As U.S. politicians joust, parry, and avoid decisions over such expenditures as giving a trillion dollars to college graduates who have amassed debt for their education; injecting billions into foreign wars; cutting benefits for entitlement programs; improving our national infrastructure and military adequacy; and dozens of other expenses that continue to expand our national debt, we can wonder about the virtue of thrift inside any of those deciders. And we can wonder if government leaders with at least a tinge of thrift would get us more for our money and help us feel more settled in our souls.
What is thrift anyway? And how does the lack of it contribute to the current chaos among our top leaders?
This series of essays is intended to help voters assess the character of their political candidates. In a world increasingly tilting towards greed, what is this virtue of thrift that helps a person overcome the tendency to lose perspective on money and material possessions? That human tendency towards getting more and more for ME has become quite visible at times now throughout society. But greed’s antithesis, thrift, is still within reach. In this, the poor can render us wise.
Put simply, thrift is sensible judgment about resources.
Every person maintains a basic relationship with the material world, the arena of things, money, possessions, or “stuff”, and dreams of opulence or at least a solidly secure future. Material possessions normally take some time and thought to obtain and maintain, and that endeavor easily gets bloated into a preoccupation called greed. Wanting more and more for ourselves beyond what we need, or even modest excess, is a basic fault of humans. Thrift is the virtue that constantly counteracts that tendency towards greed at any level of financial status.
Thrift could be described as a developed pattern of considering the limitations of resources in making decisions about spending, monitoring, planning for, and preserving possessions as a quality, fair member of a community. Those of us of moderate means, the so-called middle class and below, have variously been forced into thrift at times, and those of even lesser financial resources have had the motivation to grow up with and live with necessary thrift more stringently than the wealthy. But like all virtues, thrift varies considerably by the uniqueness of each individual.
After resigning from the priesthood and working as a group counselor at an addiction treatment program for a year, I floundered when the agency closed and left me unemployed and almost broke. I learned a lot about frugality during the next year as I survived always about a month away from homelessness. My parents had shown me thrift in the way they lived, but it burst out more fully when I had to fend for myself financially in a very tight situation.
Thrift can be seen as moderate custody of financial resources, standing between being a spendthrift or wastrel on one side, and frugality and parsimony on the other. Thrift includes some wisdom, not always born of deep thinking and theory, but rather of calm, humble, honest reflection and accepting the limitations of being human and needing the very basics of living.
Those who overcome poverty to thrive into eventual wealth are highly respected by society. But living in poverty may show us even better pictures of practical thrift that is necessary for leaders to make wise financial decisions. Think kitchens of families of poverty and the incredibly savvy and forced frugality of the cooks that use them.
Which candidates have developed this kind of thrift in their lives? How can we recognize them?
The absence of thrift in greed is shown most vividly in ignoring the limits of resources with habitual extravagance and taking for granted the goodness of abundance. People accustomed to plenty from having grown up with wealth or having lost the memories of yearning for ‘enough’ in their past, can simply lose their way in their pursuit of “more and more”. They may have long ago bought into the now common greed assumption that if something legal makes somebody some money, it is good, or at least OK. That assumption seems to easily leak into justifying even what is illegal or is considered legal in a world of inadequate financial regulation. Thrift is a quiet eye that notices waste and remembers in their soul that old saying, “waste not, want not” as not always obvious but mostly always true. The word thrift is derived from the same word as thrive.
Indeed, observed wastefulness in a person serves as an indicator of lack of thrift in two dimensions—personal waste and communal or public waste. It is the difference between curating your own money and stewarding somebody else’s. In politics, public thrift is caring for the money of society that can seem so limitless that even the word thrift sounds irrelevant. It is a virtue politicians need to have unsettling them somewhere inside as they decide for constituents about policies, projects, budgets, the nation’s debt, and the economy in general.
When authorities discovered in April of 2021 an estimated 25,000 barrels full of toxic waste that had been dumped in the ocean off Southern California in the 1920s, it illustrated how unlimited the natural world seemed to be, until recent decades. Now that pollution of our water, air, earth, and even space is becoming increasingly obvious, the evil of greed can be recognized as even more destructive to humanity than anybody thought possible a hundred years ago. Leaders of some countries still show incredible inertia in meeting the urgency of remedial work on the health of the environment with any serious vigor. That includes the U.S.
Stubborn personal waste includes all those tasks the average American does irresponsibly with our own refuse and daily resource overuse. Simple, commonly mentioned thoughtless behaviors like needlessly letting hot water run from your faucet, trashing edible food, keeping lights on when they’re not being used, running dish and clothes washing machines almost empty, unnecessary driving (and owning) of vehicles; and other neglects of extravagant consumerism, give an indication of habitual personal waste. In leaders, it can be an indicator at their homes of enormous corporate waste at work. Both personal and corporate waste need to be dealt with far more boldly than they are now for our planet to survive ecologically. I believe that it has long been known that the planet will not support all of its people at the level at which we in the U.S. live.
Leaders who lack any realistic sense of thrift continue to lead millions of people into passivity when active thrift is the virtue needed everywhere. All national leaders need a basic eye for thrift as they carry out every aspect of their work. And government oversight entities need it abundantly.
How then to initiate action by recognizing those applicants for national leadership who have a relatively solid penchant for thrift? How could we encounter potential leaders about their awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of their waste, both personal and communal?
In the large group public forum, initiating bold questions could be: “Sir/Ms, do you think it would be wise to move towards a balanced budget in our country again?” “How would we begin to do that?” “What do you think it would take to enlist all of the citizens to embrace that as a goal?” “What would be some legislative steps to take to address corporate waste as a major component of the country’s still wasteful living habits?”
In the small assessment group context, when it develops in each state, a member could begin by asking candidates: “Would you tell us a bit about how you curtail your waste in your home, with such things as water, food, electricity, gasoline, and money?” “What is your philosophy of responsible ecology”? “What do you do in following that philosophy in your home?” “How about in hotels and other public buildings?” “Where do you see the most waste in our federal government”? “Do you think Congress misses the issues of waste because of their sense of entitlement from their benefits that far exceed those of the general public?” “What are some of the initiatives and programs government leaders could implement to reduce waste and pollution in our country?” “What letter grade (A to F) would you give yourself for how you have attended to your waste, both private and corporate so far in the past ten years? Tell us why you deserve that grade?”
Gordon J Hilsman is a retired clinical educator and writer, now living in the Pacific Northwest and the author of five books including the 2023 Assessing the CHARACTER of Candidates for National Political Office: In Search of a Collaborative Spirit. He can be reached at ghilsman@gmail.com, www.spiritalclinician.com, or www.gordonjhilsman.com
