Most evenings our television news comes to us divided into segments. First, local news, then national, sports and weather — and then we often hear a section introduced, "And in economic news today..."
Like many, and because of this segmenting, I always thought that the economic news was the part with numbers, and I chose those moments to read the mail or check on the grill. My poor attention is partly blamed on not understanding the jargon and not liking the non-committal commitments from "financial industry spokespersons." Now I realize that I feel left out because the way that the economic news is delivered creates a false boundary between what happens at the World Bank and what's actually happening in the world.
For example, here's a big number that's not part of our daily news: Every day 840 million people — that's equal to the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union — go to bed hungry. It seems to me that is important economic news, but we don't get streaming video on world hunger.
But don't blame the man whose birthday we celebrate today: Adam Smith, the so-called "father" of modern economics. His thoughts about free-market competition are typically associated with the idea that self-interest brings about a healthy economy. His book, "The Wealth of Nations" is often referred to as the textbook for laissez-faire capitalism.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner," Smith famously wrote, "but from their regard to their own self-interest."
But it's worth paying attention to the origin of words. Economics wasn't always about the accumulation of wealth or the management of the stock market. The word economics derives from the Greek word, "oikodome" meaning household. In the ancient world economics was about the ways in which a household was managed and how it contributed to the good of the community in which it participated.
Today the needy of our global village outnumber those who have their needs met. We may think of this as significant or just sad but we forget that it's also economics.
Adam Smith did understand that. While he wrote about the importance of self-interest, we forget that he was neither a politician nor an economist but rather, by training and practice, a moral philosopher. He never suggested not caring for the poor; rather he presumed that a community — whether a village, a state or a country — would take care of its neediest.
Smith made his name with another book prior to "The Wealth of Nations." His first book was "A Theory of Moral Sentiments," written in 1759, in which he described the role of sympathy in society and advocated for the need of it to maximize the "efficiency of care in a community."
Smith's favorite metaphor, the "invisible hand," came from that earlier book in which he presumed a basis of equality among men. It was the emphasis on sympathy and equality that made his books bestsellers in the American colonies and, hence, part of our political consciousness. Smith believed, "there is no place for privilege and class" in a moral economy. In Smith's scheme, wealth meant not just business and prosperity but also charity, generosity, compassion and living modestly: having a sense of what is enough.
So could we include in our economic news all that matters to our community: the price of gas, and the size of the prison population, statistics about discrimination, and some mention of all those people going to bed hungry. That is also what Adam Smith was advising us to invest in.
Diane Cameron is a Capital Region writer. DianeOCameron@gmail.com.