Tag Archives: Money

Commentary

Christian professor of economics discusses capitalism, socialism and the Bible

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Here’s an interview with Dr. Shawn Ritenour, economics professor at Grove City College. The interview is conducted by Dr. Paul Kengor.

Excerpt:

Kengor: …it seems that the very foundation of economics, not to mention the American republic in some respects, is the right to private property. Do you agree? If so, is that Scriptural?

Ritenour: The foundation of economic activity and policy is private property. All action requires the use of property and all economic policy is about how people can legally use their property. To benefit from the division of labor, we must be able to exchange our products, which requires private property. Private property is definitely Scriptural. The Bible explicitly prohibits theft, fraud, moving property barriers, debasing money, violating labor contracts, as well as coveting. These prohibitions apply to both citizens and rulers. In my text, I apply this conclusion to issues such as confiscatory taxation, government subsidies, business regulation, and monetary inflation.

Kengor: I find it very telling that Karl Marx was first and foremost against private property, not to mention against God as well. In the “Communist Manifesto,” he wrote plainly: “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.” And yet, there are some religious left Christians who claim that the Bible, especially in certain Old Testament passages, preaches a form of socialism and even communism. A student of mine had a teacher at a private Christian school in Ohio who instructed the class that as Christians they should be communists. Can you address this argument?

Ritenour: Communism can be condemned strictly on the basis of the Christian ethic of property (among other reasons). Nothing in Scripture either commands or implies that the means of production should be controlled by the state. There are passages in the early chapters of Acts that are often cited as promoting “Christian communism,” but, in fact, actually illustrate Christian sharing. The various Christians still owned their property, but were generous in sharing whenever they saw a need. When Peter rebukes Ananias in Acts 5, he explicitly says that both the property that Ananias and Sapphira sold and the monetary proceeds from selling it were theirs to do with what they wanted. That is not the gospel according to Marx.

Kengor: I like the way you turn the religious left’s thinking on private property on its head. You note that “God prohibits our coveting the property of others.” With that being the case, isn’t it wrong for the government to use the mighty arm of the state to forcibly remove property from one person to give it to another?

Ritenour: I see no other way around that conclusion, especially when we realize that, in our day of mass democracy, the state usually accomplishes policies of wealth redistribution by inciting envy and covetousness among the populace.

Kengor: What about profits? Reconcile the profit motive with the God of Scripture. We have people in this society who portray profits as greedy or unjust.

Ritenour: Profit is the reward entrepreneurs receive for more successfully producing what people want. This is no easy thing to do. Entrepreneurs must invest in present production of goods they sell in the future. Neither entrepreneurs nor government bureaucrats know exactly what future demand will be. Therefore, production necessitates bearing risk. If the entrepreneur forecasts future demand incorrectly, he will waste resources and reap losses. If he forecasts the future correctly, he serves his fellow man by producing goods people want. It seems only right that such producers are rewarded with profit. In a free market, the only way entrepreneurs earn profits is to serve customers better than anyone else.

I’m a fan of Paul Kengor’s work. If I had married and had children, I would have wanted them to go to Grove City College for their undergraduate degrees. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is at Grove City right now, directing a program in astronomy.

Should Christians study other areas of knowledge like economics?

Here’s a quote from McKenzie’s Facebook page that explains why I think Christians need to understand economics.

Quote:

“If inviting nonbelievers to worship matters, then so does preserving the freedom to worship. If ministering to the needs of the poor is a mandate, then changing the policies creating poverty is very much within that mandate. And if building shelter in developing countries is part and parcel of a Christian’s burden, so… is the destruction of the power of tyrants who oppress peoples around the globe.”

It’s from Hugh Hewitt’s book “In, But Not Of”. The book is about how Christians need to make good decisions early on in life if they hope to influence the world in effective ways. This is an excellent book for young people in high school and university, or for those (like me) who dream of raising children in a careful way, so they can impact the world for Christ. My hope is to raise Michele Bachmann and Jennifer Roback Morse clones.

By the way, you can be my friend on Facebook. My Facebook page is here. And you can also follow the blog here, you have a Facebook account. (Although we get about 1000-1500 page views per day, I have only a small number of Facebook friends and followers).

Further study

News

How is socialized medicine working out in the UK and Canada?

2 Comments

First, this one from ECM, which appeared in the leftist UK Guardian. (H/T Secondhand Smoke)

Excerpt:

Blunders by GPs, hospital doctors and nurses jeopardised the health of thousands of patients when cancer was misdiagnosed or not spotted soon enough, according to an NHS report.

