The Good Ol' Days: Interesting article

Steven Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which I am not familiar with but found, thanks to Wikipedia, that sorta-conservatives William Kristol and Peggy Noonan are on the board, so I guess that would put it right of center on most issues. No big deal, but I try to learn a little about the authors to see where they are come ig from. In any event, Malanga asks an interesting question, Can Free Markets Survive In a Secularized World?

It begins:

The 18th Century English cleric and theologian John Wesley was troubled by a paradox that emerged as his teaching spread. He, like other Protestant thinkers stretching back to Calvin, taught that one could honor God through hard work and thrift. The subsequent burst of industry and frugality generated by Wesley’s message improved the lot of many of his working-class followers and helped advance capitalism in England. But, “wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion,” Wesley observed, and subsequently pride and greed are growing more common, he complained.

In order to survive and thrive, Malanga poses, capitalism needs restraint, and that restraint has historically been the virtues preached in the Protestant work ethic. But success has largely changed America from a country of work to a country of consumption, and thrift has been replaced with debt. He concludes:

People instinctively know something is missing, just not what. A religious revival in America seems unlikely. Is it equally as unlikely that our institutions, most especially our schools, would once again promote the virtues that made capitalism thrive and Western societies prosper--not just hard work, but thrift and integrity, or what we once called the Protestant ethic?

Let me see if I figure out how to embed a video: