Americans are moving from restrictive economies in California and New York to free economies in Texas and Florida, much like the Israelites escaped captivity in Egypt. Let’s Vote! I had five grandkids in the van recently, and we were trying to decide which park to visit. One of the ten-year-olds suggested energetically, “Let’s vote!” Where did an American ten-year-old get the idea that she had the power to determine the market? Well, FROM the market. And, that’s what people moving from one state to another are proving, they have the power to vote about where they live. People are voting with their feet, as they move from one state to another, as explained in a recent WSJ article titled, “The Great Blue to Red State Migration Continues.” I discussed some of this topic in podcast #131 titled Abraham and Wealth Migration. And, the great economist Arthur Laffer explains state differences in his book, The Wealth of States. The WSJ explains in their article that in the category “Migration to other states,” the loss leader was California which lost the most residents to other states, about 340,000, and New York, about 220,000. Texas gained almost 475,000 and Florida gained just under 375,000. Quoting the WSJ article now, “You don’t need artificial intelligence to spot what the losing states have in common: High taxes, burdensome business regulation, and inflated energy and housing prices. Those states also have higher than average unemployment as a result of businesses moving out of state.” The WSJ article quotes a chapter from the Old Testament, “A big problem for Democratic-run states is that their affluent residents are leading the EXODUS, and they pay the majority of income tax that supports their expansive welfare programs. This is a major reason California’s tax revenue over the last five months has come in $24.5 billion below projections despite a rebounding stock market.” Hmmm, kind of reminds you of the scene from the old movie The Ten Commandments, where the Israelites are leaving Egyptian bondage. And, in an economic sense, the folks leaving those states were in economic bondage. You may have heard that Benjamin Franklin’s choice for the great seal of the US was those same Israelites fleeing Egypt, just as Americans are now fleeing California and New York. It’s a little difficult to read the image, but it reads “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” The image shows the Israelites being pursued by Pharoh’s army. People are moving to the Red States, and Moses parted the Red Sea… goodness, there are too many parallels that can’t be overlooked. In the Holy Land, I’ve heard the phrase “From the Med to the Red,” so we should expect a political cartoon soon, with Moses holding up his staff and parting “Red” and “Blue” seas, or the red and blue states.   Freedom In my classroom at Dallas Baptist University, I have often crossed my arms and stated, “The Intersection of Christianity & Economics is freedom.” It’s such an important concept, that it’s the first of the ten Biblical Commandments of Economics that I found with Sergiy Saydometov, while writing the book Biblical Economic Policy. Well, that’s what we’re witnessing in the migration between states. You don’t have to survey the estimated eight million people who illegally crossed the Southern border of the US in the last three years. They are seeking freedom. Gee, I wonder how many have crossed the border the opposite way? Quoting the WSJ article again, “Democratic Governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom portray right-leaning states as benighted and undemocratic. But then how do they explain why so many of their states' residents are moving there?” People vote with their feet.   The End Game Where does this all end? A good case study might be Yugoslavia, which after the fall of communism, split into six constituent republics. Each group has their own country. That’s the way the US was designed, with states’ rights.

There are Ten Reasons for Hope in the New Year   I often explain that as an economist, I’m a pessimist, but as a Christian, I have hope. Hope is endemic to the Christian spirit and idea. We believe God is at work, even when the US debt clock shows that each individual’s share of the $34 trillion in national debt has increased from $85,000 to $100,000 in just the last three years. Think about it: Each of your children and grandchildren owes $100,000 in national debt. Still, there is hope. Here are some economic hopes we can have for 2024.   The Omniscient God From seeing God as a small g to God with a big G God IS sovereign, so He can do whatever He wants, without our help, but He chooses to allow us to join Him in his great work. I explained this concept in my last economics lesson of the semester at Dallas Baptist University because it helps us understand HOW MUCH humans should do. That’s the whole ballgame in macroeconomics: How active should monetary and fiscal policy be? For an atheist, it’s easy: Since they don’t believe there IS a God, humans have to do everything, but for Christians, or really, anyone who believes in a greater being, we have decisions to make about how active fiscal and monetary policy should be. It’s pretty easy to see that Christians should hope for less active fiscal and monetary policies in 2024. Accepting responsibility When GK Chesterton was asked, “What’s wrong with the United Kingdom?” He answered, “Me.” Increasingly, people believe that there’s nothing wrong with individuals, and what’s wrong in society. That’s why liberal college professors train their students to be activists. Their objective is to change the regulatory systems of society. Well, THEY are wrong. What IS wrong is the fallen nature of individuals, not societal structure. If folks start to see that the problem is based on the fallen nature, 2024 would be a better year.   A Free Economic System From Karl Marx to Adam Smith Adam Smith explained a free-market capitalist system, where both producers and consumers could benefit in the same exchange. Karl Marx countered it with a system that calls for the oppressed to rise up and throw off their oppressors. Guess what happens next? Another revolution, followed by guess what? Another revolution. Marxism is a system of continual battles because they can always find oppressed groups. It never ends in peace. I asked my students just last week, “Do they still make you read Animal Farm in high school?” Most heads nodded. There’s a lot of Marxist thinking in the world today: People who support Hamas against Israel have been duped into believing that the smaller, weaker group is always oppressed. From socialism to free-market capitalism A Christian Economist favors a middle position, typically somewhere near the free-market end of the spectrum, where there is enough freedom to exchange goods fairly, but where government has the role of maintaining competition, and preventing monopolies. Socialism always produces monopolies that serve the supplier at the expense of the demander. It’s not even a debatable subject. From spending to saving Brazil went through a period of sustained high inflation between about 1980 and the year 2000. During high inflationary cycles, it’s not wise to save, because your money becomes worth less, the longer you hold it. This period created a culture of spending and not saving, which is still obvious in Brazil today. The US is moving that way. Before the covid pandemic, in 2019, the US saving rate was about 7%. It’s now half that, about 3.5% and total consumer credit card debt crossed the $1 trillion threshold last month. I don’t have time to unpack all the various reasons for this, but one of them is inflation, and the other is a moral hazard. The government bailed out many folks during the pandemic, and now people assume the government will take care of them. So, why save?

Scarcity thinkers tell us we are running out of resources.  But Christians believe our "Made in the image of God creativity" will continue to find new ways of preserving resources. One of my favorite questions to ask groups is to complete this sentence, “Life was better before we ran out of: _____” You’re right, there’s no answer.  At least, in years of asking the question, I’ve never heard an answer.  If you know of a valuable resource that we’ve run out of, please send me an email.  But here’s the problem, we are continually being told that we’re running out of things. Just one example for now: In 1976, Jimmy Carter intoned, “We have about 35 years of oil left in the world.”  Oh, so we ran out in 2011?   The Coming Ice Age In a video from 1976, frightening music plays as Leonard Nimoy speaks in a very worried tone, “There’s little doubt that someday, the ice will return.”  More dramatic music plays, and he continues, “If we are unprepared for the next advance, the results could be hunger and death on a scale unprecedented in all of history.  During the lifetime of our grandchildren, Arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the habitable parts of our planet into a polar desert.  The next ice age is on its way.  At weather stations in the far north, temperatures have been dropping for 30 years.  Seacoasts that used to be free of ice, are now blocked year-round.  According to climatologists, within a lifetime, "we might be living in the next ice age.”  Okay, let’s be simple about this.  They were wrong in 1976.  What makes you think the climate alarmists are right today?   Progress “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”  That’s the first line of the book Progress by Johan Norberg.  The quote was attributed to Franklin Pierce Adams.  Mr. Norberg goes on to write, “The truth is that the good old days were awful.  The great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place.  Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labor, and infant mortality are falling faster than at any other time in human history.” In my lifetime, the percentage of the world living in extreme poverty has dropped from 44% to just over 8%.  On its current trajectory, it will approach zero in the next ten years. When Karl Marx died in 1883, the average Englishman was three times richer than he was when Marx was born, in 1818.   Abundance vs Scarcity, Will We Run Out? The magicians and entertainers Penn and Teller were playing a kind of poker game called Greatest Person in History, with pictures of great people on playing cards.  Penn draws a card and pushes all his chips in on the bet because he KNEW that card would cause him to win the game.  The face on the card….are you ready for this….Greatest person in history? Let me tell one more story to keep you in suspense.  Goldman Sachs came up with the idea of the BRIC countries in 2001.  The countries with the greatest supply of land, labor, and capital are Brazil, Russia, India, and China.  So, I started on a plan to take MBA students from Dallas Baptist University to all four.  Just before we left for India the Dallas Global Alliance was hosting a speech by the Indian ambassador to the US.  The Indian representative strode to the podium.  He didn’t even say hello, or good morning, or it’s good to be in Dallas.  The first words he spoke were, “Please join me in a moment of silence in memory of…..are you ready…this is the guy’s picture on Penn’s poker card….. His name is …..Norman Borlaug.  Borlaug grew up in Cresco, Iowa, and earned a Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Minnesota.  First, he went to Mexico and showed them a dwarf wheat that matured in half the time, so they could double their crop in one year.  Then he went to India and Pakistan and did the same thing.  He’s known as the man who saved a billion lives. That’s abundance. Now for scarcity.  That’s easy,

The powerful religion of Karl Marx and of Islam leads to the powerful political system of totalitarianism, which leads to the powerful economic system of Marxism, which impoverishes its people. How we see God has a lot to do with how we see our fellow man.    Belief – Politics - Economics When I wrote the curriculum for International Economics at Dallas Baptist University, I used this simple diagram to begin each session.  Belief systems produce political systems, which produce economic systems.  I know, there is a lot of interplay and it goes back and forth.  But the diagram is mostly correct. That’s why we should not be surprised that the Muslim Palestinians of Hamas have a totalitarian political system and a socialist economic system.  Power begets power.  All three of those systems are based on power structures. If Israel didn't exist, the Palestinians would still live in abject poverty. That is not Israel's fault. It's a cultural thing.  In most cases, the powerful top-down religion of Islam does not produce a bottom-up political system like democracy, nor an economic system like free market capitalism that enriches the poor. What we study in social science is differences.  That’s it.  We want to know why there are differences in the world.  Economics is a social science.  So, we want to know why the Israelis make $55,000, their neighbors, the Jordanians and Lebanese make less than $13,000, and the Palestinians make under $7,000.  Israelis make eight times more than their Palestinian neighbors.   Why? Top-down religions like Islam identify more easily with top-down political ideas like totalitarianism, and top-down economics like Marxism.   Karl Marx and the Devil That happens to be the title of my podcast #106.  That one is based on some comments by Dr. David Jeremiah.  I am struggling through a book right now titled The Devil and Karl Marx by Paul Kengor.  The subtitle is “Communism’s long march of death, deception, and infiltration.”  That sounds like the recent Hamas attack on Israel, doesn’t it?  The book I’m currently reading is hard to read because Karl Marx was such an evil person.  If you are sickened by the atrocities performed by Hamas against Israelis recently, then you won’t want to read the book.  Karl Marx exercised power whenever he could.  He impregnated his housemaid, who was about as close to an owned servant as you can get.  Two of his daughters committed suicide.  His personal life is as disordered and calamitous as the economic system he designed.  He bullied people on many occasions, and very rarely worked.  He lived off his partner, Friedrich Engels.  Maybe I’ll explain more about his disastrous and immoral life in another podcast someday.  For now, just be assured, that in his personal life and in Marxism, it’s all based on power. At the heart of Marxism is the idea of the oppressors and the oppressed.  It’s such a lousy economic system because it fails to recognize that both parties in a transaction can benefit at the same time.  Milton Friedman famously said, “Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”  Well, Marxism is one of those economic fallacies.  The left thinks Israel’s prosperity was caused by the Jews stealing wealth from the Palestinians.  That’s not how it works. About those oppressed and oppressors.  There are about 475 million Arabs in the countries that surround Israel.  Their population increased by 8.2 million last year alone.  There are…. are you ready for it……just over 7 million Jews in Israel.  Get it?  The Arab population increase in ONE YEAR was greater than the entire Jewish population.  But we’re being told that 7 million people oppress 475 million? You see, some of this misaligned sympathy for the Palestinians is because they are portrayed as the oppressed.  That’s just nonsense.  They are poor because their religion produces totalitarian polit...

