tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75563179743549052392024-03-14T11:18:20.500-05:00Christian CapitalismPresenting the Biblical basis for free market economics, capitalism, and sound investing. Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.comBlogger362125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-6592554095164464812024-03-14T11:17:00.003-05:002024-03-14T11:17:25.888-05:00Biblical Critical Theory Is Not Biblical. It’s Watered-Down Marxism<p> </p><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="lg:mr-5 mb-6 lg:float-left lg:max-w-[240px] relative z-[1]" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; float: left; font-family: "Myriad Pro", san-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; margin-right: 1.25rem; max-width: 240px; position: relative; z-index: 1;"><div class="border-t-8 border-misesBlue mb-2 max-w-full bg-misesGreyBlue" style="--tw-bg-opacity: 1; --tw-border-opacity: 1; --tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: rgb(228 235 238/var(--tw-bg-opacity)); border-color: rgb(54 110 156/var(--tw-border-opacity)); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 8px 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; max-width: 100%;"><div style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;"><img alt="bible " data-loaded="1" data-lqp="1" data-multiplier="1x" data-observed="1" data-once="easy-responsive-image" data-ratio="4:3" data-srcset="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_650w/s3/static-page/img/bible-w_0.jpg.webp?itok=1-SJJ5ra 650w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_870w/s3/static-page/img/bible-w_0.jpg.webp?itok=U85sYDAS 870w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_1090w/s3/static-page/img/bible-w_0.jpg.webp?itok=57IDuoU2 1090w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_1310w/s3/static-page/img/bible-w_0.jpg.webp?itok=9rhwuWQn 1310w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_1530w/s3/static-page/img/bible-w_0.jpg.webp?itok=S8EGOjrO 1530w" height="180" loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_4_3_650w/s3/static-page/img/bible-w_0.jpg.webp?itok=1-SJJ5ra" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; aspect-ratio: 4 / 3; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="240" /></div></div></div><div class="mt-3" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0.75rem;"></div></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="article-tags flex flex-row flex-wrap items-center gap-x-2 my-1.5" data-component-id="mises:element-article-tags" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; align-items: center; background-color: white; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; column-gap: 0.5rem; display: flex; flex-flow: wrap; font-family: "Myriad Pro", san-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0.375rem; margin-top: 0.375rem;"><span class="font-semibold tracking-wide" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600; letter-spacing: 0.025em;">Tags:</span><a class="text-misesBlueDark underline hover:text-misesBlueDarkHover focus:text-misesBlueDarkHover" href="https://mises.org/topics/book-reviews" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Book Reviews,</a><a class="text-misesBlueDark underline hover:text-misesBlueDarkHover focus:text-misesBlueDarkHover" href="https://mises.org/topics/media-and-culture" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Media and Culture,</a><a class="text-misesBlueDark underline hover:text-misesBlueDarkHover focus:text-misesBlueDarkHover" href="https://mises.org/topics/philosophy" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Philosophy,</a><a class="text-misesBlueDark underline hover:text-misesBlueDarkHover focus:text-misesBlueDarkHover" href="https://mises.org/topics/socialism" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Socialism</a></div><div class="font-myriad flex flex-row flex-wrap gap-1 mb-1.5 font-semibol" data-component-id="mises:element-article-details" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: wrap; font-family: "Myriad Pro", san-serif; font-size: 16px; gap: 0.25rem; margin-bottom: 0.375rem;"><span style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;"><time datetime="2024-02-24T06:00:00Z" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;">02/24/2024</time></span><span aria-hidden="true" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;">•</span><span class="mises-link" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0 66 107/var(--tw-text-opacity));"><a href="https://mises.org/mises-wire" hreflang="en" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Mises Wire</a></span><span aria-hidden="true" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;">•</span><span class="mises-link" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0 66 107/var(--tw-text-opacity));"><a href="https://mises.org/profile/roger-mckinney" hreflang="en" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Roger McKinney</a></span></div><br /><br /><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Christianity Today magazine, founded by Billy Graham, chose Christopher Watkin’s book, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, as one of its 2024 Book Awards and the book most likely “to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.” Other Christian organizations promote the book too.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Nonreligious readers won’t care, but they need to keep in mind that most people won’t take a class or read a book on economics. I can clear a crowded room just by mentioning economics. But they do read books like this one or listen to pastors who do. Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of voters. So, any plan to change the direction of the country’s economic policies requires reaching them.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Watkin, a lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, trudges through the Bible applying his interpretations to his perception of modern Western culture. He calls his method “diagonalization,” in which he identifies extreme cultural views and places biblical principles in the middle.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">But his diagonalization forces him to see only extremes, many of which don’t exist. Much of what he writes is reasonable, but his train derails when writing about the market:</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div></div></section><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; text-align: left; width: 989.328px;">"The market paradigm constructs us as producers and consumers of tradable commodities, each with its calculable price. This is, after all, how many religions in the world work.</div></div></section></blockquote><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div></div></section><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; text-align: left; width: 989.328px;">"[Michael] Sandel argues that we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society because now everything is negotiated, bought, and sold, including love, security, and identity. . . . Our relationships with our families, with our partners and with the world we live in are all business deals calculated to bring us profit. . . . We compete for finite resources . . . and those with nothing to exchange or no discretionary time to build up capital or networks are left behind."</div></div></section></blockquote><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Is the “market” the grocery market, the stock market, or the convenience store? Those aren’t frightening and the “market” must be terrifying. But no creature called “the market” exists. The market is merely the process by which buyers and sellers find each other and negotiate prices. But that doesn’t terrify anyone. And if Watkin would read his Bible, he would learn that most of the evils he finds the market making us commit are detailed in the book written sixteen hundred years before the advent of capitalism.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Following the Marxist portrayal of capitalism, Watkin wrote,</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div></div></section><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; text-align: left; width: 989.328px;">"The market paradigm of excess, by contrast, is a surplus of overproduction, overconsumption, and limitless profit that become necessary for the maintenance of economic growth and that issue in increasing wealth for some and increasing inequality between all. . . . [It] contents itself to scratch around in the broken cisterns of limitless accumulations."</div></div></section></blockquote><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Had Watkin read any economics book by good economists, meaning Austrian, he would know that general overproduction of all goods and services is impossible. It happens in specific industries just before a recession, due to earlier money printing by central banks, and is temporary. But what does overconsumption look like? Some claim it destroys the environment, but the environment in the West has never been cleaner, not counting the hysteria over carbon dioxide. General overproduction and overconsumption don’t exist.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Given the biblical emphasis on relieving poverty, one would think Watkin would see “overconsumption” as a good thing, far better than starving. Reducing production and consumption means becoming poorer. What standard of living does he prefer? Does he admire the Amish? Or should we return to the natural standard of living the world suffered from prehistory until the advent of capitalism in which millions died of starvation in frequent famines?</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Inequality measured by the Gini coefficient is about the same level today as it was 150 years ago, around 50. From 1950 until the 1980s, it averaged around 40. There are many reasons for the rise since 1980. One is that confiscatory taxes on the wealthiest between 1950 and 1980 forced them to take less of their wealth in taxable income by sheltering it in tax-free investments, such as municipal bonds. The rise in the Gini coefficient since then is largely the result of lower marginal tax rates that encourage wealthy people to report more taxable income.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">A second cause is the aging of the population. Older people have more wealth and higher incomes than younger people. Another cause is the explosion of poor fatherless households due to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society socialism that increased the likelihood that homes would not have both parents. Finally, increased immigration adds to the ranks of the poor. In sum, the slight ascent of the Gini coefficient is due to changing tax laws, an aging population, a growing number of poor households due to single-parent homes, and immigration, not the market.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">In another section, Watkin assaults the labor market, going far beyond the Marxist straw man of wage “slaves”:</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div></div></section><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; text-align: left; width: 989.328px;">"Modern humanity sacrifices to machinic efficiency using the currency of its labor, just as the ancient Carthaginians sacrificed to Moloch using the currency of their children. The Moloch Machine shapes and figures the bodily movements of workers that tend it, just as our own habits, attitudes, and movements are increasingly molded by the human-shaping power of smartphones and social media."</div></div></section></blockquote><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Socialists compete to invent the most outrageous descriptions of capitalism. Watkin wins a prize with his comparison of working for wages to burning children alive on an altar to a pagan god. But how does he want people to exchange services? Would he have us go back to feudalism or actual slavery, which the ancient Greeks thought imperative for a good society?</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Had Watkin read Frédéric Bastiat, he would know that when a businessman pays a worker his wages, he isn’t buying the worker’s body and soul. The manager is paying the worker only for the services he renders for a period. Paying him for doing nothing would be theft by the worker. Not paying him would be theft by the businessman.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Finally, Watkin dredges up the ghost of the tyranny of markets without laws:</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div></div></section><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; text-align: left; width: 989.328px;">"The right fails to acknowledge that when freed from regulation and government, individuals and institutions become prey to the harsh, brutal lordship of the market. As John Milbank argues, the market imperative breaks down and co-opts any spaces of resistance to its logic such as families and local associations based on trust, and leads not to a new egalitarian freedom but to “a far worse hierarchy than in the past,” namely “a hierarchy of sheer money, force and spectacle; a hierarchy without even any pretensions to virtue.”</div></div></section></blockquote><section class="relative w-full clear-both" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">No advocate for free markets has promoted a society without laws prohibiting theft, fraud, murder, and kidnapping, not even Murray Rothbard’s anarchocapitalism. From the theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation, who distilled the principles of capitalism, until today, all capitalists have insisted on the rule of law and punishment of those who violate the rights of others to life, liberty, and property.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">What Watkin is concerned about is greed. But Adam Smith demonstrated that competition in free markets suppresses greed better than any government regulations. Why? Because greedy businessmen can buy politicians cheaply to write regulations that satiate their greed. But competition in free markets forces greedy businessmen to supply the wants of their customers or risk losing them to a competitor.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Does Watkin offer any evidence that markets have created the world he describes? No, he merely quotes another socialist making that assertion. The US and the West are nowhere near as horrible places as Watkin and other theologians and philosophers claim. How do I know? One reason is the number of people coming here legally and illegally. Another is the US’s record of charity. These countries led the world in charity from 2009 through 2018: United States, Myanmar, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Except for Myanmar, those are Western countries.</div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;"><br /></div><div class="relative w-full" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 989.328px;">Most of Watkin’s book doesn’t deal with markets and makes some valid points. But his egregiously sloppy sections on markets destroy any confidence in the rest of the book.</div></div></section>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-5803602918628785812024-01-01T13:15:00.003-06:002024-01-01T13:15:34.287-06:00There Is Something Wrong with the Economic Views of Theologians<p> </p><h2 class="page-title" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; font-family: crimson_text, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 25px; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></h2><div class="group-image-wrapper field-group-html-element pull-left" id="slideshow" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; float: left !important; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-right: 20px; width: 240px;"><div class="image border-secondary" style="border-top: 8px solid rgb(56, 112, 158); box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="flexslider optionset-node-slideshow flexslider-processed" id="flexslider-1" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 4px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; zoom: 1;"><div class="flex-viewport" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-height: 2000px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; transition: all 1s ease 0s;"><ul class="slides" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transform: translate3d(0px, 0px, 0px); transition-duration: 0s; width: 480px; zoom: 1;"><li style="backface-visibility: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; width: 240px;"><div class="media media--image" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; margin-top: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; zoom: 1;"><img alt="mckinney1" class="media__element b-lazy b-loaded" draggable="false" height="427" loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/slideshow/s3/static-page/img/gettyimages-157610088-612x612.jpg?itok=Uzn6yKOA" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 500ms ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: middle; width: 240px;" title="" typeof="foaf:Image" width="640" /></div></li></ul></div></div></div></div><p class="tags" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #51585c; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;">Review of Kathryn Tanner:</span><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Spirit-Capitalism-Kathryn-Tanner/dp/0300219032/ref=sr_1_1?crid=262T6I2VNCVTF&keywords=Kathryn+Tanner%3A+Christianity+and+the+New+Spirit+of+Capitalism&qid=1702419703&sprefix=kathryn+tanner+christianity+and+the+new+spirit+of+capitalism%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-1" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism</a></em></p><div class="body-content clearfix" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">An old professor told our class decades ago to believe nothing from the popular press about economics and only half of what the financial press writes. I would add that if a theologian tries to teach you economics, hide your wallet and lock up your daughters! Kathryn Tanner’s <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism </em>is a good example of such the tragic comedy produced by most theologians.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner has taught at Yale Divinity School since 2010 after 16 years at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is an influential past president of the American Theological Society. Rosemary P. Carbine and Hilda P. Koster say, “Kathryn Tanner is, quite simply, the most accomplished theologian of her generation,” in their book <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Gift of Theology: The Contribution of Kathryn Tanner</em>. The errors in her book are so numerous that it would take another book to correct them, so I’ll concentrate on the assumptions underlying her argument.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner’s premise is that capitalism, as evil as it was in the beginning, has morphed into a more horrible monster called financial capitalism. Socialists have over the decades invented stages of capitalism and it’s popular to decry the latest for the dominance of the financial services sector. Yet as usual, they lack evidence. The sector grew from 4% of GDP in 1929 to 8% in 2006 according to a paper in the <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Growth%20of%20Finance_6ec86a21-8e68-4abc-bb09-45abaacd7be5.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Journal of Economic Perspectives</a>. While doubling, it’s still smaller than the healthcare or government sectors. The federal government absorbs over 20% of GDP. So, Tanner would be more accurate calling it state capitalism, but that’s an oxymoron.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Financial services have grown as a share of GDP because of the government, not the market. The author of the JEP paper cites the growth of home mortgages and the stock market as the main reasons. But few banks made home loans because of their risk until the federal government created Fannie Mae in 1938 as part of FDR’s New Deal to secure mortgages via mortgage-backed securities (MBS), packaged mortgage loans that are then sold to investors. Tanner describes MBS’s and other derivatives in her book. Housing prices, and therefore mortgages, are highly sensitive to Federal Reserve interest rate policy, which has promoted inflation for over a century. Housing prices have increased in step with the Fed’s printing new money and contributed to the growth in financial services.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Also, good economists have known since Fritz Machlup’s book <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Stock Market, Credit and Capital Formation</em> (1931) that most new money printed by the Fed goes into the stock market. Many people employ managers to guide their stock market investments, so, the Fed’s printing tsunamis of new money swells that part of financial services.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner sees businessmen trying to please the stock market as evil. But is it? Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann demonstrated in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Capital and Its Structure</em> that the stock market guides investment toward those activities that please consumers the most as demonstrated by profits. Why should a business succeed that annoys consumers? Who should businesspeople try to please, if not consumers? And how will you measure success at pleasing them if not by profits? The professor doesn’t know.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Finally, Tanner laments the relative growth of financial services and the shrinking share of manufacturing and farming. But any decent economist would have told her that’s a good thing! All services have outpaced manufacturing and farming as a share of GDP because of productivity increases in those industries, meaning it takes fewer people to produce goods and food than before, when we were poorer. One aspect of becoming richer and reducing poverty is working less to produce more. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner assumes the U.S. has a capitalist system. But how much of the U.S. is capitalist or socialist is debatable. In my opinion, the U.S. hasn’t been capitalist since President Wilson created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and gave the government control of our money. Until the election of President Ronald Reagan, most economists considered the U.S. to be a mixed economy at best and the country has become more socialist since. And, the U.S. has implemented eight of the ten commandments of Marx’s <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Manifesto of the Communist Party</a>. But socialists need the U.S. to be capitalist so they can blame problems on their arch enemy instead of the socialist policies that caused them.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner makes those mistakes for the same reason most theologians do: they rely exclusively on the works of socialists for sources. Tanner doesn’t disappoint, opening hers with a summary of Max Weber’s ancient tome, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.</em> No competent economic historian venerates Weber the way theologians do because he got very few things right about the origins of capitalism. But socialist theologians love the book because Weber makes capitalism look ugly and assumes the worst motives for capitalists.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Had Tanner been interested in the history of capitalism, she could have learned from great economic historians like Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Alejandro Chafuen and others that the <a href="http://rdmckinney.blogspot.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">principles of capitalism came from Catholic theologians</a> during the Reformation who distilled them from natural law and the Bible. Those principles became associated with Protestantism because the Protestant Dutch Republic first implemented them, followed by England and its colonies. The Calvinists Weber sued for the paternity of capitalism were its most virulent opponents next to Catholics.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Instead, Tanner relies on socialist sociologists such as Weber, the French philosopher Michel Foucault and a long string of sociologists. The closest to an economist I found in her footnotes were the French socialist Thomas Piketty and Wolfgang Streeck, a German economic sociologist at the Max Planck Institute.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Because she relies on socialist sociologists, her straw man is stuffed with the typical cliches. Employees are slaves unable to earn a living wage. They are cogs in a cruel machine. Managers are the slave masters cracking the whip to force the slaves to pull harder and tote more. Governments are helpless victims of their financial masters. The only socialist cliché Tanner left out was poor widows with hungry children trying to appease the landlord with the handlebar moustache so they can live one more week in their dilapidated shack.