Monthly Archives: November 2022

November 4, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 4) My children, listen when your father corrects you verses 1-4 RAISING KIDS WHO COUNT by Adrian Rogers

November 4, 2022 – 6:31 am

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Proverbs 4New Living Translation

A Father’s Wise Advice

4 My children,^[a] listen when your father corrects you.
    Pay attention and learn good judgment,
²for I am giving you good guidance.
    Don’t turn away from my instructions.
³For I, too, was once my father’s son,
    tenderly loved as my mother’s only child.

⁴My father taught me,
“Take my words to heart.
    Follow my commands, and you will live.
⁵Get wisdom; develop good judgment.
    Don’t forget my words or turn away from them.
⁶Don’t turn your back on wisdom, for she will protect you.
    Love her, and she will guard you.
⁷Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do!
    And whatever else you do, develop good judgment.
⁸If you prize wisdom, she will make you great.
    Embrace her, and she will honor you.
⁹She will place a lovely wreath on your head;
    she will present you with a beautiful crown.”

¹⁰My child,^[b] listen to me and do as I say,
    and you will have a long, good life.
¹¹I will teach you wisdom’s ways
    and lead you in straight paths.
¹²When you walk, you won’t be held back;
    when you run, you won’t stumble.
¹³Take hold of my instructions; don’t let them go.
    Guard them, for they are the key to life.

¹⁴Don’t do as the wicked do,
    and don’t follow the path of evildoers.
¹⁵Don’t even think about it; don’t go that way.
    Turn away and keep moving.
¹⁶For evil people can’t sleep until they’ve done their evil deed for the day.
    They can’t rest until they’ve caused someone to stumble.
¹⁷They eat the food of wickedness
    and drink the wine of violence!

¹⁸The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,
which shines ever brighter until the full light of day.
¹⁹But the way of the wicked is like total darkness.
They have no idea what they are stumbling over.

²⁰My child, pay attention to what I say.
    Listen carefully to my words.
²¹Don’t lose sight of them.
    Let them penetrate deep into your heart,
²²for they bring life to those who find them,
    and healing to their whole body.

²³Guard your heart above all else,
for it determines the course of your life.

²⁴Avoid all perverse talk;
stay away from corrupt speech.

²⁵Look straight ahead,
    and fix your eyes on what lies before you.
²⁶Mark out a straight path for your feet;
    stay on the safe path.
²⁷Don’t get sidetracked;
    keep your feet from following evil.

Raising Kids That Count

Proverbs (Program 2331DVD, Airing on 2/13 & 2/20)

INTRODUCTION
1. Our chief desire for our children is not that they be wealthy or famous, but that they love the Lord Jesus Christ and count for His cause.
  1. Psalm 112:2
2. We find in the book of Proverbs seven gifts that we can give to our children.
GIVE THEM AN EXAMPLE
1. Proverbs 1:7-9
2. Proverbs 20:7
3. We need to give our children a godly example.
  1. Do not pretend perfection.
  2. Be real; be genuine.
4. There are character traits which we must demonstrate to our children:
  1. Contentment
  2. Courage
  3. Courtesy
  4. Discernment
  5. Fairness
  6. Friendliness
  7. Generosity
  8. Gentleness
  9. Helpfulness
  10. Honesty
  11. Humility
  12. Kindness
  13. Obedience
  14. Orderliness
  15. Patience
  16. Persistence
  17. Self-control
  18. Tact
  19. Thankfulness
  20. Tidiness
  21. Wisdom
GIVE THEM UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
1. Proverbs 4:1-4
2. Luke 15:20
3. True love is not giving someone what they want; it is giving them what they need.
4. There must be unconditional acceptance of the child regardless of his or her behavior.
GIVE THEM CONSTANT ENCOURAGEMENT
1. Proverbs 3:21-26
2. There is a difference between praise and encouragement:
  1. Praise says that I am proud of you for what you do.
  2. Encouragement says that I am proud of you for who you are.
GIVE THEM WISE INSTRUCTION
1. Proverbs 2:1-7
2. We need to teach our children the Word of God.
3. Let the instruction be joined with training.
  1. Proverbs 22:6
GIVE THEM REASONABLE RESTRICTIONS
1. Proverbs 6:20-23
GIVE THEM A LISTENING EAR
1. Proverbs 18:13-15
2. We need to be willing to listen when they want to talk.
GIVE THEM A HAPPY ENVIRONMENT
1. Proverbs 15:13-17
2. Let your home be filled with laughter and love.
  1. Ephesians 5:4
  2. Genesis 21:6
CONCLUSION
1. God ideally wants everyone to have three homes:
  1. A family home
  2. A church home
  3. A heavenly home
2. Jesus is the greatest home builder.

