If money doesn't grow on trees, where does it come from?
On occasion during my childhood, my parents told me and my siblings that money doesn’t grow on trees but, rather, through hard work. Moreover, the resultant supply is finite. Having come through the Great Depression, my mother took this limited supply idea seriously and treated nickels like manhole covers!
By contrast, it’s hard not to conclude that many of our elected representatives these days act as though money does grow on one tree, namely deficit spending by the government funded through higher taxes and borrowing. While some economists and politicians are now expressing concerns about excessive government spending, it seems as though the general public has grown increasingly comfortable with the government money tree as the fix for all our financial problems.
In this context, it’s interesting to note that federal income tax was introduced in Canada in 1917 solely to fund the war effort, which thankfully turned out to be temporary and successful. Thus, in striking contrast to government behavior today, the original philosophy underpinning fiscal policy was that federal income taxes be strictly constrained in both duration and scope.
In any event, if money doesn’t grow on trees, where does it come from? As argued in my book More Than Your Business Card, the ultimate source of all funding in an economy is commercial activity based upon the free exchange of money for goods and services. By extension, all government largesse is ultimately funded by private sector commercial activity.
As profit-seeking businesses identify human wants and needs and take risks to fill them through their individual value propositions, money flows in various streams. These include sales to customers, purchases from suppliers, wages to employees and taxes to governments. Together these activities are intended to produce a profit, which funds business growth and rewards investors for risk-taking through driving increases in the value of their shares and the payment of dividends. Of particular relevance to this discussion, Jesus commands us to engage in profitable economic activity!
A healthy and prosperous private sector economy is essential to funding literally everything.
A better understanding of the significant economic benefits resulting from commercial activity should provoke open-minded critics of the free market economy to rethink assumptions fuelling their antipathy towards business. In fact, a healthy and prosperous private sector economy is essential to funding literally everything. Of course, as with other sectors of the economy including government, the professions, the arts and the not-for-profit domain, there will always be bad actors. This point notwithstanding, a career in business can be a noble undertaking.
For followers of Jesus, the many ways in which the business sector promotes flourishing societies is very good news for the simple reason that most of us, particularly in advanced Western economies, will spend our working lives in a variety of careers within the business realm. Knowing that business is a legitimate and hugely important calling, we need to ask ourselves the following question based on the reality that business funds all our financial needs.
Am I treating my business career as a calling from Jesus or simply a money tree?
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
