Greed

Mark 10:25, "It is easier for a camel to squeeze through a needle’s eye than for a wealthy person to get into God’s domain!"

According to news reports this past week, Donald J. Carty, the Chief Executive Officer of American Airlines, convinced American Airlines pilots, mechanics, flight attendants and baggage handlers, that they had to accept major pay cuts ranging from 15 to 23 percent to help the airline avoid bankruptcy. At the same time he secretly created retention bonuses for American Airlines’ top seven executives that would reward them for staying at their jobs until 2005. All but one of the bonuses were set at twice these executives’ annual salaries. Donald Carty’s own bonus was 1.6 million dollars.

In addition, at the same time that he was telling pilots that the company would eliminate their pension plans if it had to file for bankruptcy, Carty secretly created a special pension trust for the company’s top 45 executives that could not be touched even by bankruptcy. Carty and three other executives were to be paid extra for administrating this trust. This is not just income from ticket sales, American Airlines is slated to receive a $410 million emergency appropriation of our federal tax money.

Under attack Friday, Donald Carty resigned as chairperson and CEO of American Airlines. He is just the latest example of leaders who have been attacked in the media for their attempts to take more money for themselves at a time when the economy has turned sour for many people.

Even President Bush thinks there is a problem. Speaking to executives on Wall Street last July 9, he said "There’s no capitalism without conscience; there is no wealth without character. We need men and women of character, who know the difference between ambition and destructive greed."

The question I wonder about, is why do some of us strive for more and more money, and more things than we can buy with that money? Why did Donald Carty of American Airlines try to give more wealth to himself and to other top executives? What were they going to do with those extra millions? Why did they feel that getting more money was a good idea?

Being a middle class Unitarian Universalist minister, I do not have access to wealthy executives and therefore I do not have opportunities to interview them or observe them first hand. From a distance I try to imagine what might be going on inside them. What drives people to accumulate lots of things and lots of money?

Power must be one answer to this question. People who have money have power. Depending on the person that can be a good thing or a bad thing. I talked with a minister who had made millions of dollars a few years ago on the books he wrote. He told a group of us that the nicest thing about having money was the power that came with it. When funds were cut back for support to the planned parenthood clinic in his community, as a minister he could preach a sermon or write a newsletter column or send a letter to the local newspaper. But as a successful writer, he took out his checkbook and wrote a check to Planned-Parenthood that completely replaced all the funds that had been cut. Money gives us power.

There are many such examples of people generously giving away money for good causes. It may be this is one of the motivations behind the CEOs and top executives at places like American Airlines, and Tyco, and World Com and Enron and the other companies that have been involved in scandals over the past two years. We human beings are complex and sometimes the same person who acts in greedy ways also acts in generous ways.

Another explanation for the accumulation of excessive wealth is that each of us has an inner drive to gain a sense of personal worth, of significance, of importance. We want to gain an assurance that we matter in the scheme of things.

Perhaps greed is a result of our desire to generate or repair or maintain a sense of our own worth and importance. The money is not for the purpose of buying things but rather a way of measuring self worth. This may explain the greedy behavior we see in human beings.

If we achieve power and self worth through money, the hope is that we will be happy.

But does money buy happiness?

Obviously in modern society we need money to buy food, shelter and clothing. In Britain, France, the Netherlands, and West Germany at the end of World War II, housing and food supplies were insufficient and self-reported happiness was scarce. As the economies of these countries rebounded to provide for people's needs, happiness rebounded also.

But after a certain point the relationship between higher income and greater happiness is modest. Having more than enough provides little additional boost to well-being. A University of Illinois psychologist surveyed forty-nine of the wealthiest Americans, as listed by Forbes, and found them to be only slightly happier than average.

In national surveys what matters more than absolute wealth is perceived wealth. Actual income doesn't much influence happiness, but how satisfied we are with our income does. If we are content with our income, regardless of how much it is, we are likely to say we are happy. There is only a slight tendency for people who make lots of money to be more satisfied with what they make.

