COMMENTARY: Checkbook morality: If you can afford it, buy it

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com.) UNDATED _ Forget”caveat emptor.”Forget”every man for himself.”Forget”shop ’til you drop.” The ethic of our age was stated by a homemaker in suburban New Jersey. When asked by a Wall […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com.)

UNDATED _ Forget”caveat emptor.”Forget”every man for himself.”Forget”shop ’til you drop.” The ethic of our age was stated by a homemaker in suburban New Jersey. When asked by a Wall Street Journal reporter why she spent $20,000 last year on designer clothes for her 2-year-old daughter, she replied,”I can afford it, so why not?” In seven words, the 36-year-old wife of a junk-bond trader said it all. I suddenly understood the ethic that truly drives our society. I also saw something about myself.


The ethic is simple: If you can afford it, buy it? And if you can’t afford it, get a better job, accept another credit card, or move to the sidelines.

We are, it seems, economic creatures. Our lives focus on earning a living, our worries center on not having enough, our dreams are set on owning more, and our behavior is guided by a checkbook morality that makes ethical decisions by examining available funds.

When I bought my house, for example, I didn’t ask what my family truly needed, or how my choice might affect anyone beyond my sight. I asked only, `How much house can I afford?’

The same has been true when buying cars or clothing. I identify my upper limit and spend right up to it, sometimes beyond. I feel guilty only when I exceed my income.

We talk about right and wrong, especially when it comes to other people’s sexuality. But in areas that have to do with money _ which means most areas of life _ our moral compass tends to be affordability.

A prominent cathedral in the Midwest, for example, now has two fine pipe organs, each one top of the line. Musicians are pleased, and the church certainly can afford it. But I find myself wondering, `Is it the right thing to do?’

I wonder if we even know how to ask such a question. We know how to estimate available funds. We have learned to measure customer satisfaction (which affects future revenues). But do we know how to consider values beyond the obvious rule that might makes right?


Designer clothing for kids is more than 1980s excess revisited. It signals a moral dilemma in which most of us participate, even if our kids still languish in Levis. If our ethical standard isn’t the New Jersey homemaker’s blithe dictum _”I can afford it, so why not?”_ then what is our guide?

Let’s answer the Versace-buying mom’s question,”Why not?”First, is a $300 coat good for a child? What is the impact of a child’s having clothing that discourages playing in the mud? Or of having clothing that outshines a friend’s attire?

Those aren’t trivial questions. They require a parent to focus on the child’s welfare _ not the parent’s _ and to consider the child as a separate being entering into her own community.

Second, what else could that $20,000 have accomplished? Yes, I’m thinking of the”starving Armenians”whose welfare dotted dinner-table conversations in my childhood. I’m also thinking of children down the road in Newark. Just because one can afford to feel separated from them doesn’t mean one truly is separated from them. We don’t make any ethical decisions in a vacuum. God’s grace might be boundless, but we live in a world of finite resources. What I have is what someone else doesn’t have.

Third, what is lost in the family when money rules? Everything is connected. Spending $20,000 on daughter’s wardrobe touches more than the bank account. Daughter changes when treated this way. Wife takes on a particular cast in husband’s eye. Wife views husband differently. None of these impacts is necessarily negative, but I wonder if they were even considered.

Personally, I wouldn’t spend $20,000 on a child’s clothes even if I had it. But then a slum dweller in Mexico City might look at the $25 sneakers that I did buy for my son and wonder what is wrong with my values. It’s all relative.


And maybe that’s the point. It’s relative. We live in a relatedness that we cannot escape and must take into account. Checkbook morality isn’t enough.

MJP END EHRICH

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