A Familiar Story

Rod Dreher:

I think he’s right, and I can completely understand the terrible choice Germans are faced with, and why they recoil from making it. It destroys the moral structure of capitalism. Let the Greeks and the Italians live by tax evasion, bribes, and destructive cynicism toward their institutions and the responsibilities of citizenship, and it doesn’t matter: the Germans can be counted on to bail them out. If I were a German and my government decided to do this, I would be filled with so much contempt and despair it would be disorienting. And yet, if my government failed to do that, I would be staring into the face of a Great Depression.
I wonder what would be worse: a Depression that serves as nemesis for the hubris of the Eurozone tower of Babel, or saving the Eurozone by throwing overboard the “precious social construct” of moral hazard and an economic system that rewards virtue and punishes vice.
I know some of you readers know a lot more about economics than I do — Pyrrho! — and no doubt disagree with me on this. Please help me understand why it’s wrong to apply a moral framework to this situation, why I’m worried about the wrong thing.

Well Rod, I probably don't know a lot more about economics than you do, but you are probably familiar with a story I've heard before:

²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’    ²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
   ³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

That story throws "overboard the 'precious social construct' of moral hazard and an economic system that rewards virtue and punishes vice."  And yet some well-known individual tells the story anyway.  Sure, the younger son has realized the error of his ways and returned home to beg forgiveness and ask to be hired as a servant.  But the position of Rod is that he's worked hard and played by the rules, and thinks the people who didn't do both should face their punishment.  Here's the wikipedia summary of the parable of the Prodigal Son:

This is the last of three parables about loss and redemption, following the parable of the Lost Sheep and the parable of the Lost Coin, that Jesus tells after the Pharisees and religious leaders accuse him of welcoming and eating with "sinners." The father's joy described in the parable reflects divine love, the "boundless mercy of God," and "God's refusal to limit the measure of his grace."
The request of the younger son for his share of the inheritance is "brash, even insolent" and "tantamount to wishing that the father were dead." His actions do not lead to success, and he eventually becomes an indentured servant, with the degrading job (for a Jew) of looking after pigs, and even envying them for the carob pods they eat. On his return, the father treats him with a generosity far more than he has a right to expect.
The older son, in contrast, seems to think in terms of "law, merit, and reward," rather than "love and graciousness." He may represent the Pharisees who were criticizing Jesus.

My understanding is that Rod is devout Christian, who wants to live his life in the image of Jesus.  Being compared to the Pharisees would probably make him uncomfortable.  If one is going to look at the morality of an economic situation, he or she probably ought to consider who's morality they are looking at it through.  But I can't get away from the belief that today's conservative Christians most often play the role of the Pharisees in a modern-day version of the Gospels.  Now how does that apply to a secular world?  I don't know, but I'm not one of the people claiming that the United States is a Christian nation, so I'm not going to worry my pretty little head about it.