The Economics of Gratuity

In our side yard, a peach tree gives us nice fruit every year. We did not plant, plan or engineer this tree: it came to us spontaneously as an impulsive gesture of generosity from Mother Nature by way of some lively, productive squirrel or bird. Gratuity!

An hour ago, a handy-man friend of mine came over and installed a new thermo-coupler on the broken furnace of a single-mother friend in the neighborhood. He wouldn’t take any payment.Gratuity!

Our seven children have completed about 140 years of schooling, almost all of it Catholic. Financially this is completely impossible on the one modest salary we earned while they were growing up. How did it happen? Some mysterious, serendipitous, even miraculous Gratuity!

When we were raising our family, our dentist didn’t charge the co-pay; our mechanic (of almost 40 years) did countless repairs free of charge; our exterminator and plumber wouldn’t accept payment. When we had $500 in the bank, friends and family gave us money and help to buy and fix the 15 room house in which we raised our family and still live. Grandparents on both sides gave us memorable annual vacations in Maine and Belmar NJ. Gratuity!

A group of our family and friends opened a residence for low-income, special needs women. The rent we collect covers about 60% of our expenses. But the home is like a magnet, attracting donations of food and clothing and money as well as volunteer services. Gratuity

I have lived my entire life immersed in the economy of gratuity. This is the real economy; the human economy; the grace-infused economy. We usually have two models in mind when we say “economy:” first, the globalized, market economy including things like Gross National Product, unemployment rate, per-capita income and annual rate of growth. Secondly, we think of the government with its budget, deficit, debt, income and expenditure. These are, of course, aspects of our macro-economy; but they are of minor significance compared with what Pope Benedict has termed “the economy of gratuity.” I read in yesterday’s Times that economists have found that as a society increases its total wealth it does not increase human happiness. This makes perfect sense. It also means that the rate of growth, or decline, is not so important after all; what matters are gratitude and generosity.

A materialistic liberalism would have us believe that unemployment and scarcity are the prime sources of human misery. The real tragedy would not be that a man has no job; it would be that he lacks the resources of heart and intellect, the spontaneity, the imagination, the social encouragement and the generosity to make use of the time with which he is graciously gifted. Naïve conservatism trusts that an unregulated, untaxed market will inflate human happiness, avoiding the reality that a mechanistic, dehumanizing global economy, fueled by greed and consumerism, may be a greater threat to wholesome human communities than the over-reaching state.

Government and business, both, at their best are bursting with gratuity. We are blessed with an extensive, generous, governmental safety network which provides food, medical care, housing, education and other services to so many of us, especially the very needy. Excellent business people passionately want to serve, to be fruitful, to satisfy genuine needs and to surpass expectations. My brother, who sells bagels, gives many away. This generosity is not an activity separated off from his work; it involves the same energies, passions, imagination, and exuberance that make him a good businessman. United Parcel Service, my employer for 25 years, used to match our donations and made it possible for our family to endow a scholarship at St. Peter’s College for students who have suffered from mental or emotional conditions. Profits from UPS fund the Casey foundations which are fabulously generous on behalf of families in need. These activities are not set off from the UPS “service” industry. Generosity and gratuity are not a third domain set off from industry and government, they are already built into them; they are essential to them and fundamentally constitute them. I cannot imagine a good politician, civil servant or businessman who is not also grateful and generous.

And so, the national deficit and debt, unemployment rate, or Dow Jones average may not be so important after all. What matters is the degree to which gratitude and generosity infuse our working, our resting, our buying and everything we do.

Nor does this reflection lead to a moralistic, voluntaristic intention to give away more money or time or talent. Rather, the economics of gratuity can only spring from a deep spirit of gratitude, of quiet appreciation, of eager reception, of contemplation. We can start by marveling at the bounteousness of nature, the extravagance and synergy of our social energies, the sophistication and expertise of our culture and technology, the productivity of our economy and the complexity of our governmental system (city, state, national). We can diminish the excessive negativity that has become endemic to the dismal science: the obsessive anxiety over debt and deficit, the decline of America, or the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

This is not to deny that there are serious problems and an urgent need for sustained, thoughtful and purposeful action. It is to affirm that such insightful and fruitful action can only flow from a prior positivity of awe, contentment, reception and gratitude…such that our work, rest and celebration all flow with such delight and exuberance that all we do, in feast and famine, resounds to the Glory of God.