American incomes are 3% more equal today than in 1947.   That was the key data point from former Senator Phil Gramm’s recent speech about his new book, titled The Myth of American Inequality.    Don’t Covet Just about every discussion that points out inequalities of outcomes is a violation of the tenth commandment against covetousness.  From Thomas Picketty’s books and speeches to Black Lives Matter, to President Biden: The message is always rooted in wanting what others have. That’s why, when Sergiy Saydometov and I wrote the book Biblical Economic Policy, one of the ten Biblical Commandments of Economics we found was “Don’t Covet.”  It’s so pervasive in our society.  As I’m recording this podcast, the Union of Auto Workers is out on strike.  Guess what their major talking point is: How rich the executives are.  Who barred a production worker from seeking a C-Suite job?  In fact, companies typically provide tuition assistance for those who desire to move “up” within the company.  If any of the automakers discriminated against a qualified executive, their competitors would snatch her up in a second, seeking competitive advantage over the others.  That’s the beauty of competition.  When you discriminate in a competitive environment, you hurt yourself. The union toadies also use the phrase “fair shares.”  That’s straight out of Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged.  She does not use the term in a favorable way.   Quintiles OK, anytime you talk about incomes, you have to use quintiles.  That’s because the Census Bureau reports incomes in five different levels. Here’s the raw data point that the coveters trot out: The top quintile makes 16.7 time more than the bottom quintile.  But that’s before you count transfers.  A transfer is money that is taken from the folks in the top quintile and given to the bottom quintile.  After transfers, the ratio is 4: 1.  That’s actually a very narrow difference.  I mean really, what would you like it to be? Another shocking fact from Senator Gramm, “In 2017 the bottom quintile spent TWICE what they earned.  Hold it.  As my friend says, “That don’t pencil out.”  Where did the extra money come from?  Well, people in the top quintile spent 40% less than they earned.  Oh, now it makes sense.  It was transferred from the rich to the poor. The Census Bureau data does not count 100 federal transfer programs.  It overlooks 2/3 of transfer income.  88% of income to the bottom quintile is not counted.  Now you see why the real ratio is 4:1. There are lies, damned lies, and government statistics.  Oh, Senator Gramm’s speech that I’ve been quoting was sponsored by a think tank called the Institute for Policy Innovation.  It was founded by then speaker of the house Dick Armey, for the expressed purpose of producing reliable data.   The Wrong Motivations Back to those transfers: They instigate the wrong motives on both parties.  When you take money from the rich folks, you motivate them to produce less.  When you give money to the poor, you motivate them NOT to produce more.  Production is the key driver of a nation’s wealth.  The more you transfer, the poorer the nation gets.  One of my favorite phrases is “Policies that Promote Production is what separates rich from poor nations.”  Here’s how Winston Churchill said it, “You don’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor.”  The Dave Arnott extension of that is: When you make the rich poor, you make the poor, poorer. Ronald Reagan quipped, “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.”  The war on poverty ended up being a war on the economy.  Poverty was reduced 50% between 1945-1960.  That was BEFORE the war on poverty.  THEN LBJ launched the “war on poverty” and it has not changed significantly since.  The poverty rate without transfers ranges from about 11-16%.  When you count the transfers received by those in poverty, only 2.5% are still qualified as being in poverty.  And, again,

ChatGPT leans liberal and can be deceptive, but Christians should not be afraid of it;  It's simply another machine that will cause creative destruction that makes us economically richer.   Toward the end of last semester, I wrote to my Dean in the College of Business, “I either have the best student in the history of our program, or he’s using ChatGPT to write his essay answers.”  After noticing some similarity in a few students’ essays, I got something of a sense for what was written by students, and what was written by the Bot.  I had asked a strategy question, and the guilty answers contained more financial information than I had asked for.   This is not a huge deal.  Students have been cheating on answers since Cain said he didn’t know where his brother was.  Keeping up with cheating is what we do as teachers and professors.  This is simply a new technique.   It IS cheating, by the way.  Passing off someone else’s work as your own, is cheating.  Even if the “someone” is a computer program.   There are many Biblical warnings about deception.  Here’s just one from the Old Testament, and one from the New Testament.  Job 15:31 “Let him not deceive himself by trusting what is worthless, for he will get nothing in return”.  And in 2 Timothy 3:13-14, the apostle Paul warns us, “Evil people and impostors will go from bad to worse as they deceive others and are themselves deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and found to be true, because you know from whom you learned it”.  So we shouldn’t be alarmed by a bot trying to change our thinking.       Assumptions   An article in the Washington Post by Gerrit De Vynck is titled “ChatGPT leans liberal, research shows.”  I assume Mr. De Vynck wrote the article, and that he didn’t use AI to write it for him.  Now THAT would be interesting, wouldn’t it?  Asking a bot to write an article criticizing a bot?  He cited a research paper that said the following, “The paper adds to a growing body of research on chatbots showing that despite their designers trying to control potential biases, the bots are infused with assumptions, beliefs and stereotypes found in the reams of data scraped from the open internet that they are trained on.”   So, it’s “garbage in – garbage out.”  All computer programs are that way.  The frightening thing about this one, is its apparent ability to teach itself.  That’s reminiscent of the robot Hal’s response in the 1968 movie, 2001 A Space Odyssey, “Sorry Dave, ‘m afraid I can’t do that.”     But for now, let’s look back – to assumptions – not forward.  The Economics textbook I use in my Macro class at Dallas Baptist University was authored by Gregory Mankiw.  He has a section in an early chapter about assumptions.   As a warning about false assumptions, I tell this story.  I bought this painting while waiting for the vaporetto – that’s the water bus – in Venice, Italy.  In 1609, Galileo hauled the Doge – that’s the governor of the city state of Venice – up the 323 steps of San Marco tower to show him what he’d found in the night sky, using his newly refined telescope.  It seemed to indicate that my predecessors – Catholic Priests – were wrong, and that the earth was NOT the center of the solar system.  Galileo was tried by my predecessors, who claimed to contain all the information in the world at the time.  He tried to defend himself by saying it was only a theory, and he didn’t really believe it.  Well, he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.  The message was pretty clear: Don’t mess with the folks who held the power of information.   Legend has it that after his prosecution, he uttered the famous phrase, “Yet it moves.”  You still hear that phrase used occasionally when someone thinks they are clearly correct after losing an argument.  Maybe like a reasonable person who does the math and finds that the Inflation Reduction Act actually CAUSED inflation.  But,

Our creativity comes from being made in the image of God. That creative innovation is best expressed in time-price, defined as how many hours we work to buy something.  We're rich. Would you like to pay for your breakfast and get eight free?  Wanna pay only 2% of your air conditioning bill?  How about paying less than 5% of the marked price for a bicycle?  God has made us rich by making us creative, in His image, and according to time price, you are getting those discounts on just about everything you buy.  But first: How did we get here?   Made in God’s Image Where does creativity come from?  Well, for the Christian, the answer is pretty simple: We were made in God’s image.  Another way of saying it is, we were created by the creator to be creative.  That explanation is well-received by my students at Dallas Baptist University.  I often wonder how creative innovation is explained at secular universities.  It’s the first part of what’s sometimes called the three-chapter gospel: Creation, Fall, and Redemption.  We were created in the Imago Dei, or in God’s image.  We are NOT gods, we’re not even little gods, but we are made in His image, and we believe that’s the source of our creativity.   The Hockey Stick of Prosperity Humans were poor in the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Very few people were rich, and those are the ones we read about Abraham, Solomon, etc.  However, a substantial percentage of the population was poor.  By some estimates 25% of the first century population were slaves.  We used to ask “Why are people rich?”  And now we ask “Why are people poor?”  Because such a small percentage of the world’s population is poor.  People living in abject poverty has been reduced from 44% to just over 8% in MY lifetime.  That’s one of the most astounding economic statistics you will ever hear. What changed?  How did we accomplish The Great Escape, as 2013 Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton called it, in his book by that name? Jonathan Heidt has called it “The most important diagram in human history.”  Don Boudreaux at George Mason explains it as the Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity in a very convincing YouTube video.  Where does the hockey stick turn up?  1776.  Three things happened in the same year.  There was a political revolution, a technological revolution, and an economic revolution.   First, political:  Americans remember it was the year of arguably the greatest political revolution in history when the United States declared its independence from Britain.  Scotsman James Wilson signed both the Declaration and the Constitution.  Second, the technological revolution occurred when James Watt perfected the steam engine.  It was the first form of non-muscle power that could be moved to any location.  Third was the economic revolution instigated by the writing of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.  How about this: All three of these Scotsmen: James Wilson, James Watt, and Adam Smith were at Glasgow University from 1859-1762.  Think about walking into a pub and asking, “Who are those three guys?”  Would you arrive late for a lecture, when it featured a panel of futurists that included James Wilson, James Watt, and Adam Smith? Honestly, I just stumbled onto this amazing providence, and I’m not sure what to do with the information.  I read a book titled How the Scots Invented the Modern World.  However, it concentrated too much on the military battles and not enough on the three revolutions I was interested in. I think there was something going on in their religion, but I don’t have the details yet.  I know they had been pretty strict Calvinists, who believed that their lives were predetermined for them.  But somehow, the spirit of creative innovation was alive in the mid-18th century in Scotland, and the world is richer today because of it.   Time Price How do we measure our wealth?  Sometimes in my DBU class, I have claimed that gas is cheaper for my freshmen this year,

We can't make a perfect economic system.  But we can make it better. God is perfect, we’re not.  But that doesn’t stop people from striving for perfection.  So how do we design an economic system for an imperfect world?  That’s the subject of today’s podcast. There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal this week by Rachel Feintzeig titled “Try Hard, but Not That Hard.”  She writes, “So many of us were raised in the gospel of hard work.”  Okay, my first observation is that she called it “the gospel.”  It makes a Christian Economist think about the book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber way back in 1904. Ms. Feintzeig’s article contains long quotes from Greg McKeown who wrote the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.  Mr. McKeown suggests we aim at about an 85% success rate.  Both of these authors are writing about what economists call “Opportunity Cost.”  So, my sophomore students at Dallas Baptist University will study until they know the chapter pretty well, but not perfectly.  Why?  They know the concept of declining marginal utility, that says that each additional minute spent studying produces less than the previous minute did.  So, after a few hours of study, they go play flag football or have pizza with their friends. Facebook is the classic example of the old phrase from Voltaire, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”  It features your friends and their perfect homes, vacations, children, food, etc.  It is reminiscent of a guy whom Jesus encountered.   Trying to be Perfect He was a rich young ruler who wanted to be perfect.  Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  In the book The Maker Versus the Takers, Jerry Bowyer explains that Jesus was talking about conversion, not entry into heaven. We can’t be perfect.  The ways we might measure perfection are different than how God measures it.  We seek perfection through our accomplishments, wealth, academic degrees, and social status.  Jesus tells us to forget seeking perfection, and simply love God, and love your neighbor.  It seems strange to me that so many protestants seek perfection, because of two events: Jesus came to save us because He knew we couldn’t perfectly keep the law.  And Martin Luther led the Reformation because Luther found he could not keep the Catholic laws. Here’s what Martin Luther had to say about perfection, “We are not what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished.”  Most Christians call that “sanctification,” meaning, we are becoming closer to perfect, but we can’t gain it on this side of heaven. We’re Fallen, and we Can’t Get Up.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  The Christian Worldview says that God created a perfect world, fallen humans have messed it up, and it’s our job to redeem it, to the extent we can.  We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make this broken world better.  That’s our calling.  So how do we design an economic system that we know is going to be implemented by fallen people?   Christian Economics There is no perfect economic system.  I get so tired of hearing people poke holes in the free-market capitalist system, but then fail to present a better alternative.  There isn’t one.  Of course, capitalism has its problems, as all human systems do.  As Whole Foods founder John Mackey said, “Capitalism is humanity’s greatest invention.”  It’s head and shoulders above its nearest competitor, socialism. The market is so complex, even the greatest economists have not been able to define it.  Adam Smith called it “The invisible hand.”  That’s not a scientific answer.  Invisible?!  Friedrich Hayek said it was “spontaneous order.”  A freshman at DBU would ask the “first cause” question, which goes something like, “Who spontained it?” I like the answer from Jay Richards,

Christians are called to take care of widows and orphans, because in the agrarian economy of Biblical times, those were the people who didn’t own land, so they were not capable of economically providing for themselves.  In the 21st century, we as individuals can care for the less fortunate by two very different economic systems: Competition or Regulation. Regulations are regressive, harming the poor more than the rich.  They also exercise taxation without representation, and they side-step the democratic process. University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan has determined that the Biden administration’s rule-making has cost each American household more than $10,000, while the Trump administration’s reduction of rules saved each household $11,000.  Every American household has $21,000 less in purchasing power as a result of the change from President Trump to President Biden.  As President Obama noticed, “Elections have consequences.”  And they matter most to the poor, who suffer a greater loss in purchasing power through regulations than the rich do.  That’s because $21,000 represents a higher proportion of income to the poor, than the rich. But wait, it gets worse: To quote Mr. Mulligan directly from his letter to the Wall Street Journal, “That would be more than $10,000 in cost for the two years of President Biden’s rule-making that I examined, and almost $11,000 in savings for four years of President Trump’s.  Mr. Biden is adding regulatory costs even faster than President Obama did, while Mr. Trump reduced them.”   Opportunity Cost The simple economics question, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” is what finance people term “Cost-Benefit analysis.”  We all make those decisions, large and small, on a daily basis.  You skimmed the headline of this podcast and decided the benefit you would receive from gaining the information is greater than the cost of spending the time to listen to it.  In economics, we call that “Opportunity Cost.”  You can’t listen to another podcast at this moment, because you’re listening to this one. The federal government goes through a similar analysis, performed by the Office of Management and Budget.  They keep track of how many “significant regulatory actions” a President orders.  That has been defined as an order that costs American taxpayers $100 million.  That’s the squeeze.  Now, the Biden administration wants to double it to $200 million.  OMB also measures the “juice” that is produced from the order.  In the past, that benefit was accrued only to Americans, but being the global citizens they are, the Biden administration says those benefits can accrue from outside the US. President Trump wanted to “Make America Great Again,” and the Biden Administration wants to “Make the World Great Again.”  The current Administration is tilting at a very large economic windmill.  Justice would say that money forcefully extracted from American taxpayers should benefit Americans.  If you really think money spent by taxpayers in one country should benefit those in another country, please preach that sermon in another country, and convince them to appropriate funds that benefit Americans.   No Taxation Without Representation The phrase “No taxation without representation” first appeared in a London newspaper in 1768.  As you may remember, the phrase caught on in the colonies, and caused a revolution.  It raised the question as to whether the Crown had the right to tax its colonial subjects.  The colonists thought it did not. But that’s exactly what’s happening today.  This is taxation without representation.  Our forefathers fought a revolution over that idea.  These are administrative orders that do not go through the democratic legislative process.  They harm the poor - as mentioned earlier - and the young.  Americans can’t vote until they are 18, but they have to pay for these regulatory costs in the form of decreased family spending power every year of their lives.

“Supply causes demand” was the summary statement by the French economist Jean Baptiste Say.  The Biden administration has supplied more than $500 million to alleviate homelessness, and demand for it went up 11%.  The allotment will be quickly consumed by the Homeless Industrial Complex, who will be back at the Government feeding trough for more, faster than you can say “Dwight Eisenhower.”  Why “Dwight Eisenhower?”  He invented the term Military Industrial Complex, from which the term Homeless Industrial Complex gets its name.  The concept of the Homeless Industrial Complex is real. As far as I can tell, the term was first used by Joel John Roberts, who authored the cheeky-titled book How to Increase Homelessness in 2004.  It sprang up to monetize homeless "services" nationally and their continued funding depends on sustaining the homeless population.  They are not so much interested in solutions -- there's too much money in the problem.   Nothing About Supply and Demand The Wall Street Journal is trying to blame the homeless problem on economics, “This year’s surge reflects a host of pressures around the U.S. such as rising housing costs, and lack of affordable rental units.”  Oh, that’s why crackheads consume cocaine, opioids, and Mogen David by the gallon? Homelessness is the result, not the cause.  Homelessness is largely caused by drug addiction and mental illness. It’s not an economic problem, it’s a moral violation for the homeless who make choices to fry their brains, and for the self-interested governmental bureaucrats who make a pretty nice living in the Homeless Industrial Complex that maintains the street carnival.  Somewhere around 90% of homeless people have drug and alcohol addictions, and some degree of mental illness. In their book Extreme Leadership former Navy Seals Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, state the rather obvious, “You get the behavior you tolerate.”  New York City has something called “A legal right to shelter,” which has caused its homeless population to explode. “The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, a federal agency, also blamed growing homeless counts on housing costs and shortages.”  The government is wrong again.  Look, homelessness is NOT an economic problem.  We can do ZERO to address the homeless problem until we stop claiming an association between homelessness and lack of affordable housing.  They are unrelated.  Homelessness has nothing to do with the availability of affordable housing. When shelter is supplied for many homeless people, they turn it down.  Many homeless people are homeless because they don’t want to follow the rules that would be required to live in a house.  If you’re thinking “that’s kinda crazy,” you would be correct.  As I’ve stated, the majority of the homeless population have some kind of drug or alcohol dependence or mental illness. Noting that the unemployment rate is at 3.6%, well below what economists call the natural rate of 5%, we should notice that jobs are plentiful in this country for anyone who shows up on time and isn't stoned.   The Capitalist Good Samaritan Finding a man injured on the road, the Good Samaritan, as described in Luke chapter 10 uses his own oil, wine, and bandages.  He puts the man on his own donkey and pays the innkeeper with his own denarii. Socialists read the story to say: finding the man injured on the road, the Samaritan rushed into town and rounded up some Roman soldiers who went door-to-door, forcefully extracting taxes to buy public oil, wine, and bandages.  They bought public donkeys and public inns.  That’s not how Jesus told the story, and it’s not how we are commanded to care for the homeless.  There is no room in the Good Samaritan story for the government.   Defined by What They’re NOT Notice the title “homeless.”  Interesting that these folks are identified by what they don’t have, instead of what they do have.  Maybe I should start referring to the students in my class at Dal...

During a recent Congressional testimony, John Durham was accused of having a sullied reputation because of his association with President Trump.  His full response is the closing statement of today’s podcast.  For now, I will summarize the part that gives its name to today’s podcast, “I’m perfectly comfortable with my reputation.” Are you comfortable with your economic reputation?  How are you using your freedom to produce and distribute goods and services to your neighbors to show you love them?  As I wrote in my little book Economics and the Christian Worldview, “If you love your neighbor, you will supply her with products and services she demands.  If you love yourself, you will make a profit while doing so.” Trying to make everyone happy is a fool’s errand.  We all must make decisions in life that determine our economic contribution to those around us.    Lies, Damned Lies, and Bidenomics Economist Ronald Coase said, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.”  Advisors to President Biden actually wrote a speech about how GOOD Bidenomics is.  A reader of the Wall Street Journal wrote in the comments section: “Let’s go Brandenomics” Thomas Carlyle called Economics the Dismal Science, probably in response to Robert Malthus writing in 1798, that we would run out of food and starve.  He was wrong, and every Malthusian since him has been wrong, which has led to my favorite question to ask of groups: Complete the sentence, “Life was better on earth before we ran out of:” There is no answer.  We’ve never run out of anything, but that does not stop current day Malthusians from trying to convince us we’re going to. But economics is not dismal.  It is powerful.  It is a set of rules - I would argue - that are handed down from God.  He gave us the freedom to use our mental acuity to do math and read two-dimensional graphs, so we can have the social science we call Economics.  But, as I’ve often said, “There’s nothing created good by God, that some human has not used for his own cause.  Freedom can be mis-used.  Such is today’s Bidenomics. One of my favorite economics writers is Greg Ip at the WSJ.  He wrote recently, about President Biden, “In a memo released this week, his political strategists Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon write that Biden “faced an immediate economic crisis when he took office” in January 2021.  Actually, he didn’t.” End of quote from Greg Ip.   Absolute Economic Truth “All truth is relative” is an absolute statement.  So there has to be some truth out there, let’s go find some.  In the post enlightenment era, relativism has taken over.  They are trying to define freedom as doing whatever you want.  A person is supposedly free to say, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body.”  And we’re supposed to not only accept it, but praise it.  Carl Trueman tracks the history of that foolish claim, back to Rousseau in his very good book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.  I published a podcast, summarizing that idea, titled Expressive Individualism, it’s podcast #151.  The simple point is this: We can’t all have our own truth, nor our own economics.  There HAVE TO BE objective measures. During a rally with union members in Philadelphia recently, President Biden said it was “time to end the trickle-down economics theory.”  Yes, I suppose it is, because according to Thomas Sowell it does not exist.  He offered a reward to anyone who could cite the author of the theory.  He got no takers.  It doesn’t exist.  It’s simply a straw-man created by opponents of economic growth. During the pandemic, I built a golf course in the pasture behind our house.  It’s not very sophisticated.  And the rules vary from day to day, depending on who is playing.  I guess you could call it a “relativism set of rules.”  When a grandson is having a bad day, I even let him pick up his ball and throw it.  We don’t even keep score.  But, it’s our own golf course in our own pasture.

People are living longer, and it's shaking up the world of money. A Wall Street Journal piece shows that as we age, we stack up more cash. But, with longer lives come bigger economic questions. “You will have a long life on the earth.” This promise which accompanies the fifth commandment about honoring your father and mother is becoming more true all the time.  AND, there are economic implications. Richard McKenzie, writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, made the point that, as folks live longer, they accumulate more money.  That kind of makes sense.  The title of Mr. McKenzie’s article is Americans are Living Longer and Prospering, and the subtitle “Longer Lifespans are an underappreciated cause of the increase in wealth concentration”  really gets under the skin of the Thomas Piketty crowd.  He’s the French economist who has pointed out economic inequalities in his books The Economics of Inequality and his latest Time for Socialism.   Like our current President Joe Biden, Piketty likes to complain about the concentration of wealth among a smaller population. Certainly, you WANT people to live longer, don’t you?  Who would ever be FOR shorter lifespans?  The death crowd, I guess.  More on that later.  Oh, there is something of a statistical anomaly going on here.  In 2019, lifespans became shorter, but that was probably a one-time consequence of Covid.  The trend line of longer life spans is expected to continue, after the dip. Older workers are making a greater contribution to the economy, compared to previous generations.  Firms have begun to offer “grand-turnity” leave to retain grandparents in the workforce.   The Poor Are Getting Richer Through Economics Here’s what the Socialists really dislike, and it’s where McKenzie explains that the wealth of the bottom half of the US population increased in real dollars between 1989 and 2022.  He goes on to explain that the bottom half’s share of total wealth decreased from 3.8% to 3.1% during those years.  You see, Christians care about the poor, not the distance between the rich and the poor.  Those who care about distance are violating the tenth commandment, about avoiding covetousness.  Let me repeat the first half of Mr. McKenzie’s explanation about the wealth of the bottom half increasing in real dollars.  My sophomores at Dallas Baptist University know that “real” means after inflation.  So, even though the current administration has thrown an inflation party that has harmed them, the poor have still managed to get richer.  Christians celebrate that. But Socialists concentrate on the second half explanation from the WSJ article, about the share of wealth of the poor declining from 3.8% to 3.1%.  Mr. McKenzie notes in his article, “Sen. Bernie Sanders denounces today’s wealth-concentration as “morally obscene.” President Biden seeks to temper the growing wealth accumulation by imposing a “billionaires’ tax.” Of course, the rich are getting richer at a faster rate.  That’s just the rules of the road.  If a rich guy starts with $1 million and the poor guy starts with $1 thousand, as the economy lifts all boats, it’s going to lift the big boat further.  The only time I can find when the poor got rich at a faster rate than the wealthy was during the Trump administration, and that’s because his economic policies aligned with growth in the lower classes. And, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley point out in the book Superabundance, that, when measured by “time price” that is: How long a person has to work to buy products and services, today’s poor are getting richer all the time.   Consumer surplus Socialists are good at demand, but terrible at supply.  They start at the point where a person has money and proceed from there.  They want the government to get that money, with no consideration for the supply that produced it.  In economics, we call it “consumer surplus.”  In a competitive environment, every time you buy something, you get richer.

The market will take care of the woke problem in higher education, as consumers choose Christian colleges over corrupt state institutions.    John Ellis wrote a fire-breathing editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled Higher Ed Has Become a Threat to America. Subtitled Our corrupt, radical universities feed every scourge from censorship and crime to antisemitism. He’s mostly right. But his prescription is wrong. As with most problems in a free society, the market will take care of the problem.   The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities There is an alternative form of education that Mr. Ellis overlooks: Christian Higher Education. 150 members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities suffer from almost none of the maladies Mr. Ellis points out in his scathing article. He writes, “Every one of these degradations can be traced wholly or in large part to a single source: the corruption of higher education by radical political activists.” Okay, let’s see. I have been on the faculty at Dallas Baptist University for thirty years, so I will speak for my university, and safely assume that applies to most of the other 150 CCCU members. There are no radical political activists on our campus. Never have been. Unless you count the very conservative Young Americans for Freedom, who recently hosted a speech by retired Lt. Colonel Allen West. There’s also the Pro-Life Patriots organization. On President’s Day, their Facebook page invited students to “Join us, this Presidents’ Day as we remember some of the most Pro-Life presidents in history!” The announcement was accompanied by photos of both Presidents Bush, President Reagan, and President Trump.   Biblical Justice Ellis again, “Children’s test scores have plummeted because college education departments train teachers to prioritize “social justice” over education.” Nope, not at our university nor at just about any of the other CCCU members. We like to study “Biblical justice.” A phrase you might hear in a classroom is “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Mr. Ellis complains, “Censorship started with one-party campuses shutting down conservative voices.” That’s never happened at DBU. Recently, we have hosted former CIA and State Department head Mike Pompeo, former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis, and Kristen and Keith Getty. That last couple writes and performs Christian praise songs. Recently we also hosted retired Army General David Petraeus. We’ve never had a protestor, and we don’t expect to have one this week. Our students think, and don’t allow their feelings to control their lives. I unpack more on that topic in podcast #97 titled Thinking vs Feeling. During speeches, our students show respect for competing ideas, they don’t shout them down, or demand the speaker be ushered off campus. They treat guest speakers as guests, as they do all campus visitors.   Be Fruitful and Multiply Ellis again: “The drive to separate children from their parents begins in longstanding campus contempt for the suburban home and nuclear family.” It’s the total opposite at our university. Dennis Prager spoke in chapel, then hosted his national radio program from our campus, with some students visiting him in the studio. He cited an article about three women featured in a recent Atlantic Magazine article, who stated they would not have children because of climate change. Mr. Prager asked our students how many of them wanted to get married. In the small sample in the studio, all of them raised their hands, and having children was beyond question: of course, they planned to get married and have children. Opining about the border crises, Ellis states, “Open borders reflect pro-globalism and anti-nation state sentiment among radical professors.” Of the approximately 4500 students at DBU,

As long as the fallen nature produces unlimited wants, and the creative nature has unlimited creativity, there will be unlimited employment.   The Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report last year, projecting huge losses in three occupational groups: Administrative assistants, production, and sales.     Change is good.  The old adage, “You will get change from…

Artificial intelligence can view a photo of a person’s face and correctly identify their political leanings 61% of the time.  That’s because conservatives smile and liberals don’t.  If you want to be happy, choose conservatism.   Artificial intelligence can view a photo of a person’s face and correctly identify their political leanings 61% of the…

Just like national freedom, economic freedom must be defended.  When we stop defending it, we are on the Road to Serfdom. Ginger and I attended a family wedding recently where many of the attendees were members of the military.  I mentioned to a small group my typical phrase, “Thank you for your service to our…

Most Democrats favor a culture of dependency.  That is not consistent with the Christian worldview that God made humans to work.   “I don’t work because I don’t have to”.  A woman of working age in front of me in the check-out lane explained that to the Wal-Mart staff member.  Huh.   Work is a…

 The Biden administration is considering changing the definition of poverty to be a relative term related to the lower end of the income spectrum.  That would guarantee that “The poor will always be with you.”  This is perhaps the most important statistic in Christian economics: In my lifetime, the share of the world’s poor has…

Most of the six million illegal immigrants who have crossed the US southern border in the last two years are claiming political asylum.  They are being allowed to enter because of election politics.  The real reason is economics. The largest migration in the history of mankind has taken place across the southern border of the…

Christians should not be fooled by the Machiavellian technique of using a crisis to gain political or economic power.    The title of today’s podcast comes from Niccolò Machiavelli, known as one of the most devious of leaders.  Early in the 16th century, he wrote a book titled The Prince.  He claimed that his experience…

God gave Moses only ten rules.  But now, we are drowning in a complex maze of political and economic regulations that cede power to the government. God gave Moses only ten rules.  That’s a great example of using simple rules for a complex world.   The title of today’s podcast comes from a 1998 book I…

Government ownership produces monopolies that harm consumers.  This podcast looks at the threats of monopolies in health care, education, and religion.   In the United States, we’ve been blessed with freedom of choice, which has produced a two-part system: What the government offers, and what the free market offers.  Increasingly, we are being forced into…

An island in the middle of Copenhagen called Freetown Christiania has more rules than just about any place on earth, proving that men are NOT angels, and some form of government is necessary.    “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  That quote from James Madison in Federalist paper #51 is an appropriate…

December is Christian Month. It starts with Thanksgiving and ends with Christmas: the most celebrated holiday event in human history.   December is Christian Month. It was not officially declared by any governmental entity. It doesn’t have to be. Just look around. It starts with Thanksgiving and ends with Christmas, the most celebrated holiday event in human history. Gift-giving, Christmas trees, lights, Santa Claus, office parties, and family gatherings are all part of Christian Month. Deloitte’s holiday retail sales analysis says consumers will spend $1,652 each on Christmas. I made this observation while attending the CEO Summit at Liberty University recently. Independent reporter Lara Logan was complaining that every other group had their month. There is gay pride month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Native American heritage month. She accusingly asked, “Why isn’t there a Christian month?” It was a formal presentation, so it was inappropriate for me to shout out, “December!” but December is quite obviously a Christian Month.   Black Friday Black Friday got its name from the day when retailers went from red to black in profit terms. Without Christian Month, they wouldn’t make a profit. This year, shoppers spent $9.8 billion, an increase of 7.5% from last year.  Cyber Monday was shaping up to be a giant Christmas gift to retailers; 63% of Americans shop online for Christmas gifts. By the time Christmas arrives, each American will spend just north of $700 on gifts alone. We give gifts because the wise men brought gifts to celebrate God’s gift to mankind: Jesus, the God-man.   Gifts They brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold because he was a King, Frankincense was used by the Jewish High Priest in the temple, and myrrh is an embalming spice, which foreshadows His death on a cross. Some people complain that Christmas starts too early but Halloween is not too early for me to celebrate the birth of my savior. People complain that Christmas has become too commercial, but that’s only if you let it. Others will celebrate however they wish. For me and my family, the reason for the season is the birth of Jesus: It’s a Christian month. If baby Jesus was laid in a manger during Christian month, it was probably made of stone. Wood was scarce in first-century Israel, so farmers would take a large stone, and carve it into a dish shape that would hold water for their cattle and sheep. Jesus was likely laid in a stone enclosure, but he didn’t stay there long. His father took him out and cared for him, and his mother nursed him.   Why December? Just under half of Americans start shopping for Christmas in October. That seems pretty early, but it helps spread out the shopping blitz as the holiday gets closer. If the shepherds were out with their sheep when Jesus was born, it was probably September or October, when sheep were allowed to graze on a harvested field to eat the remaining straw and fertilize for the upcoming planting season. Christians moved the date to December 25 - Christian month - to put it exactly nine months after Easter, which was celebrated on March 25. That would mean Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the month, the 25th. Another reason for Christmas to be during the Christian month was to supplant the pagan festival of Saturnalia. Pope Julius made that change to coincide Christmas with the Roman celebration of the solstice on December 25 in the year 336. Pagans who lived in the northern hemisphere saw the sun slipping lower in the sky, and they believed they had to make a sacrifice to the gods, so the sun would return to warm them. There is pretty good evidence that the prehistoric druids, who lived in the British islands, celebrated the end of the year at a wood henge before they moved to a stone henge to celebrate the new year. Only faint evidence of the wood henge remains, but the stone henge still stands.   A Tax

Six tax policies make the poor poorer.  At many levels, governments promote barriers to progress for the poor, whom we Christians care about.    Writing in the WSJ this week, Andy Kessler opined, “There are only four things you can do with your money: spend it, pay taxes, invest it or give it away.”  My…

Christians are called to care for the poor, but there are 5 “Green Policies” that are making them poorer. “I don’t think we can count on people living an impoverished lifestyle as a solution to climate change,” Bill Gates said recently.  Oh, so climate change policies DO call on people to have impoverished lives.  Thanks…

I Timothy 5:18, states, “The worker deserves his wages.”  Five fiscal policies harm the poor by denying fair wages: Inflation, minimum wage, unemployment benefits, favoring unions, and licensing requirements.   I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.  That sarcastic anecdote serves as an introduction to today’s podcast.  Because where the government is supposed to…

The poor get rich by practicing a system of values.  Since Americans are less interested in religion, having children, hard work, community involvement, and education, the passing lane into wealth is wide open.    The Wall Street Journal recently published an article titled, “America Pulls Back from Values that Once Defined it.”  That means, there’s…

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs discriminate, so they can’t survive the market. President Biden is requiring all federal agencies to create a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team.  It seems like the Dems want to distribute everything equally, except votes.  Think about their claim, “Help me stomp my opponent so I can make everything equal.” …

Christian servant leadership gives us our political and legal systems, universities, medical care, child adoption, and freed most of the world from slavery.  And it was all done, almost for free!  It’s free!  Hold it, don’t you often say “There’s no free lunch?”  Yes, but when people donate their time to be servant leaders, society…

Most fiscal policy has become a redistribution scheme because the benefit actually accrues not to the government, but to those on whom the revenue is spent.  That’s not Biblical. When writing about taxes, Gregory Mankiw writes, “The benefit actually accrues not to the government, but to those on whom the revenue is spent.”  So pretty…

The Christian worldview calls for a market in education that provides students with a passport to freedom.     “Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.”  I noticed that quote from Oprah Winfrey on the wall of the Nashville airport recently, while Ginger and I were there for the recording of…

Fox business anchor Charles Payne famously said, “You can only vote for Socialism once.”  Another common quip is “You can vote your way in, but you’ll have to shoot your way out.”  Well, 86 US Congressional Representatives just voted for it.  Fortunately, 327 voted against it.  The seeds of Socialism are sown in free market…

Social Security is not social, nor secure. It’s not working, because it’s not aligned with God’s design. We were created as social creatures, with the innate need and desire to care for one another. But social security is not a voluntary system, so it denies humans the freedom that God intended for them to have.

