The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott

The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott
  • 4.9 (72)
  • Christianity

The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott discusses Christian economics, conservative economics, and how they relate to current events.

  1. 01/04/2024

    Vote With Your Feet

    Americans are moving from restrictive economies in California and New York to free economies in Texas and Florida, much like the Israelites escaped captivity in Egypt. Let’s Vote! I had five grandkids in the van recently, and we were trying to decide which park to visit. One of the ten-year-olds suggested energetically, “Let’s vote!” Where did an American ten-year-old get the idea that she had the power to determine the market? Well, FROM the market. And, that’s what people moving from one state to another are proving, they have the power to vote about where they live. People are voting with their feet, as they move from one state to another, as explained in a recent WSJ article titled, “The Great Blue to Red State Migration Continues.” I discussed some of this topic in podcast #131 titled Abraham and Wealth Migration. And, the great economist Arthur Laffer explains state differences in his book, The Wealth of States. The WSJ explains in their article that in the category “Migration to other states,” the loss leader was California which lost the most residents to other states, about 340,000, and New York, about 220,000. Texas gained almost 475,000 and Florida gained just under 375,000. Quoting the WSJ article now, “You don’t need artificial intelligence to spot what the losing states have in common: High taxes, burdensome business regulation, and inflated energy and housing prices. Those states also have higher than average unemployment as a result of businesses moving out of state.” The WSJ article quotes a chapter from the Old Testament, “A big problem for Democratic-run states is that their affluent residents are leading the EXODUS, and they pay the majority of income tax that supports their expansive welfare programs. This is a major reason California’s tax revenue over the last five months has come in $24.5 billion below projections despite a rebounding stock market.” Hmmm, kind of reminds you of the scene from the old movie The Ten Commandments, where the Israelites are leaving Egyptian bondage. And, in an economic sense, the folks leaving those states were in economic bondage. You may have heard that Benjamin Franklin’s choice for the great seal of the US was those same Israelites fleeing Egypt, just as Americans are now fleeing California and New York. It’s a little difficult to read the image, but it reads “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” The image shows the Israelites being pursued by Pharoh’s army. People are moving to the Red States, and Moses parted the Red Sea… goodness, there are too many parallels that can’t be overlooked. In the Holy Land, I’ve heard the phrase “From the Med to the Red,” so we should expect a political cartoon soon, with Moses holding up his staff and parting “Red” and “Blue” seas, or the red and blue states.   Freedom In my classroom at Dallas Baptist University, I have often crossed my arms and stated, “The Intersection of Christianity & Economics is freedom.” It’s such an important concept, that it’s the first of the ten Biblical Commandments of Economics that I found with Sergiy Saydometov, while writing the book Biblical Economic Policy. Well, that’s what we’re witnessing in the migration between states. You don’t have to survey the estimated eight million people who illegally crossed the Southern border of the US in the last three years. They are seeking freedom. Gee, I wonder how many have crossed the border the opposite way? Quoting the WSJ article again, “Democratic Governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom portray right-leaning states as benighted and undemocratic. But then how do they explain why so many of their states' residents are moving there?” People vote with their feet.   The End Game Where does this all end? A good case study might be Yugoslavia, which after the fall of communism, split into six constituent republics. Each group has their own country. That’s the way the US was designed, with states’ rights. But the centralization of government - especially the presidency - under Woodrow Wilson, FDR, then LBJ, has made the centralized government, specifically the presidency, more important than the founders intended. The United States is not a people, it is an idea. And, it’s an idea with two different interpretations. I’ve told my students at Dallas Baptist University, that, if they have voted, they voted for either of two ideas: Jefferson or Hamilton. Jefferson wanted a more decentralized government with more states’ rights. Hamilton wanted a more centralized federal government. It’s no coincidence that a liberal playwright authored the stage play Hamilton, and the actors sided with the Democrat party. The level of centralization SHOULD be based on the value created by centralization, vs the concomitant loss of freedom, but the Hamilton idea, adopted now by the Democrat party, is to centralize as much as possible, simply for the sake of power. Jan Jekielek of the Epoch Times has interviewed Christine Anderson of the EU. The video is titled, Is the EU Destroying Europe? She asks this fascinating question, “Why would immigrants assimilate into a society that hates itself?” Here’s the economic analysis. I’ve used this three-part concentric circle to explain the relationship of three Unions in Europe: The European Union is an economic union of 27 nations, 20 of those countries belong to the financial union called the Eurozone, and none belong to “The United States of Europe.” However, folks in the UK would say Brexit caused their loss of national sovereignty, and they WERE a member of the United States of Europe.   Worldview I was listening to a Catholic radio station a few years ago, during the right-to-life march in Washington DC, and a participant told the interviewer, “We’re going to out-produce them.” Meaning, that Christians are having children, atheists are not. Maybe that’s true of the states as well. Red states will draw the population away from blue states. Economics is a social science, where we simply notice differences. This one is pretty obvious: People are moving to better land, as Abraham did, when he moved from Ur of the Chaldeans to the promised land, as I explained in more detail in podcast #131. My podcast #72 Two Worlds is intended to convey the idea that we are dividing into two different societies in the same country. My observation is that it’s based on worldview. Just a couple examples today, because the idea is more fully developed in the aforementioned podcast. The Christian Worldview includes the concepts of Creation, Fall & Redemption. If humans were NOT created by God, abortion would be acceptable. If they are, it’s the greatest sin of my generation. Worldview’s effect on economics is easy to see. If you don’t believe people are fallen, you want the government to have more control. Ginger and I were reading books on vacation recently, and just when she invited me to, “Read this page,” I said the same thing to her about my book. Her book was about how fallen people had taken advantage of the federal government program that serves kidney dialysis patients, and mine was about how the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs was corrupt. Look, we could have been reading just about any book. Evidence of the fallen nature is all around us. To deny it is a denial of reality.   The Market Works I often hear complaints about Wal-Mart paying low salaries, and selling cheap goods. Ok, the market does not ALWAYS work, but it generally does. My response to Wal-Mart critics is to go visit with your neighbors. Apparently, they are happy shopping at Wal-Mart, or they wouldn’t go there. They are voting with their feet. The market works, almost all the time. If you buy Hunt's ketchup in the 24-ounce bottle for $1.89, and the next time you visit the store, it’s been replaced by Heinz in the 32-ounce bottle for $2.29, don’t blame Wal-Mart. They are responding to the demands of your neighbors. Yes, Wal-Mart WANTS to affect the market, but in a free market, they have very little power. You and I have the power. Let’s vote! Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    11 min