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">For example, in chapter three, “Total Commitment,” Tanner tells us that American workers must sacrifice all for our jobs and paying our debts:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 5px solid rgb(228, 235, 238); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 18.75px; margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 12.5px 25px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">Making a deadline on time may require putting everything into meeting it at every waking moment. It may require maximum concentration and exertion, not just at work but at home, too. Servicing one’s debt may require scrimping and saving on every item purchased and constant creativity in coming up with the necessary cash, turning every meager possession into a possible source of revenue, renting out one’s already cramped space, finding buyers for unwanted junk, pawning what one would like to keep, selling one’s food assistance coupons, and so on.</p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">In chapter four, “Nothing but the Present,” Tanner writes that:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 5px solid rgb(228, 235, 238); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 18.75px; margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 12.5px 25px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">The scarcity of time and resources enforced by profit-maximizing firms makes the present task urgent for workers and therefore preoccupying and all-consuming. There is no time to waste because a pressing deadline is looming. One does not have the luxury of waiting to see what might happen; no time exists for extend reflection or can one defer decision until tomorrow.</p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Relying exclusively on socialists, Tanner absorbs their anthropology that asserts people are born good and turn bad because of oppression. She appears to be a genuine Christian and knows the historic Christian doctrine of original sin that says people are born with a tendency to evil that only Christ can cure. But in this book, she jettisons Christian anthropology for the atheistic socialist one, an inconsistency common among theologians.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner claims that financial capitalism changes the way people think and shapes their character in such a way as to make them enthusiastically support it. Her purpose in writing the book was to show how Christianity could “gum up” that process of forming humans. <a href="https://rsn.aarweb.org/christianity-and-new-spirit-capitalism-kathryn-tanner" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">In an interview</a> she said:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 5px solid rgb(228, 235, 238); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 18.75px; margin: 0px 0px 25px; padding: 12.5px 25px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">I'm assuming with him [Weber] that capitalism has a culture to it, that it brings with it a particular way of understanding one's self and one's relationships with others. And it's at that point, you could say the person-forming character of capitalism, it's there that religion can most easily, I think, come into the picture and object to the way in which persons are being shaped. And I think that's one of the central features of finance capitalism, that it tends to target the whole person for profit-generating purposes, not just what you do at work, but the whole of your life isn't being understood in basically this capitalist way.</p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Tanner’s solution is to meditate on God and understand that his grace is not in short supply. “I hope I have shown the coherence of a whole new world to be entertained as an imaginative counter to the whole world of capitalism as it presently exists, and pretends to be all-encompassing, to have no limits, nothing outside itself.“</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Like most theologians, Tanner frightens readers with a story of the world set on fire by the dastardly capitalist dragon, then gives them a water pistol to quench the flames. If financial capitalism is guilty of the crimes she describes, we need a revolution, not meditation.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">Tanner is right about financial services. There is something wrong. But it’s government control of the economy and banking that causes the problems, not capitalism.</p></div>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-81964803316871687382023-11-06T20:28:00.003-06:002023-11-06T20:28:27.690-06:00Killers of the Flower Moon Is about Government Failure<p> </p><h2 class="page-title" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; font-family: crimson_text, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 25px; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; vertical-align: top;"><img alt="oil field" class="media__element b-lazy b-loaded" draggable="false" height="228" loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.mises.org/styles/slideshow/s3/static-page/img/oilfield-w.jpg?itok=Jzo50K4w" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; display: block; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 500ms ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: middle; width: 240px;" title="" typeof="foaf:Image" width="332" /></h2><p class="tags" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #51585c; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;">Most reviewers of the</span><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.killersoftheflowermoonmovie.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">motion picture</a><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;">Killers of the Flower Moon</em><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="color: #494e54; font-size: 15px;">distill just one lesson from the story: greed is deadly. The love of money leads to evil. But the real lesson should be of government failure.</span></p><div class="body-content clearfix" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">The movie follows the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Killers-Flower-Moon-Osage-Murders/dp/0385534248" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">book</a>, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Killers</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI</em> by David Grann. It tells the story of the Osage tribe during the 1920s oil boom in Oklahoma. Tribal members became very wealthy because of the discovery of oil on tribal land, and many white people committed fraud and murder to steal that wealth.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>People should read the book and watch the movie, but they should also read Angie Debo’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Still-Waters-Run-Angie-Debo/dp/0691005788" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">book</a> published in 1941, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">And Still the Waters Run</em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes</em>, because what happened to the Osage tribal members was just a small part of what took place among the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee in eastern Oklahoma at the same time.<p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Before statehood in 1907, tribal governments owned their land and leased it to members. But the federal government insisted that they divide the land among individual tribal citizens and establish private property rights in land. Despite tremendous opposition from most tribal citizens, the federal government forced tribes to allocate their lands individually. Then oil was discovered on the land. In the five civilized tribes, individuals owned the mineral rights while the Osage tribe retained them.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Criminals throughout eastern Oklahoma invented many ways to steal the wealth that oil brought to tribal members. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Killers of the Flower Moon</em> depicts a few of them. Some promised to pay tribal members an annuity of hundreds of dollars per month for life if the member would assign mineral rights to them. Of course, those members died mysteriously within weeks, but no law enforcement agency would investigate. Others worked with judges, sheriffs, and lawyers to assign guardianship of orphans to white men who then stole everything the orphans had and split the wealth with the judges, sheriffs, and lawyers.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">The federal government began to discover the extent of the crimes, thanks in part to a <a href="https://digitalprairie.ok.gov/digital/collection/culture/id/6514" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">report</a> in 1924 by Gertrude Bonnin, a research agent for the Indian welfare committee of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, titled “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes—Legalized Robbery.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">The federal government filed over thirty thousand indictments against white Oklahoma citizens for fraud and murder in the McAlester federal courthouse in the 1930s. Those indictments included almost all prominent businessmen and politicians in Tulsa and most of the state legislature. Only the governor escaped. He sent a delegation to DC to protest the indictments and complain of the economic damage they caused by questioning titles to property.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Statehood had turned the tribes into clubs with no governing authority. The federal government agreed to drop the indictments if the state allowed the tribes to restore their governments with sovereignty equal to that of the state. The state agreed, and tens of thousands of criminals went free.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">The real lesson of the massive criminal activity against tribal citizens was, once again, the failure of the government to do its job. The federal government rarely kept a <a href="https://www.history.com/news/native-american-broken-treaties" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">treaty</a> it signed with any tribal government. It had forced all the tribes in Oklahoma to relocate from their ancestral homes to Indian Territory, beginning with the Cherokee <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Trail of Tears</a> in Georgia in the 1830s. After the Civil War, the federal government again broke its treaties and stole from the tribes much of the land it had originally assigned them. The forced allotment of land to individuals from tribal ownership was another treaty violation, as was breaking up tribal government when Oklahoma became a state. Oklahoma is a Choctaw word meaning land of the red-skinned people.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">During the 1920s oil boom, the government officials enabled whites to plunder the wealth of tribal members and murder many of them by refusing to do their jobs. Governments have one mandate according to natural law and the Bible—to punish criminals.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;">Yet, in Oklahoma, those authorities not only refused to punish wrongdoers, they became the criminals attacking good citizens. Tribal members and all minorities understand the lesson of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Killers of the Flower Moon</em>: don’t trust your safety to the government.</p></div>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-5610403934600816122023-10-20T16:36:00.002-05:002023-10-20T16:36:22.611-05:00Government-Enforced Paid Family Leave Is Not Pro-Family<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh32jgTXGmvM-U9k-PHV0HItwfq7Wqgn8lPWb8eFDuBz5g88sTPHoJsuVVWu15bUkOp9hPfCAZnH9GvO_6esRkGw9x62NM5Cs-IkYwKSTOH51g2BrD04Hh2ZT5uBh63vJouw3L3Ci8TIj4e_eZsXm0zke49bZfBT-WfrX3-hV0BaXYS0wNALe3HWaF2BNnR/s480/paidleave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="480" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh32jgTXGmvM-U9k-PHV0HItwfq7Wqgn8lPWb8eFDuBz5g88sTPHoJsuVVWu15bUkOp9hPfCAZnH9GvO_6esRkGw9x62NM5Cs-IkYwKSTOH51g2BrD04Hh2ZT5uBh63vJouw3L3Ci8TIj4e_eZsXm0zke49bZfBT-WfrX3-hV0BaXYS0wNALe3HWaF2BNnR/w400-h275/paidleave.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Paid family leave—meaning the government paying or forcing businesses to pay for one or more parents taking time off to spend with a newborn—seems like a slam dunk idea to the Christian Left. According to a <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/october-web-only/pro-life-christians-should-lead-way-on-family-leave.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #38709e; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">recent article</a> in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Christianity Today</em>, “Christians Shouldn’t Need a Mandate to Provide Paid Family Leave,” “We should provide the best family leave possible. Christians who own or manage businesses ought to lead the way on family leave.” The article lists three benefits of parents taking time off to be with newborns:<p></p><ol style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 12.5px; margin-top: 0px;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Parental leave could save lives. “There is clearly a link—even if indirect—between maternity leave and babies surviving.”</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Old Testament purification rules, “which in practice gave new mothers a rest after birth,” are similar.</li><li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Men need to spend time with their children in the initial weeks after birth or adoption. “Research has shown ‘fathers who take paternity leave are more likely, a year or so down the road, to change diapers, bathe their children, read them bedtime stories, and get up at night to tend to them.’”</li></ol><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Point one is debatable, point two is irrelevant, but point three is a post hoc fallacy. Paid parental leave doesn’t cause men to become better fathers; good fathers take parental leave.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Common sense tells us that it’s good for mothers and fathers to spend as much time as possible with new babies. However, the conclusion that businesses or the government must pay for this time is another fallacy—a non sequitur, or a logical leap across the Grand Canyon. Fathers and mothers should save and pay for the leave themselves.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Americans should keep in mind that many Christians promoted a forty-hour workweek in the early twentieth century so that fathers could spend more time with their families. How has that worked out? Paid family leave will no doubt suffer similar abuse. Parents will leave babies with grandma and take off for Cancun. Fathers will play golf with his buddies. It will become just another paid vacation.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">The Christian Left must give up on the socialist nonsense that government policies can make people good or bad. These policies don’t have that power. Christianity teaches that people are born with a strong tendency to evil that only Christ can change, so paid family leave will not turn deadbeat dads into fabulous fathers.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Historically, mothers worked at home and spent all their time with their kids. Fathers always worked outside the home. How did families raise the “greatest generation” without paid family leave for fathers? Only after World War II did mothers decide they needed to work outside the home away from their children. Today, parents want someone else to pay them to stay with newborns for months. Most could likely afford to pay for it themselves since the United States is one of the wealthiest societies in the history of the world.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">Paid family leave is not profamily, as so many claim. Paying for it will require higher taxes, either now or later, to pay off the debt the state must borrow to pay for it. The government could tax the rich more as socialists want. However, every dollar taken from the rich reduces investments in new jobs and, in the long run, results in lower wages. Requiring businesses to finance this leave has a similar impact—fewer jobs and lower pay. Socialists can’t recognize those antifamily effects because they can only see the immediate effect: family leave is good so the state must pay for it. Good economic thinking requires people to consider the long-term effects.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">The author appeals to “the Bible’s frequent injunctions to help one another in love (Rom. 12:13)” as a reason to promote paid parental leave financed by the government or businesses. Yet, in context, the Bible encourages people to give their own money to help others, not use the government’s money. Everyone bears the responsibility for charity, not just business owners.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;">American socialists envy the paid family leave that many European countries have. These same socialists argue that the US, being much wealthier, can and should have the government pay for this leave as well. Yet it should be obvious that if Americans are wealthier than Europeans, then the US government or employers don’t need to finance the paid family leave; Americans can save and pay for it themselves. If the poorest workers can’t, that creates an opportunity for churches and charities to step in and help. There is no need for the state to force it on others.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494e54; font-family: myriad-pro, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px;">The most profamily policy is to lower taxes for all families so that they can take home more of what they earn.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-26166656262385131952023-10-17T15:58:00.001-05:002023-10-17T16:02:57.023-05:00 Christians don’t suffer from consumerism.<p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSrIfWtPqPc8cwuHMkP_BnjSscT-ePRpFybw8C_fkVbthPnH4G3H6jWyra2iunRKUrloZDVlPqK5Tr1DjRwp1Ae2cEwKkekCMzkBUteNHsv1TezkcSpwDf-kdCLcKAgxCQGgz9IQjK8JFfBFUaNS1Gzd1C_98BmB4VfiLoBMlXGvsXNYYZ5VQBX4U0aBHn/s300/Consumerism.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSrIfWtPqPc8cwuHMkP_BnjSscT-ePRpFybw8C_fkVbthPnH4G3H6jWyra2iunRKUrloZDVlPqK5Tr1DjRwp1Ae2cEwKkekCMzkBUteNHsv1TezkcSpwDf-kdCLcKAgxCQGgz9IQjK8JFfBFUaNS1Gzd1C_98BmB4VfiLoBMlXGvsXNYYZ5VQBX4U0aBHn/w400-h224/Consumerism.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span face="Calibri,sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Calibri,sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><br /></span></p><br /><br />For decades, any article by Christians about the evils that afflict modern society have included consumerism. For example, <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/ten-commandments-god-consumerism/">A Gospel Coalition author</a> wrote this:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">“None of us is a conscious convert to this religion of consumerism. We are discipled in it from childhood. It offers a story that attempts to rival the biblical story. In the consumer story, creation exists for our amusement and satisfaction. The perennial problem isn’t sin but lack. We don’t have enough—enough money, enough devices, enough experiences, enough entertainment. This cultural god has invited all to come and make sacrifices, promising in exchange material prosperity, comfort, and security. And this ‘salvation story’ has deeply shaped business in our world today…You cannot serve God and money (Matt. 6:24).”</blockquote><br />How many people would recognize themselves in that description of consumerism? Not many. Would they see family or friends in it? Not likely. I don’t know of many non-Christians who fit that description, let alone Christians. Who do you know lives for nothing more than to acquire more? That depiction of consumerism is an example of the straw man fallacy. <br /><br /><br /><br />The Bible doesn’t mention consumerism, but it refers to a more realistic equivalent, greed. What is greed? A common definition is the desire for more. Many Christians admire the Amish for their simple lifestyles and anti-consumerist mentality. But the Amish are grossly rich compared to most people in the world today, especially the hundreds of millions living on $3 per day. If we should be satisfied with the bare necessities for life, then anyone with more stuff than the tribes in the Amazon are greedy. After all, a lean-to for shelter, a cloth to wrap around our hips and an occasional meal of monkey meat is all we need. <br /><br />The Bible makes clear through examples what greed means. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar (Luke 16), and that of the bigger barns (Luke 12), Jesus showed that greedy people refuse to help the poor. James condemned employers who refused to pay workers their wages (James 5). Jesus indicted Pharisees for refusing to care for their elderly parents by dedicating what wealth they might give them to the Temple (Luke 11). John the Baptist told soldiers not to extort money from people or falsely accuse them of crimes and warned tax collectors not to take more than required (Luke 3).<br /><br />Can we distill a principle about greed from these? How about this: greed is the love of money so strong that one is willing to do something immoral to get or keep it? That’s why Jesus condemned those who served money rather than God (Matthew 6:24). Can Christians be guilty of such greed? <br /><br />While we can’t live sin free, greed will not characterize the lives of Christians. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contrasted the lives his disciples would lead with those of unbelievers. The parallel passage in Luke 16 shows Pharisees scoffing at this principle. The verse preceding his statement about serving money warns about envy. Paul defined greed as idolatry (Ephesians 5:5) and wrote that people characterized by a greedy lifestyle will not go to heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Greed like that of the Pharisees is a sure sign you’re not a follower of Jesus. <br /><br />The issue of greed should cause Christians to ask why are Americans, and the West, so wealthy? But to answer that question, Christians must learn economics. In the 19th century, theologians like Francis Wayland considered economics to be part of natural theology or general revelation and necessary for informed Christians. Wayland was a Baptist pastor and president of Brown University. He wrote one of the best selling economic textbooks of his century<a href="https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Databases/Encyclopedia/search.php?serial=W0110">, The Elements of Political Economy</a>. <br /><br />Economic history teaches that Americans are so wealthy because we have implemented Biblical principles of government. The theologians at the University of Salamanca distilled those principles from natural law with Biblical support during the Reformation. Adam Smith called them the principles of natural liberty. Marists referred to them as capitalism. <br /><br />Those principles made the Dutch Republic first, then England, the U.S. and the rest of the West miraculously wealthy. See <a href="https://virginiapolitics.org/online/2018/10/29/the-hockey-stick-of-human-prosperity-is-the-worst-metaphor-in-political-science#:~:text=Accordingly%2C%20a%20graph%20of%20gross,200%20years%20forms%20the%20blade.&text=The%20metaphor%20has%20become%20ubiquitous.">this graph for an illustration</a>. In the past generation, slightly freer markets have lifted over 500 million people from starvation in India and China, according to the World Bank. <br /><br />Still, some will say we should give all our wealth to the poor. That was the model for Europe for 1,500 years. Many of the nobility would give all their wealth, usually land, to the Church when they died or entered a monastery. As a result, the Church before the Reformation owned one-third of the land of Europe, which it used to help the poor. But such enormous charity never lifted anyone out of poverty; charity merely maintains life in poverty. Millions continued to starve to death in frequent famines. Only with the advent of capitalism, which gave the poor the tools to produce more, did poverty begin to decline in the Industrial Revolution. <br /><br />Those who refuse to learn economics, which include most theologians and philosophers, often believe that the West is rich because the West stole the wealth of poor countries. Some will point out that the West consumes 80% of the world’s production, which is true. But the West produces 80% of the world's output, too. <br /><br />Economics teaches us that consumption and production are two sides of the same coin. Consumption without production is impossible. Production without consumption results in waste. So, demands that we consume less are also demands that we produce less. And producing less means that we will be poorer. <br /><br />So where does that leave American Christians, the poorest of whom are among the wealthiest on the planet? Should we give all we have to the poor until we are as poor as Haitians? Should we keep our wealth and live in perpetual joyless guilt? How can we have the joy of Jesus if we are burdened with guilt from so much wealth? Guilt seems to be the only emotion Christians should have according to the many theologians who write about consumerism.<br /><br />We need a better theology of wealth and The Good of Affluence: Seeking God in a Culture of Wealth by John R. Schneider provides one. He wrote that God created the world in part for us to enjoy. Any wealth acquired honestly is a blessing from God. We shouldn’t despise such a gift. We should give a portion of our wealth to the poor, but we should never assume we can eliminate poverty through charity; that would be the sin of pride. Nor should we attempt to eliminate poverty by impoverishing ourselves. <br /><br />Solomon offered practical advice for wealthy Christians in Ecclesiastes: <br /><br />“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God . . .” (2:24–26).