Economics

In Latin, the word for “economics” comes from the Greek word oikonomos, meaning “the art of running a household.” Economists study institutions and human beings, especially how they compete, cooperate, and distribute goods, services, and information. But economists don’t just study the world as it is. They also make claims about how it ought to be. Unfortunately, some economists are captive to utopian visions based on wrong assumptions about God, humans, and the world. This is why the answers to life’s ultimate questions matter so much in making economic decisions. 

Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg.470

Democrats and Spending

 

Banking

Under fractional lending, banks are only required to have 10 percent in reserve, which means they can “lend” out $100 for every $10 they actually posses. This is why all economic debates between Republicans and Democrats are meaningless; they don’t address the core issue, which is that 90 percent of all principal in circulation from various loans is counterfeit and was created out of thin air. Obviously, as such, it can never be retrieved, and every penny of the usurious interest rates on every loan is imaginary, again conjured up out of nothing.

Donald Jeffries, Hidden History: An Expose of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-up in American Politics, pg.318-319

Government Control of Income?

Another dangerous power toward which we are moving, bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being directed against “the rich.”

The distracting phrases here include “obscene” wealth and “unconscionable” profits. But if we stop and think about it—which politicians don’t expect us to—what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn’t we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal?

Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced— and increasing a country’s productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting “the rich.”

You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called “unconscionable” but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do.

Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America, pg.12-13

Why Our Country Is So Deep in Debt

The Federal Reserve was founded in 1913 and is a state bank backed by Communists.

From 1910 to 2010 the dollar lost 97% of its value through inflation; inflation is a tax theft.

From the 2015 Documentary, AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit. 

Economic Security a Right?

Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.

Rose Wilder Lane

Spousal Benefits Should Be Reserved for REAL Marriage

The continued extension of spousal benefits to domestic partners further erodes the status and practice of marriage, ultimately reducing the well-being of children, increasing taxpayer costs, and retarding workforce productivity and economic progress. Domestic partnership benefits do not fulfill a large, unmet social need, but instead operate primarily on the symbolic level, as a signal that these relationships are marriage equivalents. …

Given the powerful advantages of marriage in protecting the well-being of children and the productivity of adults, responsible executives should be reluctant to embrace policies that suggest or imply to workers, their lovers, or their children that cohabitation is the functional equivalent of marriage, or that children do not really need both mothers and fathers.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.

Economic Benefits of REAL Marriage

Scientific evidence makes it clear that marriage I a wealth-producing institution, not merely a cultural value or a consumer good. Marriage boosts wealth in part because it points men and women toward productive, sober, steady behavior that pays off for families, for businesses, and for society. But marriage also boosts wealth and productivity for the same reason that other partnerships do: By sharing the burden of domestic and market work, married persons actually produce more working together than either would alone.

Married workers are, on average, more productive workers. The marriage premium (higher wages) earned by married men is one of the most well-documented phenomena is social science. “Typically,” write labor economists Sanders Korenman and David Neumark, wage “differentials are in the 10% to 40% range—roughly as large as race, firm-size, and union wage differentials, as well as differentials across industries.” The longer a man stays married, the higher his marriage premium, even after controlling for other factors.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Supporting Marriage Makes Business Sense.”  Corporate Research Council paper.

Bad Economy is a Result of Illegal Immigration

The economy we’re living in today is in no small part a result of the [Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965], which opened the door to mass immigration of unskilled and low-skilled workers, primarily through unlimited family chain migration. And that’s not an economy anyone should be satisfied with.

Today, we have about a million immigrants per year. That’s like adding the population of Montana every year—or the population of Arkansas every three years. But only one in 15—one in 15 of those millions of immigrants—comes here for employment-based reasons. The vast majority come here simply because they happen to be related to someone already here. That’s why, for example, we have more Somalia-born residents than Australia-born residents, even though Australia is nearly twice the size of Somalia and Australians are better prepared, as a general matter, to integrate and assimilate into the American way of life.