  2. 12/28/2023

    #199 Hope for the New Year

    There are Ten Reasons for Hope in the New Year   I often explain that as an economist, I’m a pessimist, but as a Christian, I have hope. Hope is endemic to the Christian spirit and idea. We believe God is at work, even when the US debt clock shows that each individual’s share of the $34 trillion in national debt has increased from $85,000 to $100,000 in just the last three years. Think about it: Each of your children and grandchildren owes $100,000 in national debt. Still, there is hope. Here are some economic hopes we can have for 2024.   The Omniscient God From seeing God as a small g to God with a big G God IS sovereign, so He can do whatever He wants, without our help, but He chooses to allow us to join Him in his great work. I explained this concept in my last economics lesson of the semester at Dallas Baptist University because it helps us understand HOW MUCH humans should do. That’s the whole ballgame in macroeconomics: How active should monetary and fiscal policy be? For an atheist, it’s easy: Since they don’t believe there IS a God, humans have to do everything, but for Christians, or really, anyone who believes in a greater being, we have decisions to make about how active fiscal and monetary policy should be. It’s pretty easy to see that Christians should hope for less active fiscal and monetary policies in 2024. Accepting responsibility When GK Chesterton was asked, “What’s wrong with the United Kingdom?” He answered, “Me.” Increasingly, people believe that there’s nothing wrong with individuals, and what’s wrong in society. That’s why liberal college professors train their students to be activists. Their objective is to change the regulatory systems of society. Well, THEY are wrong. What IS wrong is the fallen nature of individuals, not societal structure. If folks start to see that the problem is based on the fallen nature, 2024 would be a better year.   A Free Economic System From Karl Marx to Adam Smith Adam Smith explained a free-market capitalist system, where both producers and consumers could benefit in the same exchange. Karl Marx countered it with a system that calls for the oppressed to rise up and throw off their oppressors. Guess what happens next? Another revolution, followed by guess what? Another revolution. Marxism is a system of continual battles because they can always find oppressed groups. It never ends in peace. I asked my students just last week, “Do they still make you read Animal Farm in high school?” Most heads nodded. There’s a lot of Marxist thinking in the world today: People who support Hamas against Israel have been duped into believing that the smaller, weaker group is always oppressed. From socialism to free-market capitalism A Christian Economist favors a middle position, typically somewhere near the free-market end of the spectrum, where there is enough freedom to exchange goods fairly, but where government has the role of maintaining competition, and preventing monopolies. Socialism always produces monopolies that serve the supplier at the expense of the demander. It’s not even a debatable subject. From spending to saving Brazil went through a period of sustained high inflation between about 1980 and the year 2000. During high inflationary cycles, it’s not wise to save, because your money becomes worth less, the longer you hold it. This period created a culture of spending and not saving, which is still obvious in Brazil today. The US is moving that way. Before the covid pandemic, in 2019, the US saving rate was about 7%. It’s now half that, about 3.5% and total consumer credit card debt crossed the $1 trillion threshold last month. I don’t have time to unpack all the various reasons for this, but one of them is inflation, and the other is a moral hazard. The government bailed out many folks during the pandemic, and now people assume the government will take care of them. So, why save? In an active government environment, it’s not reasonable to save money that the government threatens to take away and give to slackers who didn’t save.    Acceptance of the Fallen Nature From a one-party state to the checks-and-balances system that the American founders intended David Horowitz, in his book Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America, explained how the founding fathers believed in the fallen nature, so they set up a three-part governmental system of checks and balances. The Democrat party is exercising executive controls that the founders never intended. We are seeing the movement toward an administrative state that denies the fallen nature. From liberal to conservative Alex Haley, the author of Roots, said “We should find the good and praise it.” Conservatives do that because they believe there were some Godly-inspired ideas that formed our current culture. Liberals want to trash the entire system, good and bad, and start all over. Guess what happens next? I just explained it in the section on Marxism: There are continual uprisings, and there’s never peace, because in a relativist philosophy, nothing is objectively good, so there are continual disagreements about what is right.   The Value of a Christian Culture From church as an advisor to church as a healer The church has been sidelined in current American society.  When LBJ pushed through the Johnson Amendment in 1954, it muted the church on political issues and sidelined them. So, there’s no wonder the church is not listened to anymore. That’s because the church is not speaking about important issues. As Eric Metaxas points out in his latest book Letter to the American Church- It’s obvious why the clergy are not listened to by society. It’s because they chose to stop commenting on the most important topics in culture. Why SHOULD they be listened to? Why would you listen to a wimp, who cowls in the face of government control, and won’t speak to the political events of the day? Especially when it includes abortion, which has killed one-third of the US black population.   A Happy New Year From unhappy liberals to happy conservatives I authored an article in American Greatness a few weeks ago, questioning whether firms would use Artificial Intelligence to hire more conservatives. That’s because AI has been pretty accurate at differentiating conservatives from liberals because conservatives smile more than liberals. It just makes sense. Conservatives are generally happy because they want to conserve what they have. Liberals are unhappy with their lives. And, when they get their way, and increase the power of the government, they make themselves even less happy. From government healthcare to Christian healthcare The largest expenditure in the federal government is healthcare. At $1.5 trillion, it is slightly higher than social security, and about double what’s spent on defense. In his book Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker says, “We no longer need a father in the sky.” Harvard University, where he teaches, would not exist without that father in the sky. Christianity has produced universities, hospitals, and the list goes on and on. The two largest healthcare systems in Dallas-Ft. Worth are Baylor, which is Baptist, and Methodist, which is Methodist. In just a few short years, we have moved from healthcare being provided by the church, to it now being provided largely by the government.   Those are just ten hopes. Yes, there are more but here’s the important economic point: We’ve always had economic problems. Some of today’s seem greater than those of yesteryear, but we believe in a God who solves problems, large and small. As the Christian Economist, I’m looking back and claiming the first sentence of the book by Angus Deaton titled The Great Escape. He writes, “Life is better now than anytime in history.” He’s absolutely right. And the Christian Economist extension is, “It’s going to get even better.” Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    10 min

  3. 12/20/2023

    Christian Colleges Solve the Woke Problem

    The market will take care of the woke problem in higher education, as consumers choose Christian colleges over corrupt state institutions.    John Ellis wrote a fire-breathing editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled Higher Ed Has Become a Threat to America. Subtitled Our corrupt, radical universities feed every scourge from censorship and crime to antisemitism. He’s mostly right. But his prescription is wrong. As with most problems in a free society, the market will take care of the problem.   The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities There is an alternative form of education that Mr. Ellis overlooks: Christian Higher Education. 150 members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities suffer from almost none of the maladies Mr. Ellis points out in his scathing article. He writes, “Every one of these degradations can be traced wholly or in large part to a single source: the corruption of higher education by radical political activists.” Okay, let’s see. I have been on the faculty at Dallas Baptist University for thirty years, so I will speak for my university, and safely assume that applies to most of the other 150 CCCU members. There are no radical political activists on our campus. Never have been. Unless you count the very conservative Young Americans for Freedom, who recently hosted a speech by retired Lt. Colonel Allen West. There’s also the Pro-Life Patriots organization. On President’s Day, their Facebook page invited students to “Join us, this Presidents’ Day as we remember some of the most Pro-Life presidents in history!” The announcement was accompanied by photos of both Presidents Bush, President Reagan, and President Trump.   Biblical Justice Ellis again, “Children’s test scores have plummeted because college education departments train teachers to prioritize “social justice” over education.” Nope, not at our university nor at just about any of the other CCCU members. We like to study “Biblical justice.” A phrase you might hear in a classroom is “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Mr. Ellis complains, “Censorship started with one-party campuses shutting down conservative voices.” That’s never happened at DBU. Recently, we have hosted former CIA and State Department head Mike Pompeo, former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis, and Kristen and Keith Getty. That last couple writes and performs Christian praise songs. Recently we also hosted retired Army General David Petraeus. We’ve never had a protestor, and we don’t expect to have one this week. Our students think, and don’t allow their feelings to control their lives. I unpack more on that topic in podcast #97 titled Thinking vs Feeling. During speeches, our students show respect for competing ideas, they don’t shout them down, or demand the speaker be ushered off campus. They treat guest speakers as guests, as they do all campus visitors.   Be Fruitful and Multiply Ellis again: “The drive to separate children from their parents begins in longstanding campus contempt for the suburban home and nuclear family.” It’s the total opposite at our university. Dennis Prager spoke in chapel, then hosted his national radio program from our campus, with some students visiting him in the studio. He cited an article about three women featured in a recent Atlantic Magazine article, who stated they would not have children because of climate change. Mr. Prager asked our students how many of them wanted to get married. In the small sample in the studio, all of them raised their hands, and having children was beyond question: of course, they planned to get married and have children. Opining about the border crises, Ellis states, “Open borders reflect pro-globalism and anti-nation state sentiment among radical professors.” Of the approximately 4500 students at DBU, about 500 are from other countries. Most of them live in a dorm that is designed to have two international students and two US students living together. If you want a peaceful world, maybe having a roommate from another culture is a good learning environment. My podcast #166 was titled “Where DEI Goes to DIE.” Apparently, Mr. Ellis agrees with me, “DEI started as a campus ruse to justify racial quotas.” At my university, we had one person with a title that had something to do with diversity. But she went to another job off campus, and I don’t think she’s been replaced. If we have a DEI office, I’m not aware of it.   Jesus was a Jew The article cites “Campus antisemitism…” I won’t even bother you with the rest of the sentence from Ellis. Are you kidding? We know that Christianity grew out of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew. Being antisemitic wouldn’t make much sense now, would it? Ellis claims that “Professors are now predominantly closed-minded, ignorant and stupid enough to believe that Marxism works.” Since Marxism denounces Christianity, you won’t find many Marxists among professors at Christian colleges and universities. Problem solved. Ellis provides this solution, “Personnel is policy. Effective reform means only one thing: getting those political activists out of the classrooms and replacing them with academic thinkers and teachers.” Way ahead of you Mr. Ellis. The members of the CCCU have almost completely done what you suggest, almost without changing a single teacher. We already had academic thinkers and teachers.   Christianity & Capitalism Mr. Ellis rages against the term, “anticapitalism.” Again, you don’t need the rest of the sentence. I teach Macroeconomics at DBU and one of my favorite phrases that I will repeat in class this week is a direct quote from Whole Foods founder John Mackey in the WSJ defending capitalism as the “greatest thing humanity’s ever done.” Mr. Ellis unknowingly supports the CCCU idea, when he writes, “This would bring about competition between corrupt institutions and sound ones.” Sorry Mr. Ellis, that competition already exists. It’s between the largely state-supported Universities that have been corrupted, and the “sound ones” who are members of the CCCU. Ellis correctly states, “Never have college campuses exerted so great or so destructive an influence.” But not at the CCCU Universities. They are graduating wholesome, intelligent, serious students who want to make the world a better place to live. I’ve often told people, “When you get tired of the yelling on CNN and Fox News, come visit chapel, where you will be surrounded by 1000 young people singing praises to God.” That will give you hope for the future. Mr. Ellis closes his screed writing about “the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education system now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history.” Chill out, Mr. Ellis. It doesn’t have to be stopped. The market will take care of this problem, as consumers choose Christian colleges over corrupt state institutions. Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    9 min