Widows and Orphans
James 1:27 says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.” It mentions those two groups because they didn’t own land. In the agrarian economy of the first century, if you didn’t own land, you couldn’t supply your own needs. Someone had to do it for you. And, that “someone” was the church, which is made up of neighbors and friends of those widows and orphans.
On August 14, 1935, Congress decided the federal government should take over that role, and social security was born. But here’s the problem: The government has no money. It must take before it can give. So it violates the eighth commandment, against stealing. The church, however, can give without taking.
Abraham Kuyper called this idea Sphere Sovereignty. In Biblical directives, the first supplier of needs for the poor was supposed to be the family, then the church. If a breadwinner died, it was his brother’s responsibility to take care of the destitute family. It’s clearly a violation of Biblical principles for the poor to be cared for by the government. And, as I’ll point out later, the program has grown well beyond caring only for the poor.
The government should punish evil but not do good. The church should do good but not punish evil. Those statements by my fellow Christian Economist Art Lindsley make a clear assignment of God’s missions for the church and the government. But, government just can’t keep it’s hands out of the cookie jar. We really should expect that, shouldn’t we? We know government officials are fallen, so some means of control is necessary. In the first 48 years of the program, they were controlled by keeping social security separate. Then, in 1983, Congress was looking for sources of revenue and spotted the Social Security trust fund. They put their hand in the cookie jar, by borrowing against it.
Here's at least two problems with social security: It’s not social, and it’s not secure.

It's not Social
What’s social about forcing people to give up their hard-earned money, so congress can re-distribute it to someone else? I particularly feel sorry for the 20-year-olds in my class at Dallas Baptist University. They are going to pay for MY social security, yet, they will not get any of their money back. As I was explaining to them, just this week, that’s why we like markets, because they are voluntary. Social security is forced. And, if you want a general trend, it is that the Bible favors voluntary exchanges, not forced extractions from unwilling people.

It’s not Secure
Travis Nix authored an article in the Wall Street Journal recently titled Higher Taxes Won’t Save Social Security.
He points out that “The Social Security administration forecasts that without benefit cuts or structural reforms, the entitlement program will run out of money in 2035.” I cited a Congressional Budget office data recently that pegs the year at 2033.
Social Security is currently funded through payroll taxes paid by both the employer and employee at 6.2% each for the first $162,000 earned.

Economics in 2023: we should not expect perfection on this side of heaven. Many people leave the church because they find that their fellow congregants are not perfect. We also hear complaints about the capitalist economy not perfectly serving everyone’s needs. The answer to both of these complaints is found at the root of the problem of all mankind: There is no perfection.   Church A friend in a Bible study recently mentioned that folks won’t attend church because, in the past, the church had harmed them in some way. About 150 years ago, my Southern Baptist predecessors claimed that the Bible endorsed slavery and used the scripture from Ephesians 6:5 stating, “Slaves obey your earthly masters.” Avoiding the church because the fallen people there have made mistakes is a sophomoric excuse. Tell me, what organizational entity will NOT hurt you? The Federal government, state government, county, city? The Rotarians, the Lions, even the Optimists will hurt you. The Salvation Army will hurt you. I wrote a series of three podcasts recently about 1) how fiscal policy harms the poor 2) how green policies impoverish the poor and 3) tax policy and the poor. I have not heard about anyone leaving the United States because they were harmed by those policies. People who leave the church because they were harmed have a very twisted understanding of the church and the gospel. There is no doctrine of perfection in the bible. As a matter of fact, the Christian doctrine is very clear about its imperfection. Romans 3:23 reads, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The church has been described more as a hospital for wounded folks, not a museum for perfect people. I’m trying to imagine someone moving to the Dallas area and buying season tickets for the Cowboys. At halftime, we find him at the ticket counter demanding a refund. “The receiver dropped the ball. I didn’t pay to see mistakes!” What did you expect? In the same way, I’m astounded at people who are hurt by the church and exclaim, “They’re not perfect!” Where did this idea of perfection come from? Seeing that we’re in the Christmas season, maybe we have an answer: we believe Jesus was perfect. As you and I travel through our lives, it’s kind of hard to understand, but that IS what we, as Christians believe. Jesus was perfect, but each of the other 117 billion people, before and since, are NOT perfect. Our pastor actually admitted from the pulpit, “Come join our church. We will hurt you.”   Forgiveness Here’s what Christians should be good at: Forgiveness. We believe in it. My consulting partner and I were asked to lead a “kumbaya” session of sorts with our local city council members and school board members. They are the two most powerful bodies in our community, and the mayor thought it would be a good idea, to get them all in the same room, and say good things about one another and it went well. When we asked for closing statements from the Mayor and the School Superintendent, the Super said succinctly, “We need to learn how to forgive.” That came out of nowhere. What did she mean?  Where did she get that? Well, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that our community was still suffering some lingering racial strife from the George Floyd killing. That’s what she meant, and she was right. Where does this model of forgiveness come from? Well, Jesus died for your sins, because there is no free lunch, someone had to pay. Jesus paid for you and me, so we have been forgiven. That’s why when the question was asked in Matthew 18:22 “How many times should I forgive?” The answer was “seventy times seven.” A society without forgiveness is a pretty ugly place to be, and that’s what’s happening in the post-modernity stage of United States society. When I used to do a lot of management seminars, I would often mention that every organization has to have some kind of a forgiveness system, although I didn’t use that term.

THE Truth, as mentioned in John 8:32, means we should seek objective agreement about economic measures.  Accepting THE truth gives freedom, while multiple truths removes freedom. 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Economics
That’s a rephrasing of the old quip attributed to Mark Twain.  In the original version it reads “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned lies and Statistics.”  
Just a few of the economic mistruths stated by President Biden in his recent state of the union speech.
 

“We created more new jobs in two years than any president did in their entire term.” First, the government does not “create” jobs in the private sector.  They could help “Create” them in the public sector, but those are paid for by taxing the private sector.   And, technically, more people found jobs, but that’s because we were on a recovery from the pandemic.  We count the PERCENTAGE change, and the percentage is nowhere near the best in Presidential history.  Here’s how the New York Times explains it, “By percentage, Mr. Biden’s first two years still lag behind the job growth of his predecessors’ full terms. The economy added 8.5 percent more jobs under Mr. Biden so far, compared with 8.6 percent in President Barack Obama’s first term, 10.5 percent in President Bill Clinton’s first term, 11.2 percent in President Ronald Reagan’s second term and 12.8 percent in President Jimmy Carter’s four years in office.”

 
Oh, by the way: If the President is taking credit for creating every new job, is he also taking credit for every job that was destroyed?
 

The President mentioned the term “Fair share” again: I’ve written and spoken about this many times.  It’s a clear violation of the tenth commandment: Don’t covet.  57% of Americans pay no income tax.  What would be their fair share?  How can paying nothing be fair?  The President said confidently, “By the way, there’s a thousand billionaires, and they pay an average of 3 percent in taxes.”  The New York Times points out that the 400 richest families paid 8.2%.  Almost triple what the President said.  To get to the 3% figure the President quoted, you have to include, as income, stocks and other assets that the wealthy own that they did NOT sell.  So the president is complaining, “The rich only pay income tax on their income”, which is the tax code.  As someone who spent his entire adult life in politics, he’s had time to change this if he wanted.


“We’ve reduced the national debt, so far, $1.7 trillion in two years.”  He said debt, but he meant annual deficit.  There’s a big difference.  The New York Times points out, “Total debt has actually increased from $27.8 trillion on his inauguration to about $31.5 trillion as of today.   His former boss, Barack Obama made the same claim some years ago.  Annual deficit was bumping along at about $500 billion a...

Government employees work in a monopoly where the fallen nature is encouraged.  Private employees work in competitive environments which discourage self-interest. 
 
What happened to the term “civil servant?”  Honestly, I have not heard that term used in twenty years.  The idea was that workers who earned their living in the public sector were serving society.  Not so much anymore. 
 
Sand on the Tracks
Roy Orr was a Democrat, who served a term as the President of the National Association of Counties.  I was once part of a leadership group interviewing Orr, and he continually used the phrase, “Sand on the tracks…That’s all we were, sand on the tracks.”  Okay, here’s the explanation: If a train gets stuck on a steep hill, or the tracks are iced over, they throw sand on the tracks for traction.  The sand gets smashed by the extremely heavy locomotive.  During a visit to a policy-making committee in Washington, he was dismayed that the staff was not showing much interest in his proposals.  The bureaucrats told him in private, “You’re just sand on the tracks.”  Meaning: Mr. Orr would soon be gone, and the bureaucrat could do what he wanted.  See why this podcast is titled “The Death of the Civil Servant?”  That’s because they are not serving society anymore, they are serving their own self-interest. 
 
Work is Good
It’s the title of podcast #24, and it earns a spot on the ten Biblical Commandments of Economics in the book titled Biblical Economic Policy that I wrote with Sergiy Saydometov.   When folks work in the private sector, they work in a competitive environment.  That means, they must serve the customer before they get served.  It’s one of my favorite lessons of economics that I will explain to my sophomores at DBU next week.  In a competitive environment, the firm must serve the customer first, before the firm gets served.  In a competitive environment, discrimination harms the discriminator. 
But the public arena is non-competitive.  People work in a monopoly: There is only one street department, one sewer department, one police department, and only one public library.  If you don’t like their service, you have no competitive supplier to switch to.
Okay, certainly there are good people who work in government.  In the Christian worldview, we believe everything was made for God’s good purpose.  But all of it CAN be used for bad purposes.  My point today is that public government jobs encourage the fallen nature, while the private, competitive sector punishes the fallen nature. 
Historically, civil servants were paid less than private servants.  The reason was a simple concept from finance: Risk and return.  Working in the public sector was seen as having less risk, so there was less pay.  Now, that kinda makes sense.  When the economy is bad, as it is today – I could read a dozen business headlines about companies laying off employees – workers in the private sector lose their jobs.  In the public service corps, there seldom are staff reductions.  The assumption is that when others lose their jobs, there is even MORE work for the public sector to do, to make up for it.  In economics, John Maynard Keynes said that the government must “spend against the wind,” and he was right.  Banks and other private institutions naturally retreat in the face of a recession.  If every entity does that, it takes a long time to recover.

