IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/fosoec/v49y2020i1p3-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Religions and the living wage

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Gardella

Abstract

This paper argues that global economic justice can best be advanced by religious leaders, beginning with Pope Francis, advocating for a living wage. The idea of a living wage—that every full-time worker should be paid enough to support a family—grows from deep roots in biblical, Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Protestant thought. Those roots developed through the work of Catholic thinkers, especially Pope Leo XIII and John A. Ryan, who was a doctoral student under Richard T. Ely, an Episcopalian. Today, such diverse scholars as Amartya Sen, Ramzi Mabsout, and Martha Nussbaum offer new supports to the call for a living wage. Building on the capabilities approach to development advanced by Sen and Nussbaum, the paper contends that a living wage fosters capabilities. Building on Mabsout’s concept of “ethical realism”, this paper presents religious traditions as the means whereby one special capability—the intuitive grasp of justice that Mabsout sees as crucial—can be fostered. Informed by the religious history presented here, readers of this paper should see why ethical realism demands that the standard of a living wage be met. In recent decades, increasing inequality has led to coalitions of religious activists seeking a living wage. To make such coalitions effective, the paper will urge that Pope Francis and other religious leaders lead boycotts and seek political actions on behalf of a global living wage.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Gardella, 2020. "Religions and the living wage," Forum for Social Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 3-23, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:fosoec:v:49:y:2020:i:1:p:3-23
    DOI: 10.1080/07360932.2015.1072097
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/07360932.2015.1072097
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/07360932.2015.1072097?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:fosoec:v:49:y:2020:i:1:p:3-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RFSE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.