  4. 12/13/2023

    #197 December is Christian Month

    December is Christian Month. It starts with Thanksgiving and ends with Christmas: the most celebrated holiday event in human history.   December is Christian Month. It was not officially declared by any governmental entity. It doesn’t have to be. Just look around. It starts with Thanksgiving and ends with Christmas, the most celebrated holiday event in human history. Gift-giving, Christmas trees, lights, Santa Claus, office parties, and family gatherings are all part of Christian Month. Deloitte’s holiday retail sales analysis says consumers will spend $1,652 each on Christmas. I made this observation while attending the CEO Summit at Liberty University recently. Independent reporter Lara Logan was complaining that every other group had their month. There is gay pride month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Native American heritage month. She accusingly asked, “Why isn’t there a Christian month?” It was a formal presentation, so it was inappropriate for me to shout out, “December!” but December is quite obviously a Christian Month.   Black Friday Black Friday got its name from the day when retailers went from red to black in profit terms. Without Christian Month, they wouldn’t make a profit. This year, shoppers spent $9.8 billion, an increase of 7.5% from last year.  Cyber Monday was shaping up to be a giant Christmas gift to retailers; 63% of Americans shop online for Christmas gifts. By the time Christmas arrives, each American will spend just north of $700 on gifts alone. We give gifts because the wise men brought gifts to celebrate God’s gift to mankind: Jesus, the God-man.   Gifts They brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold because he was a King, Frankincense was used by the Jewish High Priest in the temple, and myrrh is an embalming spice, which foreshadows His death on a cross. Some people complain that Christmas starts too early but Halloween is not too early for me to celebrate the birth of my savior. People complain that Christmas has become too commercial, but that’s only if you let it. Others will celebrate however they wish. For me and my family, the reason for the season is the birth of Jesus: It’s a Christian month. If baby Jesus was laid in a manger during Christian month, it was probably made of stone. Wood was scarce in first-century Israel, so farmers would take a large stone, and carve it into a dish shape that would hold water for their cattle and sheep. Jesus was likely laid in a stone enclosure, but he didn’t stay there long. His father took him out and cared for him, and his mother nursed him.   Why December? Just under half of Americans start shopping for Christmas in October. That seems pretty early, but it helps spread out the shopping blitz as the holiday gets closer. If the shepherds were out with their sheep when Jesus was born, it was probably September or October, when sheep were allowed to graze on a harvested field to eat the remaining straw and fertilize for the upcoming planting season. Christians moved the date to December 25 - Christian month - to put it exactly nine months after Easter, which was celebrated on March 25. That would mean Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the month, the 25th. Another reason for Christmas to be during the Christian month was to supplant the pagan festival of Saturnalia. Pope Julius made that change to coincide Christmas with the Roman celebration of the solstice on December 25 in the year 336. Pagans who lived in the northern hemisphere saw the sun slipping lower in the sky, and they believed they had to make a sacrifice to the gods, so the sun would return to warm them. There is pretty good evidence that the prehistoric druids, who lived in the British islands, celebrated the end of the year at a wood henge before they moved to a stone henge to celebrate the new year. Only faint evidence of the wood henge remains, but the stone henge still stands.   A Tax A tax was involved in Christian month. Luke 2:1 reads, “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” Much like today’s licenses and permits for everything from plumbers to hairdressers, the tax and census that accompanied it produced a receipt that was necessary to conduct business. A tax was necessary to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. A few verses later in Luke 2, it explains how Joseph went “Unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem - because he was of the house and lineage of David - To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, instead of Nazareth, where his parents lived.   Saint Claus The best-known character in Christian month is a saint. “Sainta” Claus derives from a real person, Saint Nicholas, who was a fourth-century Bishop of Myra, in what’s now Turkey. He was a kind and generous Saint, who provided the dowery for a family of poor daughters. To make the gift anonymous, he tucked the coins in the girls’ socks, which may have been hanging on the fireplace to dry. This tradition of gift-gifting explains why Giving Tuesday occurs on the last Tuesday in November, leading into the Christian month. Dutch families in New Amsterdam called Saint Nicholas Sinterklaas, which led to our current title, Santa Claus. He was portrayed as wearing a Bishop’s robe until Coke put him in red and white for an ad campaign in the Saturday Evening Post during Christian month in 1931. December has been a Christian month since the 4th century. Shopping, gifts, the supplanting of pagan rites, taxes, helping the poor, and the star of the show, Santa Claus, are all bound up together in the most celebratory month of the year, Christian Month. At the age of about 32, Jesus suffered a terrible death by crucifixion, perhaps the most terrible way to die. He was laid in a stone enclosure, but he didn’t stay there long. Ready for Easter?   Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    8 min