<br /><br />“There is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man . . .” (3:12–15)<br /><br />“Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him . . .” (5:18–20)<br /><br />“I commend joy, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.” (8:15)<br /><br />“Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do . . .” (9:7–10)<br /><br /><br /><br />“If a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all. . . . Rejoice, O young man . . .” (11:8–12:7)Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-88360340697850918662023-09-05T21:06:00.000-05:002023-09-05T21:06:04.154-05:00Jesus is an anarcho-capitalist<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4s4tUa7b_2OVQl_aeKpdBSVp7uXL2UUoAqEYV8HFTZfE7ABowLg17htDR_tpZD1AMOSr3zopQPbndnpOTeUMDBheHgOE-IMxe8Yi0fZJay3OHOnFoZLHzsBKzRvI2ZffMJ3tJvFrzXf0cPBpW-IiUUiUreM8yEQpKCCsGEg4ObHkkuiFLqZhAPDeD_PDV/s224/Roman%20coin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="224" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4s4tUa7b_2OVQl_aeKpdBSVp7uXL2UUoAqEYV8HFTZfE7ABowLg17htDR_tpZD1AMOSr3zopQPbndnpOTeUMDBheHgOE-IMxe8Yi0fZJay3OHOnFoZLHzsBKzRvI2ZffMJ3tJvFrzXf0cPBpW-IiUUiUreM8yEQpKCCsGEg4ObHkkuiFLqZhAPDeD_PDV/w320-h320/Roman%20coin.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><br /><br />Most arguments for capitalism hinge on the consequences: capitalism enriches people while socialism impoverishes. But few Christians will take a class in economics so they will not care about consequentialist arguments. They consider morality more important than consequences and capitalism to be inherently immoral. Yet, almost half of the country is evangelical or Catholic. We lovers of liberty can’t afford to ignore them. How do we address their moral concerns without succumbing to theonomy? One way is to connect Jesus with capitalist principles. <br /><br />Modernist theologians from Germany who denied the deity of Christ, fabricated the idea that Jesus was a socialist over a century ago. Both Protestants and Catholics promote that nonsense today. What were Jesus’ real views on politics and economics? <br /><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span>Unfortunately, Jesus didn’t say much about either. The closest he came was to say, “Pay to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” (Mark 12:17). Some theologians try to build a political theology around the Sermon on the Mount and sayings such as, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and “Blessed are the poor,” always twisting them to promote socialism. But according to principles of hermeneutics, we should consider Jesus’ audience, which was the common people and not the government. It’s dishonest to turn commands to individuals into political philosophy. Jesus was not a policy wonk. Families, churches and government have different responsibilities it is wrong to confuse them. <br /><br />Conservative Christians believe that Jesus is God and that opens more of the Bible for political discussion because as God Jesus would have written the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. There we find Jesus’ ideas on government because God created the nation of Israel. <br /><br />Talking about the Mosaic law resurrects the ghost of theonomy. But many principles cherished by libertarians came from it. “Thou shalt not murder” and “Thou shalt not steal” are two of the Ten Commandments. Theologians during the Reformation distilled the rights to life, liberty and property from those two commandments and prohibitions of man stealing (kidnapping) according to Larry Siedentop in his book Inventing the Individual. Equality before the law never existed until theologians determined that the government is a minister of God so it must treat citizens equally as God does. The concept of limited government came from theologians who saw the Biblical role of government as merely punishing criminals and taxation above that needed for its limited role is theft.<br /><br />Jesus gave Israel a government with no human executive, legislature, taxes or standing army. He gave them only courts as government institutions. The people selected their judges and enforced their rulings. <br /><br />Most theologians claim Israel before the monarchy was a theocracy, but in a theocracy, priests rule. In Israel, the courts ruled, and the priests only administered the temple. Yes, God was their king, but he was no more king under the judges than during the monarchy. He didn’t run the kingdom day-to-day as human kings do. God was like a human king only in that he gave Israel its laws. And we learn from later prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah that God is king of every nation. <br /><br />God gave Israel 613 laws, but the courts adjudicated only the civil part, such as “Thou shalt not steal,” or “Thou shalt not kill.” They let priests enforce temple laws and God the moral laws. Most of the civil laws protect life, liberty and property. Some seem obscure, such as “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” (Deuteronomy 25:4), or “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together,” (Deuteronomy 22:11). But these civil laws merely prohibit fraud. Linen made the most valuable cloth. Mixing cheap wool thread with linen was a fraud. Not muzzling the ox forced landowners to pay day laborers their wages. <br /><br />Most theologians believe God created a socialist government because of the Jubilee and sabbath year debt forgiveness laws. But they haven’t read the passages. Leviticus 25 describes Jubilee. A landowner might sell his land and the price was determined by the sum of the market value of the produce of the land for the years between the sale and the year of Jubilee, which took place every 50th year. For example, if the land produced $1,000 worth of olives annually and Jubilee was 12 years away, the owner could sell the land for no more than $12,000. The buyer got his money back by working the land and selling the olives. When Jubilee had arrived, he had earned back his investment without interest and the original owner took over the land again. Rather than land reform, the “sale” of the land was a loan that the land paid back each year. Jubilee was roughly like a modern mortgage burning. <br /><br />As Deuteronomy 15 shows, every seventh year all debts were forgiven. But its effect was the opposite of what socialists claim because debt forgiveness punishes the lender only if it surprises him. Such debt forgiveness was popular in the ancient world and rulers announced them spontaneously so that lenders had no chance to prepare for them by calling in loans or reducing loan amounts. <br /><br />By fixing the date of future debt forgiveness, the Mosaic law protected lenders, not borrowers. Lenders would loan only what the borrower could repay in the years remaining to forgiveness. If they loaned more than that, they understood they were providing charity. Jews preferred giving loans to the poor rather than charity because loans allowed the poor to retain their dignity. <br /><br />As pharaoh’s step-grandson, Moses was educated in the school that trained him and others in Egyptian government administration and religion. The people would have expected him to imitate the most powerful nation of its day and declare himself to be the pharaoh of Israel. Instead, he presented them with a government unique in history. No king or nobility existed to steal from the people until Israel rebelled and demanded a king. <br /><br />Moses, Joshua and the judges were never kings but generals during war and judges during peace. God warned Israel in I Samuel 8 of the many ways the king they demanded would steal from them and kill their young men in war. But Israel chose to be like Egypt. <br /><br />In 1949, Murray Rothbard coined the term “anarcho-capitalist” to describe a similar system of government. Rothbard was a student of the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. An anarcho-capitalist society would have no human executive, legislature or taxes. Law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be privately funded. Insurance companies and private security forces would compete to capture criminals and bring them to trial. Judges would decide cases following natural law. In its structure, ancient Israel was an anarcho-capitalist society, making Jesus an anarcho-capitalist. <br /><br /><br /><br />Still, Christians shouldn’t try to push Mosaic laws through Congress. Many applied to a particular place and time. We should work to restore the anarcho-capitalist principles distilled from it by theologians during the Reformation.Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-52817515357377218672023-04-05T18:31:00.003-05:002023-04-05T18:38:59.743-05:00 Bank failures another sign of the evil of monetary manipulation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_jO6HEb-eAtKjp6bYN9fKn2oZkOA1yL88PyEUImjJ7JJ9zmVW0WR90sc7tSCBIakdsCQrhHh_36B41md89InsjkWli0I8bWz3TmxABxHw_2_O5ovfwN9QFC2whIiB1baw7GyuLab2btdwziXCzUJDVUdE0tdiliLJCErGNE-W4lkQRu5Tje82ZlfiFQ/s327/bank%20failure.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="154" data-original-width="327" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_jO6HEb-eAtKjp6bYN9fKn2oZkOA1yL88PyEUImjJ7JJ9zmVW0WR90sc7tSCBIakdsCQrhHh_36B41md89InsjkWli0I8bWz3TmxABxHw_2_O5ovfwN9QFC2whIiB1baw7GyuLab2btdwziXCzUJDVUdE0tdiliLJCErGNE-W4lkQRu5Tje82ZlfiFQ/w640-h302/bank%20failure.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Recently, banks have failed, and the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates another 25 basis points, or 0.25%. Some analysts say banks are safe while others cry that the sky is falling. Who is right? Christians need to discern the financial signs of the times. </p><p>Jesus warned his disciples to get out of Jerusalem when they saw a sign: “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city,” (Luke 21:20,21). The early church followed Jesus’ advice and fled to Pella in modern Jordan, thus saving the small group from a similar fate. </p><p>Solomon wrote, “A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences,” (Proverbs 27:12).</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The recent round of bank failures in the U.S. are a sign for Christians to prepare for the next recession. Where can Christians flee to with their savings? In a recession, the prices of most assets fall, so cash is usually the best option. But due to the Fed’s policies, this recession will probably be like those of the 1970s that we labeled as “stagflation,” or a recession with high inflation. Someone created a misery index that added the unemployment rate to the inflation rate. High inflation eats away at the value of cash.<p></p><p>The reported inflation rate is around 6%, but the real inflation rate is probably higher because in the 1970s and 1980s politicians didn’t know how to tame inflation. They tried regulations, intimidation, and price controls and only made life worse. The poor economic situation threatened Nixon’s re-election before he resigned over “Watergate,” so he was the first President to force statisticians to monkey with the statistics to make inflation and unemployment look better than they were. </p><p>The economy cost Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter their second terms in office. So, statisticians continued to change the way they calculated inflation. Shadow Government Statistics continues to use the original model so we can compare today’s adjusted rate of inflation with the original method. </p><p>One of money’s purposes is to be a measuring tool that allows us to compare the values of different things from donkeys to donuts. It is like a yardstick or a measuring cup. For most of history, money was a weight in silver, then gold. The Biblical Shekel, for example, weighed about 0.39 ounces of silver. </p><p>When the Fed creates new money out of thin air, it changes that measure because a dollar buys less in the market. It’s not different from creating false weights and measures, which the Bible warns about: “You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity” (Leviticus 19:35). “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1). “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small” (Deuteronomy 25:13-16). The Fed commits the evil of unjust measures when it debases our money. </p><p>Isaiah condemned the debasing of money in 1:22: “Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water.” In the same way that merchants added water to the wine and sold it as pure wine, they added so much base metal to silver coins that they became worthless as dross, the scum on the surface of molten metal. </p><p>Amos joined Isaiah with the same indictment: “Hear this, you who swallow up the needy, and make the poor of the land fail... Making the ephah small and the shekel large, falsifying the balances by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals" (Amos 8:4-6). Making the ephah, the measure of grain, small, merchants defrauded the poor with false measures. By enlarging the shekel, they debased the money so more of it was needed to buy a given product which caused higher prices. The increased poverty made it easier to enslave the poor.</p><p>The Fed creates a false measure when it counterfeits new money into existence through its policies. That new money creates an artificial economic boom and inflation that robs people of their savings. The boom always ends in a bust, or recession, in which people lose their jobs. Many economists warn of a looming recession. Christians need to prepare for it. We can start by paying down debt and increasing savings as much as possible. </p><div><br /></div>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-16561021047275779252023-01-14T14:25:00.000-06:002023-01-14T14:25:01.035-06:00How Child Tax Credit expansion will hurt children<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKdOKY3M1cIfZ0iGXQMtOrXpRqm-N8hydxmLHF59iAZcrJSx8NWQt2GLf2ICRBu1JiMZYxnTomIwobfHr1LwQWEA9eyMkh1RONrw62__Qlu0_eeGcaw8sDqhGfdc7wBbzDGDgdNofhiceUWVrj-wX-seD4VUNBRNbY_CxjH-NSEviw1EMeryF2zljIjQ/s414/children.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="122" data-original-width="414" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKdOKY3M1cIfZ0iGXQMtOrXpRqm-N8hydxmLHF59iAZcrJSx8NWQt2GLf2ICRBu1JiMZYxnTomIwobfHr1LwQWEA9eyMkh1RONrw62__Qlu0_eeGcaw8sDqhGfdc7wBbzDGDgdNofhiceUWVrj-wX-seD4VUNBRNbY_CxjH-NSEviw1EMeryF2zljIjQ/w640-h189/children.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Last year, Congress increased the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 per child to $3,600 and eliminated the requirement that a parent be working to receive the credit, turning it into a welfare payment.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-american-families-and-workers/child-tax-credit" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">According to the government</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">, "The American Rescue Plan’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit will reduce child poverty by (1) supplementing the earnings of families receiving the tax credit, and (2) making the credit available to a significant number of new families."</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">As part of President Biden's $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, who could oppose giving more to poor children? That would be like opposing the rescue of drowning puppies. Some conservatives promoted the program to reduce abortions by paying poor women to have their children. It didn't occur to them that they are paying a form of extortion to keep their children alive, and that doing so will make the problem worse. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>However, the <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/new-analysis-finds-expanded-child-tax-credit-reduces-work-growth" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT),</a> a nonpartisan committee of the United States Congress that passed the bill, "finds that extending the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion would result in costly economic consequences." <p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">And one of the consequences could be that it hurts the children politicians intended to help. It does so by encouraging their parents to quit working. As the study showed, "The proposal is estimated to both discourage labor supply and capital investment. Because it changes the incentives for labor supply and capital, and these changes are larger than the effects on household consumption, JCT finds GDP declines by 0.1–0.3 percent."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In other words, the extra money from the federal government motivates many parents to quit working. That will make those families poorer and cause them to rely more on government handouts and charity to feed and clothe their children. The major cause of children living in poverty in the U.S. is poor, single women having children outside of marriage. Before Johnson's Great Society welfare programs, the number of children born into such households was small. Afterwards, the number exploded and now accounts for 70% of births in some groups. The expanded CTC encourages such growth. And we know that children from those homes are less likely to earn an education, and more likely to join gangs and become criminals.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Another cause of poverty is drug and alcohol abuse. The expanded CTC will make that problem worse because money is fungible, which is economic jargon for the idea that money can be used for many things. Promoters of the CTC assume that the mothers receiving it will use the extra money to feed and clothe their children.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Poor women have enjoyed many programs since 1968 to help pay for food and clothing for their children, yet according to many organizations, hunger among children is at an all-time high. The <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/february/food-insecurity-for-households-with-children-rose-in-2020-disrupting-decade-long-decline/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">U.S. Department of Agriculture web site</a> says, "The percent of U.S. households with children that were food insecure reached 14.8 percent in 2020, or 5.6 million households..."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The U.S. gives more to the parents of poor children to buy them food than anyone in all human history, yet child hunger is worse. How can that be? The answer is that the parents who get the money don't necessarily use it for food for their children.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">But no one can say this, for fear of being cancelled. The evangelical left has made an idol of the poor. No one can criticize their behavior without the evangelical left charging them with blaming the victims. Contradicting the Bible, they believe people are born good, and society makes them into poor drug addicts.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christians in the 18th and 19th centuries knew better, according to <a href="https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwiukumlmp38AhWbFtQBHQX8DG4YABAgGgJvYQ&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESbOD2_wtDOhnHMBJfeBSSppX9vvtazy4J2FnMU2OVqB3tS5OhSt8BCfzIfj6b8Egh-f9UFEu19XJwLpBjHs-ZbuM4qMOc8vm2MkB8FNCYbvWRi3jjJXgmq6u7G0ehSkXbnIZR_xWxDhjLRtJBUw&sig=AOD64_2H4mXNOvaeAnZEpbPZ8Kn1-o87pw&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwifx92lmp38AhU5l2oFHT0VAr4Q0Qx6BAgHEAE" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><em>The Tragedy of American Compassion</em></a> by Marvin Olasky. They understood the Biblical teaching that people are born with a strong tendency toward evil that only Christ can change. That tendency toward evil will cause some people to be lazy. "The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied." (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Proverbs%2013:4" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Proverbs 13:4</a> ) And, "Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger." (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Proverbs%2019:15" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Proverbs 19:15</a>)</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">And they knew that alcoholism leads to poverty: "He who loves pleasure will become a poor man; He who loves wine and oil will not become rich." (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Proverbs%2021:17" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Proverbs 21:17</a>) And, "For the heavy drinker and the glutton will come to poverty, And drowsiness will clothe one with rags." (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Proverbs%2023:21" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Proverbs 23:21</a>) Drug addiction produces the same results.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christians before the 20th century believed that God knew more about human nature than socialists, and insisted on getting to know the poor, giving food and clothing instead of cash to those who can't work, and avoiding subsidizing the behaviors that cause poverty. As a result, Christians took good care of the poor through the 19th century. Only in the 20th century did a minority of evangelicals become deluded by the socialist nonsense that society, particularly capitalism, causes poverty, and the government must give them cash indiscriminately. Socialists ignore the mountains of evidence that the poor often don’t use money as politicians intend.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">People made that mistake with the 40-hour work week, thinking fathers would spend more time with their families if the work week were reduced from 60 hours. In a similar way, parents will most likely not use the expanded CTC to feed their children, as the evidence of food insecurity for children demonstrates. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The CTC can do more harm to children than good. It’s time the evangelical left and Republicans face the truth about human nature and poverty. Private charity will feed the children without subsidizing the bad behavior of their parents.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-44348348838847312112023-01-14T14:21:00.002-06:002023-01-14T14:21:18.195-06:00How the Christ child rescued the world from poverty<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9GRcLFiToxasVGJZzB5-0o-V6VuKO83L9F9WCsVCi-EnwfSHnlC9KqE9T-wHK_YtDneKzAh6f_R6OhUDN0noPvKw2E4_tIdC-sTuLtQI0m7lyBopEBH3FHv3ZVPzodPczO83Ukg-_7KNsi8NOIUCAr6TtNW8kbyCwWp6dPDAUrTCN9zFxsFksJV8cw/s251/nativity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="251" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9GRcLFiToxasVGJZzB5-0o-V6VuKO83L9F9WCsVCi-EnwfSHnlC9KqE9T-wHK_YtDneKzAh6f_R6OhUDN0noPvKw2E4_tIdC-sTuLtQI0m7lyBopEBH3FHv3ZVPzodPczO83Ukg-_7KNsi8NOIUCAr6TtNW8kbyCwWp6dPDAUrTCN9zFxsFksJV8cw/s1600/nativity.jpg" width="251" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">In 1849, Dr. Edmond Sears wrote a Christmas message for his congregation in Wayland, Massachusetts. Set to music, it became the beloved Christmas carol “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” The third stanza expresses his sadness over the poverty in his community:</span><p></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“And ye, beneath life's crushing load, <br />whose forms are bending low, <br />who toil along the climbing way <br />with painful steps and slow, <br />look now!”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">As sad as that poverty was to Sears, the poor in the middle of the 19th century were far richer than those in the previous century. Humanity had suffered under the crushing load of poverty since God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden. According to the best economic historians, such as Angus Maddison, the standards of living in 1800 for most of Europe were no different from those of the average person in the days of Abraham and Sarah. Standards of living began to grow, and poverty recede, for the first time in human history in the early 17th century in the Dutch Republic. Why then and there?</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The Christ Child was God’s greatest gift to humanity:<p></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”<cite style="display: block; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-style: normal; text-align: right;">John 1:12</cite></p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">That adoption as children breaks the chains of evil that enslaves all people, especially from the power of envy because that sin, and not greed, kept humanity in poverty for millennia, according to the sociologist Helmut Schoeck in his classic book, <em>Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior</em>.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Schoeck demonstrated the ubiquity of envy and how societies through history have built institutions to soothe envy by taking from the successful to give to the rest. Such institutions quench the innovation that launches economic development and alleviates poverty.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a href="http://christianeconomists.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2013-Fall-Ballor.pdf" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">The economist Jordan Ballor offers</a> the testimony of Alexis de Tocqueville to the dangers of envy in a democracy:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“But in the human heart a depraved taste for equality is also found that leads the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in liberty…</p><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Democratic institutions awaken and flatter the passion for equality without ever being able to satisfy it entirely. Every day, at the moment when people believe they have grasped equality, it escapes from their hands and flees…”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In his paper, Ballor quotes several prominent economists who declared that socialism “...is a form of institutionalized envy” and is “envy legitimized.” Christ offered the only solution to the problem of envy, according to Schoeck:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“The ethic taught by the New Testament sought to secure differentiated human existence in a world full of envious people and unlikely to evolve into a society of equals. A society from which all cause for envy had disappeared would not need the moral message of Christianity. Again and again we find parables to the tenor of which is quite clearly the immorality, the sin of envy. One should love one’s neighbor as oneself – for the very reason that this will protect him against our envy and hostility.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christendom took 1,500 years from the birth of Christ to instantiate Biblical principles of economics, partly due to the veneration of Aristotle by theologians, and partly due to the nearly impregnable nature of envy in the human heart. Both caused theologians to condemn commerce, manufacturing, and banking, for centuries, permitting Jews to practice only those despised occupations, then persecuting Jews out of envy when their businesses made them wealthy.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Dutch Republic of the 17th century implemented Biblical principles of government and economics, which suppressed envy enough to allow for innovation and growth in standards of living for the first time in history. The individual rights to life, liberty, and property, distilled from natural law with support from the Bible prevented envious people from punishing the successful. They elevated commerce, manufacturing, and banking to respectable Christian vocations. Christians learned that loving your neighbor as yourself means being as happy for his success as if it were your own.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">As a result, the West is 30 times wealthier than it was in 1800. That would never have happened without the babe in the manger.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-32437330718033690342023-01-14T14:18:00.002-06:002023-01-14T14:18:34.014-06:00How Christianity and capitalism lifted South Korea out of centuries of poverty<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBPrtuJEz7ml49zJ0vScu6UuRQrG__KIw1T-SDWF8YdGJb_HyIZg5TqOSv-C1S-Ct9-IEmvT4iUwblU5zNbbVL426lM_IDNcQPT4QRycbB4h9nSFQ1ubHMpHyZa2Uu62LdSe0CbpgHDyXbP_9SPgmecr59WIvLNmHNUHQdIKIVehQKj-lXHmntsx6qQ/s275/SKorea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBPrtuJEz7ml49zJ0vScu6UuRQrG__KIw1T-SDWF8YdGJb_HyIZg5TqOSv-C1S-Ct9-IEmvT4iUwblU5zNbbVL426lM_IDNcQPT4QRycbB4h9nSFQ1ubHMpHyZa2Uu62LdSe0CbpgHDyXbP_9SPgmecr59WIvLNmHNUHQdIKIVehQKj-lXHmntsx6qQ/s1600/SKorea.jpg" width="275" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">The movie</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><em style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Devotion</em><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">tells the story of Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in U.S. Navy history, and his friendship with Tom Hudner, who became the Navy's most celebrated wingmen. The film makes points about race, friendship, heroism and the Korean War, sometimes referred to as the forgotten war. Those are important, but the movie offers forgotten economic lessons for today as well. </span><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The two Koreas that emerged from the disaster of war offer a case study in what causes economic development, that is, poverty reduction. The Koreas are an important experiment because, as in all good scientific experiments, only one variable changed - the economic institutions. Before World War I, Korea had been unified for twelve centuries. The culture and language were uniform, and the “Hermit” kingdom was one of the poorest on the planet. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>In 1910, Japan colonized Korea and built industries to supply Japan and later its war against Asia. <a href="https://www.fpri.org/article/2017/04/nations-prosper-case-north-south-korea/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Japan confiscated land so that</a>, “By 1930, the colonial government was by far the largest landowner in Korea possessing almost 40 percent of Korea’s land area…Even though by the end of World War II, Korea was, after Japan, the second most industrialized nation in Asia, the human costs of the colonial period were massive, and most Koreans were poor and uneducated.”<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">After World War II, The U.S. and U.S.S.R. divided Korea at the 38th parallel into the American (South) and Soviet (North) occupation zones. Two years later the North invaded the South and the Korean war began. Three years later, the war ended at the 38th parallel with tens of thousands of Americans and far more Koreans and Chinese dead and the Korean peninsula destroyed. In the 1960s, per capita GDP of South Korea was about $1,600. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">By 2011, GDP per capita had risen to $32,000 in the south. What happened? South Korea embraced mostly capitalist economic principles. It helped that Christianity grew rapidly there, too, which suppressed envy enough to allow for innovation. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Meanwhile, North Korea clung to Marxist economic policies even as the Soviet Union collapsed, Eastern Europe destroyed the Iron Curtain and China launched its rise to prosperity through slightly freer markets. Up to a million people died by famine during the 1990s and North Korea remains one of the world’s poorest nations. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">North Korea, the old Soviet Union, China under Mao, Venezuela and Cuba are examples of the principles of Marx taken to their logical conclusion. Socialism must make nations totalitarian and poor if the government follows Marxist policies consistently and without regard to consequences, as F.A. Hayek demonstrated in his classic book, <em>The Road to Serfdom</em>. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Of course, socialists in the U.S. such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez don’t want to follow socialism to its logical conclusion because they know about those disasters. They don’t want to eat the whole golden goose, just a leg or two, something like what Europe has done. They see capitalism and full socialism as two great evils and believe a golden mean exists in which they can take only the good from each and leave the worst behind, thereby creating paradise. They believe they could achieve that through heavy business regulation, taxation and redistribution of wealth. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">But the fact is that there is no golden mean. Those in the poorest fifth in the U.S., which is far from being capitalist, <a href="http://rdmckinney.blogspot.com/2019/11/african-americans-are-among-richest.html#more" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">are among the planet’s richest people</a> and equal in standards of living to the average citizen of the European Union. And U.S. citizens are freer. Democratic socialism in Europe hasn’t achieved paradise. It has stopped the slide into poverty and totalitarianism somewhere in the middle. The U.S. could be more like Europe by becoming poorer and less free through more socialism. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Hayek explained that the slide into poverty and less freedom happens because every government intervention in the market produces consequences that even socialists don’t like. But instead of rolling back socialist policies, they demand greater socialism to combat the bad outcomes of previous policies. Eventually, the increased poverty and lack of freedom become too much and people rebel against more socialism. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">It’s good to remember the Korean War for the heroism of the soldiers and for its economic lessons. </p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-90600560892605027932023-01-14T14:15:00.002-06:002023-01-14T14:15:27.179-06:00Railroad strike shows unions violate Biblical principles<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9eNW6ygaSeIaeubt6XZhCLE_99dpAny1EBDGQAyfn-d0Rcwa-NZcLAmj87uTQWAaRtaLLoRX76jWEljdiDxWqZwl2zMQtg2AwSm_8OqU5b2NZkZ2Ek1sg9sHMzLyUSA6w8-VmuResR143r8l7zpD_n2EGHc6AVWsJgBhA2an79jU6xqc7xA2hd6rSdQ/s300/railroad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9eNW6ygaSeIaeubt6XZhCLE_99dpAny1EBDGQAyfn-d0Rcwa-NZcLAmj87uTQWAaRtaLLoRX76jWEljdiDxWqZwl2zMQtg2AwSm_8OqU5b2NZkZ2Ek1sg9sHMzLyUSA6w8-VmuResR143r8l7zpD_n2EGHc6AVWsJgBhA2an79jU6xqc7xA2hd6rSdQ/s1600/railroad.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">With their threat to strike, railroad unions are holding a gun to the heads of American consumers to force railroads to pay employees more. Unions asked for fifteen paid sick days, but the railroads have offered one personal day. More than 400 groups recently called on Congress to intervene, fearing a strike would idle shipments of food and fuel while inflicting billions of dollars of economic damage.</span><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/400-groups-urge-us-lawmakers-take-immediate-steps-block-potential-rail-strike-2022-11-28/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">According to Reuters</a>, “A rail traffic stoppage could freeze almost 30% of U.S. cargo shipments by weight, stoke inflation and cost the American economy as much as $2 billion per day by unleashing a cascade of transport woes affecting U.S. energy, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and retail sectors.” Unions and railroads have until Dec. 9 to resolve differences.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">While not all support the strike, most Americans support unions because they hold to the myth that unions caused the increases in standards of living in this country over the past century and a half by forcing businesses to pay workers more than the market wage. However, the actual history of how U.S. workers attained one the highest standards of living in the world credits capitalism. In the Gilded age, before unions became powerful, the wages and standard of living of American workers soared at rates rarely seen since, even as the nation absorbed a tsunami of poor immigrants looking for jobs. How?<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">High profits encouraged massive investment in U.S. industries and forced companies to compete for workers with higher wages, better working conditions and more leisure time. Investment in better tools increased worker productivity. Child labor ended in the same way. Laws against it appeared when the practice had nearly vanished because rising standards of living made child labor unnecessary for a family’s survival.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The truth is that union members take their higher wages from other workers. As any introduction to economics class will teach, wages higher than the market rate cause unemployment. Unions cause it among their own workers because companies must shed some employees to pay for the higher wages of those who remain, much as happens with minimum wage laws.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Companies pass on some of the union wage increases through higher prices to consumers, who must buy less of other goods so they can pay the higher prices demanded by union-made products. Less demand for non-union goods means lower revenues and wages for workers who make them.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Also, unionized companies squeeze suppliers by reducing what they pay for supplies. Suppliers then must cut back on the number of workers they hire or reduce wages. Finally, union wages force companies that compete in the international market to send jobs overseas in search of lower wages. All these methods of compensating for higher union wages cause greater unemployment, meaning union workers extract their higher wages from non-union laborers.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Union workers tend to strike against their employers when profits rise as they have lately, hoping to carve out for themselves a larger slice of the profit pie. But those same workers refuse to take pay cuts when profits fall, or their employers suffer losses.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Biblically, union workers violate the just price doctrine distilled by theologians over centuries. Theologians had debated what constitutes a just price, including wages, for centuries when during the Reformation they concluded that a just price can be found only in a free market without either side in the negotiations being coerced. Jesus <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/jesus-parable-endorses-market-wage-versus-wage-controls.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">endorsed freely negotiated wages</a> as a just price in his parable about the vineyard workers.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Finally, unions violate the Biblical right to property (Thou shalt not steal) held by the owners of companies because ownership exists only when the owner can dispense with his property in a free market without coercion.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">A union worker might be upset if a waiter held a gun to his head and demanded a higher tip. He might even consider it theft.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-73626497866402186172023-01-14T14:08:00.005-06:002023-01-14T14:08:41.340-06:00FTX’s greed, corruption isn't capitalism's fault<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_9rPYF6Y6tWejaM4_aWIo_UNxpkDhbz22kLhbcqtAHSySR4P17KUqoEvDLwjCwpBEGipghWrzqxJ543RZsfbpYJxMr90dTWOD7N2O-GG6-LH-joJP9fH-clEY-FVGZD4uWfO7ciZ_KHow4FY6FmOY2IXP7AYpQ-CSizUc2TxvEYM6UswU4Upbd16_qQ/s760/SBF.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="760" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_9rPYF6Y6tWejaM4_aWIo_UNxpkDhbz22kLhbcqtAHSySR4P17KUqoEvDLwjCwpBEGipghWrzqxJ543RZsfbpYJxMr90dTWOD7N2O-GG6-LH-joJP9fH-clEY-FVGZD4uWfO7ciZ_KHow4FY6FmOY2IXP7AYpQ-CSizUc2TxvEYM6UswU4Upbd16_qQ/s320/SBF.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br />Recently, FTX, a digital coin trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, declared bankruptcy and shocked some people in the world of investing. The company collapsed from a valuation of $32 billion to nearly zero. George Selgin, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia, has written a<span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><a href="https://www.alt-m.org/2022/11/21/BANK-AND-CRYPTO-RUNS-FACTX-VS-FICTION/" style="color: #1774ce; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">good analysis</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">of the fiasco.</span><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">To boil down the complexities, FTX used the funds of depositors to make loans to its subsidiary, a venture capital firm called Alameda. Alameda made poor investments and lost so much money that it couldn’t repay FTX, and both tanked. Few depositors will get their money back. Clearly, Bankman-Fried became greedy and cost those who trusted him billions of dollars.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Michael Frost might say, “What did you expect? Capitalism cranks out evil people.” This is Frost’s fifth point in his article “<a href="https://mikefrost.net/5-reasons-capitalism-is-not-christian/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">5 Reasons Capitalism is not Christian</a>.” I responded to his other four points <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/lazy-theology-leads-to-socialism.html" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/capitalism-punishes-greed.html" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/anti-capitalist-theologian-ignores-jesus-endorsement-of-wages.html" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here </a>and <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/theologian-wrongly-blames-free-market-for-ecological-crisis.html" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a>. In his last point, Frost blames capitalism for destroying democracy:<p></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have pointed out that, ‘a market arena of self-interested and anonymous interaction might reduce not only the need for compassion, but also the sentiment itself. In this respect, the economy produces people as well as things, and the capitalist economy produces people that are not ideally equipped with the democratic sentiments and capacities…’</p><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">It results in elites controlling the political system, governments serving the interests of private capitalists, and very limited autonomy for workers.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Frost’s main point above ("... the capitalist economy produces people ...") is that capitalism <em>causes</em> people to become evil, as it did to Bankman-Fried. (Inversely, he might believe that socialism produces good people.) Keep in mind that Frost is a theologian and has written or edited 19 books of theology. Yet he attributes the cause of evil in humans to an economic system, even though he knows the doctrine of original sin, that people sin because we have a strong tendency toward evil issuing from Adam and Eve that only Christ can change.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span style="color: #10132c;">Atheists in the Enlightenment fabricated the nonsense that people are born good and turn bad only because of oppression, with property as the greatest oppressor.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Frost should also know that opposition to democracy existed long before the advent of capitalism. Historians claim that ancient Greeks invented democracy, but only the elite landowners in Greece participated. Greeks considered prostitution a useful service and had many temples with male and female prostitutes as part of the worship, but they despised commerce as one of the worst evils of mankind. Throughout history monarchs dominated and opposed democracy.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Frost’s second point is that capitalism enriches a group of elites who bribe politicians to pass legislation, or enact regulations that favor the elite. So far there is no evidence Bankman-Fried did that, but such corruption clearly happens today. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1986/press-release/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">James Buchanan won the Nobel prize</a> for stating the obvious. Businesspeople work mainly through <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">regulatory capture</a> for special treatment.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">But does capitalism <em>cause</em> it?</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Capitalism requires government limited to just the punishment of criminals who violate the rights to life, liberty and the property of others. Of course, the state can’t violate those rights either. The Apostle Paul wrote “… for it [government] is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a servant of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. ... For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.” (<a href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?v=Romans+13%3A4-6&version=ESV" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Romans 13:4-6</a>)</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">A few theologians camp on the phrase “for it is a servant of God to you for good …” and imagine that God intended governments to do anything that anyone can imagine as contributing to the common good. But the verses that follow strictly limit the good that governments do to punishing criminals: verse six ends with “… devoting themselves to this very thing.” What “very thing?” The punishment of criminals.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Capitalism demands the government treat all citizens equally because God does, and the government is His servant. So if it gives to one group it must give the same to all. With such a limited state as described by Paul, businessmen gain nothing from bribing politicians, so politics is much less corrupt.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The U.S. was mostly capitalist from the 18th century through the early 20th century, until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president. FDR struck down the requirement that the state treat all citizens the same and vastly expanded the power of the state to reward and punish different groups of citizens, especially corporations. In the decades since, Republicans and Democrats have continued to grow the power of the state, thus making it lucrative to bribe politicians.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Federal Register of new regulations grew by 75,000 pages every year from 1970 until 2008, at which point it jumped to 100,000 pages annually. Are Americans such unruly people that we need that volume of regulations to corral us? No. Most of those regulations were written to reward large corporations for their campaign contributions by limiting competition from smaller firms. That’s one reason a hand full of corporate cartels dominate industries in the U.S.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Frost is wrong; neither capitalism nor socialism “produce people.” We inherited our evil natures from Adam and Eve. And capitalism didn’t create the corrupt political system we suffer from today, socialist policies did. We don’t enjoy capitalism today, but a form of fascism light. FDR launched it with his socialist policies and succeeding generations of politicians have perpetuated it because it enriches them too.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-472634515787159812023-01-14T14:04:00.005-06:002023-01-14T14:04:29.435-06:00Christian theologian wrongly blames free market for ecological crisis<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNMM8JuJw-5MEPwepCSSumOYmeadCO7EQhwPRxL3nocqTuNyUzSPhJS6bHCnzXHlQP_1Zcm92mBOtHnQn64YuhjdnMprz9B4-PfoYH3CJxEv2b9jQCEpilUwG6sGxpzHoO-7SECnEBzNRzwIx4UCSSckjrCegDFW8H4ruuX5lcYEwz3BMd2zRt5qukmw/s760/world.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="507" data-original-width="760" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNMM8JuJw-5MEPwepCSSumOYmeadCO7EQhwPRxL3nocqTuNyUzSPhJS6bHCnzXHlQP_1Zcm92mBOtHnQn64YuhjdnMprz9B4-PfoYH3CJxEv2b9jQCEpilUwG6sGxpzHoO-7SECnEBzNRzwIx4UCSSckjrCegDFW8H4ruuX5lcYEwz3BMd2zRt5qukmw/s320/world.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference was winding down in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, as I write this article. Speaking at the conference,</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/11/11/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-27th-conference-of-the-parties-to-the-framework-convention-on-climate-change-cop27-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">President Joe Biden advertised</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">that the bill he disguised as inflation reduction was really a way to push the Left’s climate agenda, which is unpopular among many Americans, through Congress:</span><p></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“We are racing forward to do our part to avert the ‘climate hell’ that the U.N. Secretary-General so passionately warned about earlier this week. … And this summer, the United States Congress passed and I signed into law my proposal for the biggest, most important climate bill in the history of our country — the Inflation Reduction Act.” </p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a href="https://mikefrost.net/5-reasons-capitalism-is-not-christian/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Mike Frost blames</a> capitalism for creating the looming “climate hell” because, he wrote, “In order to exist, capitalism must expand without end.” That unrestrained growth destroys the environment and impoverishes the nations that climate change damages the most. The charge of unlimited growth and environmental destruction is Frost’s fourth indictment. I responded to Frost’s first three misconceptions about capitalism <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/lazy-theology-leads-to-socialism.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/capitalism-punishes-greed.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/anti-capitalist-theologian-ignores-jesus-endorsement-of-wages.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Most people agree that being wealthy is better than being poor, all other things remaining the same. Frost complains that capitalists take that to the extreme by worshipping GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth. Here are three points Frost got from Joel Kovel, a founder of eco-socialism:<p></p><ol style="color: #10132c; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2em;"><li style="margin: 0.4em 0px;">Capitalism tends to degrade the conditions of its own production.</li><li style="margin: 0.4em 0px;">Capitalism must expand without end in order to exist.