Clair Brown is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Society at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of “Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science.”
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Harvard Political Review: Could you briefly talk about how you started thinking about this rather uncharacteristic marriage between traditional economics and Buddhist philosophy –– what was the inspiration behind writing “Buddhist Economics”?
Clair Brown: As an economist, I find it interesting that at the faculty and graduate level, we teach economics quite holistically: we don’t just assume that people are self-regarding, but also that they are other-regarding. Now, with the climate crisis, we are very focused on making sure that the important externalities in economics, such as air pollution and greenhouse gases, are integrated into the way we think about how the economy works. However, while we were doing this, we weren’t really integrating it into one model.
Meanwhile, we were reducing taxes and deregulating, which political scientists will tell you doesn’t mean creating free or competitive markets. No company wants a competitive market –– they all want market power, or they don’t make good profit. Deregulation just meant turning the rules of the market over from the government to big business. And so we started doing that, especially in energy and pharmaceuticals and healthcare. We’ve done it across the board and now we’ve done it in social media, which came later. But we’ve created these very large markets that have just a few companies that dominate them.
So I am thinking we’ve got to do a better job of teaching economics, and I’m a Buddhist so I decided let’s just start with really simple Buddhist concepts like interdependence, something the ecologists agree with as it’s a law of ecology. Let’s just start there and say the world is interdependent, where people are interdependent with each other and with nature. So I’m thinking that you bring together that and then you bring together a Buddhist concept that I think is actually quite important, which is relieving suffering. And since we’re all interdependent, we have got to think about it globally. And when you bring all these things together, let’s think about taking care of the human spirit –– we all deal with physical and mental health, but there’s a human spirit that makes us all part of humanity.
That summarizes what Buddhist economics is about and why I did it. But you don’t have to be a Buddhist to understand Buddhist economics. Buddhist economics is just holistic economics. And it’s based upon what we already know from Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz. Amartya Sen taught us about capabilities and Joseph Stiglitz taught that countries pick their inequality and that we can reduce it. And Jeffrey Sachs and others taught us that we also know how to relieve global suffering. Buddhist economics –– some people call it caring economics or doughnut economics –– is about understanding that the neoliberal or free-market model isn’t producing the common good and the social good that we need, and it’s actually killing the earth.
HPR: As you touch upon in your book, we live in a world defined by an economic system where a handful of billionaires have accumulated more wealth than half of humanity. What would be the Buddhist approach to tackling this level of grotesque inequality that exists in our modern world?
CB: I think there is no one silver bullet to dealing with inequality, and we need to tackle it at the national level but also at the global level. I think everyone agrees that we need to raise taxes on the rich and on companies. But for that to work, we also need a minimum tax so that companies can no longer avoid taxes by shifting all around the world with the help of their lawyers and accountants. We definitely need to ask how we can globally set minimum taxes that allow countries to have more progressive taxes so that companies can no longer race to the bottom and run around the world looking for the lowest taxes that they could possibly pay.
Economists think of reducing inequality in two ways. One is, after people’s incomes and livelihoods are earned, let’s tax it and redistribute it. And so you need pretty good taxes and revenues to have government programs, so you have a social safety net, you provide healthcare, you provide education, you provide care for seniors, you have retirement pay, and you have a whole package of goods and services for everybody to create a meaningful, comfortable life. But also then we go one step further and say we also want to make sure jobs are good –– let’s not forget about pre-income equality, policies like minimum wage, and ensure people have a balanced life. There are all kinds of ways that the government also regulates employment markets and what companies can do in terms of worker safety and that certainly has come up with covid. And it’s been a really important difference across countries –– how we protect the workers and ensure that they are safe.
Now we have to go a step further and at least raise minimum wages. But then part of the problem seems to be that we don’t have unions anymore in the U.S.. It’s like the unionization just disappeared. So there’s a lot of discussion now about how we can create better jobs, and this is really once again a global discussion. We just need to come together politically to do it.
HPR: Following that train of thought, do you, in a Buddhist model of economics, envision the government receding into the background or do you instead see a more expanded role for the state?
