Baby Economics

ECONOMICS is too hard. Who can tell from deficits and multipliers, after all? So it is time to dumb economics down, and make it simple enough for a baby to understand. “Economics for Babies.” This could be a publishing sensation to equal the Dummies phenomenon. Here is how it works.

Drill, Baby, Drill. Our liberal friends are convinced, because their tame climate scientists have told them so, that conventional energy sources are either doomed, as in Peak Oil, or evil, as in coal and nuclear energy. It’s a pity that horizontal fracturing is making monkeys out of the Peak Oil chappies. The only way to approach energy is to let the Rockefellers and the Fricks and the Texans and the Albertans and the North Dakotans go for it. If they make a mess—and they will—then we will make ’em clean it up.

Cut, Baby, Cut. Our liberal friends are convinced that, given sufficiently rigorous policy analysis and sufficiently inspired political leadership, they can design and build the bridge to the future with government programs. But the truth is that government spending, all government spending, is a waste, starting with the Pentagon and defense spending. But, wasteful as they are, some government programs are necessary. Alexander Hamilton laid out the case for a national defense in the early Federalist Papers. Almost all other government programs are pure waste; their only purpose is to buy votes for politicians with your money. Alas, they do more than that: they fray the cords of community. When people have to work together in voluntary cooperation to secure retirement income, health care, and education, they build community. When the government does it, the people fall to squabbling and grabbing their piece of the pie. So the only thing to do with government is to cut.

Grow, Baby, Grow. Our liberal friends are convinced that government must invest in the infrastructure to build “public goods.” That is the rationale behind President Obama’s crazed push for very fast trains, clean green energy, and the rest of the liberal crony capitalist agenda. But almost all “big ideas” for government investment have ended in tears, from government credit allocation to government energy policy. There’s a very simple reason for this. Politicians are experts in winning elections, and businessmen are experts in growing the economy. Politicians should stick to politics, and let businessmen get on with business. Come on liberals: we all know how to grow the economy. You do it will low tax rates on people and low taxes on jobs.

Debt, Baby, Debt. What is it about the national debt? Under Alexander Hamilton the US national debt ignited an economic boom. Under President Obama it has sent the economy on a Recovery to Nowhere. How come Hamilton was so smart? It’s simple. He stole his financial system from the Dutch. It was the Dutch that invented the modern financial system in about 1600 complete with banks, bond market, stock market, national debt, and a hard-money central bank. It worked so well that the Dutch won their independence from Spain. Then the Brits imported Dutch finance in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and built a world empire. Alexander Hamilton imported Dutch finance into the US in 1792. Confidence in US credit got so high that President Jefferson could borrow the money to buy Louisiana and enable his successors to conquer a continent. But gambler John Law taught the world how to screw up Dutch finance. He took it to France in 1715, sweet-talked a couple of dukes, turned it into a confidence trick, and destroyed the credit of the French ancien regime. Today we call John Law’s system “stimulus” or “Keynesian economics” and we know where it ends: “sovereign default.” How can you tell sound “Dutch finance” from the inflationism of Keynes and Law? It’s the difference between confidence and confidence trick.

Next year is election year, and patriotic Americans will want to vent their frustration at a failed Obamanomics. What better way could they choose than public recitations of Baby Economics. I suggest that the flash crowds of young Americans chanting “U.S.A.!” in front of the White House upon the death of OBL and also upon the occasion of an LSU leftie trying to burn an American flag might like to blend a little Baby Economics into their chants. For starters, why not warm up with “U.S.A.! Drill, Baby, Drill! U.S.A.!”

Real economics is pretty simple. A baby could understand it. The reason it’s gotten so complicated is that politicians are always trying to game the economy to buy votes. Spend, Baby, Spend!

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

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Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

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I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
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