  5. 12/06/2023

    #196 The Economics of Imperfection

    Economics in 2023: we should not expect perfection on this side of heaven. Many people leave the church because they find that their fellow congregants are not perfect. We also hear complaints about the capitalist economy not perfectly serving everyone’s needs. The answer to both of these complaints is found at the root of the problem of all mankind: There is no perfection.   Church A friend in a Bible study recently mentioned that folks won’t attend church because, in the past, the church had harmed them in some way. About 150 years ago, my Southern Baptist predecessors claimed that the Bible endorsed slavery and used the scripture from Ephesians 6:5 stating, “Slaves obey your earthly masters.” Avoiding the church because the fallen people there have made mistakes is a sophomoric excuse. Tell me, what organizational entity will NOT hurt you? The Federal government, state government, county, city? The Rotarians, the Lions, even the Optimists will hurt you. The Salvation Army will hurt you. I wrote a series of three podcasts recently about 1) how fiscal policy harms the poor 2) how green policies impoverish the poor and 3) tax policy and the poor. I have not heard about anyone leaving the United States because they were harmed by those policies. People who leave the church because they were harmed have a very twisted understanding of the church and the gospel. There is no doctrine of perfection in the bible. As a matter of fact, the Christian doctrine is very clear about its imperfection. Romans 3:23 reads, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The church has been described more as a hospital for wounded folks, not a museum for perfect people. I’m trying to imagine someone moving to the Dallas area and buying season tickets for the Cowboys. At halftime, we find him at the ticket counter demanding a refund. “The receiver dropped the ball. I didn’t pay to see mistakes!” What did you expect? In the same way, I’m astounded at people who are hurt by the church and exclaim, “They’re not perfect!” Where did this idea of perfection come from? Seeing that we’re in the Christmas season, maybe we have an answer: we believe Jesus was perfect. As you and I travel through our lives, it’s kind of hard to understand, but that IS what we, as Christians believe. Jesus was perfect, but each of the other 117 billion people, before and since, are NOT perfect. Our pastor actually admitted from the pulpit, “Come join our church. We will hurt you.”   Forgiveness Here’s what Christians should be good at: Forgiveness. We believe in it. My consulting partner and I were asked to lead a “kumbaya” session of sorts with our local city council members and school board members. They are the two most powerful bodies in our community, and the mayor thought it would be a good idea, to get them all in the same room, and say good things about one another and it went well. When we asked for closing statements from the Mayor and the School Superintendent, the Super said succinctly, “We need to learn how to forgive.” That came out of nowhere. What did she mean?  Where did she get that? Well, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that our community was still suffering some lingering racial strife from the George Floyd killing. That’s what she meant, and she was right. Where does this model of forgiveness come from? Well, Jesus died for your sins, because there is no free lunch, someone had to pay. Jesus paid for you and me, so we have been forgiven. That’s why when the question was asked in Matthew 18:22 “How many times should I forgive?” The answer was “seventy times seven.” A society without forgiveness is a pretty ugly place to be, and that’s what’s happening in the post-modernity stage of United States society. When I used to do a lot of management seminars, I would often mention that every organization has to have some kind of a forgiveness system, although I didn’t use that term. I would ask the attendees for phrases, and they would mention things like, “Water under the bridge” “A come-to-Jesus meeting” or simply a progressive discipline system. Why do you suppose we do that? Why do we give people “three strikes and you’re out,” and why do we allow folks to have multiple convictions before they are sent to jail? It’s because we believe in the Christian view of forgiveness. Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in the 1830s to study the US penal system. It was very different from the French system, where they simply threw people in jail, and they stayed there. We shouldn’t be surprised, the French Revolution followed the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, which did not include forgiveness. The young American country had a Christian system of rehabilitating people. His findings were published in a book titled Democracy in America. We believe that people are naturally fallen, but they can reach for the higher angels of their nature, even while in the fallen state. It brings to mind the Greek story about Sisyphus. He was assigned to roll a boulder up a hill all day. When he returned to work the next morning, the boulder was at the bottom of the hill again. Kinda sounds like your work, doesn’t it?! That’s a good metaphor for our Christian belief system because it shows that our fallen nature pulls us, and the organizations we belong to, down the hill. The rock has to be pushed back up. So, when we see a stone at the bottom of the hill, we’re not surprised, but when we see one at the top of a hill, we know someone pushed it there.   Economics Capitalism provides the means to forgive. In a capitalist economy, individuals own private property, usually in the form of money, to use as a means of forgiveness. In socialism, goods are distributed, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” So where is what my fellow Christian economist Anne Bradley calls the “leftovers?” How could you give anything in an act of forgiveness? If you only have what you need, by definition, you have no ability to make an economic show of forgiveness. So many books try to trim the edges of Capitalism. I read Redeeming Capitalism a few years ago. I’m now reading one titled Better Capitalism. Another is titled Compassionate Capitalism. Frankly, I don’t recommend you read any of these books. They are all feeble attempts at redirecting our fallen economic system to better serve our neighbors, but I’ve noticed that there are no books that try to trim the edges of socialism. Have you seen a book titled Better Socialism, or Improved Socialism, or Compassionate Socialism? Perhaps it’s because we assume that Socialism can’t be redeemed. It's lost forever. Sisyphus can’t even attempt to roll the Socialism stone up the hill. Marxism is all about the oppressed and the oppressors, but what happens if they forgive each other? Then Marxism would not be necessary. You see, the entire economic idea of Marxism is based on the lack of forgiveness. And that’s why - by the way - there is no room for Christianity in Marxism, because once people learn how to forgive each other, Marxism dies. In Matthew 26:11, Jesus said “The poor you will always have with you,” because He knew we couldn’t run a godly economy. And, there’s great evidence that we have not. In a fallen world, there can’t be a perfect system.   No Utopia My podcast #34 is titled No Utopia, takes that point from a sub-topic in my little book Economics and the Christian Worldview. That podcast makes the point that there cannot be a perfect economic system that is populated by fallen people but we can make a better one. Let’s consider a simple index, with Socialism on one end, and Capitalism on the other end. Problem: Pure Socialism produces government-controlled monopolies, and pure Capitalism produces business-controlled monopolies. What’s the ideal way to distribute goods and services in a world where all the socialists and the capitalists are fallen? The best answer seems to be somewhere near the capitalist end, with just enough government control to maintain competition. And, to quote the school superintendent, “We need to learn how to forgive.” Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    10 min