In sum, over 36 million immigrants, or 94 percent of the total, have come to America over the last 50 years for reasons having nothing to do with employment. And that’s to say nothing of the over 24 million illegal immigrants who have come here. Put them together and you have 60 million immigrants, legal and illegal, who did not come to this country because of a job offer or because of their skills. That’s like adding almost the entire population of the United Kingdom. And this is still leaving aside the millions of temporary guest workers who we import every year into our country.

Unlike many open-border zealots, I don’t believe the law of supply and demand is magically repealed for the labor markets. That means that our immigration system has been depressing wages for people who work with their hands and on their feet. Wages for Americans with high school diplomas are down two percent since the late 1970s. For Americans who didn’t finish high school, they’re down by a staggering 17 percent. Although immigration has a minimal effect overall on the wages of Americans, it has a severe negative effect on low-skilled workers, minorities, and even recent immigrants. . . . 

But the harmful impact on blue-collar workers isn’t the only problem with the current system. Because we give two-thirds of our green cards to relatives of people here, there are huge backlogs in the system. This forces highly talented immigrants to wait in line for years behind applicants whose only claim to naturalization is a random family connection to someone who happened to get here years ago. We therefore lose out on the very best talent coming into our country—the ultra-high-skilled immigrants who can come to America, stand on their own two feet, pay taxes, and through their entrepreneurial spirit and innovation create more and higher-paying jobs for our citizens.

To put it simply, we have an immigration system that is badly failing Madison’s test of increasing the wealth and strength of the community. It might work to the advantage of a favored few, but not for the common good, and especially not the good of working-class Americans.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Immigration in the National Interest

Government-Directed Financial Collapse

The trend today is toward more and more control of the economy by government that goes directly against our traditions, against the ideas of freedom and individual initiative that made us great. . . .   There’s no question that the self-sufficiency and material well-being of Americans are being diminished by government.  We’re following England down the road to intellectual and financial destruction.

Barry Goldwater, 1975.  Cited by Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Volume 5: The Welfare State 1929-1985, pg.309

The New Deal Extended the Depression

The New Deal programs did not end the Great Depression; they delayed recovery and prolonged it.  Economically, there is but one route to prosperity, and that is through freedom of enterprise, productivity, and competition.  The New Deal hampered enterprise and competition.  Production was discourage by such devices as acreage allotments for farmers, shorter hours of work in industry and reducing then number of people in the labor force.  Enterprise was hampered by diverting capital from private hands and spending it for public employment and public enterprises.  The proof of the pudding came in the period 1937-1939, when in the midst of prolonged depression, the depression deepened.  The stock market crashed again in 1937, though not so loudly.  Unemployment rose, until in the course of 1938 it reached the highs of 1933, despite such programs as WPA and the CCC.  According to some surveys, it reached 11 million in this period.  Higher wages resulting from government encouraged unionization and wages and hours legislation contributed to the deepening depression.

To show how the New Deal programs prolonged depression and worsened the situation, it may be helpful to examine a little more closely the fate of the farmers.  These measures were often supposed to save the family farm and even increase the number of people in farming.  If anything, they worked the other way.  About 25 per cent of the population lived on farms in 1933; this had fallen to 23 per cent in 1940 and to 15 per cent in 1950, when most of the programs were still in effect.  As for tenant and sharecroppers, who were supposed to be special objects of consideration, the comments of two historians are in order.  One says, “The AAA brought benefits to almost all commercial farmers.  But in limiting acreage and providing the strongest possible incentive for more efficient land use, and thus for better technology, it forced sharecroppers off the land and worsened the plight of farm laborers.”  Another says, “New Deal policies made matters worse.  The AAA’s reduction of cotton acreage drove the tenant and the cropper from the land. . . .”  They prolonged the agony of leaving the farm, with the usually small government checks, but by limiting acreage to money crops they sealed the fate of many farms.