Over time, does our happiness grow with our paychecks? In the United States as a whole, the answer is clearly no. Since the 1950s, our buying power has doubled. In 1957 our per person income, expressed in today’s dollars, was seventy-five hundred dollars. By 1990 it was over fifteen thousand. We have twice as many cars. We have color TVs, VCRs, home computers, air-conditioners, micro wave ovens, garage door openers, answering machines, and brand-name athletic shoes. But are we happier?

The research evidence is that after a certain point, making more money and having more things does not lead to happiness, contentment or joy. We can buy and eat the best meal in the best restaurant in Washington, and that might make us happy. However, buying and eating the best meal in the best restaurant a second time is not likely to make us twice as happy. Once beyond poverty, further economic growth does not significantly increase human well-being.

Still the belief that we will be happy if we accumulate things or accumulate money is strong inside us. I remember in my childhood, a period of time starting when I was about nine years old and lasting for about three years, when I was a collector. I had a rock collection. I had a comic book collection. I had a postage stamp collection. I saved old magazines.

When I was 15 I started reading psychology books in an attempt to understand myself and others. In a book by Erich Fromm I came across a passage about what he called the "Hoarding Orientation."

This German Jewish psychologist described the hoarder as a person who feels ‘the source of all good’ to be outside of themselves. Whatever one wants to get must be sought there, and one cannot produce anything important oneself. The aim of a hoarder is to bring as much as possible into their control. The more they have, the more secure they feel. I thought back to that time when I was a collector, and that is certainly how I felt. Collecting things helped me feel more secure.

I do not know for sure what goes on in the mind of a person who struggles to make more and more money, much more money than they or their family could possibly need. However, I wonder if they have the same feelings inside that I had back when I was a collector. Back then I did not have much confidence in myself or my own ability to create, or be productive. The more stuff I gathered around me the more secure I felt. When I see news stories about people who build houses with many more rooms than they need, or who own several homes they do not use, or who collect expensive things like antique cars, I wonder if they have regressed back to that emotional state I went through many years ago when I was a collector.

In my teenage years, at some point, I began to feel that I could be productive, creative, and that I had power. I could sing a song. I could cook a meal. I could write a letter. I could grow a plant. I could tell a joke. I could paint a room. I could throw a ball. I could develop friendships with other people.

As I felt more productive and powerful inside, all the stuff I had collected became a burden. I lost interest in saving old comic books. It all gathered dust in my room, until one day I dumped everything but the stamp collection into the trash. I did not completely give up collecting. I still have that stamp collection (although in retrospect it might have been better if I had saved the comic books). Still when I got rid of most of the stuff, I felt liberated.

When I hear about people who strive to accumulate enormous wealth, and buy expensive things, I wonder if they have ever felt the freedom that comes from not being burdened with lots of stuff. I wonder if they are empty inside. Perhaps this emptiness is what drives them to buy a $15,000 antique umbrella stand in the shape of a three-foot-high poodle. I would guess that this is the act of a person who suffers from very poor judgment, or is seriously unhappy.

To Donald Carty of American Airlines and Jack Welch of General Electric, and to the failed executives of Enron and Tyco and World Com, I can only say that in my experience the special moments of happiness are the ordinary things. A simple, good meal. Small talk with a friend. Playing a game. Going for a walk. Reading a good book. Singing a song. Weeding a garden. Taking a bath or a shower. Playing golf or tennis. Playing with children. Going to church. These are sources of happiness.

To anyone who feels the need to spend $2,200 on a wastebasket, I offer these words by Wendell Berry at no charge. Wendell wrote:

I sat one summer evening and watched a great blue heron make his descent from the top of the hill into the valley. He came down at a measured deliberate pace, stately as always, like a dignitary going down a stair. And then, at a point I judged to be midway over the river, without at all varying his wing beat he did a backward turn in the air, a loop–the–loop. It could only have been a gesture of pure exuberance, of joy—a speaking of his sense of the evening, the day's fulfillment, his descent homeward. He made just the one slow turn, and then flew on out of sight in the direction of a slew farther down in the bottom. The movement was incredibly beautiful, at once exultant and stately, a benediction on the evening and on the river and on me.

In such ordinary moments human happiness is found. These moments are all around us, if we take the time to see them.

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
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