Recent pay increases for the poor have out-paced inflation, which is more support for the idea that the market will take care of the poor, if we just let it operate freely.  
The Democrat party has given up on caring for the poor via minimum wage, and the market has taken over that role.  An article in the Wall Street Journal this week declares, “Biggest Pay Raises Went to Black Workers, Young People and Low-Wage Earners.”  The subtitle reads, “Median weekly earnings rose 7.4% last year, outpacing inflation: Some groups notched double-digit gains.”
For decades, the Democrats claimed to be the patron of the poor by calling for increases in the minimum wage.  Then, strangely, they went silent on the issue.  Either they learned some Christian Economics, or had more fun causing inflation that harmed the poor.  I don’t know.
But the economic fact is that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has been underwater for many years now.  When a minimum wage is below the equilibrium wage, we call that “non-binding.”  So for many semesters now, in my econ class at Dallas Baptist University, I’ve been pointing out that the Buc-ee’s starting wage of $12 is well above the federal minimum wage.
 
The Trump Economy Revisited
Quoting from the WSJ article again, “Black workers, young workers and people on the bottom of the income scale were among those who saw the largest pay increases last year, when employers were readily handing out raises in a tight labor market and high inflation environment.”  Tight labor markets are good for the poor.  The last time we saw the poor get rich at a faster rate than the rich got rich was during the incredible economic growth produced by the Trump administration’s tax-cutting.  That swelled the pockets of the poor faster than any government program in history.  The big difference is this: During the Trump administration, inflation was below 2%, and now it’s in the 7% range.
But The Christian Economist rejoices when the poor make progress, especially when they make more progress than the rich.  More data: The median raise for Black Americans employed full time was 11.3%, compared with the prior year. Weekly pay for workers between 16- and 24-years old rose more than 10%. The bottom 10th of wage earners—those that make about $570 a week—saw their pay increase by nearly 10%.
 
Sorry Mr. Piketty
He’s the guy who is always reminding the nimble-minded about the gap between the rich and the poor.  Well, according to the WSJ, it just narrowed.  Oh, Mr. Piketty was busy in 2021, publishing the book A Brief History of Equality, hmmm maybe that history got extended since folks got MORE equal, as reported this week.  And, he made another contribution to free market capitalism by offering the book for sale titled Time for Socialism.  Get the hypocrisy? He’s selling a book for profit, in a free market economy titled Time for Socialism.  If it really WAS time for Socialism, wouldn’t he be practicing the dicta – From each according to his ability,

Gridlock is good, at the national level.  More political and economic decisions should be made at the state and local levels.  The Bible calls for even more decisions at the family and church levels. 
 
A friend asked recently about the “horrible” in-fighting that was necessary to elect Kevin McCarthy speaker of the house.  I responded, “Gridlock is good.”  As the process played out, every day, Congressman McCarthy gave up more power, to gain the election.  This is what the founders had in mind. They did not want a powerful speaker, like Nancy Pelosi.  Power is an economic good: The more of it that is concentrated in the hands of the speaker the less gets distributed throughout the house of Representatives.  So, we have a weak speaker of the House.  That’s good for governance AND for economics.   
One of the best books on this topic is misnamed, but it makes this point very well.  It’s titled Cowards, and it was written by Glenn Beck.  He makes the point that elected government officials are cowards for not standing up to excessive spending that produces national debt.  
 
The Christian Worldview
Michael Horowitz is an agnostic Jew who explains the Christian Worldview very effectively in his book Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America.  He explains how the founding fathers understood the fallen nature of humans and thus designed a three-part competitive system with checks and balances.  Think about it: If you thought people were NOT fallen, you would give them unlimited power.  But they ARE fallen, so we don’t give them power.  Or, we shouldn’t.
The Christian worldview has three elements: Creation, fall, redemption.  Economics is the study of the production and distribution of goods and services in a scarce environment.  In the garden, we believe Adam and Eve had work to do, but there was abundance, not scarcity.  Scarcity starts with the fall.  That’s where economics starts.  Without the fall, there is no economics.  The third element in the Christian Worldview is redemption.  In economics, we believe God calls us to redeem resources to their creational intent, to serve our neighbors. 
In our current day, it’s very obvious that our economic system is out of whack and headed for a debt cliff.  Why?  The government has denied the fallen nature.  I’m writing a podcast on the subject of how the Democrat party denies the fallen nature, which will unpack more on that subject, but I will concentrate only on spending today.  Fiscal policy includes two elements: Taxing and spending.  The experience of the Democrats controlling Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency over the last two years, has shown us what happens there is agreement and a LACK of gridlock.  I unpack more details in podcast #146 titled Power Corrupts.
OK, I have presented the Christian worldview, because I’m the Christian economist.  But the Jewish worldview also encourages free debate.  The word Israel, means “To struggle with God,” and disagreement is at the core of Jewish culture.
 
National Debt Limits Freedom
The obnoxious spending of the Biden administration, when the Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the Presidency, should be ample evidence of why the founders designed a system of checks and balances.

Karl Marx said that workers should own the means of production.  In the digital economy, they do: a computer and a smartphone. 

Karl Marx called for workers to have ownership of the means of production.  When he wrote The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels in 1847 they didn’t.  In 2023, they do.  You see, we’ve moved from a production to an information economy.

Digital Economics
The term digital Marxism was invented by Daniel Pink in his 2002 book titled Free Agent Nation.  The book is mostly about the rise of the gig economy, which I explained in more detail in podcast #51 titled God’s Gig Economy.  One of the enablers of the gig economy is digital Marxism.
Ok, Marx stated that the workers must own the means of production.  This is based on the fallen nature of humans, which we find in the Christian Worldview.  We believe God created a perfect world, fallen humans messed it up, and we find salvation through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as our savior.  Clearly, Karl Marx didn’t believe in the first and third parts, but he DID accept the fallen nature.  I have more to say about him in podcast # 106 titled Karl Marx and the Devil.  The fallen nature is important to economics, by the way.  Economics is the study of the production and distribution of goods and services in a scarce environment.  Scarcity started with the fall.  And, just about every important economic concept is based on the scarcity assumption.  That’s why digital Marxism is so fascinating. 
So, Marx looked at the fallen nature of demanders of labor in the middle of the 19th century and noticed they were taking advantage of the scarcity they owned: That is, the supply of work.  And, Marx had a lot to complain about: Child labor, terrible, dangerous working conditions, and a six-day workweek were common.  There was more supply than demand for labor, and the factory owners took advantage of labor.  But, then, as the century progressed, things didn’t get worse, as Marx predicted, instead, they got better.  Marx and his patron, Friedrich Engels finally surmised that their prediction was NOT coming true, and workers were NOT going to rebel on their own, so Socialism needed a push, which was provided by the political force of Communism.  Vladimir Lenin enters the picture in the early years of the 20th century, and the economic idea of socialism rightly earns a very bad reputation as it was enforced by political power.  Things haven’t changed much in a hundred years.  Socialism is STILL based in power. 
Karl Marx claimed that workers must own the means of production.  As Daniel Pink points out, in the information age, they do. 
I ask my students at Dallas Baptist University to picture either of their parents at work.  What are they doing?  In the information age, it’s very likely they are staring at a computer or talking on a smartphone.  Three elements are at work here:

Training.  Training is free.  You learn how to run a computer at a tax-supported school that’s free.  
The mechanism.  A computer costs about $500 and a smartphone about the same.  If you can’t afford a computer, you can use one at the public library for free.  If you can’t afford a phone, the government will give you an Obama phone.  And for those of us who know the phrase, “There’s no free lunch,” take a look at your cellphone bill, you paid for it.  
Distribution of information.  It’s free also.  Again: If you use the computer at the library, they are providing internet service for free, and if you have an Obama phone, you get the service for free.


Freedom of Labor
You can work for anyone.

China will NOT become the world’s greatest economic power, because their economic model is not aligned with reality, as the Christian Worldview is.
 
The 18th and 19th centuries could be considered the centuries of the United Kingdom.  And, the 20th was the century of the United States.  The Chinese are claiming that the 21st century is the Chinese Century, both geo-economically and geopolitically.  But, it’s not going to happen.  China will NOT become the world’s greatest superpower.  Not in 2023, nor 2030, nor 2050.  Why not?  Their economic model is not aligned with reality, or as I like to call it, the Christian Worldview.
 
The Yin Yang
First, just a LITTLE philosophy, and it’s a little because I’m not much of a philosopher.  The Chinese believe that good and bad are intermingled, as shown in the yin-yang.  As it turns, good and bad move together.  Their belief is that the US was on top for a century, and now as the yin-yang turns, they will be on the top.  They believe they have less control over their fate than Christians do.  And, they believe good and evil are intermingled, while we believe that good and evil are SEPARATE entities, and that evil is a parasite on good.  
Now, back to economics.  The Japanese Center for Economic Research issues a periodic assessment of trends in Asia-Pacific economies, and as recently as 2021 it forecast that China’s nominal GDP would exceed America’s by 2029. No longer. The Japanese think tank now estimates that the U.S. will maintain a healthy lead over the People’s Republic, with U.S. GDP exceeding $41 trillion in 2035. China’s will be closer to $36 trillion.
 
Move the Labor Force
When I was a PhD student in the early 1990’s, experts were saying that China couldn’t grow because their infrastructure was undeveloped.  They didn’t have the roads, water & sewer, electricity, telecommunications, nor railroads systems.  They overcame those logistical hurdles by moving the labor force from the countryside to the burgeoning Pearl River delta cities of Guanzhou, Shenzen, and Donguan.  That was pretty easy.  Just make stuff near the port, put it in a sea-going container, and it can reach any port in the world in a few days. 
They have experienced what economists call the “catch-up” effect.  It’s kinda like, if you want to be the most improved basketball team in the conference, you start out as the worst.  China started out as an undeveloped economy when they were freed from Communist Socialism starting in about 1978.  They put their foot in the door of free market capitalism, but now under Xi Jinpeng, they are slamming it shut.  Their economy reportedly grew at 9% for about 20 years.  This year it’s down to five percent.  Okay, mostly because of Covid, but that’s concealing the problem of centralized government.   But the Japanese Economic source I cited earlier, thinks China’s growth will be 2% or lower by 2030, because of the authoritarian rule of President Xi and the one-child policy that has shrunk the labor pool.  That 2% growth compares with 3%, which the US has averaged for over a hundred years.  
 
Economic Freedom
Frederick Hayek made the point that freedom is the underlying concept of an effective economic policy.  It’s the first of the Ten Commandments of Biblical Economics that S...

#154 Predicting the Future
 
Christians should look forward to the future with great anticipation.  Of course the future is uncertain, but that’s what gives us economic freedom.
 
Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.
That quote from Danish physicist Neils Bohr was about the uncertain future use of nuclear power.  But, it certainly applies to economic forecasts.  Almost everyone on Wall Street and in Washington got 2022 wrong.  Well, economically, the folks in Washington are not supposed to have anything to do with the economy, and until about a hundred years ago, they didn’t.  Try finding a newspaper article from 1910 about the economy that blames ANYTHING on the government.  It just didn’t happen.  The economy was seen as a force of nature that humans could not control.  Then with Economic Humanism, which I explain in podcast #21, we decided that WE were in charge of the economy.  
It’s correlational, and maybe it’s causal that the founding of the Fed in 1914 –  which was supposed to deal with monetary policy – coincides with the growth of fiscal policy.  The founding of the Fed was followed by severe regulatory fiscal policy from Franklin Roosevelt, who essentially stole power from the legislative branch to empower the presidency.  
 
