Family-Friendly Economics - Why Small Is Still Beautiful

Joseph Pearce writes in the February 25 edition of The National Catholic Register:

A third of a century ago, in 1973, a German economist living in England wrote an international bestseller called Small Is Beautiful.

It had a huge impact.

The book’s author, E.F. Schumacher, became a celebrity overnight. He and his book became the icon of a new generation of environment-conscious politicians, economists and campaigners. The views expressed in Schumacher’s book became so fashionable that Jimmy Carter, following his election to the U.S. presidency in 1976, invited Schumacher to the White House for a photo shoot. Pictures of Carter and Schumacher, arm in arm, were splashed across the newspapers, indicating, so the president would have us believe, that he was in tune with the latest thinking on “economics as if people mattered,” which was the sub-title of Schumacher’s book.

There was, however, a secret behind Schumacher’s book that his millions of admirers did not know. It was a secret that some of them would wish not to know. It was, in fact, a secret that many of them still want to keep secret.

The secret is this: Schumacher was hugely influenced in his writing of Small Is Beautiful by the teaching of the Catholic Church.

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Joseph Pearce is writer-in-residence at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, and is co-editor of the Saint Austin Review. His most recent book, Small Is Still Beautiful, is published by ISI Books. You can read more about this topic at Pearce's blog small is still beautiful.