Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

The Prime Minister made his first statement in the Commons on Tuesday, discussing issues he sees as crucial to the nation’s revival. But if he’s anything like his three immediate predecessors, he’ll be judged on one thing above all: as Bill Clinton’s staff liked to say, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ On Monday, at the age of 92, the world lost one of America’s most distinctive voices – the agrarian poet, novelist and essayist Wendell Berry. In his defining 1984 essay ‘The Two Economies,’ Berry describes the Little Economy, which only includes certain people, only buys certain things, only lasts a limited length of time. It’s the world in which there’s not enough to go round. It’s the economy of scarcity. By contrast there’s the Great Economy. The great economy is for everybody, gives what money can’t buy, and never expires. This is the economy of abundance. It’s the currency of heaven. Berry says while a little economy can ‘evaluate, distribute, use, and preserve things’, ‘it cannot make value. Value can originate only in the Great Economy.’ The secret of happiness is learning to love the things we have in plenty and don’t run out. The name for those things is the Great Economy. Berry’s essay offers us a clue to unlock one of Jesus’ most impenetrable parables, the story of the shrewd manager. A wealthy man fires his manager. The manager has a few days before he has to leave. He decides to visit his boss’ debtors and reduce their debts. To everyone’s surprise, the rich man commends the manager, saying, in as many words, ‘You were in a hole, and you got out of it. You realised generosity is the best investment. You’re better at this than I am.’ The notion of economics is rooted in the Greek word for household management. Economics means putting your house in order. In the parable, the manager loses his own home but ends up being welcomed into everyone else’s. It’s too late to make money, but it’s not too late to build social capital. The manager switches economies. He gives up trying to squeeze people for a living and starts making friends instead. He realises, however desperate his financial plight, the friends are more important than the money. He moves from an economy of scarcity and perpetual anxiety to an economy of abundance and limitless grace. Wendell Berry’s greatest legacy was not his searing words but his peerless example. In 1964, aged 30, he bought a farm in his native Kentucky, which he tended for the next 60 years. Everything he wrote, he tested against the truth of the landscape. His prophetic life asks us which economy we’re really living in.