Securities are not Secure
“Secure” came into English in the 1530s, from Latin securus. When applied to persons, securus could mean "free from care, quiet, or easy.”  The original meaning in English was “free from danger.”
Initially, the word was applied to property pledged for a loan. That’s logical because the property was intended to make the loan “free from danger” to the lender. Somewhat later the word began to be applied to evidentiary documents verifying loans and collateral, and eventually, all documents that proved financial rights.  Okay, you have a secure LEGAL right to the property in a limited liability corporation, but there is no FINANCIAL security.  Anywhere, anytime, as a matter of fact.  It’s just a fact of human nature.  Nothing is secure, except of course, most Christians view our salvation as secure.  But, we still use the word “security” in finance.  Collateral is security for a loan. Stocks and bonds are securities.
Since we have a human nature that demands security, it gets supplied by many things in life: Money, stocks and bonds, relationships, and self-esteem.  But none of those are secure.  People find happiness when they learn to live in that insecure environment. 
The generation of my sophomores at Dallas Baptist University are the richest generation ever.  I mean…..in the history of the world.  There has NEVER been a richer generation.  Then why do they feel so insecure?  And by “they” I mean the generation.  Why do 22% of them report that anxiety affected their academic performance?  It’s because of today’s topic: They are unable to predict the future.
Currencies are called notes.  During the Gold Standard, they literally were notes.  The British currency is called the pound because it represented a pound of silver.  The Polish currency is called the Zloty because the word means “gold.”  How about the dollar?  It’s from the low German word “daler” which means a coin made from silver from the Joachimsthaler silver mine in what’s now the Czech Republic.  
But,

#153 How to Destroy an Economy
Four policies are attempting to destroy the US economy.  Let's pray they don't.
 
In the history of mankind, countries, and economies have come and gone.  We know what destroys them.  I’m sorry to observe that the United States economy, the greatest economy in world’s history, is taking steps toward destruction.  
I’m an academic, and I’m pleased and proud to give citations where necessary.  Today’s idea comes from an article in the Epoch Times by Victor Davis Hanson titled, If you really wanted to destroy the US.  He knows more about political history than I do, and his article goes in that direction.  My observations, predictably, are about the economy.  
 
Destroy the Dollar
I unpacked some of this idea in podcasts #101 titled Inflating Inflation, and in podcast #62 The End of Fed Independence. 
As covid was ending and demand was rising, the government used fiscal policy to spend trillions.  The Fed kept interest rates low, as they increased the money supply.  That’s a classic formula for inflation.  If you increase the supply of dollars and keep constant the products they are buying, the currency will depreciate.  Inflation harms the poor, who we Christians care about.  The last two quarterly reports had inflation at 8.5%, then 7.1%.  You realize, that’s four times the goal of 2%.  Think about it: If a sophomore in my econ class was hoping for a B, by earning 80%, and she actually earned 20%, would a parent be proud of that achievement?  But that’s what the administration is doing: They are bragging that, at 7.1%, inflation is only four times what they want it to be.  See if your kids are happy with four times fewer toys at Christmas.  
Why is the dollar still strong on the foreign exchange?  Because, even though the US is doing terrible, the other developed countries are doing terriblier.  We are the best house in a bad neighborhood.  
 
Increase the National Debt
When my sophomores at Dallas Baptist University were born, the national debt was about $5 trillion.  It’s now $31 trillion.  But, millions, billions, trillions, it all gets confusing, so let me give you some context.  When my sophomores were born, the debt to GDP ratio was 56%.  It’s now 121%.  It has more than doubled in twenty years.  And, the last six years have been really frightening.  National debt has ballooned from $20 trillion when my sophomores were in high school, to now $31 trillion, and they’re only half way through college. 
SOME debt is not so bad, it depends on what you do with it.  Using debt as leverage is good.  That’s where Dave Ramsey and I depart.  He says you should have NO debt.  It seems to me that debt as leverage makes you richer.  Of course, there’s risk.  There is always risk.  But the current debt that the United States is accumulating is not being used to build capital infrastructure that creates more value, it is being used to maintain social programs.  Which, by the way, the church is supposed to do, but I’ve spoken quite a lot on that in the last few weeks.  
This year, the government will take in almost $5 trillion and spe...

#152 Giving to the Poor
The Government is populated by people who serve their own self-interest, by spending other people’s money.  Churches are populated by people who have committed to serve the interest of others, with their own money.
 
Should we give to the poor, or help the poor?  That interesting question was posed by one of you, who listens to the Christian Economist podcast.  
 
When Helping Hurts
The first answer comes from the book When Helping Hurts by Corbett and Fikkert.  I was pleased to meet Brian Fikkert at a meeting of the Christian Economic Forum.  Partly to thank him for his very good book, but also, to discover there IS a Christian Economist taller than me: I’m about 6-foot-4, and Brian is about 6-foot-7.  Oh, the other source is a very good series of videos hosted by Michael Mathison Miller at the Acton Institute, called Poverty Cure.  
I could state numerous scriptures, here are just a couple. Proverbs 29:7 reads, The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.   Matthew 25: 35: For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.  
There’s pretty good agreement that Christians are supposed to care for the poor. The question is, “How”? 
 
God’s Sovereignty &Man’s Responsibility
When I posed this question in my Dallas Baptist University class last week, I asked students for a better theological term to describe what I was talking about.  I didn’t get very good answers.  So I will use this title, given to Ginger and I in a Sunday School class some ten years ago.  God is Sovereign and can do whatever He wants.  If he wants to help the poor, he can do it via His miraculous power.  But, for some reason, He chooses to do his work through humans, which means it is man’s responsibility.    So, he puts poor people in front of us, and expects us to care for them.  When do we turn away from the poor and say “God will take care of them,” and when do we jump in and help because it’s man's responsibility?
 
Too Much Freedom
OK, this one is difficult for me, because when Sergiy Saydometov and I wrote Biblical Economic Policy, the first of the Ten Commandments of Economics we found was People Should be Free.  And, as I have studied and learned more in the two years since we wrote the book, I have become even more convinced that the intersection of Christianity and Economics is freedom.
But, you can’t find any society where people are perfectly free.  I’m going to have more to say about this in a future podcast, where I will attempt to explain the term Expressive Individualism, from the best book I’ve read this year, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman. 
But for now, let’s accept that you can’t have a perfectly free society.  And that’s where a recent article in the Wall Street Journal comes in.  Titled https://www.wsj.

#151 Expressive Individualism
Individualism is aligned with God’s design, expressive individualism is not.
 
Homo economicus is a Latin term that explains what happens when humans are reduced only to economic maximizers.  Unfortunately, we are headed toward the eventuality at a frightening speed.  It’s explained in maybe the best book I read this year, titled, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, by Carl Trueman.  Throughout the book, he continually asks how a person can say, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body.”  I’m old enough to remember when a comedian named Sid Caesar said something that silly, we would all laugh and wait for the next punchline.  But Trueman helps us understand, not only why we take such an objectively untrue statement – not only seriously – but we are encouraged to HELP the person discover the woman inside the man.  
 
Relativism
As Grandma Ginger says, “One of our grandsons claims to be Spiderman half the time, but we don’t believe him.”  Then why are we forced to believe the obviously false statement, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body?”  Because who OWNS the body determines what we can do with it.  If God owns it, we ask Him.  But, increasingly folks are taking only the economic, self-interested view, and are claiming they can make of their bodies whatever the economic environment demands. 
It's really the nadir of relativism, which says, “My idea – that all ideas are equal – is better than your idea.”  Okay, that makes no sense, at least to a rational economic decision maker.  That’s what economists assume we are.  But, as Trueman writes, “When the agreed-upon rational basis for debate is gone. All that is left is emotional preference.” He explains the philosophical under-pinnings this way, “With Nietzsche we see clearly two pathologies of our present age receiving philosophical explication: the tendency to be suspicious of any claims to absolute moral truth, and a rejection of religion as distasteful.”  
Look, when Abraham decided there was ONE God, the world changed, and it’s never gone back.  His idea – or God’s idea – was planted into an environment of multiple gods.  They still exist.  I’ll do a podcast sometime where I review the book God is not One by Stephen Prothero.  For brevity’s sake today, let me just summarize that the one god believers, mono-theists as they are called, started with Judiasm, which fathered the other two popular monos: Christianity and Islam.  The world’s five major religions are rounded out by the two polytheist belief systems: Buddhism and Hinduism.
So what Trueman is helping us understand here, is that expressive individualism is when EACH person is their own God.  Well, people have tried that since Eve.  The serpent told her that God didn’t want her to eat the apple, because she would become like God.  Tricky little guy, that serpent.  And, he never takes a day off.  He’s still encouraging people to try to become their own god.  It never works, but people keep trying. 
 
God creates, Humans Discover
This key assumption of the Christian Worldview is best explained by Albert Wolters in his rather theologically based book Creation Regained.  He says that God created the world, and our job as humans is to discover his creation.  He writes, “There are two kinds of law: laws of nature and norms.

Adam and Eve ate the apple because they wanted to be God. That desire has not gone away, and recently, we are seeing even more evidence of it. Our society is moving from “God to Government” and the implications don’t look great.   Worldview Christian Worldview to secular worldview The Christian Worldview says God created a perfect world, fallen humans have messed it up, and we find redemption through Jesus Christ. Support for abortion provides ample evidence that many people don’t believe humans are created by God; I will cite many examples of the denial of the fallen nature in the next few statements. If we’re not fallen, who needs a savior for redemption? Fallen to not fallen The defund the police movement was based in the assumption that humans are not fallen. If you just leave them alone, peace will break out. This is not a theoretical belief system. It’s been proven over and over again, that if you reduce punishments, crime increases, as it is in America today. From serving God to being “god” In the book The Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self Carl Trueman explains why people believe they are “A woman trapped in a man’s body,” or the opposite. The supposition is objectively false, but the concept of expressive individualism has led folks to believe they can do it. Maybe it’s the best evidence for the departure from the Christian Worldview, because people don’t believe they were created by God, so they can create themselves. Frightening.   Economics Supply side to demand side Keynesians believe that during an economic downturn, the economy should be stimulated by shifting the demand curve out. The measure of that effort is called the Philips curve, and it has been shown to work in the short run, but not in the long run. In the long run, you end up with employment returning to its natural rate, but with the added debt that was accumulated to shift the demand curve. When shown this, John Maynard Keynes agreed, and responded, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” What a selfish thing to say. In about twenty years, I might be dead, but my Dallas Baptist University sophomores will be in the middle of their careers, struggling to pay off the debt our country has accumulated. I’ve told them many times, that they will look back on the years from 2019-2023 and ask why the national debt moved from $20 to $30 trillion in just four years. Free market capitalism to socialism This is the most dangerous movement in economics. The title “Free Market Capitalism” reveals its intent in the title, because it calls for free exchange of goods and services. Socialism is based in power, where producers and consumers are coerced to exchange goods in a way the government wants them to. From private investment to government crowding out To help my sophomores at Dallas Baptist University do well on their weekly quiz, I ask if we should smoke cigarettes. The obvious answer is “no.” “So we should nix cigs!” is exclaim, which helps them remember the equation for Gross Domestic Product: Y = C + I + G + NX. In the last quarterly GDP report, Consumption and Government Spending were up. Investment was down. That means we have a good short-term economy, but a bad long-term economy, because there is not enough investment being made.   Governance Biden’s Sphere Sovereignty to Economic humanism Biden’s Sphere Sovereignty is the title of my podcast #111. I caught him admitting that government could not solve some specific problem, so I took the opportunity to make it the title of a podcast. Economic Humanism is the title of my podcast #21, which explains how humans think they can do just about anything. After eating the apple, Adam and Eve found it didn’t work that way. US Revolution to the French Revolution In his book Last Call for Liberty, Os Guinness explains the difference in the US revolution, which defended religious freedom, and the French revolution, which deposed religion.