</li><li style="margin: 0.4em 0px;">Capital leads to a chaotic world-system, increasingly polarized between rich and poor, which cannot adequately address the ecological crisis.</li></ol><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Of course, a Marxist would say such things. Marx wrote similar nonsense 150 years ago without any evidence, and there is still no evidence for them. But letting Marxists define capitalism is no different from atheists defining Christianity. Atheists could be no more honest than Marxists.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">There is nothing in the writings of the theologians who distilled the principles of capitalism in the 16th century that requires endless growth. No one at that time thought economic growth was possible or that people could control it. That was God’s work. After all, standards of living had not changed from pre-history until the 16th century, so that must be how God wanted people to live.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The sudden explosion of wealth in the Dutch Republic of the 17th century surprised everyone: theologians, scientists, scholars and kings. Kings tasked their wisest people with finding out how the Dutch had achieved such wealth, while Spain had grown poorer despite stealing hundreds of shiploads of silver and gold from the Americas. Peter de la Court in Holland explained it, but few paid attention until Adam Smith wrote <em>Wealth of Nations</em>. Smith recognized that the Dutch had become wealthy by fully implementing his system of natural liberty over a century before.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Smith did not make growth a requirement of capitalism, but following his principles will cause growth. He wrote, “Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Although growth isn’t necessary, capitalists see growth as good because it reduces poverty. Socialists claim they can reduce poverty, too, but 150 years of history prove that socialism has never done anything but impoverish everyone. Growth is less a <em>goal</em> than a <em>test</em> of capitalism: if we aren't growing, we must not be following the principles. But I have been unable to find any proponent of capitalism who saw growth as necessary. Still, there are limits to capitalist growth: savings drive growth, and the lack of savings kills it. Also, central bank manipulation of the money supply can halt growth when money printing generates unsustainable growth that ends in recessions.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/lazy-theology-leads-to-socialism.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">I responded to Kovel’s third point</a> about increasing inequality earlier. What about his environmental objection? After the collapse of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe and the exposure of the poverty in those states, socialists had to abandon their economic defense of socialism and put all of <a href="http://rdmckinney.blogspot.com/2018/03/climate-change-is-socialist-groupthink.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">their hopes for advancing their ideology on environmentalism</a>. If capitalism doesn’t take from the poor and give to the rich, and it doesn’t depend on endless growth, maybe Frost is right that it destroys the environment?</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Wrong! There is a strong correlation between economic freedom (capitalism) and a clean environment. The nations with the worst pollution are former socialist ones or corrupt “emerging” market countries.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Capitalism has protected the environment with one principle: private property. People won’t tear up their own property; that’s human nature. But they will tear up the property of others. The worst environmental disasters in the U.S. have happened on government-owned properties such as military bases and national forests. Timber producers such as Weyerhaeuser don’t clear cut their own land, but they do clear cut government owned land. In countries where the state owns most of the land, loggers buy bureaucrats to look the other way while they destroy forests.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Freer countries, though not capitalist, like the U.S., enjoy such clean environments that socialists had to invent a new pollutant: CO2, the gas every human and animal exhales. According to them, our high standards of living produce massive amounts of CO2 that warm the planet and cause flooding and droughts. But the hysteria behind the fear of a “climate hell” hasn’t fooled many Americans, because some things are too obvious to miss.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">For example, the climate has been warming since the last ice age when glaciers covered most of North America and Europe. Those glaciers retreated long before the Industrial Revolution. Sea levels have been rising for millennia. <a href="https://edepot.wur.nl/194047" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Here</a> and <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4020-5741-0_26.pdf" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">here</a> are two papers that prove that 99% of sea level increases happened before 1800. Archeologists have found several ancient cities built dozens of meters below the ocean’s surface.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert was good farmland. A changing climate transformed it into desert long before the Industrial Revolution. Greenland was once hotter than it is today. Below the ice that covers it are the remains of Viking farms built around 1000 AD. I will become concerned about the temperature of the planet when Greenland’s ice cap melts.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Today, almost 8 billion people inhabit this planet, up from 1 billion in 1900. The additional 7 billion wouldn’t be alive today without the amazing productivity of capitalism to produce food and clothing. Economic growth was necessary to provide for them. Having eight times as many people on the planet could cause enormous pollution, but in the counties with the freest markets, capitalism has solved that problem as well.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Frost and Kovel are wrong on all three points. Capitalism doesn’t require unrestricted growth, but it is the only system to have ever lifted people out of poverty instead of pushing them down into worse poverty, as socialism does. And capitalism protects the environment better than any government has.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-83624083669264834842022-11-18T16:02:00.002-06:002022-11-18T16:03:43.919-06:00Capitalism liberated women from the toil and spinning that Jesus talked about<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUu_aOxJWUjA6Ab1jDrsI13hksKFBpVw1N9CARL5ll_X_3ZMTVi_09DyVwYtq6PY8JRAZlPCZQN1Vvjfz1-WJgMS70gJhro46QEeXQ6GjBVqK1nDjPpIJ_tRsvhBfmc1C0y1LGt3yXW5Wmwf5x1Dl2-n5Ie1qIRXDPU-lKoB7IVifEM6MFnd5_d0jR9w/s210/Textiles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="210" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUu_aOxJWUjA6Ab1jDrsI13hksKFBpVw1N9CARL5ll_X_3ZMTVi_09DyVwYtq6PY8JRAZlPCZQN1Vvjfz1-WJgMS70gJhro46QEeXQ6GjBVqK1nDjPpIJ_tRsvhBfmc1C0y1LGt3yXW5Wmwf5x1Dl2-n5Ie1qIRXDPU-lKoB7IVifEM6MFnd5_d0jR9w/w454-h259/Textiles.jpg" width="454" /></a></div><br /><span face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 18px;">Jesus warned his followers not to be consumed with daily cares in Matt 6:28-29, “And why are you anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."</span><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Lilies don’t spin, but women did. Spinning yarn consumed the lives of most women in Jesus’ day. From pre-history until the invention of the spinning wheel, girls were taught from the age of 6 to spin thread using a <a href="https://woolery.com/spinning/hand-spindles/spindles.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">spindle</a>, usually a wooden dowel jammed into a hole in a clay or rock disc called a whorl. Spindles resembled a crude top. The short end of the dowl sticking out of the whorl had a hook for grabbing and spinning the fibers while the thread was wound on the longer part. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Until they died or were too old, girls and women spun yarn from the time they got out of bed until they went to bed. They spun while cooking and taking care of children. They spun thread while washing clothes and dishes and talking to friends. Jewish women probably didn’t spin on the Sabbath. Demand for cloth was great and spinning the yarn was the main bottle neck. Navies required large amounts of cloth for sails, according to Virginia Postrel in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/75319.Virginia_Postrel" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><em>The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World</em></a><em>:</em></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight hours a day with a heavy spindle whorl to produce relatively coarse yarn, a spinner would toil 385 days to make enough for the sail. Plucking the sheep and preparing the wool for spinning required another 600 days. From start to finish, Viking sails took longer to make than the ships they powered.” </p><cite style="display: block; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-style: normal; text-align: right;">Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World</cite></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Girls produced the coarse yarn needed for sails and the clothing of the poor. After years of practice, women could spin very fine threads used for the soft clothing of wealthy politicians and earned more for it. </p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“Contrary to the impression left by toga party costumes, the toga was closer to the size of a bedroom than a bedsheet, about 20 square meters (24 square yards). Assuming 20 threads to the centimeter (about 130 to the inch), historian Mary Harlow calculates that a toga required about 40 kilometers (25 miles) of wool yarn—enough to reach from Central Park to Greenwich, Connecticut. Spinning that much yarn would take some nine hundred hours, or more than four months of labor, working eight hours a day, six days a week. Ignoring textiles, Harlow cautions, blinds classical scholars to some of the most important economic, political, and organizational challenges that ancient societies faced."</p><cite style="display: block; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-style: normal; text-align: right;">Virginia Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World</cite></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The Bible often emphasizes the wealth of people by describing their fine clothes because the time and labor needed to spin the yarn and weave it into cloth made clothing extremely expensive. As a result, most people owned just one suit of clothes until after capitalism made them cheaper. For example, the High Priest wore several layers of clothing made from fine spun linen, the most expensive cloth at the time. “Fine spun” meant a high thread count in today’s terms. It took women many years of practice to learn to spin such thin threads of linen. <p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Also, bleaching cloth white or dying it blue, purple and scarlet were very expensive processes. That’s why peasants tended to wear clothes made of coarsely spun threads, often with knots in them due to the thread breaking during spinning, and the same color as the wool the sheep wore without having been bleached white. The harlot in Revelation 17 wears fine linen dyed purple and scarlet, like that of the high priest. Jesus wore a <em>chiton</em>, a tunic that fell just below the knees because only the wealthy could afford the <em>stolai</em> (Mark 12:38) that went to their ankles. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The spinning wheel became widely used in Europe in the 16th century and increased productivity by as much as ten times what a woman could produce with a spindle. Still, women spent most of their time with a spinning wheel. During the summers in the Dutch Republic, girls would set up their spinning wheels in a square so they could visit and young men could drop by and flirt. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Women continued to be lashed to spinning wheels until the invention of mechanical spinners during the Industrial Revolution that took spinning from home production to factories, which deprived many families of the income from spinning and weaving cloth at home. The Luddites tried to stop progress by destroying the machines in factories. They could see only the short-term costs to them, not the long-term benefits. Fortunately for women, they failed. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The textile mills so hated by the Luddites and socialists, liberated women from being chained to spinning thread during most of the hours they were awake. Textile mills led increases in standards of living by making one of the necessities of life, clothing, much less expensive. They freed women to do other work while reducing the cost of clothing so much that most people could afford several suits of clothes and many middle class people began to dress like the nobility. Textile mills were the greatest women’s liberation movement in the history of mankind. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In Jesus’ day, girls and women were virtual slaves to spinning thread and anxiety about it must have distracted them from the Gospel. That’s why Jesus mentioned spinning in his sermon. Thanks to capitalism, women no longer suffer from the anxiety of spinning enough thread to sell to help feed their families.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-29004050874331737292022-11-18T16:00:00.002-06:002022-11-18T16:00:27.246-06:00Why Christians should care about inflation<p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The official rate of inflation recently soared above 8% according to state statistics. Readers may have a gut feeling that prices have risen higher, and you may be right. <a href="http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">According to Shadow Statistics</a>, the inflation rate is closer to 15% using the same methods the US government employed in 1990. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Why should Christians be concerned about inflation? Because it’s theft from the poor and middle classes on the grandest scale possible. Eight percent inflation means that someone has stolen 8% of your money by making it buy less food, clothing, gas, etc. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-blames-putins-price-hike-gas-prices-depend/story?id=84034646" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Biden blamed Putin for inflation</a>: "Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should on hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away…"</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/elizabeth-warren-covid-19-price-gouging-inflation" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span></span></a></p><a name='more'></a><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/elizabeth-warren-covid-19-price-gouging-inflation" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Senator Elizabeth Warren</a> (D) blamed Covid and greed, but especially greed:<p></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">"What has also happened is that now that we’re living in America where there’s a lot more concentration in certain industries, look at the oil industry, look at the meat industry, look at groceries generally. What’s happened is that these companies have said ‘you know, we’ll pass along costs, but while we’re at it and everyone’s talking about rising costs let’s just add an extra big dollop of cost increases to expand our profits."</p></blockquote><div class="message-from" data-click-type="ads-native" style="border-color: rgb(219, 219, 219); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; clear: none; color: #10132c; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0px; margin: 1.5625rem 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 1.5625rem 0px 0.9375rem;"><div style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; flex: 0 1 19.25rem; font-size: 1rem; margin-bottom: 0.625rem; padding-right: 32.5938px; vertical-align: top; width: 308px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">They’re both wrong and merely recycling the popular theories of socialists and others uneducated in economics. History, including recent events, is so complex that politicians can find justification for any crackpot theory. Understanding inflation requires some knowledge of economics. </span></div><div style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; flex: 0 1 19.25rem; font-size: 1rem; margin-bottom: 0.625rem; padding-right: 32.5938px; vertical-align: top; width: 308px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">The real cause of price inflation is the tsunami of new money the Federal Reserve has unleashed on the economy over the past several years. In some studies, the maximum impact on prices of that flood of money can come as late as five years from date of the policy implementation. In other words, today’s price increases may be the result of policy changes years ago. The great monetary economist </span><a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/258396#:~:text=Milton%20Friedman%20challenges%20this%20view,rather%20than%20ameliorate%2C%20economic%20fluctuations." style="color: #1774ce; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Milton Friedman argued</a><span style="font-size: 18px;"> that monetary policy acts with long and variable lags.</span></div></div><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">So, how does the Fed control the price of eggs at Walmart? Understanding the answer requires being able to follow short trains of logic. Many people can’t manage that, so they become suckers for conspiracy theories. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Fed initiates price inflation on purpose to “stimulate” economic growth by lowering the interest rate it charges banks or by purchasing securities from banks, which then have more money to lend. But to encourage more people to borrow, banks must reduce their interest rates on loans. Finally, businesses, the government, and individuals borrow and spend the new money. Most of the borrowing and spending today comes from the federal government. </p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">In economic language, that spending represents an increase in demand for goods and services, so when you hear reporters say higher prices result from demand and not an increase in the money supply, readers will understand that the two can’t be separated. Monetary policy works by increasing demand. Yes, supply chain bottlenecks can make inflation worse but they are always temporary and self-reversing. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Inflation is destructive because prices coordinate production and consumption by signaling companies to produce more when prices are high and less when prices are low. Consumers buy less when prices are high and more when they are low, all other things remaining the same. But coordination happens only when prices accurately reflect supply and demand and accurate prices require a relatively fixed stock of money, such as the US enjoyed during the best years of the gold standard. When the Fed counterfeits money to expand the supply, it creates an artificial demand for cars and houses and eggs. Because the supply of eggs hasn’t risen, their prices rise.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Fed process of money creation is a clear violation of the Biblical commands prohibiting false weights and measures: “You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity” (<a href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=NIV&v=Leviticus%2019:35" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Leviticus 19:35</a>). “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight” (<a href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=NIV&v=Proverbs%2011:1" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Proverbs 11:1</a>). “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small” (<a href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=NIV&v=Deuteronomy%2025:13-16" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 25:13-16</a>).</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">During much of the history in the Hebrew Bible, money was a weight. The shekel was the same weight as 180 barley grains. When Abraham bought a cave to bury Sarah in in <a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Genesis%2023" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Genesis 23</a>, he paid 400 shekels of silver for it and would have used a scale to weigh the amount of silver. The dollar, pound, and most units of money were originally measures of weight. So, when the Fed floods the country with new money that it created out of thin air, it corrupts the money in the same way that false weights did in the Hebrew Bible. </p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Who benefits from inflation? Those working in the financial sector and the government because they get the new money first before prices have risen. The working poor get the new money last and become poorer. Fed monetary policies are one of the main reasons for rising inequality in the US.</span> </p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-20573610834128619292022-11-18T15:56:00.004-06:002022-11-18T15:56:24.041-06:00Social justice is injustice<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">The Christian left objects to inequality of incomes and wealth because they want justice, they say. In other words, people earning different amounts of income violates justice. The left makes up only about 10% of evangelicals, but they enjoy the favor of the mainstream media and so are much noisier than the majority. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Pinning down a definition of justice is difficult these days. It means something different to everyone while socialists work overtime to create as much confusion as possible. And they have done well. Take for instance the phrase “climate justice.” What does that even mean? Still, many take it for granted that inequality is injustice. Former President <a href="http://www.barackobama.net/barack-obama-reclaiming-the-american-dream.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Barak Obama said</a>, “I’ve been told of the injustice in the growing divide between Main Street and Wall Street by the lowest-paid workers and the wealthiest billionaires.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, wrote in <a href="https://blog.acton.org/archives/15714-commentary-prophet-jim-wallis-and-the-ecclesia-of-economic-ignorance.html" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street</a>, “For three decades, we have experienced a social engineered inequality that is really a sin – of biblical proportions. We have indeed seen class warfare, but this war has been waged by the wealthy and their political allies against the poor and the middle class.”<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Tim Keller, founder of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, <a href="https://christianintellectual.com/the-theological-problem-with-tim-kellers-so-called-social-justice/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">expresses a similar view</a>: "‘If you do not actively and generously share your resources with the poor, you are a robber. You are unjust.’ He makes a similar claim in his article, ‘The Gospel and the Poor,’ saying, ‘To fail to share what you have is not just uncompassionate, but unfair, unjust.’” </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christians can study all that philosophers from Plato to Plantinga have written on the subject and will be more confused than when they started. The philosophers’ goal seems to be to hammer the concept of justice into the idol of their idea of a good society. Instead, Christians should be concerned with how God defines justice.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Theologians have labored to obscure the topic as much as philosophers but this ain’t rocket surgery. The Hebrew Bible has two primary words they say mean justice, <em>tsadaqa </em>and <em>mishpat</em>. The late <a href="https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/2269078/jewish/Tzedek-Justice-and-Compassion.htm" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rabbi Jonathan Sacks</a> wrote of <em>tsadaqua</em> the following:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“<em>Tzedek/tzedakah</em> is almost impossible to translate, because of its many shadings of meaning: justice, charity, righteousness, integrity, equity, fairness and innocence. It certainly means more than strictly legal justice, for which the Bible uses words like <em>mishpat</em> and <em>din</em>.”</p><cite style="display: block; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-style: normal; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/2269078/jewish/Tzedek-Justice-and-Compassion.htm" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Tzedek: Justice and Compassion</a></cite></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Evangelical left conflate the two Hebrew words, <em>tsadaqa</em> and <em>mishpat</em>, in order to claim that giving to the poor is not charity but justice, meaning that to not give is theft. This tradition began early in Christian history. The Church Father <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/scottericalt/theft-from-the-poor-saints-on-social-justice/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ambrose wrote</a>, “It is no less a crime to take from him that has, than to refuse to succor the needy when you can and are well off.” And Chrysostom wrote, “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.” In other words, property doesn’t exist. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">If we take those comments literally then the poor should be able to go to court and sue the rich for more charity because the lack of concern for the poor is the same as breaking into our neighbor’s house and stealing his wife’s diamond necklaces. The Christian left doesn’t want that. It wants the state to take from the rich and distribute to the poor. But is that what God had in mind with the concepts involved in <em>tsadaqa </em>and <em>mishpat</em>? This is where Greek can help clarify because it tends to be more precise than Hebrew. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, usually translates <em>Mishpat</em> by nouns derived from <em>krino</em>, such as <em>krisis</em>, <em>krineis,</em><em>krima</em>, meaning “to judge,… punish, vindicate, and obtain justice,” according to the Dictionary of New Testament Theology (DNTT). Judges were called <em>kritai</em>. <a href="http://internetbiblecollege.net/Lessons/Relevant%20Greek%20Words%20About%20God%20The%20Judge.htm#_ftnref1" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">The Louw and Nida Lexicon</a> says <em>krino</em> means “to decide a question of legal right or wrong, and thus determine the innocence or guilt of the accused and assign appropriate punishment or retribution.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Septuagint usually translates <em>Tsadaqa</em> as <em>dikaiosune</em>, or righteousness. The DNTT says, “Righteousness in the OT is not a matter of actions conforming to a given set of absolute legal standards, but of behavior in keeping with the relationship between God and humans.” </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">To summarize, the Hebrew mishpat and the Greek <em>krisei</em>, <em>krisis</em>, <em>krineis</em>, and <em>krima</em> refer to judicial activity in courts of law when applied to humans. <em>Tsadaqa</em> and <em>dikaiosune</em> refer to personal righteousness in relation to God and other people that doesn’t involve courts or legal standards. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Of course, there is some connection. Righteous people will want to implement justice and evil ones to pervert it. Legal justice is the lower standard of morality, but that doesn’t mean they are synonyms. The Bible often uses the words together, signaling that they refer to different concepts. In the following verses, the Hebrew word is given first followed by the Greek in parentheses. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Leviticus 19:15 says, “You shall do no injustice in court (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krisei</em>). You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness (t<em>sadaqa</em>, <em>dikaiosune</em>) shall you judge (<em>tishpot</em>, verb of <em>mishpat</em>, <em>krineis</em>) your neighbor. (ESV)” </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Psalm 89:14 says, “Righteousness (<em>tsadaq</em>, <em>dikaiosyne</em>) and justice (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krima</em>) are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Psalm 106:3 states, “Blessed are they who observe justice (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krisin</em>), who do righteousness (<em>tsadaqa</em>, <em>dikaiosune</em>) at all times!”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“When justice (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krima</em>) is done, it is a joy to the righteous (<em>tsadaqa</em>, <em>dikaion</em>) but terror to evildoers. (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Proverbs%2021:15" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Proverbs 21:15</a>,)”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Amos%205:24" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Amos 5:24</a> demands, “But let justice (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krima</em>) roll down like water, righteousness (<em>tsadaqa</em>, <em>dikaiosyne</em>) like an ever-flowing stream.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“Learn to do good; seek justice (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krisin</em>), correct oppression; bring justice (<em>mishpat</em>, <em>krisin</em>) to the fatherless, and please the widow's cause,” (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Isaiah%201:17" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Isaiah 1:17</a>). </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">God often condemned the rich in the prophetic books for dealing unjustly with the poor and the Christian left interprets those passages to mean that a society is unjust if poverty exists. In reality, the princes who governed the nation bribed judges in courts to pervert the law and steal the lands of the poor. The injustice the prophets railed against was legal injustice, not the lack of charity. Justice is the only job of government, and the nation of Israel perverted it. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Bible never recommends, let alone requires an equal distribution of wealth. Why? Because people are sinners and if the government redistributed wealth indiscriminately, as the US does today, it would reward laziness, drunkenness, criminal behavior and drug use, the chief causes of poverty in the book of Proverbs. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Some of the confusion over social justice derives from ignorance of economics and clinging to the medieval view of wealth that one person can grow wealthier only at the expense of others. Before the advent of capitalism, most wealthy people stole their wealth from others. Afterwards, the West outlawed those methods so that people must create wealth honestly through commerce. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">But what about the Torah poor laws? Keller wrote in “<a href="https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/justice-in-the-bible/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Justice in the Bible</a>”, </p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“The Sabbath year law required that every seventh year all debts were cancelled (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Deuteronomy%2015:7-10" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 15:7-10</a>). An even more radical law was the law of the “Jubilee” year. Every 50 years, the land went back to its original allotments (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Leviticus%2025:8-55" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Leviticus 25:8-55</a>)….Then there were the laws of gleaning. Landowners were not to harvest out to the edges of their field, maximizing profits for themselves, and then later out of their great wealth, help the poor only through philanthropy…. Theologians like Calvin have taught that the basic theological ideas about wealth and justice reflected in the Mosaic laws are abiding…. As a result, we can say that to be radically generous is not only a matter of mercy, but of justice.”</p><cite style="display: block; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-style: normal; text-align: right;"><a href="https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/justice-in-the-bible/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Justice in the Bible</a></cite></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Pastor Keller would be right if in ancient Israel the poor could take a farmer to court for not leaving enough gleanings or disobeying the Sabbath year and Jubilee laws. But we know from scholars that the government of Israel, the courts, did not adjudicate such laws. They handled the civil laws, thou shalt not steal or murder, and left the moral and poor laws and tithing to God to enforce. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Still, even if socialists learned better economics and interpreted the Torah laws appropriately, they would demand that the state redistribute wealth more equally. The only motivation for it would be envy. Those who insist they want to redistribute wealth because they care about justice have merely redefined envy as justice.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-6892070031339909132022-11-18T15:54:00.003-06:002022-11-18T15:54:32.495-06:00If Christians care about the poor, they will care about the stock market crash<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">The Stock market, measured by the S&P 500, is down over 15% at the time of this writing, and is probably down more at the time of your reading. Should Christians care? They should. if they care about the poor.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">A collapsing stock market, also called a bear market, remains one of the best predictors of a looming recession. Economists joke that bear markets have predicted 10 of the last eight recessions. Still, that’s a better record than economists have, who have predicted none of the recessions in the past century.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The top <a href="https://www.aier.org/article/aier-leading-indicators-index-dips-back-below-neutral/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">business cycle models</a> include the stock and bond markets as leading indicators and the recent drop in both shouts that a recession is on the way. No one gets hurt more by a recession than the poor, who lose their jobs as unemployment rises and contributes to greater inequality. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Most Americans keep some savings in the stock market, if only in retirement accounts, pension funds, and life insurance. Those institutions used to invest in safe bonds, such as those issued by the U.S. government. But Federal Reserve monetary policy drove interest rates on bonds to near zero and forced those institutions to invest in the stock market to get the returns needed to pay retirees and policy holders. They have lost millions in the recent market decline.<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span style="color: #10132c;">The fall in the market results from the Federal Reserve’s promise to raise interest rates to kill inflation. Running at around 8% annually, inflation also hurts the poor: their dollars buy less food, gas, and other necessities. The Fed caused the high inflation that it is fighting through its irresponsible monetary policy since the last recession in 2008.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Fed economists believe that increasing the money supply will boost spending and jump start the economy after a recession. But for years after a recession, people hang onto the new money to rebuild savings lost from earlier market crashes and recessions in which they spent savings while unemployed. So, the Fed keeps printing new money until spending begins again.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The problem is that there are long and variable lags between Fed policy decisions and their impact on inflation and jobs. Rumors of changes in Fed policy impact the stock and bond markets almost immediately, which fools many economists into thinking everything else changes just as quickly. But studies show the lag between Fed policy changes and their impact on inflation to be one to two years. That means the inflation we suffer today is likely the result of policy decisions two years ago, and the increases in interest rates won’t have an effect for at least another year. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Fed’s manipulation of the money supply violates the Bible’s commands prohibiting false weights and measures. Amos 8:4-6 is a good example:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Hear this, you who trample the needy, to do away with the humble of the land, saying,</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“When will the new moon be over, so that we may sell grain, and the sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, to make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, and to cheat with dishonest scales, so as to buy the helpless for money and the needy for a pair of sandals, and that we may sell the refuse of the wheat?”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In the Hebrew Bible, merchants used scales to weigh silver when people paid for their goods. A shekel of silver weighed 180 barley grains. Evil merchants would use false, heavier weights to defraud customers and make them pay more than they should. The Fed does something similar today. The value of the U.S. dollar for most of our history was fixed at a certain weight of gold, which limited how much the Federal Reserve could manipulate its value. Eventually, politicians delinked the dollar from gold so the Fed could print as much as it wanted. The result is inflation, which the Fed counters through higher interest rates and recessions.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The dollar should be like a fixed weight that allows us to compare the values of other goods. An honest weight accurately reflects the demand for hamburgers, houses, and hotel rooms so that producers can coordinate their supply. When the Fed regularly changes the value of the dollar by printing more of them, it destroys that coordination and causes waste, inflation, and recessions. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Rising interest rates in the U.S. will benefit one group of people: the poor outside the U.S. who keep most of their savings in $100 dollar bills under their mattresses. Higher rates will cause the value of those dollars to rise against their local depreciating currencies and increase their savings.</p><p><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Most Christians think of the stock market as a playground for the rich and greedy. But if they care about the poor as they claim, they will care about the stock market.</span> </p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-72270582199759335962022-11-18T15:52:00.006-06:002022-11-18T15:52:49.728-06:00Bureaucrats vs. babies: how government caused the baby formula shortage<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Jesus singled out children as subjects of special care and protection. He rebuked His disciples for not letting children come to Him and threatened millstones to those who cause littles ones to stumble. And of course He said “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><em style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">water </em><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.”</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">If giving water to a little one carried a special reward, what judgment lies in store for those who prevent others from giving bottles to thirsty babies? Given the tragic, unjust and unnecessary government edicts which have led to the recent shortage in baby formula, that’s a question our government should be asking itself.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The shortage of baby formula first appeared last fall and was due to supply chain bottlenecks resulting from the pandemic. Then in February, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shut down the Abbott Labs plant that produces around 23% of all formula in the country. U.S. manufacturers produce 98% of all formula sold here. Just four companies produce 90%. This raises a lot of questions.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>When FDA bureaucrats shut down a plant that makes a quarter of the formula for babies, why didn't anyone consider that this may cause a critical shortage? The supply before the shutdown was already short about 20% and parents were screaming for relief. Is no one at the FDA smart enough to see that shutting down the Abbott plant would severely worsen the shortage, and so plan to alleviate it? Or were they too busy with LBGQT+ training to bother?<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span style="color: #10132c;">A full four months later, the federal government grudgingly decided to allow imports from Europe. That, along with re-opening the Abbott plant, should begin to help. But why did it take four months? And why haven’t we been importing European baby formula before this? After all, their standards are higher than those of the U.S. in some cases, and basic economics informs us that competition reduces prices while boosting quality. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The <a href="https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aier.org%2Farticle%2Fcronyism-makes-the-baby-formula-shortage-worse%2F&data=05%7C01%7Crmckinney%40ccok.com%7C5a9a1b6606b7465a936208da3e987793%7C78f2dcdcc9a84b209afa5cdd988d6b33%7C0%7C0%7C637891122097150570%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2BbOSa%2Bwu2mqYZidN1dhwTw4YB%2F3ROMOislMXlFPHtt4%3D&reserved=0" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">American Institute for Economic Research reported</a>, “U.S. Customs recently seized nearly 600 cases of formula from Germany and the Netherlands over labeling requirements. The agency’s self-congratulatory press release reads as though it had made a major drug bust, lauding its and the FDA’s ‘collective efforts to help keep our citizens safe.’”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">And the <a href="https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcafehayek.com%2F2022%2F05%2Fsome-non-covid-links-187.html%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Demail&data=05%7C01%7Crmckinney%40ccok.com%7C5a9a1b6606b7465a936208da3e987793%7C78f2dcdcc9a84b209afa5cdd988d6b33%7C0%7C0%7C637891122097150570%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=P8P8PToDBKuGvCvXnhsFjakHSe69xL%2B23cV8JrFPydQ%3D&reserved=0" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal wrote</a>, “Parents who tried to purchase directly from Europe had hundreds of dollars of formula seized by U.S. customs agents. One parent reported that she had nearly $700 of formula destroyed at the border—in the middle of a national formula shortage.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Why do only four companies control 90% of the supply? The answer lies in the desire of the majority of voters to have the federal government regulate industry. Americans believe in a fictional entity that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, always good, and watching over their welfare night and day. They call it Government. This fictional entity battles like a valiant knight against an evil, corporate dragon that would burn down every city and devour the helpless inhabitants if the Government knight didn’t defend them.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Mental magic keeps people from seeing that the Government they idolize is not what they imagine but is made up of nothing more than humans like them: politicians and bureaucrats have a strong tendency to selfishness, greed, envy, and all the other evils individuals are subject to. Or they imagine magic happens to the humans who become bureaucrats and politicians which transforms them into angels.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Mainstream economists have perpetuated this fairy tale for a century: they see market “failure” everywhere, so much failure that it’s a wonder the market works at all! Then they proclaim that the fictional character known as Government can fix these failures. But their definition of market failure comes from another fairy tale they authored, that of “perfect competition,” taught in every intro to econ text. The real world doesn’t and can’t match their fairy tale, but instead of admitting they are devoted to a fairy tale, they declare the real world market has failed.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The economist James Buchanan won a Nobel Prize for telling people that politicians and bureaucrats aren’t angels. He informed us that those politicians and bureaucrats are real flesh and blood humans. They go into government work for selfish reasons, not to magnanimously shepherd every detail of your life. They are no less or more selfish, greedy, envious, dishonest, or power hungry than the executives of corporations. Most Americans would be horrified to know that their knights and dragons are best buds.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Each talks smack about the other in public, but in private they often share beers. That’s because politicians lust for power, and need money to get it to win their next election. Corporations give them the money. But like any good businessman, CEOs want something in return. Usually, they want politicians to put their corporate people on the regulatory agencies that oversee their industries. The process is known as “<a href="https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/advocacy/issues/regulatory-capture#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20Regulatory%20Capture,agency%20is%20charged%20with%20regulating." rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">regulatory capture</a>.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Once on the staff of regulatory agencies, the corporate bureaucrats write regulations that favor the largest corporations. Of course, their motives are “pure as snow.” They only want to “promote” the health and safety of the American people. But few of the regulations they write have anything to do with health and safety and everything to do with blocking competition. After all, we have known for decades that Canada and Europe produce high quality baby formulas that the FDA refuses to allow Americans to buy.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">For a detailed explanation of the process, read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bootleggers-Baptists-Economic-Persuasion-Regulatory/dp/1939709369" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><em>Bootleggers and Baptists: How Economic Forces and Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics</em></a>. In short, bootleggers and Baptists had the same goal: to end legal sales of booze on Sunday. They had different reasons for wanting that. Baptists thought they were saving society; bootleggers wanted to have the Sunday market to themselves by eliminating competition from established liquor stores. But they cooperated to get the regulations or legislation passed. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In the formula fiasco, the FDA plays the role of Baptists: they only want to “protect” the health of babies. Corporate baby formula makers are the bootleggers: they want to limit competition from smaller businesses and foreigners. The result for babies has been higher prices for their food, or no formula at all.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Economists, mostly on the Austrian side, have been informing people about this racket for decades, but most have pressed their hands to their ears. For change to happen, adults must quit believing in fairy tale characters like Government and open their ears and eyes to reality.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-64850944001250794112022-11-18T15:50:00.005-06:002022-11-18T15:50:46.764-06:00If Jesus were physically here today, He’d promote capitalism<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Roger Olson, Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology at Baylor University, recently published an essay with the title, “</span><a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2022/02/why-i-am-a-socialist-because-i-am-a-christian/" style="color: #1774ce; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Why I Am a Socialist: Because I Am a Christian</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">.” He added, “I do think that laissez faire capitalism, especially its Social Darwinist variety, is contrary to the spirit, the ethos, of Jesus Christ, which is compassion for the weak, the vulnerable, the ‘little ones.’…What would Jesus advocate for if he were here, in person, physically, today?”</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In other words, today Jesus would be a socialist, according to Olson. But the professor errs in his logic, hermeneutics, history, and economics. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The obvious error in Olson’s reasoning is his logical leap, called the <em>non sequitur</em> fallacy. Olson believes that compassion requires the state to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Otherwise, there is no compassion. What about charity? Olson never mentions it. Is there really nothing between socialism and ruthless oppression of the poor? Olson believes so. The Bible says we should care for the poor, but insisting that only the state can provide for them is an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evel_Knievel#:~:text=Robert%20Craig%20%22Evel%22%20Knievel%20(,Hall%20of%20Fame%20in%201999." style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Evel Knievel logical leap across the Grand Canyon</a>. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>A PhD in theology ought to be familiar with the principles of hermeneutics, which are logic applied to interpretation of the Bible. One of the primary rules to guide this interpretation is to consider the audience. When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” and encouraged His followers to give to them, was He addressing politicians? No, politicians avoided Jesus and He wasn’t a political policy wonk, anyway. He spoke to crowds of the most common people in the nation, many of whom would become part of His Church. So, He encouraged individual charity to the poor. Charity in the Bible is never enforced by the state. It is required by God, not the government.