Abundance and leisure are fueled by free-market incentives and faithful presuppositions.
No two words in the English language create the feeling of relaxation as perfectly as “summertime weekend.” But the two days of physical and spiritual rest we enjoy each week are not the inevitable products of the cosmic order: They have been made possible by the unique marriage of the free market and faith.
Socialist nations such as North Korea and Cuba have been caught in a virtual time-warp since data collection began.
Of course, despite socialism’s pretences, North Korea’s wealth is far from evenly distributed. But if it were, the average North Korean today would have the same GDP-per-person as the average American had in the 1770s and the average Briton enjoyed a century earlier.
To take another example, modern China has experienced tremendous economic growth since Deng Xiaoping institutedmarket reforms in the late 1970s. But South Korea had already reached the same average GDP-per-person that China enjoys today around the time Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympic games. Hong Kong had the same prosperity shortly after Bruce Lee died. The UK reached that level the year that four lads from Liverpool formed the Beatles. And the U.S. had accrued the same wealth shortly before Pearl Harbor.
Some are tempted to believe this wealth has come about because Americans and British are working longer hours every year. One politician recently asserted, erroneously, that “unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs.” The truth is that Americans less likely to work two jobs than any time in decades – bivocational priests and pastors aside.
“The nine- to ten-fold increase in real incomes seen in industrialised countries between 1880 and 2000 coincided with a near halving of working hours,” wrote Christopher Snowdon of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
But free-market economics had an unsung and unappreciated assistant in this effort.
Prosperity’s silent partner has been the Christian religion.