Frequently Asked Questions

How does JEM describe jubilee economics?

The economics that we call "jubilee" can be helpfully described by many other names:

Sustainable Economics Economics of Abundance Sabbath Economics Economics for the Common Good Peoples's Economics Economics for People-Planet-Profit Living Economics Ecological Economics

These are all names that emphasize important aspects of the economic relationships JEM values. In this way we are describing economic patterns and practices that impact our lifestyles, shape our households, and affect how we are present in the world.

What is an economics of abundance?

The language of abundance contrasts sharply with the economics of scarcity. Economic models that prevail among the nations of the world are based on the notion that there is not enough to go around. Some people just have to do without, or at least with less.

Spiritual traditions all insist that the Creator - and continuing creation - provides sufficient for all. Thus we can correctly describe the Creator's sufficiency as the abundance of the "Divine enough".

Abundance Economics   Scarcity Economics Encourages cooperation   Encourages competition Values the common good and sustainability   Values market expansion, maximizing profits, and privatization Seeks redistributive and restorative justice   Promotes rich-poor inequalities Emphasizes non-violent economics   Emphasizes violence to workers, families and the land, often driven by economics Practices lifestyles of enough   Practices lifestyle of accumulation and more Harmonizes with sustainability, sufficiency, and a no-waste web of life   Promotes growth, development, and production without regard to social or environmental impacts Finds security in relationships and community   Finds security in accumulated assets and power

How is jubilee economics an economics of abundance?

Human systems of distribution allocate more to the powerful, less to others. The myth of scarcity is perpetuated by the persons and systems that uphold power at the expense of the abundance of "enough for all". The story of economics in human history is written by those with power, so the story is told - both unconsciously and intentionally - in ways that perpetuate the odd heresy that the Creator mistakenly created more needs than resources.

The economic stories of many indigenous peoples, peoples of the underclass, people of conscience, and religious traditions proclaim the reality of abundance: there is sufficient for the common good of all. JEM seeks to learn that story and then to amplify it and practice it amid today's economics of empire and privilege.

Does JEM really expect jubilee economics to become a major economic practice today?

The people's economics, which we here call jubilee economics, is, in fact, quite widely practiced today even though it is not the prevailing economy as defined by the governments and economic powers in the world.

Jubilee economics is today, as it has been historically, an economics of resistance to what prevails amid empire and transnational corporate rule. It resists what prevails by actively practicing viable, sustainable, and local life-giving alternatives.

Jubilee Economics Ministries encourages all who deeply desire to practice these alternatives. Intentional communities (many of them spiritually oriented), indigenous communities practicing traditional ways, economic cooperatives, and intentional local economies are some of the places to look for a variety of expressions of jubilee economics in contemporary contexts.

The practice of jubilee is far wider than most people realize. The practice remains "hidden" from histories, written and taught, because those histories describe the perspectives and practices of the dominating cultures. But there are other histories to be told and lived. People's histories, as Howard Zinn has named them in his well-known People's History of the United States, tell these stories which the powers of the prevailing culture wish we would forget.

Why is the economics of jubilee not more widely practiced?

People, businesses, and governments commonly seek advantage, power, and control. The framework of jubilee seeks to prevent domination, empire, and control, so it goes against what they are looking for.

In the world of Jubilee Economics -

• All are invited to participate without partiality.
• All are to share in the resources of the earth, and to do so with ecological reverence.
• Power, too, is to be shared and passed around.
• The regular and intermittent redistribution of resources and wealth, so resisted by current neo-liberal economics and other domination economics, is a foundation of jubilee.
• Jubilee levels economic frameworks based on hierarchies of power and accumulation erected by empire and those who wish to dominate.

Jubilee continues, as it always has, in the people's stories and history, being practiced in a variety of expressions.