Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Thomas Sowell opposes government intervention in the economy

Leave a comment
Young Thomas Sowell

From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The policies of this administration make it risky to lend money, with Washington politicians coming up with one reason after another why borrowers shouldn’t have to pay it back when it is due, or perhaps not pay it all back at all. That’s called “loan modification” or various other fancy names for welshing on debts. Is it surprising that lenders have become reluctant to lend?

Private businesses have amassed record amounts of cash, which they could use to hire more people — if this administration were not generating vast amounts of uncertainty about what the costs are going to be for ObamaCare, among other unpredictable employer costs, from a government heedless or hostile toward business.

As a result, it is often cheaper or less risky for employers to work the existing employees overtime, or to hire temporary workers who are not eligible for employee benefits. But lack of money is not the problem.

Those who are true believers in the old-time Keynesian economic religion will always say that the only reason creating more money hasn’t worked is because there has not yet been enough money created. To them, if QE2 hasn’t worked, then we need QE3. And if that doesn’t work, then we will need QE4, etc.

Like most of the mistakes being made in Washington today, this dogmatic faith in government spending is something that has been tried before — and failed before.

[…]It is not politically possible for either the Federal Reserve or the Obama administration to leave the economy alone and let it recover on its own.

Both are under pressure to “do something.” If one thing doesn’t work, then they have to try something else. And if that doesn’t work, they have to come up with yet another gimmick.

All this constant experimentation by the government makes it more risky for investors to invest or employers to employ, when neither of them knows when the government’s rules of the game are going to change again. Whatever the merits or demerits of particular government policies, the uncertainty that such ever-changing policies generate can paralyze an economy today, just as it did back in the days of FDR.

Words of wisdom.

Commentary

Doug Groothuis states the central problem with Rob Bell’s book

5 Comments

Dr. Doug Groothuis was asked to serve on a panel discussion of Rob Bell’s new book “Love Wins”.

He wrote an outline, and posted on his blog. (H/T Doug)

Here’s the core problem he found with Bell’s book:

4. Bell seems to advance three propositions in Love Wins

a. Everyone is saved: God wants all to be saved; God gets what God wants.

b. Everyone is not saved. We can refuse God’s love.

c. We don’t know if everyone is saved or not.

5. These statements are inconsistent with each other; they cannot all be true

I am not sure why anyone is reading this book – it’s logically inconsistent. And whenever you ask Bell questions, his stock reply is to ask you questions back without answering. He makes an assertion, you point out how he contradicts the teachings of Jesus, and then he says “I don’t know, do you?” or “do you long for everyone to be saved?” or “do you know if universalism is true?”. These are verbatim quotes from his debate on the Unbelievable show. It is so bad that I listened to the first 30 minutes and just quit. I would rather listen to Christoper Hitchens – at least he is clear about what he believes. Rob Bell makes John Dominic Crossan sound like Hugh Ross.

Commentary

MIT student offers a secular case against same-sex marriage

7 Comments

This is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student newspaper. It’s written by a Ph.D student in financial economics.

Excerpt:

When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse’s social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse’s health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between two unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children.

[…]Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met.

[…]Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe’s Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes.

[…]When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation.

[…]The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other?

You can learn the basics of defending traditional marriage from this column. But same-sex marriage is actually less of a threat to marriage than another policy called “no-fault divorce”. Let’s look at that policy.

No-Fault Divorce

Economist Stephen Baskerville wrote an article about how certain policies cause the decline of marriage and the family. The biggest one is the policy of no-fault divorce, which is really unilateral divorce. No-fault divorce refers to the ability of one spouse to end the marriage for any reason, or no reason. It’s probably the biggest reason why men refuse to marry today, because they are almost always the victim, and it costs them plenty.

Dr. Baskerville writes:

…80 percent of divorces are unilateral. Under “no-fault,” divorce becomes a power grab by one spouse, assisted by judicial officials who profit from the ensuing litigation: judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, and social workers. Involuntary divorce involves government agents forcibly removing innocent people from their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their children. It requires long-term supervision over private life by state functionaries, including police and jails.

…Invariably the first action in a divorce is to separate the children from one parent, usually the father. Even if he is innocent of any legal wrongdoing and does not agree to the divorce, the state seizes his children with no burden of proof to justify why. The burden of proof–and financial burden–falls on him to demonstrate why they should be returned.

A legally unimpeachable parent can thus be arrested for seeing his own children without government authorization. He can be arrested through additional judicial directives that apply to no one but him. He can be arrested for domestic violence or child abuse, even without evidence that he has committed any. He can be arrested for not paying child support, regardless of the amount demanded. He can even be arrested for not paying an attorney or psychotherapist. There is no formal charge, no jury, no trial, and no record.

If these statements surprise you, I recommend you read the whole article to find out how this is done.

My secular case against marriage is here.