Curtis Dahlgren
COLUMN #101: An introduction to economics 101
By Curtis Dahlgren
"Never trust anyone over the age of 90." — new slogan of the 60-year-old hippies
"Life isn't 'dog eat dog'; it's 'dog eat dog food.'" — the owner of Marmaduke, the comic-page Great Dane (8-24-81)
AS THE INTELLIGENT DESIGNER OF ALL LAWS, JESUS CHRIST understood the laws of economics. He alluded to the subject more than once, but one good example is in His sermon on the mountain: "Therefore take no fearful thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or Wherewith shall we be clothed?
"FOR AFTER ALL THESE THINGS DO THE GENTILES SEEK."
That last part is one of His most humorous lines, because at first glance it appears that He (a Jew) is implying that the Gentiles are more preoccupied with materialistic things than the Hebrews. The bottom line, though: what this Jew was actually saying is, the "Gentiles" have more negative and more "fearful" thoughts about economic needs [oftentimes "conspiratorial" thoughts] while the laws of economics seem quite "natural" to Israelites of faith.
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." Period.
My economic law #1 is: Economic self-reliance requires faith (in a Higher Power).
America's early settlers and pioneers epitomized that spirit. The Europe they left behind never had a dominating entrepreneurial spirit in the same way. To this day they look with bewilderment upon our relatively individualistic attitude (not understanding that "seeking first the Kingdom" has a lot to do with that). "Fearful thoughts" and stress are inversely proportional to the degree to which people put first things FIRST.
The "secular culture" leads to more belly-aching than "Thanksgiving"!
No one ever complains about the price of dog food, DVDs, or CDs. No one complains about 60 cents per gallon gas taxes, but the 10-cents-a-gallon oil company profits are called "windfall profits." The more the price of gas drops, the more people clamor lately to have Uncle Sam "do something" (but "don't you dare touch those gas taxes, or mandatory mark-up laws")!
This is one of the many ways modern Americans repudiate the entrepreneurial spirit of our forebears. Of course, there are still "two Americas," thank God. More than 100,000 businesses in this country were started by kids under the age of l8. This is a hint of hope in a nearly hopeless pop culture.
The "other America," the left-wing extremists, want us to be "more like Europe." Michael Savage says they want us to become a colony again — a colony of Europe (where unemployment is much greater than ours)! The lack of economic education in the public schools could be our downfall.
Konrad Adenauer was an exception to the European rule, and in the 1950s he succeeded in lowering taxes in Germany, which led to their "miraculous" post-war economic recovery. President Kennedy emulated Adenauer and led the fight for lower taxes, which (surprahse, surprahse) led us out of a recession. Now President Bush's tax cuts are in the cross-hairs because of economic illiteracy, plus a healthy dose of demagoguery.
"But what about the poor?" they say. So, what about the "poor"?
Define POOR. Well, I guess the government defines it as those in the lowest percentiles of our population [let's just say the lowest one-fifth, for sake of argument]. As our population grows, the statistic for the number of "poor" grows too (though the percentage so defined remains the same). Nevertheless, the demagogues increase their drum-beat.
What about the theory that "the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer"? I've never seen any proof of that offered by the demagogues, but leaving that aside, according to my annual income, I would be defined as "poverty stricken," and so I am qualified to comment, as follows:
WE "POOR" AMERICANS HAVE CERTAIN ADVANTAGES NEVER KNOWN IN EARLIER TIMES (and if you want to take me out-of-context, here's a good place to start):
The war-on-poverty lobbyists often spend $100 on one night out at a restaurant. I've bought CARS for less money than that! In a mass-market of nearly 300 million people, we poor still have access to good used cars, because most people won't drive one that "moth and rust hath corrupted," to paraphrase Christ.
We also now have cheap generic products, "dollar stores," garage sales, plus Goodwill and other resale shops. I've found that it's cheaper to buy a suit at St. Vincent's than to take my old one to the cleaners. This isn't just the philosophy of a "cheap Scandinavian" but it could be the key to your survival in the times ahead of us.
IF YOU'D RATHER BUY "BRAND NAME" CLOTHES, DON'T CALL YOURSELF POOR!
When people complain about prices, the economically illiterate simply don't compute the adjustment for inflation. The price of gas would have to be in the range somewhere above $3.50 a gallon to set a record in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars. Yes, I once drove from Wisconsin to Georgia and home on $14 worth of gas (at 25 cents a gallon and 40+ mpg, I could go 1,600 miles on $10 worth of gas), but still, today's gas is a bargain compared to Evian water or Krispy Kream donuts or Starbucks coffee!
Truth be told, the oil companies would prefer "stable" prices to "high" oil prices.
While you're belly-aching about the price of gas, don't forget the efforts of the Sierra Club to keep the price even higher than it is now! As for "over-consumption," a lot of the over-consumption of energy is by environmentalists who set their thermostat at 85 when its 60 outside, and set their air conditioners at 60 when it's 85 outside. Now that's an "ugly American"!
Those big fancy houses of the DINKs (double income, no kids) burn a lot of gas and electricity unnecessarily. Wood-burning is becoming politically incorrect too now. I guess a dead tree is considered "fossil fuel" these days! I just wish that our lefty neighbors, who don't like the way that Freedom and the Market manage the supply and prices, would move to Cuba, where there is neither Freedom nor supply. If they have "fearful thoughts" about the economy now, at least there they would have no doubts. They would know what to expect, but they won't move because they'd miss their Krispy Kream donuts and Ben & Jerry's.
Ronald Reagan told one of his favorite stories about Communism to Gorbachev himself: A Moscow housewife sends her husband to the store for a loaf of bread. He stands in line for six hours and the "state store" runs out of bread. He goes berserk and complains loudly. A man in a trenchcoat walks up to him and says, "You have been warned. We will not warn you again."
The man goes home and his wife says, "You forgot the bread!"
"It's worse than I thought," said the man. "They're not only out of bread, but they're out of bullets!"
It all boils down to two choices: the "whims" of the Market, or the whims of corrupt bureaucrats. The latter are subject to a need for bribery in order to stay in power, and the history of the world has shown us over and over and over again where that leads. You don't want to go there.
The economically illiterate who call all competition a "dog-eat-dog" world, are generally people who DON'T COMPETE VERY WELL, so they would like to outlaw all competition.
Here's my economic Law #2: "Competition" is a word like weather. It's a word that can accept an adjective, like any other noun. It can be either "good" or bad, depending on the general morality of the members of society.
Incidently, since the Lefties have made "morality" a 4-letter word, why should they complain if some members of the business community follow suit with the trump that the left called (moral relativism)?
Economic Law #3: "Don't knock your competitors. By boosting others you will boost yourself. A little competition is a good thing and severe competition is a blessing." So said someone named Jacob Kindleburger.
The Left is all in a bundle about Wal-Mart these days. The same things were said about J.C. Penney when he started his chain out of a small town in Wyoming. What is it with the elites who evidently can't stand any corporation that isn't started in NEW YORK CITY? "Property rights" evidently only apply to inherited East coast wealth or politically correct companies.
Here are a few words from "Competition as a Dynamic Process," by John Maurice Clark:
"[Dynamic Competition] calls for a multitude of conditioning factors, starting with the basic law of personal and property rights and contract, implemented by dependable guidance, and going on to an array of more specific controls and general standards of responsible conduct. This whole body of standards, formal and informal, constitutes what has been spoken of as the 'rules of the game' of competitive business . . .
"It is never safe to assume that the relation between profitability and serviceability is automatic, and our best efforts cannot hope to make it perfect. But it can turn the forces of competition largely in constructive directions, resulting in a combination of adequate discipline and flexible responsiveness to the wishes of those most directly concerned, which is preferable to the defects and abuses of direct authoritative control of production, price, and all that goes with them." [my emphasis]
That was published in 1961 by the Brookings Institution, not exactly a "conservative" foundation. I am reminded that even our secular, anti-Judeo-Christian universities are still producing some good Schools of Business, still inculcating "standards of responsible conduct" in their alumni — unlike the "environmentalists" and others who graduate with majors in the "soft sciences."