Over a period of a year, doctors failed to spot key signs of cancer, tissue samples were mixed up, some patients were wrongly given an all-clear and vital diagnostic tests were delayed because of staff and equipment shortages, the study, undertaken by the NHS’s National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), found.

[…]When 508 cases were examined in detail, it was found that 177 patients were harmed. Two died, 25 suffered severe harm, 52 moderate harm and 88 low harm. Of a sample of 150 patients, 37% experienced delays of up to three months, 38% of more than three months and some had delays of three years. The government estimates that 10,000 die each year because of late diagnosis of cancer. The UK is poor by international standards at diagnosing cancer, studies have shown.

The post features tons of alarming examples. There’s socialism. When you don’t have your money in your hand, you cannot expect to be treated properly. You need a choice among providers to negotiate the best deal for your dollars.

Next, also from ECM, this one from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

The Ambulance service is being paid bonuses for not taking patients to hospital in a bid to help the NHS hit controversial targets.

Patients’ groups expressed horror at the “sick experiment” in which NHS managers have agreed to pay £38 for every casualty that ambulance staff “keep out of Accident and Emergency” (A&E) departments after a 999 call has been made.

The tactic is part of an attempt to manage increasing demand for emergency care amid failings in the GP out-of-hours system.

[…]The bonuses are among dozens of schemes being tried out by ambulance trusts across the country as they attempt to improve their emergency response times and help A&E departments meet controversial targets to treat all patients within four hours of arrival.

Another plan uncovered would see thousands of 999 calls currently classed as urgent downgraded so that callers receive telephone advice instead of an ambulance response.

But we’ll soon surpass them, I’m sure.

But wait! Maybe Canada’s single-payer system is better!

The left-wing Montreal Gazette reports.

Excerpt:

Health Minister Yves Bolduc said Friday over-crowding in Quebec’s hospital emergency rooms would be resolved in “four or five years.”

“We have the best health care system in the world,” Bolduc said, while admitting that patients sometimes have to wait for that care.

“All the patients are well treated,” he said.

[…]Quebec still has a shortage of doctors and nurses, he said…

[…]Bolduc announced his newest timetable in response to reports patients are kept for 48 hours and longer in emergency.

As well, relatives are blaming deaths in their families on emergency-room congestion.

From the communist CBC, here’s more:

Guy Morisette, head of the Outaouais health agency, told CBC News that the hospital has worked hard to fix the situation, but recruiting and retaining enough staff remains a problem, and additional solutions such as training personnel and developing new programs are longer-term efforts.

Hospital Average ER Wait Time
Buckingham 20 h 30 min
Gatineau Hospital-Hull campus 20 h 06 min
Gatineau Hospital-Gatineau campus 25 h 36 min
Gatineau-Memorial 17 h 00 min
Maniwaki 10 h 24 min
Pontiac 13 h 12 min
Outaouais average 20 h 42 min
Quebec average 16 h 30 min

Taxing and regulating doctors and treating patients for paper cuts for FREE doesn’t create a shortage of health care at all. Oh, no. And anyway, the politicians just get treated in the USA anyway.

Last, Quebec, Canada’s most liberal province, proposes massive user fees.

Excerpt:

Quebeckers are bracing themselves for sweeping increases in taxes, rates and fees after a provincial budget that also proposes a controversial user fee for health-care services.

By proposing a fee for medical appointments, the 2010-11 budget tabled Tuesday represents a shift in how the province addresses spiralling health-care costs, and could trigger a national debate over conflicts with the Canada Health Act.

[…]The user fee would take the form of a deductible that, according to one proposal, would be capped so that total charges do not exceed 1 per cent of a family’s annual income. It would involve charging $25 per medical visit and be paid on a fee-for-service basis. It was estimated under one proposal that a couple with two children making 10 medical visits a year would pay a maximum of $250 annually.

The government of Premier Jean Charest also announced a new health tax to commence in June, 2010, that will be levied on individuals when they file their income taxes. The “health contribution” will cost adults $25 this year and eventually climb to $200 in 2012. Lower-income families will be exempt. When fully implemented, the new tax will generate $945-million a year.

Ontario already has massive income tax rates, property taxes, surtaxes, sales taxes, municipal taxes and health care surcharges of hundreds of dollars a year. It’s not just that they have no freedom of speech, but they die waiting for health care. (This isn’t the Conservative Party’s fault – they don’t have a majority yet to bring in market reforms to lower the cost of health care, and they don’t have a majority of the Senate and not even close to a majority in the Supreme Court).