<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span style="color: #10132c;">Another important principle of hermeneutics is to consider the historical context. Olson needs to read Jerry Bowyer’s book, The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics</span><em style="color: #10132c;">,</em><span style="color: #10132c;"> </span><span style="color: #10132c;">which shows that Jesus’ attacks on the rich took place when he preached in Judea where most rich people had stolen their wealth from others. The Bible often condemns the wicked wealthy, but portrays wealth gained honestly as a gift from God. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Olson is also ignorant of the 150 years in which economists proved Marx wrong. But for Olson, ignorance of economics is no problem; Marx said it, and that settles it: “The socialism I embrace is not tied to any political party… It is not Marxism, although it believes Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism has merit….it’s best visible representations are in the Scandinavian countries.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Olson is unaware that Finland (9), Denmark (10), and Sweden (11), rank above the U.S. (25) in terms of economic freedom <a href="https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">according to the Heritage Foundation’s index</a>. But that doesn’t mean those Scandinavian countries are capitalist. They are not. It means the U.S. is more socialist than the socialist countries Olson admires. Nor does he care that the poor in the U.S. are wealthier than the poor in Scandinavian countries because our standard of living is higher. But he recognizes that the U.S. has implemented many socialist programs: “Much of socialism is actually manifested in many things American society take for granted such as social security and Medicare and Medicaid and public ownership of many of the means of transportation, etc.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Olson ignores the warnings of 19th century Christians who feared giving too much to the poor instead of too little, as Marvin Olasky demonstrates in The Tragedy of American Compassion. Indiscriminate giving, which government welfare programs do, encourages drug and alcohol abuse, laziness, and single mother-headed households that produce most of our criminals. Indiscriminate giving to the poor vastly increases their numbers as more choose not to work and encourages the vices that keep people poor. We have proven that any American who finishes high school, stays off drugs and alcohol, doesn’t commit crimes, shows up to work on time, and is faithful to his wife or her husband, can live a middle-class American lifestyle, the highest standard of living in human history.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Allowing Marx to define capitalism for him, Olson offers a dishonest depiction of it: “What would Jesus advocate for if he were here, in person, physically, today? I believe he would speak out prophetically, as did the Hebrew prophets, against those who advocate government that allows the weak, the disadvantaged, the sick, the disabled, the poor to fall through the cracks simply to keep in place ‘economic freedom’ for the rich and powerful.” But having a drunk atheist define capitalism is as reasonable as letting atheists define Christianity; they won’t come close to the truth.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The 19th century was the golden age for laissez-faire capitalism in the U.S. and U.K. because theologians considered it to be Christian economics. It lifted citizens in both nations to extraordinary levels of prosperity compared to previous centuries. And because of our greater wealth, Christians took care of the poor better than anyone in history, without subsidizing alcoholics or men who refused to work.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Yet Olson considers capitalism a great evil. Does he analyze the economic theology of great proponents of capitalism, such as <a href="http://rdmckinney.blogspot.com/2017/06/christian-laissez-faire-built-this.html" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Francis Wayland, a Baptist Pastor</a>, president of Brown University when it was a Christian school, and author of one of the most popular economic textbooks of the 19th century? No, Olson doesn’t bother.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Few theologians have devoted the time necessary to learning economics. Like Francis Wayland, Paul Heyne was one who did, and he is worth reading, especially Are Economists Basically Dishonest? Christians should shun PhD-gilded theologians who, bored with theology, stray into the lanes of other disciplines like economics. They know no more than any random man off the street in other fields. And doing so, they dishonestly try to project the authority of their PhD in one field onto their ill-informed opinions in another.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">What would Jesus advocate for if he were here, in person, physically, today? He would promote laissez-faire capitalism, because He wrote the Book from which the principles of capitalism came.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-89019148060393351342022-11-18T15:48:00.003-06:002022-11-18T15:48:47.515-06:00Jesus cared about government and economics<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">An unscientific survey of theologians over the past decade has shown that the dominant views are:</span></p><ol style="color: #10132c; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2em;"><li style="margin: 0.4em 0px;">Jesus only cared about the Kingdom of God and nothing about government or</li><li style="margin: 0.4em 0px;">Jesus was a socialist.</li></ol><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Both are wrong. The more reasonable idea that Jesus came to establish the kingdom of God, but <em>also</em> cared about government, is as neglected as a teenager in foster care.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The New Testament has little to say about government. In Mark 12, the Pharisees and Herodians asked Jesus if they should pay taxes to Rome. Rabbis typically destroyed each other’s reputations by asking questions the victims couldn’t answer. They hoped to discredit Jesus as a teacher, as they had many other rabbis. But Jesus embarrassed his opponents:<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“And Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were amazed at Him.” (Mark 12:17)</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In other words, Jesus said pay <em>your taxes</em> to Caesar, but devote <em>yourselves </em>to God. Paul echoed Jesus’ admonition to pay taxes in Romans 13. Similarly, I Peter 2 tells Christians to submit to the government.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">If those passages are all the metal we have to forge a theology of government from, then non-Christian philosophy is a better guide; Jesus really didn’t care about government. But Paul gives us a clue to better political theology: </p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“…for it [government] is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a servant of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil." (Romans 13:4)</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In that passage, Paul hints at the role of government: to punish evil people. Only Oliver O’Donovan, the Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh, has recognized this point. In his Desire of Nations, he wrote “There remains simply the rump of political authority which cannot be dispensed with yet, the exercise of judgment.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">That’s why we pay taxes. Paul doesn’t say the government should strive to make us happy, end poverty, build roads and schools, promote homosexuality, spread democracy, control the climate, or any of the other hobby horses people like to ride today. That doesn’t mean the state <em>can’t</em> do those things, it only means that no one can find support for such government activity in the Bible.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Where did Paul get his idea about the role of government? Mostly likely, he learned it from the Hebrew Bible–what Christians call the Old Testament–as he did much of his theology. It was the only Bible in Paul’s day, and the Apostles knew it well.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Today, most theologians trace the origins of human government to the covenant with Noah after the flood: “Whoever sheds human blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made mankind.” (Genesis 9:6-7) As far as we know, this is the first time God gave humans the authority to punish others who committed murder.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">David VanDrunen, Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminar, milks the covenant with Noah for every drop of political theology in his book, Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World. Sometimes, the book has the feeling gives you the feeling that the author is creating a universe out of an excavated tooth, but he makes some excellent points. His biggest weakness is his total rejection of the government God gave Israel as a model.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Most theologians agree with VanDrunen on this point, ignoring Israel's Torah government, claiming it was a theocracy only for Israelis at a particular time. But Israel wasn’t a theocracy. A simple definition of a theocracy is “government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.” The second part doesn’t apply because priests didn’t rule Israel. Until the monarchy, Israel had no human executive except during wars. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The first part applies because God gave Israel its structure and laws. But what nation, before or after, did not have laws like “Thou shalt not steal” or “Thou shalt not murder”? Or laws prohibiting false weights and measures, or adultery? The civil laws God gave Israel were not unique, then or now. And God did not run the day-to-day business of the nation as kings did. The book of Judges covers about 450 years, yet God intervened in the affairs of the nation only a dozen times, to punish (and then rescue) the tribes.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">God’s treatment of Israel under the judges was not different from his ruling over the monarchy. Isaiah and the other prophets show us that God punished and rewarded the nations that surrounded Israel, including Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece. In other words, God rules every nation as he did Israel under the judges. He is king of the universe, whether people acknowledge that reality or not.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Catholic Church had downplayed the Hebrew Bible so much that at the time of the Reformation, those who advocated for Scripture as the only guide to faith and practice were shocked to realize they knew nothing about the Old Testament. So, they hired Jewish scholars to teach them the Hebrew language, according to Eric Nelson in his book, The Hebrew Republic. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Those theologians read I Samuel 8 and decided that God wanted a republican form of government for His people. In that passage, God allowed Israel to have a monarchy as punishment for its rebellion against Him and the government He had established. Until theologians studied I Samuel 8, they had assumed that God preferred monarchies. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">But the most important aspect of the Torah government of Israel was not its specific civil laws, but its structure. It was a republic, as Nelson showed, because the people chose the judges (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Deuteronomy%2016" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 16</a>). God gave Israel no human executive, legislature, or taxes. He gave them judges for governmental institutions, chosen by the people, to adjudicate only the civil laws, leaving the moral and religious laws for God to enforce.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The people of Israel were no better or worse than people are today. If that government worked for them for 480 years (from the time of Moses), it should work now. God created only one government. He created it to give His people the best chance of flourishing, spiritually and materially. He was angry with Israel for demanding a king and He listed the evil things kings would do to the people. We should pay attention.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">What does all of this have to do with Jesus? Christians know that Jesus isn’t just human; He is God. As God, he wrote the Torah that became the constitution for the nation of Israel. While Jesus had little to say about government in the Gospels, He said a lot in the Torah about what kind of government He prefers for His people. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, created a government in the nation of Israel. It must have been important to Him. Torah laws demand that the courts implement justice, the application of God’s civil laws. Jesus as God condemned the princes of Israel (the government) in the prophetic books for stealing the lands of the poor by bribing judges and perverting justice. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Yes, Jesus took human form to save humanity from sin, but that doesn’t mean He lost all the concern for government and justice that He had in the Old Testament.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-90246805898926505882022-11-18T15:47:00.002-06:002022-11-18T15:47:07.441-06:00Romney’s Family Security Act is not pro-life economics<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Around 60% of abortions are done by single mothers living in poverty, so the aborting of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court has caused politicians to call for a pro-life economy. They seem to think that reducing poverty will end the need for abortions. Of course, socialists have always thought they could perfect humanity by getting rid of poverty.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The search for a pro-life economy inspired politicians to dust off Mitt Romney’s Family Security Act which he announced in February of 2021. According to his web site, the <a href="https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-offers-path-provide-greater-financial-security-american-families/#:~:text=The%20Family%20Security%20Act%20would,for%20each%20school%2Daged%20child." rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Family Security Act</a> would “…create a new national commitment to American families by modernizing antiquated federal policies into a monthly cash benefit amounting to $350 a month for each young child, and $250 a month for each school-aged child.”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Democrats don’t like the plan because Romney would cut other programs to pay for it. Republicans don’t like it because it’s simply more welfare. Christians should oppose it because of the moral hazard it creates. Romney’s plan falls into two traps: moral hazard and the <em>homo economicus</em> fallacy.<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Romney, like most politicians, doesn’t understand moral hazard, one of the most important principles in micro-economics. Moral hazard teaches us that if you eliminate the consequences of risky behavior, you get more risky behavior. The typical example is insurance; having insurance to pay for the damage to one’s car after a wreck motivates many people to drive more recklessly.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Hurricanes cause far more property damage today than in the past because of federally subsidized insurance. Before the 1960s only the poor lived near beaches, where land was cheap. Land was cheap because no company would insure homes built so close to the water, due to the threat of tidal waves and hurricanes. The wealthy kept their houses safely inland. Then <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj/vol7/iss3/3/" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">politicians, in their infinite wisdom</a>, decided to force taxpayers to subsidize the cost of insurance for the wealthy on properties that insurance companies deemed too risky. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Any freshman in an intro to economics class could have predicted the results: wealthy people gobbled up beach front property and built mansions on the water’s edge or in the water. Risky? Absolutely, but they didn’t care because taxpayers helped pay the cost of their insurance. They could easily rebuild, and many have multiple times.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Monetary policies of the Federal Reserve breed moral hazard problems, too. Economists have complained for decades that low interest rates set by the Fed cause people to invest in riskier ventures than they would if interest rates were higher. Then, when interest rates rise, those bets go bust.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Abortion paid for by taxpayers took away one part of the unpleasantness of getting pregnant when women didn’t want to. There was no need to fuss with birth control. In the same way, if we take away all the discomfort of having children and pay poor, young, uneducated girls to have them, they will have more than they otherwise would.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Avoiding moral hazard requires looking ahead. Jesus warned His disciples to count the cost of following Him. “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:28: 28). That’s excellent advice and could rid us of the undesired consequences of moral hazard if people would follow it. Yet politicians like Romney want us to pretend there are no costs to their policies, only benefits.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Politicians will complain that opposition to Romney’s plan is heartless, but foolishness is not compassion. Enabling sin is not compassion. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8149507-if-we-wanted-to-be-serious-about-evidence-we-might" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Dr. Thomas Sowell explained the moral hazard</a> in such welfare programs: “Nearly a hundred years of the supposed ‘legacy of slavery’ found most black children [78%] being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent [66%].” Dr. Sowell wrote that decades ago. The percentage of children born to single parents is higher today among blacks than whites. Essentially, “compassion” for poor mothers increased their numbers dramatically, and with devastating consequences: the sons of unwed mothers make up the majority of criminals.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Marvin Olansky’s book, <em>The Tragedy of American Compassion</em>, shows that indiscriminate giving, as Romney proposes, does little more than encourage more people to quit working and live off the labor of others. And it will encourage poor, single, uneducated women to have more children for the income they generate from the government.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">There is no solution to problems of unwanted pregnancies, but if we removed the incentives, fewer single women might get pregnant. In the past, concerns about morality kept single women chaste, and those who became pregnant lived with their parents. But few people care about morality today except conservative Christians, and single mothers see no reason to submit to the discipline of their parents when their sugar daddy, the federal government, will take care of them.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">And Romney’s plan will hurt middle class families who must pick up the tab. Yes, Romney claims his program would be fiscally neutral by cutting other programs. But we’ve been suckers for that snake oil for decades: Congress always passes the spending, but never the cuts.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christians can help alleviate (but not eliminate) the difficult lives of single mothers by getting to know them and supporting those who pledge not to have more children until they marry. Many churches have programs to provide free car maintenance and help with the rent. But federal programs increase the numbers of single mothers so much that the efforts of the church become like trying to drain the ocean. Romney’s plan would make the problem worse.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Finally, Romney and supporters fall into the <em>homo economicus</em> fallacy. <em>Homo economicus</em>, the hero in mainstream economics, cares about nothing in life but money. He or she places a price sticker on everything. In the context of abortion, the only algebra necessary is comparing the cost of an abortion to the cost of having the baby.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><em>Homo economicus </em>is necessary for the very limited calculations that the science of economics makes, supply and demand and all that. But he becomes grotesque when introduced to the more sophisticated world of political economy that most people care about because we know that people decide things for many reasons other than money: for example, love, religion, charity, morality, et cetera.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Most pregnant poor single mothers give birth. <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm" rel="noopener" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">According to the CDC</a>, “…the abortion ratio was 195 abortions per 1,000 live births.” If 60% of births and roughly the same percentage of abortions occur to poor, single mothers, then five times as many poor women give birth than have abortions. Why are so many poor women having babies and not aborting them? Clearly, money isn’t the issue. Romney merely wants to throw more money at the problem.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Like doctors, politicians should first try to do no harm and if they have caused harm, stop it. The first step to take would be to end the state’s subsidizing poor, uneducated, single mothers having babies. We have enough children without fathers. The second step is to free the economy from government chains so that it can created jobs for those young women, and reduce taxes so that working poor families keep more of their income. Third, use DNA tests to find the fathers and make them pay child support. But the only solution to the unwanted pregnancy problem, in the end, is for more men and women to become followers of Christ.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-74631581914578360162022-11-18T15:45:00.002-06:002022-11-18T15:45:05.770-06:00Socialists love abortion because they hate families<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Can economics explain the left’s rage over the Supreme Court’s abortion of Roe v. Wade? It can, and the logical chain isn’t that long. But we must understand true Marxism, not the popular myth that it is nothing more than a way to help the poor. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Karl Marx claimed that class conflict drives history. The bourgeoisie get economic power by exploiting the much larger working class, the proletariat. Yet this conflict of interests has rarely boiled over into revolutions of the type that happened in Russia and China. What went wrong? Why didn’t the poor and oppressed stand up and throw off their chains? It wasn’t logical, Marxists alleged.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Marx’s followers began rummaging through the closets of their dark minds for answers. One they dredged up was Critical Theory, which taught that women and minorities had been oppressed for so long they had become accustomed to it and didn’t recognize how oppressed they were. Marxists claimed that Christianity helped the oppression of the proletariat by focusing their attention on heaven (encouraging them to endure hardship), and promoting the evil of private property. Another enabler of oppression, Marxists claimed, is the family.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Socialism before Marx had been anti-family from the beginning because socialists viewed Christianity as their arch enemy, according to F. A. Hayek in his classic book, <em>The Counter-revolution in Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason</em>. They not only wanted to get rid of property, but the sexual morality and family life it endorsed as well.<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Marxists fabricated the idea that the family hindered the proletariat awakening to their oppression: “<a href="https://revisesociology.com/2014/02/10/marxist-perspective-family/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Institutions such as the family</a> perform the function of ‘ideological control’, or convincing the masses that the present unequal system is inevitable, natural and good.” Also, bourgeoisie passed on their great wealth to their children, so it became concentrated instead of spreading to the proletariat, according to Marxists.