Economic reality

Our son was making a football toss last night. He used a display board I had laying around and cut holes in it for targets. Then he decorated the whole thing with various pictures. They are having a fair at school - he said to teach the value of money, basic economics. The project has been ongoing - they have been assigned various tasks over the weeks with different monetary values and the teacher acting as the "bank".

But the "bank" is to take 50% of profits - so we suggested that perhaps someone should diversify and set up a secondary financial institution with better returns for clients. We argued he could get an 'A' by showing an understanding of the capitalist system and principles - but he said no - that wasn't the way it was - when we asked why he simply shrugged and said,
"I can't do that."

So he went off to have fun without really worrying about the fact that the system was set up to be ridiculously unfair. He knows he will still turn a good profit and cannot see beyond the system. Sound familiar?

Justice is a funny thing - just as my son senses - questioning the system is a risky business and justice often takes second place to propriety or even comfort.

Isaiah 3 talks about God and God's interaction with the people. There are symptoms of a sinful root and oppressing each other is one of them.

It is you who have devoured the vineyard;
the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts.

So my son is being taught the lesson not of empowering economics but of "take what you can get and make the most of it." Perhaps it will get better, perhaps there is more to come in the exercise. But it looks all a bit similar to the real world I live in, everyone scrambling after the Greenback with relative value ascribed to human life based on economics - it looks like the people living a long way from the presence of God.