Commentary

Jennifer Roback Morse writes about the real issue in the marriage debate

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Cloning her would solve the marriage problem
She knows about love and marriage

Because I’m so busy working and writing the blog, I almost never have time to read books any more. Right now I am reading Jay Richards’ “Money, Greed and God” and Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Smart Sex”. I read Smart Sex on Saturday when I go to lunch.

I found a wonderful series of passages on marriage and child development in Smart Sex, and I’m going to type the whole thing in for you, because I think it’s so important.

Excerpt from p. 41-43. Dr. J writes:

I believe the real issue driving the “marriage debate” is the question of what we owe to children. Do we owe them material resources, provided by society at large? Or do we owe them personal relationships, provided for them by the particular people who brought them into existence? If children truly need a two-parent, married-couple family, this would place obligations upon the adults to get married and stay married. Many adults are reluctant to accept these particular obligations. So they, along with their allies in high policy-making places, try to minimize the importance of the evidence or to reinterpret it to mean that children really need more material support from government and business.

From this perspective, the questions are: What is the minimal set of human relationships that a child can have and still turn out tolerably well? What is the least adults have to do in relationship terms for their kids to get by? How much money does society have to pump in from outisde the family to make up for the loss of relationship, so that I won’t have to give up my belief that parents are entitled to any lifestyle choices they want?

This minimalist mentality shows up in the conclusions people draw from these studies. For instance, people reinterpret the studies showing that a stepfather who spends enough time with this stepchildren can ward off some of the problems often seen in divorced families. A one level, this is undeniable. Of course children benefit from more time and attention from their fathers and stepfathers. But we are not justified in drawing the conclusion that there is no reason to be concerned about family structure as long as stepfathers spend enough time with their stepchildren. The very same study also shows that stepfathers, on average, spend much less time with their wives’ children than do biological fathers.

Many people seem to beleive it is unreasonable to expect or even encourage people to get married and stay married. But asking stepfathers to behave like biological fathers may be every bit as unreasonable . Stepfathers behave systematically differently from biological fathers. It is unrealistic to expect men to work as hard to on a relationship with another man’s child  as he would with his own child. It is more straightforward, as well as more sensible, to expect men and women to work together to maintain their marriages in the first place.

Some people argue that the children of single and divorced parents would do fine if only society would increase the resources available to the children. The government should provide some combination of subsidized day care, housing allowances, and income supplements to increase the standard of living of the children of single-parent households. This postition is unpersuasive because most studies show that problems remain even after accounting for differences in economic resources. The resources that two parents can provide are not likely to ever be fully replaced by a single parent, no matter how heavily subsidized.

I bellieve that children are harmed by the loss of relationship itself, not simply by the loss of resources. The primary business of parenthood is relational. Parenthood is much more than a process transferring resources from Big People to Little People. If that were true, resources from outside the family could possibly make up the losses that children experience from the loss of a parent.

The primary responsibility of parents is to build relationships with their children and prepare their children to build relationships on their own when they mature. The whole attachment process, upon which conscience development depends, is a relationship-building process. Replacing a father with a paycheck is not a service either to the child, who misses out on the father’s love, or to the father, who becomes reduced to a combination sperm donor and wallet.

I propose that we confront these relationship issues with more generosity toward children. Instead of asking how little we have to do, we should ask what children need from their parents in order to thrive. Instead of asking how much money it takes to substitute for the presence of both parents, we could ask what parents can do to keep growing in love and regard for each other. We should not embrace a collective responsibility for financial support for children when we could embrace the personal obligation to nurture and cultivate loving relationships between spouses. We should be asking how we adults can support each other in maintaining our marriages.

The reason why I am chaste is because I need to court effectively so I can choose a wife who believes what Dr. Morse wrote – that parenting is an important purpose in marriage, that both parents matter and that the government is not a subsitute for mothers and fathers. I can test if a woman is qualified to parent annoying, aggressive, insolent little child monsters letting her try to nurture me during the courtship. If she can develop my Chrsitian worldview, then should be able to handle the children.

I think my single male readers should think the same way. Stop thinking with your hormones and start thinking about what women can do for God in relationships. We all need to realize that the time to address marital problems is during the courtship phase of the relationship. Therefore, choose wisely. And we should stop trying to grow a secular government to replace the parents. If a secular government is responsible for the children, then those children will never form relationships with God in Christ.

On the contrary, Christian parents must jealously guard their children from a secular government. And that means we should favor limited government and a free market, with unregulated, low-taxed small businesses creating plenty of jobs so that we have lots of pay left over after taxes to spend on stay-at-home moms, private schools, and apologetics training materials. We can spend our own money better than any secular government can to buy anything that our children may need. It’s our responsibility.

Jennifer Roback Morse’s blog is here.