CB: Well, certainly more expanded than in the U.S., and so, once again we go look at Europe. Europe has really been our teachers. People trust the government and they want to pay decent taxes –– if you go and talk to people in Denmark and Norway and Sweden, they will tell you that they want to have the taxes because they get good education, good healthcare, good social safety net, and paid time off when they get kids. And they understand it costs money. So there’s much less focus on private consumption and more on the ability to live as a community and with everybody getting the basic education and health care and other things that they need to function. And as Amartya Sen would remind us, everybody can fully develop their skills and talents and be a contributing member to society. That’s really important, and the government has to play a major role in that, otherwise that’s not going to happen. In the U.S., we have seen communities get abandoned as people become addicted to drugs when they lose their jobs because there’s really no social safety net or no way to transition.
HPR: Your book has a very overt focus on sustainability and its importance going forward. We live in a world where human affairs continue to put enormous strain on the planet, even as the climate crisis threatens our world. How do you think we can create a more sustainable economy that emphasizes the interdependence between us and our environment, which you point out is the fundamental core of a Buddhist economy?
CB: That’s a great question, and it’s going to especially come up in Scotland at COP26.
It’s really important because we don’t have much time –– the climate scientists say we have 10 to 20 years to actually get rid of fossil fuel energy and we know how to do it. Rich countries need to consume less and to quickly transition off of fossil fuel energy, which we can do. And then we need to allow the developing countries to actually increase their consumption and also to leapfrog over dirty fossil fuel energy in their development. Because they still need to develop, but they don’t need oil, coal, and gas to do it –– they need the technology from the rich countries. So in COP21, the rich countries said they will transfer technology, but then Trump got elected and it all just evaporated. And so we’ve got to get back to that because the rich countries have the technology that they can share and the funding so the developing world can implement it, while the U.S. and the other OECD countries at the top transition off of fossil fuel energy and reduce wasteful consumption. And that’s not hard to do. We actually know a lot about doing that –– it’s like you just moved to a regenerative economy. Individually, people can do a lot better in terms of reducing consumption.
The role of the government is critical. No matter what individuals do, we’re not going to meet the climate goals unless the national governments take strong policies that create clean energy, clean electricity, electrify everything and then once people have better choices their carbon footprint will go down enormously. I have an electric car, and I only have one because it’s possible to get one: it was inexpensive, it was easy to plug in and put in a charger where I live. I had to be able to have those options, and if people want plant-based diets they have to easily be able to find plant-based foods. We need to live in a community that makes these choices easy and obvious and ensure we feel good about it. So that’s where, in fact, the research has shown if you have a social safety net, you tend to find that living more naturally is okay and you don’t worry all the time about losing your job or getting off the materialistic treadmill. You have to think differently about how you want to live and, as I said, Europe is way ahead of us and we need to move ahead much more rapidly in thinking about the role of private consumption versus the role of living in a community that has a lot more social services.
HPR: Another feature of our modern economy seems to be, and this is especially true in the U.S., that we seem to be working longer and longer hours. Do you think this is a fundamental flaw in our economy? How should we view our vocation from a Buddhist standpoint?
CB: European countries work less, and they are really mindful about getting vacations or getting paid leave when they have children or getting sick leave. So I think it is part of the problem of the materialistic treadmill. When you never have enough, and when you live in a really competitive labor market and economy, then you never can get off the treadmill. And for some people, their work hours are not determined by themselves, but by their bosses. One interesting thing that happened after COVID-19 is that people started actually working less, and some people had to stay home, especially women, so their participation went down. And a lot of people, now that we are leaving COVID behind, are now asking themselves: how much do I want to work, how can I make my life more integrated between work and family? So people are now realizing how much they would enjoy being with their kids, being with their families or just having some time to read and think. And so I think one of the good things about the pandemic is that it did allow people –– not everyone, frontline workers certainly didn’t have this time –– to think and read and explore what is meaningful to them, what kind of life they want to live. And that to me is a really important step in reaching what we call a Buddhist economy.
Image Credit: Photo by Dyanna Taylor is licensed for use under CC BY 2.0.
