Clair Brown - Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science

To my family and friends for their love and caring,
To Mother Earth for nurturing life through the ages.

Economics affects how we live and how happy we are. Yet most people ignore economics even though it has a powerful impact on our lives and our future.

Take our two biggest worldwide challenges: global warming and income inequality. United Nations climate scientists warn that time is running out if we are to avoid destroying our planet and our way of life. Income inequality rivals that of the Gilded Age, with economists predicting that inequality will continue to grow, along with political turmoil.

Both of these challenges are profoundly influenced by economics. Overcoming them will require a complete rethinking of our economic system, our lives, and what matters to us. We must learn to live in harmony with Nature and with one another.

I have been an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, for a lifetime and a Buddhist for a decade. As a professor of economics and a student of Buddhism, I have been grappling for some time now with the troubling disconnect between free market economics and the issues of the real world. In an era marked by vast economic disparities and the threat of environmental collapse, with opulent living for a few, comfortable living for many, and deprivation with suffering for most, something is clearly wrong.

Free market economics assumes that markets produce optimal outcomes and people have the resources to create satisfying lives. In measuring national well-being, economics focuses only on income and consumption, and excludes many of the pressing issues that define our modern life.

What would a Buddhist approach to economics, in which people are regarded as more important than output and a meaningful life is prized above a lavish lifestyle, look like? I began to wonder.

My thinking about how to reframe economics from a Buddhist perspective was inspired initially by studying Buddhism with compassionate, knowledgeable teachers at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley. Then a Tibetan Buddhist meditation hall opened not far from our house. My husband and I stopped by and heard a talk given by Anam Thubten Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama, and began practicing with him. As I embraced the core Buddhist concepts of interdependence, compassion, and right livelihood, I wondered, How would Buddha teach Introductory Economics?

Four years ago, I put my musings into action by teaching a sophomore seminar on Buddhist economics at Berkeley, in part to develop my own thinking on the subject. The students energetically engaged in addressing questions about inequality, happiness, and sustainability, teaching me what I already suspected: you dont have to be an economics major or practice Buddhism to join in the conversation about how Buddhism can connect the human spirit and the economy to create well-being and happiness for all people.

As a Buddhist and an economics professor, I join the chorus of economists asking whether there is an alternative to an economy ruled by desire and ill equipped to address the challenges of environmental deterioration, inequality, and personal suffering.

What makes people happy? This question takes us to the heart of the difference between free market economics and Buddhist economics: our that the feeling of not having enough and wanting more does not arise from the inherent desirability of the objects we are seeking, but from our own mental illusions. Buddha taught us how to end suffering by changing our states of mind, which translates into finding happiness through living a meaningful life.

Free market economics holds that human nature is self-centered and that people care only about themselves as they push ahead to maximize their incomes and fancy lifestyles. According to this approach, buying and consumingshopping for new shoes or playing a new video gamewill make you happy. Forget that soon you will grow tired of the shoes, become disappointed with the game, and be off shopping again. In this endless cycle of desire, we are continuously left wanting more without ever finding lasting satisfaction. Free market economics is not guiding us toward living meaningful lives in a healthy world, nor is it offering solutions to our concerns about global wars, income equality, and environmental threats.

Buddhist economics, in contrast, provides guidance for restructuring both our individual lives and the economy to create a better world. Practice compassion to be happy replaces More is better. Everyones well-being is connected replaces Maximize your own position. The welfare of humans and Nature is interdependent replaces Pollution is a social cost that the individual can ignore.

Climate scientists warn that we dont have much time left to make the switch from an income-driven world with little concern for environmental harm to an economy that dramatically reduces our carbon footprint. Scientists around the world release a steady flow of reports on how human activity is causing global warming and how it harms our lives now and will into the future. Yet most people seem too busy to listen and take action.

On the same weekend in January 2015, two very different articles appeared: one, in the highly respected journal Science, reported that threats to our as many are now referring to todays ongoing extinction of species.

Inequality is equally relentless. In many economies, of a crisis that was caused by the powerful financial sector, which recovered just fine as a result of government bailouts. In the United States, the bailout cost taxpayers $21 billion, plus billions in lost wages.

a safety net for hard times. In contrast, the United States has a much less progressive tax structure and a flimsy safety net, and private companies are in charge of much of health care and child care.

Similarly, climate scientists have demonstrated that burning fossil fuels, causing carbon dioxide emissions that heat the planet, is the result of many choices that governments make. The United States has aggravated both global warming and inequality by allowing big business, especially the fossil fuel and finance industries, to be big political players. Countries choose to institute policies that result in global warming and inequality, and they can reverse them if they so desire.

The term Buddhist economics was first coined by E. F. Schumacher in his 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Schumacher foresaw the problems that come about with excessive reliance on the growth of income, especially overwork and dwindling resources. He argued for a system that valued individual character development and human liberation over an attachment to material goods. In Schumachers view, the goal of Buddhist economics is the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.

My approach expands on Schumachers notion of Buddhist economics to accommodate a world that couldnt have been envisioned in 1973, and to advocate an approach to organizing the economy so that a meaningful life reflects our caring for one another and global sharing of the worlds resources in a sustainable system. Buddha taught that true happiness does not come from the external world, not from fame or consumption or friends or power. True happiness comes from within ourselves as we surrender to the great unknown, develop love and compassion for everyone, and become aware of every precious moment of life.

We are failing at both the personal and the national level, and we must wake up and take action. And we do not have to don sackcloth and stop living comfortable, interesting, and fulfilling lives to do so. We can reprogram our economic system to create, measure, and evaluate what we value, to develop well-performing economies that provide meaningful lives for everyone while protecting the planet. Buddhist economics can guide us along the way.