The New Deal concentrated much attention on raising wages and farm prices.  To foster this, it adopted monetary and fiscal policies which brought in later years the scourge of inflation, the destruction of savings, and a society bent on somehow holding on to a portion of what has been earned.  The long-term result to this date [October 1986] has been the progressive destruction of the dollar.  That, too, is a legacy of the New Deal.

Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Volume 5: The Welfare State 1929-1985, pg.93-94

Unemployment Insurance?

If extended unemployment be accepted as the norm for a considerable portion of the population, it makes sense to insure against this hazard.  Indeed, prudent people have long believed it wise to set something aside against a “rainy day,” i.e., against some unfavorable circumstance beyond their control.  When government undertakes such a program, it takes over at least a portion of the responsibility which before that fell upon the individual, family, or, perhaps, the local community or neighbors.  From an economic point of view, government provided unemployment compensation amounts to paying people not to work.  It is a highly uneconomic, or diseconomic, practice.  This is made more impractical, if that is possible, by taking the contribution to the program from the employer and placing no penalty upon the worker while he receives the compensation.  The only check on it is that the compensation must end after a specified period of time.

Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Volume 5: The Welfare State 1929-1985, pg.78

Which Is Really Greed?

If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as “social gains”; if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as “selfish greed.”

Ayn Rand

All Freedoms Begin With Free Economy

A man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master, they are the essence of a free economy, and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.

Margaret Thatcher

Government and the Economy Don’t Mix

Government intervention produces distortions in an economy, makes for uneven and often wasteful development, sets the stage for booms and busts, tends to enrich some and impoverish others.

Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Vol. 4: The Growth of America 1878-1928, pg.14

What Really is the Meaning of “Poor”

The liberal Left likes to use the nation’s “poor” to justify its constant cries for higher and higher taxes, demonizing all who resist granting money to the visible at the expense of the invisible. Those who do not want taxes raised still higher to help the poor are not compassionate.  Over time, this short-sighted philosophy has robbed the term “poor” of any meaning. … No group of people would, on their own, come up with the concept of charity or the notion of poor. These are both legacies of western civilization’s Judeo-Christian origins…. The main reason it is so difficult to define “poor” is because we are people, not animals. … You see, it is relatively easy to define poverty in an animal. Say an elephant requires sixty pounds of vegetation each day to remain healthy. Say a lion requires twenty pounds of meat. If either animal receives less than this, it can safely be regarded as poor. They each have less than they need. However, if you speak of what a person needs you start sounding a bit like Karl Marx, who felt that communism would provide all a person really needs. His spiritual heirs discovered that Karl erred.  People’s ability to produce is finite and limited by their strength, ability, and life span. People’s needs, on the other hand, can be infinite. While all individual animals of a species are pretty much alike, no two humans are alike. It is simply not possible to speak of a human’s needs. … There is one additional complication in trying to speak of people’s needs. We all have limitless desires. … To put it directly, wealth and poverty to animals are absolutes; to humans, they are comparatives. …

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.247

Modern Economics Comes From Atheists

Not surprisingly, only one group of Americans is consistently resisting this massive cultural change in our values. Only they possess the faith to forego short-term snake-oil fixes in order to ensure the long-term fiscal and social health of society. …only America’s religious conservatives, both Jewish and Christian, possess the spiritual muscle to attack the malevolence at its root, which is the secular tendency to ignore the invisible. No wonder that Adam Smith and most of the other fathers of modern economics were God-worshiping Christians. No wonder that Keynes and other big-spending fathers of economic modernism were atheists.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.245-246

Describing the Current American Culture

A family of little faith is doomed.  Children will be allowed to spend precious and unrecoverable hours before a television.  They will be allowed a virtually unrestricted diet of fats and sweets.  They will know little discipline, little postponement of gratification, because the convenience of the present is of far greater priority to their parents than the long-term health and social development of the children.  The pleasures and benefits of this indulgent policy are immediately felt; its price will be paid far off into the future.  Seeing that ultimate price demands faith the family does not possess.