By the way, no nation in the world has developed more technology for cleaning up the environment than the good old "capitalist" USA, and no nation ever polluted the world more than back in the old USSR. And I wonder how much money was donated to help clean up our Gulf states by George Soros, People for the "American" Way, or the Sierra Club? [They're holding that money back to lobby for making us a Colony again — a colony of Europe.]
In concluding, according to a USA Today headline (10/27/05), Wal-Mart critics take cause to church: "The movie ['The High Cost of Low Prices'] is part of a broader campaign by a disparate group of critics who now include ministers asserting Wal-Mart's tactics are a moral as well as economic issue . . . [Director Greenwald's] Brave New Films estimates that 40,000 people will view their film in churches and other religious venues after its limited theatrical release next week in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles."
What'd I tell you about left-wing bias against companies founded in places like Wyoming and Arkansas? In their "Brave New World," flyover country is simply "too Judeo-Christian" and is a region that must be "saved" by destroying it. I'm only being partly facetious.
This movie was shown at the library in my former home town recently, and while that's "free speech," the showing of such propaganda in the churches is the worst form of blasphemy. While pretending to oppose CERTAIN "money-changers," they are setting up tables in the churches and temples for THEIR OWN MONEY-CHANGERS — the unions and companies that contribute to the "right" political causes.
It's time to turn the tables and throw them out of the temples and churches, or else get out of those churches and tell the "disparate ministers" why you're getting out!
THE "OLD HIPPIES" NOW DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER THE AGE OF 90, AND THAT INCLUDES JESUS CHRIST AND HIS NATURAL LAWS OF ECONOMICS.
Keep the faith, seek first the Kingdom, and don't throw that which is holy to the dogs.
© Curtis Dahlgren
"Never trust anyone over the age of 90." — new slogan of the 60-year-old hippies
"Life isn't 'dog eat dog'; it's 'dog eat dog food.'" — the owner of Marmaduke, the comic-page Great Dane (8-24-81)
AS THE INTELLIGENT DESIGNER OF ALL LAWS, JESUS CHRIST understood the laws of economics. He alluded to the subject more than once, but one good example is in His sermon on the mountain: "Therefore take no fearful thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or Wherewith shall we be clothed?
"FOR AFTER ALL THESE THINGS DO THE GENTILES SEEK."
That last part is one of His most humorous lines, because at first glance it appears that He (a Jew) is implying that the Gentiles are more preoccupied with materialistic things than the Hebrews. The bottom line, though: what this Jew was actually saying is, the "Gentiles" have more negative and more "fearful" thoughts about economic needs [oftentimes "conspiratorial" thoughts] while the laws of economics seem quite "natural" to Israelites of faith.
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." Period.
My economic law #1 is: Economic self-reliance requires faith (in a Higher Power).
America's early settlers and pioneers epitomized that spirit. The Europe they left behind never had a dominating entrepreneurial spirit in the same way. To this day they look with bewilderment upon our relatively individualistic attitude (not understanding that "seeking first the Kingdom" has a lot to do with that). "Fearful thoughts" and stress are inversely proportional to the degree to which people put first things FIRST.
The "secular culture" leads to more belly-aching than "Thanksgiving"!
No one ever complains about the price of dog food, DVDs, or CDs. No one complains about 60 cents per gallon gas taxes, but the 10-cents-a-gallon oil company profits are called "windfall profits." The more the price of gas drops, the more people clamor lately to have Uncle Sam "do something" (but "don't you dare touch those gas taxes, or mandatory mark-up laws")!
