fingers but it's a question we too have to raise when if we're serious about relationships I also wanted to pick up on your point that work can give positive value to people you know in economics works the negative in order to get the stuff but it's that's again a terribly shriveled view I've been working I've just finished a book on the refugee crisis I've been working with Syrian refugees in Jordan the last couple of years and the the model we have for dealing with refugees UNHCR is a purely it's a very shriveled humanitarian view of what is a person food shelter that's it the efficient way to provide that is a camp right that's what they do a very large majority of Syrian refugees have completely bypassed the camps they've chosen not to go there they've chosen to ignore the food and the shelter even though it's free why because most of all first and foremost they want the autonomy and the dignity that comes from being able to work and so what do they have to do they have to head into the towns where they're not allowed to work but they can below the radar screen get some sort of job and about 85 percent of them choose that rather than this shriveled existence in the camps so yes work is fundamental by that people participate and so get human dignity in terms of the ancient traditions here too it's not always clear that we're talking about the same thing where we're talking about justice for instance in the old roman traditions you have justice as an idea of neutrality you know lady justice with a blindfold holding a sword in the one hand and the scales and the other in the jewish christian traditions muslim too you have justice as being faithful being truthful to the community so it's a matter of building relationships and as you build and restore relationships sometimes you have to take sides sometimes you have to actually side with those who are pushed under the wheel or you also have to say a few harsh words to those who are denying relationships who are destroying relationships and maybe that's something you can also learn from the refugees you know where are they going how are they rebuilding relationships who benefits and who loses i can't tell you how it kills me to cut off a discussion it breaks my teacher's heart but i want us to leave on time a reminder that this evening in this room there is a panel economic balance achieving economic balance closer to the ground with a panel of minnesota experts simultaneous to that is a concert and also just a reminder to gustave students you have exclusive access to these folks this evening please take advantage of this incredible opportunity thank you all for coming