  6. 11/29/2023

    #195 From God to Government

    Adam and Eve ate the apple because they wanted to be God. That desire has not gone away, and recently, we are seeing even more evidence of it. Our society is moving from “God to Government” and the implications don’t look great.   Worldview Christian Worldview to secular worldview The Christian Worldview says God created a perfect world, fallen humans have messed it up, and we find redemption through Jesus Christ. Support for abortion provides ample evidence that many people don’t believe humans are created by God; I will cite many examples of the denial of the fallen nature in the next few statements. If we’re not fallen, who needs a savior for redemption? Fallen to not fallen The defund the police movement was based in the assumption that humans are not fallen. If you just leave them alone, peace will break out. This is not a theoretical belief system. It’s been proven over and over again, that if you reduce punishments, crime increases, as it is in America today. From serving God to being “god” In the book The Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self Carl Trueman explains why people believe they are “A woman trapped in a man’s body,” or the opposite. The supposition is objectively false, but the concept of expressive individualism has led folks to believe they can do it. Maybe it’s the best evidence for the departure from the Christian Worldview, because people don’t believe they were created by God, so they can create themselves. Frightening.   Economics Supply side to demand side Keynesians believe that during an economic downturn, the economy should be stimulated by shifting the demand curve out. The measure of that effort is called the Philips curve, and it has been shown to work in the short run, but not in the long run. In the long run, you end up with employment returning to its natural rate, but with the added debt that was accumulated to shift the demand curve. When shown this, John Maynard Keynes agreed, and responded, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” What a selfish thing to say. In about twenty years, I might be dead, but my Dallas Baptist University sophomores will be in the middle of their careers, struggling to pay off the debt our country has accumulated. I’ve told them many times, that they will look back on the years from 2019-2023 and ask why the national debt moved from $20 to $30 trillion in just four years. Free market capitalism to socialism This is the most dangerous movement in economics. The title “Free Market Capitalism” reveals its intent in the title, because it calls for free exchange of goods and services. Socialism is based in power, where producers and consumers are coerced to exchange goods in a way the government wants them to. From private investment to government crowding out To help my sophomores at Dallas Baptist University do well on their weekly quiz, I ask if we should smoke cigarettes. The obvious answer is “no.” “So we should nix cigs!” is exclaim, which helps them remember the equation for Gross Domestic Product: Y = C + I + G + NX. In the last quarterly GDP report, Consumption and Government Spending were up. Investment was down. That means we have a good short-term economy, but a bad long-term economy, because there is not enough investment being made.   Governance Biden’s Sphere Sovereignty to Economic humanism Biden’s Sphere Sovereignty is the title of my podcast #111. I caught him admitting that government could not solve some specific problem, so I took the opportunity to make it the title of a podcast. Economic Humanism is the title of my podcast #21, which explains how humans think they can do just about anything. After eating the apple, Adam and Eve found it didn’t work that way. US Revolution to the French Revolution In his book Last Call for Liberty, Os Guinness explains the difference in the US revolution, which defended religious freedom, and the French revolution, which deposed religion. You’re welcome to notice which was more sustainable and successful. Yuval Levin dug deeper into the philosophical underpinnings of the two revolutions in his very good book The Great Debate.   The Divine to Humanism From humility to hubris Before Netflix produced the TV series titled The Crown, I didn’t care at all about the British royalty. I still think it’s rather interesting that one of the most sophisticated and developed countries in the world has a king and queen. The reason Ginger and I enjoy the program is because the writing is so good. During the first two seasons, they have the Queen say quite often, “Sometimes the most difficult thing to do is nothing.” That’s very good advice, but only if you believe there is a God who guards and guides. If you don’t believe in an active God, then humans would never accept that advice. Which is exactly why currently, we are hearing the ridiculous humanist statement from climate activists, “I can change the weather.” When I hear the chicken little’s proclaiming that they sky is falling, I think about Toto pulling back the curtain and revealing the Wizard in the movie The Wizard of Oz.   Religion From admired to dangerous Jim Denison is about the smartest guy I know in the Christian culture space. I write a 1500-word podcast once a week, he writes the same amount five days a week! Denison makes the observation that the public perception of Christianity has gone from admired to tolerated to dangerous. From Christmas as Christ’s birth to a Winter Celebration We have many of these examples in our own communities. I heard this one from reporter Laura Logan at the CEO Summit at Liberty University recently. She told about being with a Catholic priest in Paris, who asked her to look out over the city and observe what was missing. It was December, and there were no Christmas lights to be seen. Some of my friends complain about the commercial Christmas push starting too early. While I know what they mean, I actually have the view that you can’t start the celebration of Christ’s birth TOO EARLY for me. I know, that’s not what the stores are doing, but they can’t stop me from celebrating Christ’s birth in October.   Turning this big ship around When I appeared on Dennis Prager’s Fireside Chat, his last question was about whether I was an optimist or a pessimist. I said that I am known as the Christian Economist. The economist in me is a pessimist, but the Christian in me is an optimist. That’s because, even though we’ve been in economic messes like this before, God somehow seems to rescue us. While we shouldn’t get in trouble, just because God will save us. We are in trouble now, and I believe that even though humans continue to express their fallen nature, God has never changed. In a fast-changing environment, it’s good to hold onto something that does not change.   Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    9 min

