Income in Philosophy and Ethics
Throughout history, many have written about the impact of income on morality and society. Saint Paul wrote 'For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil:' (1 Timothy 6:10 (ASV)).
Some scholars have come to the conclusion that material progress and prosperity, as manifested in continuous income growth at both individual and national level, provide the indispensable foundation for sustaining any kind of morality. This argument was explicitly given by Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and has more recently been developed by Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman in his book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.
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Famous quotes containing the words income in, income, philosophy and/or ethics:
“You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Some rough political choices lie ahead. Should affirmative action be retained? Should preference be given to people on the basis of income rather than race? Should the system be—and can it be—scrapped altogether?”
—David K. Shipler (b. 1942)
“The new statement will comprise the skepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as must include the oldest beliefs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)