This is one of the many ways modern Americans repudiate the entrepreneurial spirit of our forebears. Of course, there are still "two Americas," thank God. More than 100,000 businesses in this country were started by kids under the age of l8. This is a hint of hope in a nearly hopeless pop culture.
The "other America," the left-wing extremists, want us to be "more like Europe." Michael Savage says they want us to become a colony again — a colony of Europe (where unemployment is much greater than ours)! The lack of economic education in the public schools could be our downfall.
Konrad Adenauer was an exception to the European rule, and in the 1950s he succeeded in lowering taxes in Germany, which led to their "miraculous" post-war economic recovery. President Kennedy emulated Adenauer and led the fight for lower taxes, which (surprahse, surprahse) led us out of a recession. Now President Bush's tax cuts are in the cross-hairs because of economic illiteracy, plus a healthy dose of demagoguery.
"But what about the poor?" they say. So, what about the "poor"?
Define POOR. Well, I guess the government defines it as those in the lowest percentiles of our population [let's just say the lowest one-fifth, for sake of argument]. As our population grows, the statistic for the number of "poor" grows too (though the percentage so defined remains the same). Nevertheless, the demagogues increase their drum-beat.
What about the theory that "the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer"? I've never seen any proof of that offered by the demagogues, but leaving that aside, according to my annual income, I would be defined as "poverty stricken," and so I am qualified to comment, as follows:
WE "POOR" AMERICANS HAVE CERTAIN ADVANTAGES NEVER KNOWN IN EARLIER TIMES (and if you want to take me out-of-context, here's a good place to start):
The war-on-poverty lobbyists often spend $100 on one night out at a restaurant. I've bought CARS for less money than that! In a mass-market of nearly 300 million people, we poor still have access to good used cars, because most people won't drive one that "moth and rust hath corrupted," to paraphrase Christ.
We also now have cheap generic products, "dollar stores," garage sales, plus Goodwill and other resale shops. I've found that it's cheaper to buy a suit at St. Vincent's than to take my old one to the cleaners. This isn't just the philosophy of a "cheap Scandinavian" but it could be the key to your survival in the times ahead of us.
IF YOU'D RATHER BUY "BRAND NAME" CLOTHES, DON'T CALL YOURSELF POOR!
When people complain about prices, the economically illiterate simply don't compute the adjustment for inflation. The price of gas would have to be in the range somewhere above $3.50 a gallon to set a record in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars. Yes, I once drove from Wisconsin to Georgia and home on $14 worth of gas (at 25 cents a gallon and 40+ mpg, I could go 1,600 miles on $10 worth of gas), but still, today's gas is a bargain compared to Evian water or Krispy Kream donuts or Starbucks coffee!
Truth be told, the oil companies would prefer "stable" prices to "high" oil prices.
While you're belly-aching about the price of gas, don't forget the efforts of the Sierra Club to keep the price even higher than it is now! As for "over-consumption," a lot of the over-consumption of energy is by environmentalists who set their thermostat at 85 when its 60 outside, and set their air conditioners at 60 when it's 85 outside. Now that's an "ugly American"!
Those big fancy houses of the DINKs (double income, no kids) burn a lot of gas and electricity unnecessarily. Wood-burning is becoming politically incorrect too now. I guess a dead tree is considered "fossil fuel" these days! I just wish that our lefty neighbors, who don't like the way that Freedom and the Market manage the supply and prices, would move to Cuba, where there is neither Freedom nor supply. If they have "fearful thoughts" about the economy now, at least there they would have no doubts. They would know what to expect, but they won't move because they'd miss their Krispy Kream donuts and Ben & Jerry's.
Ronald Reagan told one of his favorite stories about Communism to Gorbachev himself: A Moscow housewife sends her husband to the store for a loaf of bread. He stands in line for six hours and the "state store" runs out of bread. He goes berserk and complains loudly. A man in a trenchcoat walks up to him and says, "You have been warned. We will not warn you again."
The man goes home and his wife says, "You forgot the bread!"
"It's worse than I thought," said the man. "They're not only out of bread, but they're out of bullets!"
