There are times when the title of a book is so immediately gripping that one must immediately buy it. This is such a case. Is it not the case that capitalism is increasingly under scrutiny (and even disrepute) in our day? Capitalism, we’re told, is fundamentally based on greed. It’s mean. It’s the process whereby the strong prey on the weak. I’ll never forget (now President) Barack Obama sometime this summer decrying the record profits of the oil companies. Citing the large profit figure, he cried out (absurdly), “That’s your money!” Really? How can it be my money when they have it? I gave it to them in exchange for their product. Nobody made me do it. I chose to.
Anyway, here’s the product description:
Does capitalism promote greed? Can a person follow Jesus’s call to love others and also support capitalism? Was our recent economic crisis caused by flaws inherent to our free market system? Jay Richards presents a new approach to capitalism, revealing how it’s fully consistent with Jesus’s teachings and the Christian tradition, while also showing why this system is our best bet for renewed economic vigor.
The church is bombarded with two competing messages about money and capitalism:
* wealth is bad and causes much of the world’s suffering
* wealth is good and God wants you to prosper and be rich
Richards exposes these myths, and other common misconceptions about capitalism, and reveals the surprising ways that capitalism is, in fact, the best system to respond to the biblical mandates of alleviating poverty and protecting the environment. Money, Greed, and Godequips readers to take practical steps in their own lives to conduct business, worship God, and serve others without falling into the “prosperity gospel” trap.
And the endorsements:
“In Money, Greed, and God, Jay Richards has written the definitive case for capitalism, a crisply written and incisive discourse on wealth and poverty, money and morality for the 21st Century.”
-George Gilder, co-founder of the Discovery Institute and author of Wealth and Poverty
“Jay Richards understands the objections to capitalism, and here explains why they do not convince him. The empirical findings revealed in Money, Greed, and God run against those objections.”
-Michael Novak, Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute
HT: JT