#150 The Avatar Election
 
Political candidates present Avatars of themselves, hoping to get elected.  Christian Economists seek reality, not fake people. 
 
In the recent election, we were encouraged to vote for a representation of a representative, not for a real human.  Many candidates avoided debate, stayed out of the public, and hoped their constituents would have a greater fear of the competition, than appreciation for the candidate.  Many Avatars won. 
 
What is an Avatar?
The first definition is from the Hindu belief system.  An avatar is a manifestation of a deity.  The second definition is the one we are most familiar with, “A figure representing a person.”  An Avatar is a representation of a human.  They are NOT human.    
I took one of my granddaughters to see the movie, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.  I have often said, “If you want to see divorce and bankruptcy, go talk to your neighbor.  We pay $15 and invest over two hours of time to escape reality.”  But the latest Wakanda movie is just too far for me.  There is so much sci-fi content that I didn’t enjoy the movie.  I really liked the first one, by the way.  That’s because it developed the characters, and I gained an appreciation for them.  But, undeveloped strivers who can’t make a decision bore me.  I’m not even going to get into the Anti-Christian and anti-American themes in the movie.  I’ll let you invest your own $15 and 160 minutes for that information.  It’s just a bunch of fake good people, fighting fake bad people, and I didn’t much care about either of them. 
Oh, there is an economics story in the movie.  It’s fake also.  They assume that Wakanda got rich by hoarding its supply of Vibranium in a closed economy.  That’s never happened in the real world.  Closed economies die, and open economies thrive.  
 
The Basement Election
Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, campaigning mostly from his basement.  Humans are pretty simple creatures in this regard: We observe what works, and do more of it.  Students in my class at Dallas Baptist University have figured out that class attendance correlates with higher grades.  National Football League teams have figured out that passing wins more games than running.  My grandkids have figured out that I will buy them any flavor of Slurpee at 7-11.  Candidates figured out that they can win an election by hiding in their basements.  That’s dangerous.  
It's dangerous to vote for a candidate you don’t know.  It’s dangerous to accept a religion you can’t explain.  And, it’s dangerous to participate in an economy you don’t understand.  
 
Feeling vs Thinking
So, if there was a lack of debates and public information, how do voters make their choices?  Mostly from the impact of ads.  Those ads are NOT about the candidate, they are about the avatar that the political campaign creates.  I unpack feeling vs thinking in podcast #97.  When voters can’t get factual information about the candidate, they vote based on feelings, not facts.  And they are more motivated by fear.
Ginger reminds me that #88 Don’t Fear the Future is the most viewed of my podcasts.  But people DO fear.  They fear the future, they fear a lot of things.  Fear is a good motivator, and it’s becoming the greatest motivator in elections.  Think about it: Most of the campaigns smeared the opposition, they didn’t build up their own candidate.  
Back to my previous discipline of management, it’s often said that there are two motivators: Carrots and sticks.

Negative growth via socialism is being forced to live with less.  Growth via free market capitalism is choosing to do more with less. 
 
It’s all about power.  The serpent told Eve that if she ate the apple, SHE would be God.  Things have not changed that much.  People still want to be god, and they attempt to become god by having power over others.  In a previous generation, the political term was Communism which used the Economic concepts of Socialism.  Today, they’re calling it The Great Reset.  It’s the title of my podcast #112.  Their long-term plan is to cause so much chaos that we will beg them to take over.  I asked Ginger, “Why would George Soros donate money to defund the police in Austin, Texas?  Answer: When chaos breaks out, we cede more power to the government to quell the violence.
Harking back to my days in Management, I used to tell groups, “They call it an ORGANIZATION because it is a growing thing.  Like your skin, which is shedding cells as we’re sitting here, the organization is an organ.  It’s either growing or dying.  There is no stable state.”
Yet, we as humans WANT a stable state.  Sorry, not on this side of heaven.  Your organization is either growing or dying.  Your business is growing or dying.  Your church is growing or dying.  Your marriage is growing or dying.  The economy is growing or dying.  
In the economics textbook, I use at Dallas Baptist University, the author Gregory Mankiw states it very clearly: Policies either cause efficiency when society gets the maximum benefits from its scarce resources.  This is called growing the size of the pie.  Or Policies seek equality, where there is a distribution of economic prosperity uniformly among the members of society.  These policies are concerned with how the pie is divided into individual slices.  Everything involving redistribution is no-growth because it steals productive capital and uses power to give it to someone else.  This violates the 8th commandment: Don’t steal.  
I boldly announce in class: Each policy can be put into only one category, meaning: The policy either grows the pie or divides the pie.  My students are watching one of the clearest examples of both, in back-to-back presidential administrations: Trumpenomics grew the pie, and Bidenomics is distributing it. 
 
The Degrowth Craze
Andy Kessler, writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, calls it “The Deadly De-Growth Craze: Stagnant societies eventually slide into oppression, chaos, anarchy and ruin”  
Mr. Kessler writes, “The modern world is constantly subjected to crackpot movements that eventually fail, but not before causing serious damage. Karl Marx was a crackpot.  The latest is Modern Monetary Theory and unlimited dollar creation for government spending, which caused today’s runaway inflation.”  I explain in greater detail the foolishness of Modern Monetary Theory, in podcast # 31 titled the Myth of Modern Monetary Theory.  But for today, I’ll summarize by emphasizing it IS a myth.  You can change economic policy, but you can’t change economic law.  Modern Monetary Theory attempts to change economic law and fails miserably. 
Mr. Kessler reports that the no-growth crowd demands that we put well-being ahead of profit.  Hold it.  Let’s take a peek behind the curtain of these great Oz pretenders.  They’re assuming that profit does NOT produce well-being.  Profit is well-being because it creates more jobs instead of government honeypots to pay people not to work. Growth is fuel. That computer you’re watching this podcast on: ...

#148 It is Better to Supply than to Demand
We used to get our identity from what we supplied, now we get our identity from what we demand.  Christians should get their identity from being made in the image of God. 

Your Name
What’s your name?  Even more interesting, what’s it mean? That is the beginning of an interesting exercise in class at Dallas Baptist University.  If it's Mill, like the philosopher John Stuart Mill, someone in your lineage ran the mill.  If it’s Smith, like that guy, Adam Smith, someone was a black smith or tin smith or silver smith.  Farmer is obvious, as is Shumacher.  A cooper made wooden barrels, and a winnegar tended a vineyard where they made wine.  Examples go on and on.  So, at one time in history, people had no choice.  If your Dad ran the mill, you were going to run the mill.  If he was a farmer, you were going to be a farmer.  But in modern life, people have a choice.  Oh, historically women had NO choice.  It is estimated that at the time of Jesus, women had to have nine pregnancies, to produce one child who would reach the age of reproduction to keep the population stable.  Think about it: If women averaged eight, we wouldn’t be here.  So in modern times, women have been freed to pursue any field of economic production they choose.  
When Jesus first started preaching, they asked, “Who is this man, and where is He From?”  In New Testament times, a person’s identity was tied to his family lineage, and geography.  In John 1:46, Nathaniel asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  In Jesus Among Other Gods, Ravi Zacharias makes this point.  When he would lecture back in his home country of India, he was known for his family’s lineage, which was impressive.  My paternal grandmother’s family lived on the Thames river, just south of London.  Since they lived at the water, the family name was “Atwater.”   
Oh, my title today, “It’s better to supply than demand, " is a re-wording of the old bromide, “It’s better to give than to receive.”  I sometimes use that quip in a quite sarcastic way when handing out a quiz to students at Dallas Baptist University. 

Supply Side vs Demand Side
The field of economics can be divided into two groups: Austrians and Keynesians.  I am an Austrian, following the lead of Ludwig von Mises, then Frederick Hayek….yea, THAT guy, and Milton Friedman.  We believe in GROWING the pie via producing on the supply side.  Keynesians follow John Maynard Keynes, who was succeeded by Paul Samuelson and Paul Krugman and now just about every political operative on the left, who wants to redistribute the supply of goods and services.  They believe in DIVIDING the pie, by distributing goods on the demand side.  In podcast #116 titled “The Resurgence of Socialism,” I point out that Socialists are great at demand, but terrible at supplying demand.  
So here’s the interesting part.  Carl Trueman is a theologian from the UK who teaches at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.  There he is with DBU President Dr. Adam Wright, during an appearance at my University recently.  In his chapel speech at DBU he invoked the same concept I use in class: That some last names indicate job titles: Mill, Smith, Farmer, Shoemaker, etc.  And he said that, historically, that’s where we received our identity.  But NOW, we receive more of our identity from what we CONSUME.  So our identity has changed from production to consumption.  From supply to demand.

#147 The Digital Dollar Deceit
As the Christian Economist, I worry about the threat to privacy posed by central bank digital currencies. 

The US government first issued paper currency in 1861.  For over 160 years, we have used dollars as our currency.  You might even say, cash has been king. But it might be replaced by another king: The digital dollar, issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.  
 
A Fiat is More than a Car
In the context of cars, FIAT is an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino.  Worth coming to class, I didn’t know that.  But, we’re talking about fiat money, not cars.  In this context, Fiat means “Let it be done.”  In economics it means an arbitrary or authoritative command.  Many currencies still have the face of the national sovereign on them.  It recalls the classic case when the Pharisees were testing Jesus by asking if his disciples paid the temple tax.  In response, in Matthew 22 Jesus asked, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”  Oh, a couple observations: They were testing Jesus, who we believe was God.  Not a good idea.  And we often miss the most important part of that verse.  Jesus responded, ”Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” is the first part.  Now the important part, “…and render unto God what is God’s.”  That means you and me.  We are made in the Image of God, which I unpack in podcast #32 by that name.  So, the coin goes to Caesar, and we go to God.
But, back to the Fiat idea.  The king or queen issued the currency, so he or she was in control of it.  Samuell Gregg, writing in his book For God and Profit, pointed out that the king could call money value up or down, depending on whether the debt was owed to him, or from him.  You’re welcome to notice that the government is now calling the money value DOWN, via inflation, because its debt has increased from $20 trillion to $30 trillion in just a few years.  
 
The Great Reset
Writing in the Epoch Times recently, an article by John Mac Ghlionn is titled A Digital Dollar is Coming: Americans should be concerned.  He says, “A large number of Americans still believe, somewhat naively, that cryptocurrencies are the future of finance. They’re not… central bank digital currencies are the next step in the evolution of money.”
I challenged the World Economic Forum in podcast #112 titled The Great Reset.  My basic argument is that Christians believe in two great resets: 1. Christ came to earth as the god man.  2. He’s coming back.  Those are two great resets.  In the meantime, how are Christians expected to produce and distribute goods in a scarce environment?  My work as the Christian Economist is to seek answers to that question.  Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and designed for privacy, digital currencies are centralized and public. They are, in many ways, the antithesis of cryptocurrencies; because they are NOT private.  
The United State is one of over 100 countries who are looking into digital currencies.   Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell generally suppor...