Like other countries, New Zealand is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, the sharp end of which is felt every time we fill up our cars with gas or wheel our trolleys through the supermarket checkout.
Some of us are doing it harder than others. According to Foodbank Aotearoa New Zealand, demand for food bank assistance rose over 30% in the second quarter of this year.
Around the same time as news broke about this alarming increase in demand for foodbank assistance, Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy was reported as saying that supermarkets took more than $1million in excess profits every day.
More recently, reports have emerged about record, eye-watering profits for banks and oil companies.
The problem is widespread. According to a report by British trade union movement Unite, the 2021 profit margins of the largest publicly listed companies in the UK were 73% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
The problem has become so acute that world leaders, including the President of the United States and our own Prime Minister, are speaking out. Excess profits "windfall" taxes have been imposed in some countries. The Green Party is calling for one to be imposed here.
We hear a lot today about "corporate citizenship" and "social responsibility". Often these take the form of corporations sponsoring projects that benefit local communities, or employees within these companies volunteering their time with not-for-profit organisations and charities.
Such initiatives are all well and good. But where do these altruistic gestures sit alongside the realities of price gouging and corporate profiteering?
How do "corporate citizenship" and "social responsibility" connect with economic justice?
And, in the case of fossil-fuel companies: how does one square their rhetoric of "corporate responsibility" and "stewardship" with the fact that their record profits will contribute to the devastating effects of climate change realities for decades to come?
As I ponder these questions, I am reminded of the Rev Rutherford Waddell’s famous sermon on "the sin of cheapness", delivered in St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Dunedin, in 1888. Waddell railed against a process known as "sweating", whereby the incessant demand for cheap goods was forcing prices down to a point where wages fell below subsistence level. The fact that no laws were being broken did not make it right in Waddell’s eyes. His sermon inspired the Otago Daily Times to take up this issue of justice, which, in turn, led to significant labour reforms in this country.
I am also reminded of a 16th century Reformer, John Calvin, who had a lot to say on matters of economic justice (though he didn’t use that term) in his adopted city of Geneva.
As a lawyer, Calvin knew all about contractual obligations and the laws of economics. He argued, however, that we have an obligation towards our neighbour that goes beyond contract law and the law of supply and demand.
Just because one can charge a premium on goods and services, or just because one is legally entitled to enforce a contract, does not mean that one should do so. If, by our actions, somebody is driven into poverty or deprived of their dignity, then a core imperative of loving one’s neighbour has been violated and we have sinned against God.
Calvin was especially concerned about the plight of refugees, of whom there were many in his day, the result of widespread political and religious persecution.
He was dismayed by refugees being taken advantage of by God-fearing, entrepreneurial Genevan locals.
His condemnation of sharp business practices, including usury, the charging of excessive interest, put him offside with many of the wealthy elite of his day.
We live in a time and context that is vastly different to that of either Waddell or Calvin. However, the dynamics of human greed and economic exploitation that protect privilege and divide the haves from the have-nots are not so very different whichever age we live in. Corporate profiteering that takes place under the cloak of respectability and the protection of the law might be a relatively new term, but it is certainly not a new phenomenon.
In the Wisdom literature in the Bible there is a verse that says, "Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss."
Those words from Proverbs 22:16 might be several millennia old, but wisdom of this sort does not have a use-by date.
It issues a timeless challenge to call out economic injustice and to realign economic practice with commitments to the common good, human dignity, and long-term ecological and planetary health.
Dr Graham Redding is a lecturer in chaplaincy studies at the University of Otago.
