SUSTAINED WEALTH
P . J . HILL
P . J . Hill is a renowned scholar , prolific author and sought out speaker . In this interview he discusses the history of sustained wealth , who has it and who does not , and our responsibility as Christians .
THE HISTORY OF SUSTAINED WEALTH
Have you ever struggled with the concepts laid out in Act 2:35 , “ And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all , as any had need .” Does this mean you shouldn ’ t own things ? What is your responsibility to others who are poor and in particular fellow Christians ? Are you supposed to be guilty because you make money ? Well , read on and see what P . J . Hill , a renowned Christian economist has to say about sustainable wealth and a Christian ’ s mind set .
AOF : Dr . Hill , thank you for talking to us today . Perhaps you could start by talking to us a little bit about a subject I think you are pretty familiar with : Sustained economic growth . Could you tell the reader what that is ?
HILL : Right , it is when economic growth has an impact on the ordinary person , just a regular , run-of-the-mill person . We ’ ve had wealth throughout history . You can look back and you can see some people were pretty well off . You can look at palaces , you can look at rulers of empires , you can look at architectural features and there has always been some people that have been able to do pretty well . The idea of economic growth that effects everybody , or almost everybody , really starts around 1800 . It starts in England and the Netherlands , then it goes to North America and Western Europe . Then , finally , it gets to other places in the world : Japan , Taiwan , Singapore , and then , most lately , China and India . When we say “ sustained economic growth ,” we mean that it increases the living standard of just regular people , all people throughout the economy . Sometimes a few people may be left out , but the amazing thing is that for the last couple to three hundred years , depending on which society you are talking about , some groups of people have just had enormous increases in their material wellbeing . Part of that is measured by change in life expectancy . Life expectancy around the world in 1800 was around 30 years . In England and the Netherlands it might have been around 35 years . Now , in almost all of the developed world , it ’ s around 75 or 80 years . That alone is a pretty good indicator that something has happened to allow people to live better .
In a way , it is like someone had passed wealth on because they only lived to be thirty , so it would span three generations . Now , people are living long enough to pass it on to themselves .
Right . Part of it is passing on the technology , passing on the capital , the knowhow to organize production . It is certainly , say for somebody living in North America , compared to where standards of living were two hundred years ago . It is very difficult to get our minds around how much change there has been .
America obviously is now part of the developed world , one of the leaders . In the current economic state , there is a
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