  7. 11/22/2023

    Thankful for Private Property

    The Pilgrims tried socialism and it failed. Then private property led to so much prosperity that they hosted the first Thanksgiving.   If you have enough to eat this Thanksgiving, you should be thankful for the private property system that produced the food. We live in the most prosperous, fruitful time in human history. Let’s take a brief look at how we got here. In October of 1621, Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford called a three-day festival, inviting the ninety Indians to join the 50 Pilgrims. This feast, which included times of thanks to God as well as athletic competitions and food and fellowship, is commonly celebrated as the first Thanksgiving festival in America. So, if you celebrate it with football games and food with your neighbors, you are re-enacting this cherished Christian tradition, but who were these Pilgrims, and how did they get here?   Fight or Flight That’s the basic idea from psychology that our minds are built to either change ideas we disagree with, or run from them. It’s a pretty big discussion among Christians in the United States today. Or, at least, it SHOULD be. I delve into the question in podcast #72 titled Two Worlds. Being in the world, but not of the world is becoming more difficult in post modernity. The Pilgrims response was flight, as explained by David Barton at WallBuilders: The Pilgrims are well known today for their association with the first Thanksgiving festival. The Pilgrims were Separatists — a set of Protestants who felt that they would be unable to reform the Church of England and therefore they chose “flight” over “fight.” They went to Holland and then eventually to America. But the other group who came later, were Puritans. They were “fighters” who believed they could reform the Church of England. It turned out that they were wrong, and following severe persecution, some 20,000 followed the Pilgrims to America. The Pilgrims had obtained a land grant for Virginia and set sail in the Mayflower on September 6, 1620. But after a rough ocean crossing, they landed 200 miles north of Virginia in what became known as Massachusetts. On November 11, 1620, they finally dropped anchor and came ashore.   Grateful or Entitled Of the hundreds of books and articles I’ve read and the hundreds of speeches I’ve heard, the one that makes the most impact on today’s subject is a little five-minute video by Dennis Prager, titled The Key to Unhappiness. He says there are two groups of people: Those who are grateful and those who are entitled. The grateful will always be happy, the entitled will never be happy. And here’s the strange part: Dennis is a Jew, who does not believe Jesus died for him. Think about it: A Jew is telling a Christian that HE should be grateful. Kinda backward, isn’t it? I’m the one who should be telling HIM to be grateful. Jesus had to die for your sins because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody had to pay. And it wasn’t you. That’s why Christians are grateful, and why we celebrate Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be grateful for. You’re welcome to feel sorry for atheists during this season. They have no one to be grateful TO. I don’t know how you can be grateful FOR, without being grateful TO. Oh, then the non-believer has to suffer through Christmas, and not celebrate the birth of Christ. You know, for all we complain about the difficulty of being a Christian, this time of year, it’s quite a blessing. Our grandkids sometimes tell each other, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.” Actually, that’s a pretty good Christian economic philosophy. Be happy for what you have. After all, being happy is not having what you want, it’s wanting what you have. In our book Biblical Economic Policy, Sergiy Saydometov and I mention this concept as one of the Ten Commandments of Economics, which we borrowed from the list by Moses. It’s #4 for us, and it’s called “Don’t Covet.”   If you Don’t Work The apostle Paul wrote the people in Thessalonica, “He who won’t work, won’t eat.” The first Pilgrims hava the same problem some 2000 years later. William Bradford was the governor of the Plymouth colony. Here’s what he had to say about the socialism of the early Pilgrims, “By adopting the communal system we thought we were wiser than God.” That’s true of Socialists today. They think they are so smart, they can plan an economic system. No one is as smart as all of us. I often use this little diagram when I teach the power of markets in my class at Dallas Baptist University. The benevolent dictator would have to have perfect vision through two eyes, but it’s spelled with a capital I because it stands for information and intent. Bradford thought he was wiser than God because he tried to plan a socialist system that would produce more than the market system. He found he was not as smart as he thought. And, socialists since him have continued to try, but it never works. I unpack more of this in podcast #76 titled Central Planning Still Does Not Work. It never did. From Kings in the Old Testament to the Romans in the New Testament. From William Bradford at Plymouth to Robert Owen in Indiana in 1842, from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Vladimir Lenin. From Fidel Castro to Hugo Chavez, from Jeremy Corbyn in the UK to Bernie Sanders in the US Senate: They are all trying to be God, like Adam and Eve. And, what they all find, is that if you eat the apple, you get poorer. If you award it as private property and allow humans, made in the image of God, to find creative ways to increase their production and be industrious and fruitful, the economy multiplies and everyone gets richer.   Those Fruitful Pilgrims Here's how Jerry Bower explained it in Forbes Magazine, way back in 2008, in an article titled “Lessons From A Capitalist Thanksgiving”. “The members of the Plymouth colony had arrived in the New World with a plan for collective property ownership. Reflecting the current opinion of the aristocratic class in the 1620s, their charter called for farmland to be worked communally and for the harvests to be shared.” Predictably, famine ensued, followed quickly by plague. Half the colony died. Unlike today's socialists, they learned from their mistakes, giving each person a parcel of land as private property. The results were astounding. They were actually following the advice that would be written 150 years later by Adam Smith: Specialize, then trade your surplus. Men worked hard. Fields were not only tilled and planted but also diligently harvested. They traded with the neighboring Indian nations and learned to plant maize, squash, and pumpkin and to rotate crops from year to year.   The harvest was bountiful, and new colonists immigrated to the thriving private property, capitalist economy. Kind of like the folks crossing the southern border of the United States today. People want to live in a private property, capitalist state.   Private Property When I talk about the lack of private property in my sophomore class at Dallas Baptist University, the students have trouble grasping the concept. They know that they have a title to their car, and their parents have a title to their home. To live in a society without private property, and the attendant legal system to enforce it, is frankly, beyond their level of understanding. That’s why the Pilgrims were richer than the Native American Indians they encountered in the New World. Most Indians didn’t believe in private property. They were mostly animists, who worshipped the earth. You can find many of their philosophical descendants today in the modern world, who worship the creation instead of the Creator. As Hernando DeSoto explains in The Mystery of Capital, in the early colonial period of the United States, property owners marked the edges of their property with corn stalks in Iowa and hatchet marks on trees in New England. What De Soto so clearly explains is how those common marking systems became standardized and codified into law. Private property and the laws that defend it are what make nations wealthy, and it produced the first Thanksgiving. I will close with an admonition from Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute, “Before we eat turkey this Thanksgiving, we should first thank private property rights, because they protect us from the “tragedy of the commons” that resulted in starvation and death for the early Pilgrims’ failed experiment with socialism. Without property rights, Thanksgiving Day would be “Starvation Day.” Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    10 min

  8. 11/15/2023

    Who is Getting Shanghaied in Trade?

