Consumerism can become too much of a good thing

I can understand the temptation of wealthy people to guard their assets to such an extent that they spurn or at least suspect pleas for charity giving. It could be in church, it could be with any number of benevolent agencies that ask help. Up go the mental defenses against this or that appeal. They feel that giving too much away will jeopardize their stash, and it might even encourage the bad habit of dependency among the poor, which they would not want to do. For the poor’s sake, of course. As a famous socialite once said, you can never be too rich or too thin.
What I don’t understand is the far greater number of people with few of the means of the 1-percenters who vote right along with them to protect the financial position of the well to do. If this benefited them, that at least would make sense. But voting down constructive, needed school referendums, or infrastructure rebuilding, or daycare centers for single parents, the kind of thing that helps all in society, is shooting oneself in the foot. In an era of instant gratification, we don’t want to wait to enjoy the benefit of safe bridges or adequately financed schools. We want the immediate benefit of lower taxes even if the savings are tiny. We refuse to wait till we or our children can phase in socially useful expenditures paid for by taxes.
The thinking of these latter might be that they hope to be rich someday, so let’s get in place now the mechanisms they will need to protect their assets. Yet recent findings indicate that for working-age households headed by someone younger than 65, median income increased by 1 percent, from $56,802 in 2011 to $57,353 in 2012. Sound good? But consider that such households suffered a 9.3 percent decline in income, a loss of $5,815, from 2007 to 2011. Net loss.
Sharing the resources God gave to all humanity, not just the rich, not just Americans, not just us but all people, is basic bedrock Catholic social doctrine. However, preaching this foundational truth in church causes many to hear not social doctrine but socialism, a mistake almost impossible to correct. Preachers who have the courage to stand in front of worshippers of varying incomes and take the lofty command of Jesus down to where the people live are commonly accused of socialism and of partisan politics.
The impartial dictionary says that socialism is “a political and economic theory of social organization based on collective or governmental ownership and democratic management of the essential means for the production and distribution of goods. . . .” But Catholic social doctrine defends private ownership. It denies the Marxist claim that no one may have private property. It denies even a kinder, gentler government the right to seize property without due process the goods someone worked hard to get. Factory owners who built factories with much help from employees may keep their factories. Trucking companies that take produce to markets may keep their trucks.
But I think we all understand the problem. Jesus cautioned us about pursuing ever bigger barns and dining sumptuously while the Lazaruses of the world starve at our gates. He did this because he knew the basic human compulsion to acquire and to clutch things, a desire that has to be controlled lest it own us. It is not that industriousness is bad. It is that consumerism can become too much of a good thing. It’s just that it has to be controlled unless we want bad things to happen, like unwanted pregnancies or membership in the community of about a dozen pandemic sexually transmitted diseases. Broken hearts, too, are common.
We have passed Labor Day, when we honor every worker doing honest work. We know that those doing essential leadership jobs could not function without those doing socially useful but low-paying jobs. We just celebrated Thanksgiving, when we rhapsodize about the horn of plenty as though the national religion of capitalism has granted everyone access to it, knowing that we owe God the thanks, not the American economy. People in other countries who also have to work for a living sometimes seem to be less obsessive about money and yet enjoy a higher standard of living. What do they know that we don’t?
By the way, I still think we ought to repeal the Second Amendment.