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Friedrich Engels, a wealthy bourgeois industrialist and sycophant of Marx, hated the Christian family so much <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">he wrote a fake history</a> of its origins by capitalists:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“<a href="https://revisesociology.com/2014/02/10/marxist-perspective-family/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">According to Engels</a>, the monogamous nuclear family only emerged with Capitalism. Before Capitalism, traditional, tribal societies were classless and they practised a form of ‘primitive communism’ in which there was no private property. In such societies, property was collectively owned, and the family structure reflected this – there were no families as such, but tribal groups existed in a kind of ‘promiscuous horde’ in which there were no restrictions on sexual relationships.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Progressives (socialists) in the 20th century, accordingly, intended abortion to control the fertility of minorities, rather than to liberate women, <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-pacific-southwest/blog/planned-parenthoods-reckoning-with-margaret-sanger" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">according to Planned Parenthood</a>:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“The difficult truth is that Margaret Sanger’s racist alliances and belief in eugenics have caused irreparable damage to the health and lives of Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, and many others. Her alignment with the eugenics movement, rooted in white supremacy, is in direct opposition to our mission and belief that all people should have the right to determine their own future and decide, without coercion or judgement, whether and when to have children.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">World War II destroyed the reputation of eugenics, so its promoters fished around for new uses for their favorite tools: abortion and minimum wages. By the 1960s they would use abortion against their old enemy, the family. In their twisted vision, having children enslaved women to the family and perpetuated capitalism. Abortion would free them to be like men. They could have sex with anyone they wanted and not be forced to marry because of children.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Not all proponents of abortion are socialists. Most are what Lenin called “useful idiots” in that they promote the cause of socialism without knowing it while thinking they advocate something else, such as women’s liberation. But the intelligent socialist knows that abortion is a powerful weapon for destroying families and capitalism. The Supreme Court didn’t completely disarm them, but it did force them to retreat a little.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christians know that families form the heart of God’s organization of society. “No doubt about it: children are a gift from the Lord; the fruit of the womb is a divine reward” (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Psalm%20127:3" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Psalm 127:3</a>). Socialists should heed the warning that, “Those who trouble their family will inherit the wind. The fool will be servant to the wise ," (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Proverbs%2011:29" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Proverbs 11:29</a>) as well as, “But if someone doesn’t provide for their own family, and especially for a member of their household, they have denied the faith. They are worse than those who have no faith/" (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=ITimothy%205:8" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">I Timothy 5:8</a>)</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-76994248384514092902022-11-18T15:42:00.008-06:002022-11-18T15:42:57.019-06:00Will the death of an icon end the evangelical left?<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">An icon of the evangelical left, Ron Sider, went home to the Lord recently at the age of 82. Sider is most famous for his book,</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><em style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study</em><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">published in 1977. Sider admitted in the opening address to the</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0091829619897427" style="color: #1774ce; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">2019 annual meeting of the American Society of Missiology</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">that his book advertised his ignorance: </span></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“The book ranges over a wide field, as you know: biblical studies, economics, politics, social ethics—I didn’t know much at all about any of those areas. Apart from a few courses on biblical studies at Yale Divinity School, I had virtually no training in any of these areas. I never had a course on politics and only one on economics (Economics 101) in my whole life.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">But ignorance of his topic didn’t stop him! Published by InterVarsity Press, the book became popular among students who knew less about economics, history and the Bible than Sider. <em>Christianity Today</em> magazine called Sider’s book one of the 100 most influential books in religion in the 20th century, but then CT had long promoted Marxism. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">When Sider’s book came out, Jimmy Carter had been elected President. The country had been slogging through a decade of high inflation and was mired in stagflation, the combination of high inflation and unemployment that mainstream economists told us was impossible. The most popular economics textbook in the country, by Paul Samuelson, reminded us with every new edition that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would overtake the U.S. as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. The prospects for Soviet-style socialism seemed bright, and Sider’s book reached an audience hungry for more optimism about socialism.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In his ASM speech, Sider joked that he had been called a Marxist. “My response to that was, ‘I’m a Mennonite farm boy, for Pete’s sake. Have you ever met a Mennonite farmer who wants the government to own his land?’”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Yet, in his first edition, Sider called for a national food policy, greater foreign aid, a guaranteed national income, international taxation, land reform, bureaucratically determined prices, national health care, population control, and the right of developing nations to nationalize foreign holdings. In other words, he didn’t want the state owning his land, but he was happy to have it turn him into a sharecropper, taxing away most of its produce and regulating what, when, and how he could plant, in the name of environmentalism. How is that different from the state owning his land?</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Sider's books are full of Marxist terminology such as “economic violence,” “exploitation,” “proletariat,” “social justice,” “structural change,” and “new international economic order.” He even entitles a section in <em>Rich Christians</em> “Is God a Marxist?” His answer is obviously yes, for the “God of the Bible wreaks horrendous havoc on the rich” because “the rich regularly oppress the poor and neglect the needy.” Moreover, “God is on the side of the poor.” Quoting E.F. Schumacher, Sider wrote,</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“It is obvious that the world cannot afford the USA. Nor can it afford Western Europe or Japan.... Think of it-one American drawing on resources that would sustain 50 Indians! ... The poor don’t do much damage. Virtually all damage is done by say, 15% .... The problem passenger son Spaceship Earth are the first-class passengers and no one else.”</p><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“If God’s word is true, then all of us who dwell in affluent nations are trapped in sin. We have profited from systemic injustice. We are guilty of an outrageous offense against God and neighbor.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Sider’s book went through several editions, ending in 1997 as <em>Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity. </em>The change in the subtitle marked a shift in the author’s economic thought. He had expunged some of the rabid anti-capitalist language and grudgingly conceded that freer markets had helped the poor. Instead of blaming Christians for the plight of poor nations, he challenged them to live more simply and devote more to charity. Why the change? The Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991 and destroyed the economic arguments for socialism. Sider was forced to face the obvious. He followed his comrades by switching to environmentalism as a channel for advancing socialism. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Then Sider shifted again, desperately trying to keep up with the times. In his 2012 book, <em>Just Politics</em>, Sider affirmed the Biblical requirement that able-bodied people should work. The Journal of Markets and Morality, put it this way:</p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“<a href="https://www.marketsandmorality.com/index.php/mandm/article/view/971" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Nonetheless, in clear contradiction</a> to 2 Thessalonians 3:10, Sider insists that even people who ‘irresponsibly choose’ not to work still have a right to basic provisions supplied by others (including food and a level of healthcare ‘that the science, technology, and wealth of a given time can make available to all [society’s] members’)…. The unspoken assertion is that government should take from the responsible in order to give to the irresponsible.'</p><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Distributive justice, as defined by Sider, is a ‘just division of money, health care, educational opportunities—in short, all the goods and services in society.’ This is another area where Sider’s biblical exegesis appears to be unduly influenced by his political preferences, and his bias is evident to the careful reader.”</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Next, Bernie Sanders made socialism respectable again and in the 2019 speech Sider backslid on his ambivalence to capitalism. “I think my book Rich Christians illustrates from the first edition my basic methodology for looking at social problems.” He told about a message he gave at an Oregon Christian college: “I gave two chapel talks about structural injustice, God’s concern for the poor, and how American wealth resulted to some extent from poverty in other parts of the world.” </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Sider was a typical evangelical theologian, taking his cues from anti-Christians on social issues then using a crowbar to force the Bible to conform. He claimed to be pro-life and formed a group he called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden. Yet, Sider had his own private definition of pro-life that was very different from what most Christians meant by the term. He intended to deceive others with the title. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Sider, Jim Wallis and others dreamed of dragging all evangelicals into political activism for socialism during the 1970s. Fundamentalists had rejected politics for most of the 20th century, letting the left dominate from the election of Roosevelt on with disastrous results. Side succeeded in awakening fundamentalists to politics, but he was horrified that it took the form of the conservative Moral Majority and the election of Ronald Reagan as President. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Today, Sider’s evangelical left makes up about 20% of evangelicals and have tempered their advocacy of socialism. Instead of claiming that socialism is Christian economics, they assert that the Bible is ambivalent about economics and government so any system should be acceptable to Christians. Like Sider, they are proud of their ignorance of economics and content with a superficial grasp of the Bible.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Maybe we should think of Sider as one of the weak Christians Paul mentions in <a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Romans%2014" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Romans 14</a>. Paul saw Jewish believers who couldn’t get past the holy days and rituals of Judaism and enjoy their freedoms in Christ as weak in faith. They used the same Bible as Paul and other believers who were strong in their faith. But they used faulty hermeneutics and arrived at false, destructive theology. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">In a similar way, Sider and the evangelical left he helped create, violated the principles of hermeneutics to deceive gullible Christians into following the economic principles of an alcoholic atheist rather than the Word of God.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-33669429782807160812022-11-18T15:40:00.005-06:002022-11-18T15:40:54.370-06:00Should we blame Biden for the recession?<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Many Americans believe the President controls the economy, which is why exit polls after a presidential election have shown, for decades, that the most important issue on the minds of voters in choosing a candidate is the economy. Economic indicators in the election year are the best predictor of the winner. If Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing at or above average, the incumbent party usually wins. If not, the challenger wins. President Trump lost his bid for a second term in office largely because of the recession caused by COVID.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">U.S. real GDP fell last quarter by 0.9% from the first quarter, which had also declined by 1.6%, causing many pundits in the news business to declare that we are in a recession. Republicans have tagged it the Biden recession, while the President has tried to redefine the term to not take the blame. Both parties see the state of the economy as a factor in determining the outcomes of the congressional elections this November.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is responsible for declaring a recession, but it may not consider the recent decline in GDP to qualify as one because it doesn’t follow the media definition. “The <a href="https://www.nber.org/business-cycle-dating-procedure-frequently-asked-questions" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">NBER's traditional definition of a recession</a> is that it is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.” With unemployment at records lows and millions of job openings, this doesn’t feel like a recession. So the NBER may come to Biden’s rescue by not calling the recent decline a recession.<p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">If it does declare that the two quarters of declining GDP are a recession, what responsibility does the President shoulder for it? That depends on what you think causes recessions. Most voters know little about economics and think an inept President causes them. There is some truth to that. Presidents can cause what the great economic historian Robert Higgs called “<a href="https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Regime_uncertainty" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">regime uncertainty</a>” to describe how President Roosevelt extended the Great Depression. FDR devoted hours to attacking and threatening businessmen with higher taxes, more regulation, and confiscation, which caused greater uncertainty about the future. As a result, they quit investing in new business ventures that create jobs. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Recall how the economy soared after President Trump was elected, but before he took office? Higgs’ “regime uncertainty” partly explains it. President Obama had attacked businesses throughout his two terms. Remember his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/obamas-you-didnt-build-that-problem/2012/07/18/gJQAJxyotW_blog.html" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">famous line from the 2012 campaign</a>, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” President Trump relieved Obama’s regime uncertainty before he took office so businessmen felt comfortable in investing for the next four years. Biden and his administration have created uncertainty among businessmen similar to that of FDR and Obama, so naturally a recession is likely. </p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Mainstream economists roll their eyes at the regime uncertainty explanation. Their favorite answer is “stuff happens!” They use more technical jargon. And they throw the consumer under the bus for not spending enough. But ask why consumers stop spending and they will say, “Stuff happens!”</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Other than Higgs’ regime uncertainty, and recessions caused by wars or pandemics like COVID, the best theory of recessions is the Austrian Business-Cycle Theory (ABCT). Originally distilled by Ludwig von Mises and further refined by F. A. Hayek, the ABCT shows that modern recessions begin with an unsustainable expansion of the economy through the Federal Reserve’s policies of responding to a recession by reducing interest rates below the market rate, also called money printing. Fed policy causes businessmen to launch many risky ventures that can’t succeed without those lower interest rates. Eventually, falling profits or inflation persuade banks or the Fed to rein in credit expansion, a recession occurs, and the cycle starts again.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">God’s plan for the economy calls for private property and free markets. In money, that means a gold standard. Governments hated the gold standard because it restrained how much they could spend without increasing taxes. Politicians know that voters couldn’t care less how much the government borrows and spends, but they will revolt against higher taxes. To borrow all they want, governments must control the money supply, the private property of its citizens. Then the government robs the lenders by printing more money (through credit expansion) and creating inflation. Since its creation in 1913, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/aei/photos/a.290944073957/10156116509838958/?type=3" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Federal Reserve has stolen 96%</a> of the value of the U.S. dollar.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Recessions in the 19th century, under the gold standard, were shorter, shallower, and were mostly caused by wars and government manipulations of banks to escape the restrictions of the gold standard. The U.S. saw its greatest leap in standard of living (reduction in poverty) under the gold standard.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Socialists have maintained for over a century that recessions happen because capitalism is inherently unstable. In one sense they are right: tribal people living in the Amazon rain forest don’t experience recessions or expansions. However, regime uncertainty and the ABCT point to one culprit: the government.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">The Bible says, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” (<a class="" href="https://bibleportal.com/verse-topic?version=ESV&v=Psalm%20146:3-7" style="color: #1774ce; position: relative; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">Psalm 146:3-7</a>)</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Americans don’t want to hear that. They want to keep alive the fiction that their government is all-wise, all-knowing and all-compassionate. Christians know it is not.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7556317974354905239.post-74435507687042783012022-11-18T15:39:00.003-06:002022-11-18T15:39:19.295-06:00No Biblical basis for student debt cancellation<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Republicans have opposed President Biden’s debt cancellation for students who piled up tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree. The left assumes many of the Republicans are Christians and this gives them an opportunity to prove again that the Democrat party doesn’t understand Christianity or like it: </span></p><blockquote style="border-left: 7px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); color: #767676; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 1.5em;"><p style="color: black; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">“<a href="https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/26/no-joe-biden-canceling-student-debt-isnt-like-jesus-forgiving-sins/" style="color: #1774ce; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">I’m not Christian, but with all the teachings about giving</a>, I’m pretty sure Jesus would be cool with President Biden’s decision on cancelling student debt,” spouted anti-Trump antagonist David Weissman on Twitter. “A whole lot of folks who supposedly pray, ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’ don’t see debt forgiveness as an answer to prayer,” added preacher Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">God didn’t forgive our sins with a wave of His hand; He paid for them with the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. That’s why the Bible says frequently that we who are “born again” in the words of John have been redeemed or purchased for a price. God chose to give His son in exchange for us and He can confer forgiveness on anyone He wants because He can know the hearts of everyone. He doesn’t forgive insincere or evil people looking for a fire escape. Since no human can know the heart of another the way God can, much of the debt cancellation will simply go to deadbeats from people who had no choice in the matter and many of whom didn’t go to college.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Christians who support the debt cancellation handouts drag out the Torah practices of Jubilee and Sabbath year debt forgiveness as precedents. A larger effort decades ago to erase the debts of poor countries was labeled “Jubilee 2000.” But Jubilee and Sabbath year debt forgiveness, found in Leviticus chapters 25 and 26, protected property rights.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Jubilee required the buyers of land to pay the value of its produce for the years remaining until Jubilee, at which time the land returned to the seller. In modern terms, the land was not sold but leased, with the lease price prorated for the productivity of the land times the number of years until Jubilee. The Torah didn't allow people to sell land, but only lease it for 50 years at most. Jubilee merely signaled the end of the lease.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Every seventh (a Sabbath) year, lenders were to forgive all debts. Real debt forgiveness works only when lenders can’t anticipate it. Surprise decrees of debt forgiveness were common in other nations at the time Moses wrote the Torah, and monarchs used them to buy the good will of the poor (most people). If lenders could anticipate such episodes, they could protect themselves by lending less or calling in loans earlier. God’s debt forgiveness occurred on a regular schedule, advertising to lenders when it would happen and preventing people from borrowing more than they could repay in seven years while protecting lenders. If the lender loaned more than that amount, he understood he was giving charity.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Some scholars, such as Joseph Lifshitz (in his book <em>Judaism, Law & The Free Market) </em>have written that God never intended the government to enforce the Jubilee and Sabbath year debt forgiveness laws. Those were moral/religious laws and not the civil laws that the courts adjudicated. Israel left enforcement of the moral laws to God.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">There are other objections to student debt forgiveness. The federal government never had the Constitutional authority to make the loans in the first place, and the Bible admonishes Christians to obey the law (Romans 13) even if the Supreme Court refuses to enforce it.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">Also, the Constitution, the Bible, and natural theology require the government to treat all people the same and not show preference. Leviticus 19:15 says "You must not show special favor to poor people or great people, but be fair when you judge your neighbor." The government is a minister of God (Romans 13) and since God treats all people equally, the government must do the same. So, if it forgives $10,000 in debt for some, it must give $10,000 to every other citizen or it has acted unjustly.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">God never gave the state the authority to take from one group to give to another. Yes, the Bible is full of admonitions to help the poor. But the Biblical model for helping the poor is always private charity, never the state taking from one group to buy votes from another. That is how all Christianity understood poor relief from the time of the Apostles until the 20th century, when a minority of Christians became idolaters over socialism.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem;">If people want to help students drowning in debt, they are free to give their own money. If the government wants to return to a just system, it will allow students to declare bankruptcy on their debt, in which case lenders will be much more careful about to whom they lend.</p>Roger McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06583232178752912133noreply@blogger.com0