    Trade with China makes Americans richer, but China is likely using the profits from their exports to build a military that the US will fight someday.   In the 19th century, if a sailor got too drunk in a port city, he might wake up the next day on a ship steaming toward Shanghai. The noun became a verb, and he had been “Shanghaied,” but in the current US-China trade relationship, who is getting Shanghaied? Trade with China makes us richer, but they might be using those profits to build a military that we will fight someday. I’ve often said, you won’t find a one-armed economist because we will always say, “On the other hand.” Trade with China reflects this conflict. Trade makes us richer, but it also makes China richer. What do we do? I think it would be difficult to find a scripture that encouraged market discrimination against a people group, just because they are from another country. That’s where Christianity and Economics support each other. They BOTH call for open markets and trade, among all people groups and all countries.   Trade is Good Of course, trade is good. The entire Adam Smith economic legacy might be neatly tied up in a two-step process: First, increase production via specialization, then trade your surplus. Trade is Good is one of the Ten Commandments of Economics that I found with my co-author Sergiy Saydometov, when we wrote the book titled Biblical Economic Policy. If we didn’t trade, we would be very poor. I’m pretty good at giving economics lectures and writing, I’m an average farmer, a lousy tailor, and even a worse auto mechanic. I couldn’t make a car if my life depended on it. Instead, I specialize in writing and speaking, and I trade for food, clothes, and cars. That little economic system works at the national level too. This is still Adam Smith territory: he noticed that the French were better at making wine, but the Scots were better at making Whiskey. That’s why some wines, like Champagne and Bordeaux, are named for the region where they are made. I’ll presume you know why they call it “Scotch Whiskey.” In the first nine months of this year, China exported to us $210 billion more in goods than we exported to them. That’s the FRONT part of the equation that they explain to you on CNN and Fox News. The back part of the equation is a little more complex, so you only find that in the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. That’s where you find this Chinese businessman holding a million US dollars and trying to exchange it for something. He ends up buying a shopping mall in Cincinnati, or a wheat farm in Kansas because that’s where the US dollar is honored. That back side of the equation is where you hear people complain “The Chinese will own the US someday.” That’s chicken little economics. I heard the same thing about the Japanese in the 1990’s. If the Chinese buy $210 billion worth of real estate in the US every year, there really is not even an ESTIMATE of how long it would take them to own a meaningful percentage of US assets. Recently, there have been reports that they are buying land near military installations. That’s concerning.   Trading Avoids War There’s something called the Golden Arches theory of Conflict Prevention that goes something like this “No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other.” It was first proposed by Thomas Friedman in a New York Times column, then became part of his book titled The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which I read years ago. Maybe it was disproven by the UK’s struggle with Argentina over the Falklands, and the current Russian war on Ukraine, but the concept is still valid. Trading avoids war. Part of the reason that Imperial Japan attacked the US was because the US stopped trading oil and steel with them. OK, the US had good reason. They were responding to Japan’s atrocious treatment of the Chinese, just across the Japanese border. That’s interesting to think about: My podcast today, attempts to avoid war with China, and it was Japan’s mistreatment of THEM, that partially led to World War II. You can also make the economic case, that part of Adolf Hitler’s popularity was due to his promise to re-ignite the Third Reich after the cruel treatment of Germany at the Versailles agreement. The great British economist Maynard Keynes left the conference in protest, arguing that it would cause World War II. He was right. The Versailles Agreement extracted severe financial payments from Germany. To make the payments, they simply printed up the Deutschmarks, and it caused hyperinflation. Hitler promised to get revenge on the rest of Europe. Another example is the formation of the European Union. The original purpose was to avoid World War III. It began as a coal and steel trading agreement because coal and steel are two of the elements required to make the implements of war.   Beating Plowshares into Swords You DID get the idea that it’s backward from the scripture in Isaiah 2:4, where we are called to “Beat our swords into plowshares.” That’s the problem. The conservative voices in America will warn you that when you buy a Chinese product, the profits are used to build a war machine that will be used to dominate the world. That IS something of a concern, but you’ve already heard about how we get richer by trading with China. So, if we stop trading, WE will become marginally poorer. Then, how will WE be able to afford to build a military to defend the world against China’s expansionist powers? Ginger and I are blessed to be able to travel. We like exotic places, but we have purposely avoided Cuba because we’ve been told the money we would spend in the country would be used to further suppress the population, so we’re not going. That’s the same argument being made by the anti-China trade folks: They’re concerned that the Chinese government is using profits from US-China trade, to build a military.   The Market To some extent, the market will take care of this. As Chinese products get more expensive, consumers will follow the demand rule of economics, and buy products from lower-cost producers. During a trip to Vietnam some years ago, one of my traveling buddies was charged with sourcing a men’s shirt, because costs in China were getting too high. During a separate trip to China, we drove past a newly completed apartment complex. It was more than a complex; it was a small city. I counted the rows while one of my grad students counted the columns, and we estimated it would hold 10,000 people. It was totally empty, and my guess is that it remains empty today. That’s the problem with a centralized government. None of us is as smart as all of us, but Communist Socialism denies that very simple fact. They continue to barrel ahead with foolish projects that will harm the economy. For more on how the US might be taking us down the same foolish path, I will refer you to my podcast #76 Central Planning Still Does Not Work. China’s opening up in the 1980s and its membership in the World Trade Organization in 2001 ignited a new phase of globalization, bringing investment to China and cheaper consumer goods to Western consumers. For years after that, foreign companies plowed the profits they made in China back into China. Now, as growth slows they are pulling those profits out. There are many indications that the market is decreasing China’s economic power.   The Solution “A problem well-stated is half-solved.” That quote is attributed to Charles Kettering, the famed inventor and former head of research for General Motors. Well, this one is ONLY half-solved. You have to wonder if the talking heads on the conservative side really understand that what they are calling for is government control of the marketplace, to disallow consumers the freedom to choose the products they want. If we were convinced of China’s expansionary desires, we would not trade with them. Until that’s absolutely clear, America should do what she’s so good at: Give people the freedom to choose. The US has the most powerful economic machine in the history of mankind. That’s been produced by freedom-loving people who demand choice in products and services. Fear God Tell the Truth Earn a Profit FOLLOW THE CHRISTIAN ECONOMIST ONLINE: https://davearnott.com/  Donate Today | https://pushpay.com/g/davearnott https://twitter.com/DaveArnott5 https://www.facebook.com/TheChristianEconomist Odysee | https://odysee.com/@TheChristianEconomist Rumble | https://rumble.com/c/c-1147611 Spreaker | https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-christian-economist-by-dave-arnott YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChristianEconomist

    10 min
See All (21)

4.9
out of 5
72 Ratings

About

The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott discusses Christian economics, conservative economics, and how they relate to current events.

Information

  • Creator
    The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2024
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Christian Economist | All Rights Reserved
  • Show Website
    The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott