Wealth and poverty: Acts 4:32-35

The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common.

The apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power, and they were all given great respect.

None of their members was ever in want, as all those who owned land or houses would sell them, and bring the money from them, to present it to the apostles; it was then distributed to any members who might be in need.

Wealth and poverty

The more 'equal' distribution of wealth is a noble yet unsustainable strategy, unless there is wealth creation. The Acts of the Apostles reading from Divine Mercy Sunday (cited in full, above), is one such example. Selling land and homes to re-distribute wealth leaves people landless and homeless and the benefits from the proceeds of those sales is short term. To be sustainable, these sales would have to be repeated often, if not daily. The process described by this reading shows the use of wealth to fund consumption, when a sustainable process requires the creation of wealth through work to create income that exceeds the level of consumption, this providing sufficient -- and sustainable -- consumption while also providing for a cushion, a 'rainy day fund,' in the form of savings, i.e., wealth.

This often seemed to be a difficult concept for my students to grasp. They often conflated wealth with income, and poverty with an absence of consumption when, in reality, wealth is static, income is a process over time, work is a form of wealth creation, and consumption cannibalizes wealth or reduces the net effect of income. The simple secret is to produce more than you consume, and to then share your excess.

This confusion also surfaced in the inability to grasp the nature of today's 'sharing' or 'gig economy,' when students did not realize that the economy and the nature of work has long been a 'gig economy,' and that the idea of a salaried, stable, forty-hour-a-week, fixed and/or guaranteed wage/salary is a relatively recent and limited way of structuring work and compensation. While people like the seeming certainty of a weekly or monthly wage, such a system of compensation or work did not always exist and, even today, there is a huge portion of the economy where people only get paid for a task, project or an assignment, and not for simply coming to work forty hours a week.

The 'sharing economy' is a misnomer. For an AirBnB host or an Uber driver, neither is sharing their home or car. Rather, they are providing a short-term, temporary service, selling -- not sharing -- that service by utilizing an otherwise underutilized asset -- their home, car or time -- to a person who needs a time-delineated service. There is no wealth created nor shared. Rather, there is a service of value to the customer provided at a real or opportunity cost to the provider, much as a restaurant sells the service of preparing, serving and cleaning up after a meal.