Economic Welfare
Ensuring the material welfare of the people.
Before moral education can succeed, people's material needs must be met. A starving population cannot focus on virtue. Rulers must ensure economic welfare as foundation for moral cultivation.
First enrich the people, then teach them.
Economic welfare is prerequisite for moral development.
Analects
Written about in
- What Confucianism says about leading others
Analects 13.9 puts enrichment before instruction: feed people first, then teach them. A leader demanding cultural transformation from underpaid people has the Confucian order exactly backwards.