A society of no faith is equally doomed.  They will demand goodies from their leaders who, lacking the faith to say no, gladly indulge the populace in exchange for the votes that keep them in power.  They know full well that the price will have to be paid on some future leader’s watch.  At least it won’t be paid on theirs.  Whether the issue is Social Security, socialized medicine, rent control, making married couples pay more tax than they would pay were they single, or any other fiscal policy, too many of us see only the immediate benefits. We have been indoctrinated with the propaganda of compassion. Feeling people’s pain sounds noble and good. In reality it serves the need of those who seek to benefit now by making future generations pay the price.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.245

Governments Do Not Produce Money

When Christopher Reeve suffered a spinal cord injury, it pushed that area into prominence. But in all the calls for increased funding, I did not see anyone saying, “Since we need more research on spinal cord injuries, shall we reduce funding for diabetes or for cystic fibrosis? Or perhaps we should spend less on the arts.” The assumption seems to be that money is just sitting there and we simply need to withdraw it. Too many citizens fail to understand the simple reality that governments do not produce money, although they may well print it. Only hard-working people, who produce more than they need, actually produce wealth and money.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.244

The View From the Liberal Zookeepers

One popular tactic used by champions of the welfare state is to slander those who have worked diligently for their success.  The slander has worked, leading to a public perception that the rich got that way by stealing from the poor.  This perception includes that wealth-producing activities are unseemly and that free-market economic activity causes, rather than cures, poverty.  Just as it is wrong for a zookeeper to allow one elephant to eat considerably more than another, so it must be wrong for the government to allow one human or company to acquire or possess significantly more than another.

This view is consistent, of course, with the Leftist view that humans are merely another species of animal.  Secularists believe, if they stop to actually think about it, that humans contribute little or nothing to the satisfying of their needs.  Like animals, they can only exist on what is already available.  In other words, humans consume.  Therefore, isn’t it only proper of our Beltway zookeepers to equalize distribution and consumption?  Unfortunately, our nation’s politically correct (but morally incorrect) answer is to take from those who seem to have too much and redistribute the proceeds to those who seem to have too little, just as a responsible zookeeper would do.

In the view of government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs who create and market new technology and products in our country are very smart animals, but animals nevertheless.  By some form of skullduggery, under cover of darkness while the zookeepers were not watching, these entrepreneurs somehow seized more that their “fair” share.  They are obviously depriving others of that to which they are entitled.  After all, there are only so many bones, fish and pieces of meat available in the keepers’ bucket.

Thus our government zookeepers attempt to repair their mistakes by the vigilant taxation and prosecution of companies which have been “too” successful.  To gain votes, politicians often encourage those who have made self-destructive decisions in their lives to feel scorn for those who deployed self-discipline to become productive.  There is no better way than to exhibit a revulsion for what I call ethical capitalism.  Today we hear people referring to the 1980s as a period of moral depravity.  These individuals consider the miracle of economic enterprise to be the human equivalent of dogs fighting over a bone.

When America followed the biblical blueprint, it was clear that buying, selling, owning property , and being successful in business should evoke no psychological discomfort.  Economic activity is another way in which we satisfyingly distance ourselves from the animal kingdom and justify our humanity.

But if we continue to accept the godless alternative, then indeed we do not differ in kind from monkeys or other animals, only in degree.  Animals do not create wealth, they merely seize the commodities they need; people obviously do the same.  They may employ more sophisticated methods like bonds, debentures, taxation, and penalization of success, but it is seizing nonetheless.  Is it merely coincidence that those who most strongly advance evolution as the one and only approach to our origins are also those who most strongly oppose the free market?

Clearly, morally sensitive people must decry this activity.  If God created us and touched us with His abilities, then we are qualitatively different from animals.  Our ability to speak and to create is unique.  Therefore, animals plunder but people profit; the creation of wealth is an expression of our godly origins.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.227-228