It all boils down to two choices: the "whims" of the Market, or the whims of corrupt bureaucrats. The latter are subject to a need for bribery in order to stay in power, and the history of the world has shown us over and over and over again where that leads. You don't want to go there.
The economically illiterate who call all competition a "dog-eat-dog" world, are generally people who DON'T COMPETE VERY WELL, so they would like to outlaw all competition.
Here's my economic Law #2: "Competition" is a word like weather. It's a word that can accept an adjective, like any other noun. It can be either "good" or bad, depending on the general morality of the members of society.
Incidently, since the Lefties have made "morality" a 4-letter word, why should they complain if some members of the business community follow suit with the trump that the left called (moral relativism)?
Economic Law #3: "Don't knock your competitors. By boosting others you will boost yourself. A little competition is a good thing and severe competition is a blessing." So said someone named Jacob Kindleburger.
The Left is all in a bundle about Wal-Mart these days. The same things were said about J.C. Penney when he started his chain out of a small town in Wyoming. What is it with the elites who evidently can't stand any corporation that isn't started in NEW YORK CITY? "Property rights" evidently only apply to inherited East coast wealth or politically correct companies.
Here are a few words from "Competition as a Dynamic Process," by John Maurice Clark:
"[Dynamic Competition] calls for a multitude of conditioning factors, starting with the basic law of personal and property rights and contract, implemented by dependable guidance, and going on to an array of more specific controls and general standards of responsible conduct. This whole body of standards, formal and informal, constitutes what has been spoken of as the 'rules of the game' of competitive business . . .
"It is never safe to assume that the relation between profitability and serviceability is automatic, and our best efforts cannot hope to make it perfect. But it can turn the forces of competition largely in constructive directions, resulting in a combination of adequate discipline and flexible responsiveness to the wishes of those most directly concerned, which is preferable to the defects and abuses of direct authoritative control of production, price, and all that goes with them." [my emphasis]
That was published in 1961 by the Brookings Institution, not exactly a "conservative" foundation. I am reminded that even our secular, anti-Judeo-Christian universities are still producing some good Schools of Business, still inculcating "standards of responsible conduct" in their alumni — unlike the "environmentalists" and others who graduate with majors in the "soft sciences."
By the way, no nation in the world has developed more technology for cleaning up the environment than the good old "capitalist" USA, and no nation ever polluted the world more than back in the old USSR. And I wonder how much money was donated to help clean up our Gulf states by George Soros, People for the "American" Way, or the Sierra Club? [They're holding that money back to lobby for making us a Colony again — a colony of Europe.]
In concluding, according to a USA Today headline (10/27/05), Wal-Mart critics take cause to church: "The movie ['The High Cost of Low Prices'] is part of a broader campaign by a disparate group of critics who now include ministers asserting Wal-Mart's tactics are a moral as well as economic issue . . . [Director Greenwald's] Brave New Films estimates that 40,000 people will view their film in churches and other religious venues after its limited theatrical release next week in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles."
What'd I tell you about left-wing bias against companies founded in places like Wyoming and Arkansas? In their "Brave New World," flyover country is simply "too Judeo-Christian" and is a region that must be "saved" by destroying it. I'm only being partly facetious.
This movie was shown at the library in my former home town recently, and while that's "free speech," the showing of such propaganda in the churches is the worst form of blasphemy. While pretending to oppose CERTAIN "money-changers," they are setting up tables in the churches and temples for THEIR OWN MONEY-CHANGERS — the unions and companies that contribute to the "right" political causes.
It's time to turn the tables and throw them out of the temples and churches, or else get out of those churches and tell the "disparate ministers" why you're getting out!
THE "OLD HIPPIES" NOW DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER THE AGE OF 90, AND THAT INCLUDES JESUS CHRIST AND HIS NATURAL LAWS OF ECONOMICS.
Keep the faith, seek first the Kingdom, and don't throw that which is holy to the dogs.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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