Weaponizing Your Wallet

A dozen or so years ago, my sociologist friend Catherine and I wrote a book called Our Money, Our Values. We started with a presumed set of shared values—strong, healthy communities, social and economic justice, and environmental sustainability. We invited our readers to reflect on how their use of money promoted or worked against those shared values. Today those of us who believe in community, equity, and sustainability are mor challenged than ever by a contrary se of values under the misleading label of ”conservatism.”

Money is powerful. Money motivates, rewards, punishes, empowers, threatens. We need to harness, individually and collectively, as much of this tool to restore the good society we once thought we had.
How you spend or refrain from spending, how you save and invest, how you contribute to worthy causes and organizations all can be your voice in the larger world. Here are some thoughts on how to tweak your habits in ways that will help bend that arc of the universe so that it bends a little deeper toward justice.

Shopping. This one has had a lot of press lately as firms kowtowed the Trump administration over DEI. Amazon.com, Target, and Walmart were among the many firms who meekly withdrew their commitment to being intentionally inclusive of all varieties of people—age, gender, gender identity, disability, color. Pocketbook language is something that the owners will understand. (When the Washington Post started backing away from its traditional progressive stance, it lost some of its best writers and also 250,000 subscribers overnight. I was one of them.) Shop local. (That helps with building strong communities). Find firms that support positive social values and shift your spending there. And forgive yourself if you can’t find (as I did) Blue light 275 readers anywhere except amazon. Cancel your amazon prime, your streaming services that do not support your values, and seek out others that do. Sorry, X (not really), Facebook (don’t miss it), and lots of others which spout anti-environmental and anti-justice. See if you can find a B-corps firm, one that has a commitment in its corporate charter to pursue specific environmental and justice goals and be respectful of the needs of the communities where’re they are located. B-corp is one label. ESG (Environment, social and governance) is another. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is a third indicator. And waste our time, a resource worth much more than money.

It matters not only where you shop, but what you buy. Look for products whose production or consumption doesn’t overload the solid waste stream, involve harmful chemicals, require practices like fracking and strip mining, or are produced under unhealthful conditions by cheap labor (often children).

2. Investing—this is a key place to express values. Avoid the big banks who rip of low income customers with monthly charges and fees (especially on credit cards), minimum balance requirements, justice rhetoric. Read the prospectus for any possible investment. Look for mutual funds that endorse and actively promote your values. Green Century, for example, s one of my favorite mutual funds because it invests in clean and renewable energy. Here the acronym is SRI—socially responsible investing. Some economists would have you believe that the sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder wealth. It isn’t. Profits should be the reward for providing useful goods and services to households and other business firms. If your retirement savings are under your control (mine were not), explore your options for investing in assets and management philosophies that affirm your values,

3. Giving—use your money to support political candidates who share your values and to support local, national, and international organizations who are working to affirm and promote a just, peaceful, and sustainable human community that respects our fellow beings and the earth. Check Charity navigator to see what they support and how much of their revenue goes to marketing, promotion and top-level staff rather than direct assistance to those in need or support for actions that make people in need safer and healthier..

Make this the year of the moral consumer—citizen-worker-investor. It takes effort. It takes a village, so encourage your family, friends and neighbors, to do the same. The world will be a better place for it.