Seeing Jesus in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job

July 16, 2013 – 1:28 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 10) Summing up Proverbs study

May 30, 2013 – 1:06 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 2) What does it mean to fear the Lord?

May 2, 2013 – 1:13 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)

The Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

July 8, 2013 – 12:01 am

Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Why is Solomon so depressed in Ecclesiastes? by Brent Cunningham

July 3, 2013 – 7:00 am

Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Robert Leroe on Ecclesiastes (Mentions Thomas Aquinas, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, King Solomon, King Rehoboam, Eugene Peterson, Chuck Swindoll, and John Newton.)

June 19, 2013 – 1:30 am

Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes

June 11, 2013 – 1:55 am

Ecclesiastes: Solomon with Life in the Fast Lane

June 3, 2013 – 1:19 am

Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Ecclesiastes a scathing and self-deprecating attack on hedonism and secular humanism by Solomon

May 31, 2013 – 1:17 am

Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Solomon was right in his cynicism–unless……unless there is a God who created us and cares about us

May 22, 2013 – 1:34 am

The Humanist takes on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

May 20, 2013 – 1:13 pm

Tom Brady , Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 3)

December 23, 2011 – 11:12 am

Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers on gambling

July 18, 2013 – 12:44 am

Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Book of Ecclesiastes

July 17, 2013 – 1:40 am

Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers: Are fathers necessary?

July 16, 2013 – 12:43 am

Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Tom Brady, Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 2)

December 22, 2011 – 11:56 am

Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Friedman Friday MILTON FRIEDMAN: “I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion dollars than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit.” (article by Dan Mitchell)

November 4, 2022 – 1:15 am

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The CRFB Fiscal Quiz

I’ve shared all sorts of online quizzes that supposedly can detect things such as whether you’re a pure libertarian.

Or even whether you’re a communist.

Today, courtesy of the folks at the Committee for a Responsible Budget, you can agree or disagree with 24 statements to determine your “budget personality.”

I have some quibbles about some of the wording (for instance, I couldn’t answer “neither” when asked to react to: “The government should spend more money on children than on seniors”).

But I can’t quibble with the results. Given the potential outcomes, I’m glad to be a “Minimalist” who is “in favor of smaller government.”

Though I’m disappointed that I apparently didn’t get a perfect score on “Size of Government.”

And I need to explain why I got a mediocre score on the topic of “Fiscal Responsibility.”

The budget geeks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) have a well-deserved reputation for rigorous analysis. I regularly cite their numbers and appreciate the work that they do.

That being said, they mistakenly focus on deficits and debt when the real problem is too much government.

I agree with Milton Friedman, who wisely observed that ““I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion dollars than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit.”

The folks at CRFB would disagree.

Indeed, they are so fixated on red ink that they would welcome tax increases.

At the risk of understatement, that would be a very bad approach.

The evidence from Europe shows that higher taxes simply lead to higher spending. And more debt.

Indeed, Milton Friedman also commented on this issue, warning that, “History shows that over a long period of time government will spend whatever the tax system raises plus as much more as it can get away with.”

The bottom line is that CRFB not only has the wrong definition of “Fiscal Responsibility,” but they also support policies that would make matters worse – even from their perspective!

EP 4 – From Cradle to Grave [6/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980)

March 1, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

Thank you for taking time to have your office try and get a pulse on what is going on out here in the country. I wanted to let you know what I think about the minimum wage increase you have proposed for the whole country and I wanted to quote Milton Friedman who you are familiar with and you made it clear in July that you didn’t care for his views! Let me challenge you to take a closer look at what he had to say!

Four Progressive Minimum Wage Myths Debunked

Democrats are just making things up to advance their job-killing cause.

SHIKHA DALMIA | 4.18.2016 10:30 AM

Progressives have gone crazy over the minimum wage.

President Obama got the ball rolling when he called for hiking the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per

hour. Now, bothDemocratic presidential candidates are trying to one-up him, with Bernie Sanders demanding a $15 federal wage and Hillary Clinton $12. Meanwhile, California and New York have already passed laws mandating the Bernie rate, and scores of cities across the country are clamoring to follow suit.

And all the while, minimum wage advocates are making increasingly fanciful claims on behalf of their beloved laws.

The left’s minimum wage obsession dovetails with a shifting academic consensus that until the 1990s considered such hikes a recipe for killing jobs, especially for low-skilled workers. For a long time, the generally accepted rule of thumb was that, all else remaining equal, every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage would decrease low-skilled employment by 1 to 2 percent, since the more employers had to pay these employees, the fewer jobs they could afford to provide.

This consensus began to fray with a 1992 study by economists David Card and Alan Kreuger, who found that New Jersey’s minimum wage hike—from $4.25 to $5.05—did not lead to expected job losses in the state’s fast food restaurants. This finding has been hotly contested, but even if it were true, it doesn’t mean there are no other downsides to minimum wage laws. For example, sometimes employers don’t respond to minimum wage hikes by laying off workers, but instead by raising prices for consumers. (Minimum wage opponents haven’t helped their case by hitching it almost exclusively to job losses while ignoring the other, equally pernicious, adjustment responses by businesses.)

There is only one scenario, according to Naval Postgraduate School economist David Henderson, under which a modest legally mandated minimum wage might do more good than harm: when employers enjoy monopsony power (a monopoly on the buying side) in the labor market, either because there are very few of them or because workers can’t leave for some reason. Employers then have a relatively free hand to hold wages down. A mandated minimum wage under those circumstances merely diverts the firm’s “excess profits” to the worker, something that would have happened automatically in a more competitive market. But it doesn’t diminish a company’s productivity or its incentive for additional hiring—thereby actually boosting job growth. But genuine monopsony isn’t common and would require a very finely calibrated and skillfully crafted minimum wage, which is not how blanket policies work in the real world.

America’s federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour works out to about 42 percent of its $17.40 hourly median wage. Even the most gung-ho academics only advocate raising it to 50 percent of the median — which means a little over $8.70. This in itself is a crude benchmark that lumps together high-wage service occupations with low-wage construction and other non-service ones whose market realities are completely different. Be that as it may, it is inconceivable that a $15 minimum wage—equal to 86 percent of America’s median wage, and the highest in the Western world—wouldn’t kill jobs, especially in small towns and cities where wages tend to be lower. Witness the chronic double-digit unemployment rate that a far less insane minimum wage has generated in France, Spain, Belgium, and other European countries.

And yet, minimum wage enthusiasts are abandoning all caution and making increasingly extravagant claims. Here are four of their sillier arguments:

False: Minimum wage hikes will lead to productivity-boosting automation

The standard rap against minimum wage laws is that by raising the cost of hiring workers, they prompt companies to invest in labor-saving technologies, throwing people out of work. But Matthew Yglesias claims that this would by no means be a “bad thing.” Why? Because productivity is the engine of economic progress. And if machines are more productive than people, then policies that prod employers to replace people with machines would mean more wealth without toil for everyone. This is the reverse of the Luddite fallacy that seeks to boost jobs by eschewing labor-saving technologies. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman once heard a Third World bureaucrat, suffering from this fallacy, defend his decision to have poor workers dig a massive canal with shovels rather than earth movers because that meant more jobs. Friedman asked: Why don’t you replace their shovels with spoons?

Increasing productivity is not simply a matter of increasing output, but doing so in the most cost-effective way. You do not encourage that with policies that force investments in capital equipment when labor is plentiful. Indeed, this raises the overall opportunity cost, rendering an economy less efficient. If Friedman were alive, he may well have asked Yglesias why, by his logic, he doesn’t just advocate a ban on all manual labor.

False: Minimum wage hikes helps firms make more money

This claim strains credulity. How would a $15 mandate that almost doubles a company’s labor costs actually boost profits? The argument that former Labor Secretary Robert Reich offers is that higher wages means happier employees and lower turnover, something that saves a company money. If so, the million-dollar question is why aren’t greedy companies doing this already? Are they too stupid or sadistic or both to pass up on a win-win deal for both themselves and their workers?

False: Minimum wage hikes will stimulate the economy

Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, claims not only that a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t produce job losses in the short run, but would actually stimulate the economy, resulting in job gains in the long run. “They’d (employees) have more money to spend, the overall level of demand for goods and services would be higher, and so would the level of employment,” he claims.

But shifting wealth around doesn’t generate real economic growth. Boosting productivity does. Indeed, ordering employers to give artificial raises means that they would have less money to spend or invest, cancelling out any extra spending by workers.

False: Minimum wage hikes will diminish the strain on welfare programs

Advocates of the minimum wage claim that without a suitably high minimum, low-income workers are forced to rely on food stamps and health care programs to make ends meet. In essence, they argue, welfare programs end up subsidizing McDonald’s low-wage workforce, which is hardly fair to taxpayers. Forcing companies to pay something resembling “living” wages would diminish low-wage workers’ dependence on government programs.

This assumes that boosting the minimum wage would hand more workers a raise than it would throw people out of work, of course — which is hardly a reasonable assumption, as pointed out earlier. Indeed, notesUniversity of California, Irvine’s David Neumark, the probability that a family will escape poverty due to higher wages will be offset by the probability that another will enter poverty because it has been priced out of the labor market.

The core fallacy in this line of reasoning is that employers can set wages based on employee needs rather than market forces. Hence, they can simply be forced to hand over more money to their workers. That, however, is not how things work, especially in a globalized world where forcing employers to cough up wages higher than the market can bear would undermine their competitiveness—not something that helps anyone in the long run.

This article originally appeared in The Week.

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733

Williams with Sowell – Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell – Reducing Black Unemployment

By WALTER WILLIAMS

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Ronald Reagan with Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman, President Obama, spending out of control | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell: In cases where taxpayers have a lot of control over the timing, level, and composition of their income, changes in tax rates may cause big changes in taxable income (or “tax base” in the jargon of economists)!

November 3, 2022 – 11:17 pm

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The IMF, the Laffer Curve, and Supply-Side Economics

The Laffer Curve is a very straightforward concept.

It graphically illustrates why politicians are wrong if they think you can double tax revenue by doubling tax rates (or that revenues will drop by 50 percentif tax rates are cut in half).

Simply stated, you also have to look at what happens to taxable income.

In cases where taxpayers have a lot of control over the timing, level, and composition of their income, changes in tax rates may cause big changes in taxable income (or “tax base” in the jargon of economists).

None of this should be controversial. Even Paul Krugman agrees that the Laffer Curve exists.

Today, we are going to see that the pro-taxInternational Monetary Fund also admits there is a Laffer Curve.

Indeed, a new study authored by David Amaglobeli, Valerio Crispolti, and Xuguang Simon Sheng openly states that politicians should be very cognizant of the fact that some tax policy changes can have a big effect on the “tax base.”

This paper investigates the potential revenue impact of different tax policy changes using the Tax Policy Reform Database (TPRD)… Revenue responses to tax policy changes depend on many factors… However, one of most important factorsis the nature of the tax policy change itself. For example, while a tax rate cut will directly lower revenue intake, it could also encourage more economic activity, hence expand the tax base. Estimating the revenue response to a tax policy change, therefore, requires granular information on the nature of this change, including on the tax instrument used (e.g., VAT or personal income tax), the type of change adopted (e.g., tax base, tax rate), and its timing and size.

Here are some of the findings.

We assess the impact of tax policy changes on tax revenues using Jordà (2005)’s local projections method. Our baseline results are based on tax shocks identified in the year when a tax change is announced. Our main empirical findings suggest that the revenue yield of tax policy changes varies significantly across taxes and types of changes, with tax rate changes generally having a more transitory revenue impact than tax base changes for most taxes. Specifically, base broadening changes in PIT, CIT, EXE, and PRO have on average a more significant and long-lasting impact on tax collection than rate changes. At the same time, rate hikes have relatively more significant effects on taxes in the case of VAT and SSC measures.

Most notably, the report finds tax increases hurt prosperity, especially higher marginal tax rates.

Gechert and Groß (2019) conclude that measures to broaden the tax base are less harmful to economic growth than tax hikes. Dabla-Norris and Lima (2018) find that during fiscal consolidations, tax base-broadening measures lead to smaller output and employment declines compared to measures to increase tax rates.

And we learn that it is very foolish to raise corporate tax rates.

Mertens and Ravn (2013) find that…increases in CIT are approximately revenue neutral for the United States. …Announcements of CIT increases are associated with a somewhat transitory rise in tax collection, suggesting that companies have quickly adapted their business to reduce the tax burden.

For wonky readers, here’s a chart from the study. Note how, in many cases, there’s not much difference in revenue between tax increases (blue line) and tax cuts (red lines).

P.S. One big takeaway is that there is not a single Laffer Curve. There are multiple Laffer Curvesdepending on the tax that’s being changed and the ability of taxpayers to change their behavior.

P.P.S. A less-obvious takeaway is that class-warfare taxes cause the most economic damage, meaning the most harm to ordinary people.

P.P.P.S. You can call it the “Khaldun Curve” if you prefer.

P.P.P.P.S. I have trouble deciding what evidence is most powerful, the views of CPAs or the data from the OECD?

Corporate Tax Rates and Taxable Income

In the case of business taxation, the most visually powerful evidence for the Laffer Curve is what happened to corporate tax revenue in Ireland after the corporate tax rate was slashed from 50 percent to 12.5 percent.

Tax revenue increased dramatically. Not just in nominal terms. Not just in inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate receipts actually climbed as a share of GDP.

And this was during the decades when economic output was rapidly expanding.

In other words, the Irish government got a much bigger slice of a much bigger pie after tax rates were dramatically lowered.

Now let’s look at some evidence from a new study. Three professors from the University of Utah (Jeffrey Coles, Elena Patel, and Nather Seegert), and a Treasury Department economist (Matthew Smith) estimated what happens to taxable income for U.S. companies when there is a change in the corporate tax rate.

In response to a 10% increase in the expected marginal tax rate, private U.S. firms decrease taxable income by 9.1%, which indicates a discernibly more elastic response than prevailing estimates. This response reflects a decrease in taxable income of 3.0%arising from real economic responses to a firm’s scale of operations and 6.1% arising from accounting transactions via (for example) revenue and expense timing. Responsiveness to the corporate tax rate is more elastic if a firm uses cash (9.9%) rather than accrual accounting (7.4%), if the firm is small (9.9%) rather than large (8.6%), and if the firm discounts future cash flows at a lower rate.

The paper is filled with equation, graphs, and jargon, but the above excerpt tells us everything we need to know.

When tax rates go up, taxable income goes down (both because there is less economic activity and because companies have more incentive to manipulate the tax code).

Thus confirming what I wrote back in 2016 about taxable income being the key variable.

By the way, this does not mean that lower tax rates lead to more revenue. Or that higher tax rate produce less revenue.

Such big swings only happen in rare circumstances.

But it does mean that politicians will not grab as much money as they hope when they increase tax rates. And that they won’t lose as much revenue as they fear when they lower tax rates (and we saw that most recently with the 2017 tax reform).

I’ll close by noting that this is additional evidence for why we should be thankful that Biden’s proposal for higher corporate tax rates was not enacted.

P.S. The chart at the beginning of this column may be the most visually powerful evidence for the corporate Laffer Curve. The most empirically powerful evidence, however, comes from very unlikely sources – the pro-tax IMF and the pro-tax OECD.

March 3, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

______________________________

Dan Mitchell shows how ignoring the Laffer Curve is like running a stop sign!!!!

Can You Spell L-A-F-F-E-R C-U-R-V-E?

July 12, 2013 by Dan Mitchell

I’m thinking of inventing a game, sort of a fiscal version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Only the way it will work is that there will be a map of the world and the winner will be the blindfolded person who puts their pin closest to a nation such asAustralia or Switzerland that has a relatively low risk of long-run fiscal collapse.

That won’t be an easy game to win since we have data from the BIS, OECD, and IMF showing that government is growing far too fast in the vast majority of nations.

We also know that many states and cities suffer from the same problems.

A handful of local governments already have hit the fiscal brick wall, with many of them (gee, what a surprise) from California.

The most spectacular mess, though, is about to happen in Michigan.

The Washington Post reports that Detroit is on the verge of fiscal collapse.

After decades of sad and spectacular decline, it has come to this for Detroit: The city is $19 billion in debt and on the edge of becoming the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy. An emergency manager says the city can make good on only a sliver of what it owes — in many cases just pennies on the dollar.

This is a dog-bites-man story. Detroit’s problems are the completely predictable result of excessive government. Just as statism explains the problems of Greece. And the problems of California. And the problems of Cyprus. And theproblems of Illinois.

I could continue with a long list of profligate governments, but you get the idea. Some of these governments are collapsing at a quicker pace and some at a slower pace. But all of them are in deep trouble because they don’t follow my Golden Rule about restraining the burden of government spending so that it grows slower than the private sector.

Detroit obviously is an example of a government that is collapsing sooner rather than later.

Why? Simply stated, as the size and scope of the public sector increased, that created very destructive economic and political dynamics.

More and more people got lured into the wagon of government dependency, which puts an ever-increasing burden on a shrinking pool of producers.

Meanwhile, organized interest groups such as government bureaucrats used their political muscle to extract absurdly excessive compensation packages, putting an even larger burden of the dwindling supply of taxpayers.

But that’s not the main focus of this post. Instead, I want to highlight a particular excerpt from the article and make a point about how too many people are blindly – perhaps willfully – ignorant of the Laffer Curve.

Check out this sentence.

Property tax collections are down 20 percent and income tax collections are down by more than a third in just the past five years — despite some of the highest tax rates in the state.

This is a classic “Fox Butterfield mistake,” which occurs when someone fails to recognize a cause-effect relationship. In this case, the reporter should have recognized that tax collections are down because Detroit has very high tax rates.

The city has a lot more problems than just high tax rates, of course, but can there be any doubt that productive people have very little incentive to earn and report taxable income in Detroit?

And that’s the essential insight of the Laffer Curve. Politicians can’t – or at least shouldn’t – assume that a 20 percent increase in tax rates will lead to a 20 percent increase in tax revenue. They also have to consider the degree to which a higher tax rate will cause a change in taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will discourage people from earning more taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will discourage people from reporting all the income they earn.

In some cases, higher tax rates will encourage people to utilize tax loopholes to shrink their taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will encourage migration, thus causing taxable income to disappear.

Here’s my three-part video series on the Laffer Curve. Much of this is common sense, though it needs to be mandatory viewing for elected officials (as well as the bureaucrats at the Joint Committee on Taxation).

The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory

Uploaded by afq2007 on Jan 28, 2008

The Laffer Curve charts a relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. While the theory behind the Laffer Curve is widely accepted, the concept has become very controversial because politicians on both sides of the debate exaggerate. This video shows the middle ground between those who claim “all tax cuts pay for themselves” and those who claim tax policy has no impact on economic performance. This video, focusing on the theory of the Laffer Curve, is Part I of a three-part series. Part II reviews evidence of Laffer-Curve responses. Part III discusses how the revenue-estimating process in Washington can be improved. For more information please visit the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s web site: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

Part 2

Part 3

P.S. Just in case it’s not clear from the videos, we don’t want to be at the revenue-maximizing point on the Laffer Curve.

P.P.S. Amazingly, even the bureaucrats at the IMF recognize that there’s a point when taxes are so onerous that further increases don’t generate revenue.

P.P.P.S. At least CPAs understand the Laffer Curve, probably because they help their clients reduce their tax exposure to greedy governments.

P.P.P.P.S. I offered a Laffer Curve lesson to President Obama, but I doubt it had any impact.

___________________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

Williams with Sowell – Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell – Reducing Black Unemployment

By WALTER WILLIAMS

—-

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Ronald Reagan with Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

Dan Mitchell: Question of the Week: Has the European Fiscal Crisis Ended?

July 9, 2013 – 12:00 pm

We got to cut spending or we will be in a fiscal crisis like Greece!!! Question of the Week: Has the European Fiscal Crisis Ended? January 12, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I’ve frequently commented on Europe’s fiscal mess and argued that excessive government spending is responsible for both the sovereign debt crisis and the economic stagnation […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

Taxes made simple by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute

July 8, 2013 – 1:02 am

The Flat Tax: How it Works and Why it is Good for America Uploaded by afq2007 on Mar 29, 2010 This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video shows how the flat tax would benefit families and businesses, and also explains how this simple and fair system would boost economic growth and eliminate the special-interest […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama, spending out of control, Taxes | Tagged Dan Mitchell | Edit | Comments (0)

Cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog that demonstrate what Obama is doing to our economy (Obama’s out of control spending not helped by raising taxes on rich)

June 25, 2013 – 1:13 am

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. President Obama really does think that all his answers lie in raising taxes on the rich when the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell, President Obama, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute gives overview of economic policy and he praises Clinton and Reagan

June 6, 2013 – 9:59 am

__________ President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Tom Selleck, Dudley Moore, Lucille Ball at a Tribute to Bob Hope’s 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center. 5/20/83. __________________________ Dan Mitchell is very good at giving speeches and making it very simple to understand economic policy and how it affects a nation. Mitchell also talks about slowing the growth […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Bill Clinton, Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell, Milton Friedman, President Obama, Ronald Reagan, spending out of control, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog that demonstrate what Obama is doing to our economy (cartoon on entitlements)

May 31, 2013 – 1:13 am

The Laffer Curve – Explained Uploaded by Eddie Stannard on Nov 14, 2011 This video explains the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue. The key lesson is that the Laffer Curve is not an all-or-nothing proposition, where we have to choose between the exaggerated claim that “all tax cuts pay for themselves” […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell, President Obama, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 296) (Laffer curve strikes again!!)

April 15, 2013 – 12:00 am

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. The way […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 282, How the Laffer Curve worked in the 20th century over and over again!!!)

March 29, 2013 – 7:30 am

Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Laffer curve hits tax hikers pretty hard (includes cartoon)

March 27, 2013 – 11:21 am

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Today’s cartoon deals with the Laffer curve. Revenge of the Laffer Curve…Again and Again and Again March 27, 2013 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Editorial cartoon from Dan Mitchell’s blog on California’s sorry state of affairs

March 26, 2013 – 12:38 pm

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the sequester, economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, minimum wage laws, tax increases, social security, high taxes in California, Obamacare, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. President Obama’s favorite state must be California because […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell | Edit | Comments (0)

Portugal and the Laffer Curve

January 11, 2013 – 1:45 am

Class Warfare just don’t pay it seems. Why can’t we learn from other countries’ mistakes? Class Warfare Tax Policy Causes Portugal to Crash on the Laffer Curve, but Will Obama Learn from this Mistake? December 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in mid-2010, I wrote that Portugal was going to exacerbate its fiscal problems by raising […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell | Edit | Comments (0)

Political arguments against higher taxes from Dan Mitchell

December 10, 2012 – 8:14 am

Republicans would be stupid to raise taxes. Don’t Get Bamboozled by the Fiscal Cliff: Five Policy Reasons and Five Political Reasons Why Republicans Should Keep their No-Tax-Hike Promises December 6, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The politicians claim that they are negotiating about how best to reduce the deficit. That irks me because our fiscal problem is […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

President Obama ignores warnings about Laffer Curve

November 28, 2012 – 9:34 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama, Taxes | Tagged cato institute | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell looks at Obama’s tax record

October 31, 2012 – 7:30 am

Dan Mitchell’s article and the video from his organization takes a hard look at President Obama’s tax record. Dissecting Obama’s Record on Tax Policy October 30, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The folks at the Center for Freedom and Prosperity have been on a roll in the past few months, putting out an excellent series of videos […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama | Tagged Dan Mitchell | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell: “Romney is Right that You Can Lower Tax Rates and Reduce Tax Preferences without Hurting the Middle Class”

September 19, 2012 – 6:37 am

The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory Uploaded by afq2007 on Jan 28, 2008 The Laffer Curve charts a relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. While the theory behind the Laffer Curve is widely accepted, the concept has become very controversial because politicians on both sides of the debate exaggerate. This video shows […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Taxes | Tagged Arthur Laffer, Dan Mitchell, laffer curve | Edit | Comments (0)

The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom

July 24, 2012 – 12:16 pm

I got to hear Arthur Laffer speak back in 1981 and he predicted what would happen in the next few years with the Reagan tax cuts and he was right with every prediction. The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom July 1, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in 2010, I excoriated the new […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute | Tagged Dan Mitchell | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell: Maryland to Texas, but Not Okay to Move from the United States to Singapore?

July 24, 2012 – 10:07 am

You can’t blame someone for leaving one state for another if they have a better an opportunity to make money. Maryland to Texas, but Not Okay to Move from the United States to Singapore? July 12, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve commented before about entrepreneurs, investors, and small business owners migrating from high tax states such […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist.

July 8, 2012 – 12:52 am

Raising taxes will not work. Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist. The Laffer Curve Shows that Tax Increases Are a Very Bad Idea – even if They Generate More Tax Revenue April 10, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The Laffer Curve is a graphical representation of the relationship between tax rates, tax revenue, and […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell shows why soak-the-rich tax policy does not work

May 18, 2012 – 12:17 am

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute shows why Obama’s plan to tax the rich will not solve our deficit problem. Explaining in the New York Post Why Obama’s Soak-the-Rich Tax Policy Is Doomed to Failure April 17, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I think high tax rates on certain classes of citizens are immoral and discriminatory. If the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute takes on liberals on PBS

April 22, 2012 – 5:50 am

You want the rich to pay more? Dan Mitchell observed:I explained that “rich” taxpayers declared much more income and paid much higher taxes after Reagan reduced the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent. Liberals don’t understand good tax policies. Against 3-1 Odds, Promoting Good Tax Policy on Government TV April 12, 2012 by […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, President Obama, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute takes on the Buffett Rule

April 13, 2012 – 1:44 pm

Class warfare again from President Obama. Rejecting the Buffett Rule and Fighting Obama’s Class Warfare on CNBC April 10, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve already explained why Warren Buffett is either dishonest or clueless about tax policy. Today, on CNBC, I got to debate the tax scheme that President Obama has named after the Omaha investor. […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0)

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama | Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 448 Responding to Dan Barker’s book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE (A universe with a god is more complicated than one without it. In order to fix all the bugs in the God task—the ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE, the problem of evil, the lack of agreement among believers, the lack of a coherent definition, the uncertainty of the interpretation of UNRELIABLE holy books, ) FEATURED ARTIST IS Yaacov Agam

November 3, 2022 – 6:19 am

Life Driven Purpose: How an Atheist Finds Meaning

I have read articles for years from Dan Barker, but recently I just finished the book Barker wrote entitled LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which was prompted by Rick Warren’s book PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE which I also read several years ago.

Dan Barker is the Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, And co-host of Freethought Radio and co-founder of The Clergy Project.

On March 19, 2022, I got an email back from Dan Barker that said:

Thanks for the insights.

Have you read my book Life Driven Purpose? To say there is no purpose OF life is not to say there is no purpose IN life. Life is immensely meaningful when you stop looking for external purpose.

Ukraine … we’ll, we can no longer blame Russian aggression on “godless communism.” The Russian church, as far as I know, has not denounced the war.

—

In the next few weeks I will be discussing the book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which I did enjoy reading. Here is an assertion that Barker makes that I want to discuss:

A universe with a god is more complicated than one without it. In order to fix all the bugs in the God task—the absence of evidence, the problem of evil, the lack of agreement among believers, the lack of a coherent definition, the uncertainty of the interpretation of unreliable holy books,

Let me respond by providing a letter I wrote to Dr. Steven Weinberg (who was one of my favorite authors to read):

June 30, 2018

Steven Weinberg

The University of Texas at Austin

Department of Physics

2515 Speedway Stop C1600

Austin, TX 78712-1192

Dear Dr. Weinberg,

I really enjoyed your book To Explain the World more than any other book of yours that I have read. It showed to me that you really understand where evangelicals like myself really stand. You may not agree with us, but you understand the consistency of our positions. You also give Christians credit where credit is due:

Whatever individual clergymen may have thought about a heliocentric theory, there was no general Protestant effort to suppress the works of Copernicus.

Nor did Catholic opposition to Copernicus become organized until the 1600s. The famous execution of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition
in 1600 was not for his defense of Copernicus, but for heresy, of which (by the standards of the time) he
was surely guilty. But as we will see, the Catholic church did in the seventeenth century put in place a
very serious suppression of Copernican ideas.

Dr. Weinberg, you understand how important it is to evangelicals for the Bible to be both historically and scientifically accurate:

A few years after the publication of De Revolutionibus, Luther’s colleague Philipp Melanchthon (1497–
1560) joined the attack on Copernicus, now citing Ecclesiastes 1:5—“The Sun also rises, and the Sun
goes down, and hastens to his place where he rose.”
Conflicts with the literal text of the Bible would naturally raise problems for Protestantism, which
had replaced the authority of the pope with that of Scripture.

I noticed that you used Ecclesiastes 1 in the previous quote in your book. Did you know that particular chapter has some highly advanced scientific knowledge in it concerning hydrology? Take a look at a quote from John MacArthur’s sermon that can be seen on You Tube under the following title, “Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 2 (Selected Scriptures):”

QUOTE FROM JOHN MACARTHUR:

Christians believe that God is there and as Francis Schaeffer says…and He is not silent. He has spoken throughout His creation…Let us take some simple categories and look at them. First of all, hydrology…hydrology. This deals with the subject of water…of water, the waters of the earth. You can get all the way in to the seventeenth century, the sixteen hundreds, and you will find scientists puzzled about the source of water, talking about subterranean reservoirs where water is held down in the belly of the earth and comes up from there. But in the seventeenth century, scientists such as Edmé Mariotte, Pierre Perrault, and Edmond Halley, all three in the seventeenth century, opened up the modern understanding of hydrological motion, or the hydrological cycle, how there is only an original mass of water. It is always the same, it always has been the same, it always will be the same. This is the first law of thermodynamics. This same mass of water, this same cycle of the combination of H2O moves continually through a process of evaporation, transportation, precipitation and irrigation, and then run off back to start the process all over again. The Bible is absolutely accurate in the way it presents the hydrological cycle.
Listen to the language of Isaiah 55 and verse 10. “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and furnish seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be which goes forth from My mouth. It shall not return to Me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I said it.” Now the point of that statement by the prophet is to show that the Word of God always accomplishes its purposes as God sends it forth. But the analogy, and the Bible isn’t a book trying to teach you science, but when it uses a scientific analogy it is an accurate one. It’s as the rain comes down from heaven and returns there but only after its watered the earth that you see the hydrological cycle.

If you turn with me for a moment to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, you find again a reference to this. In verse 6 it talks about how the sun rises, the sun sets, hastening to its place. It rises there again, blowing toward the south and turning toward the north. The wind continues swirling along. Talks about wind currents as well. And on its circular courses the wind returns, the wind runs in circles. This is before they knew the earth was a circle. But the wind is running the circle of the earth. You have in verse 7 hydrology, all the rivers flow into the sea yet the sea is not full, or the sea does not overflow. Why? Because when all the water flows into the sea, it evaporates back out of the sea up to the heavens where it is retained in the clouds and then deposited again on the earth and runs the same cycle again and again.

In Job, perhaps the first book ever written, talking about the same time as the Pentateuch would be written, you have this in Job 36 verses 27 and 28, “For He draws up the drops of water, He draws them up, they distill rain from the midst which the clouds pour down. They drip upon man abundantly.” Now it’s starting to put together the rain and the snow come out of the sky, they come down, they irrigate the earth, they go into the rivers and the streams, they flow into the sea, the sea never overflows because the water is drawn up and distilled in the clouds. The clouds move over the land and they drip upon man abundantly and the cycle goes on. Psalm 135:7, “He causes the vapors to ascend to the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain.” There you have all of those elements of evaporation, transportation, precipitation, irrigation and run off and the cycle goes on again.

And Scripture speaks about this not infrequently, but quite frequently. Just a couple of other passages that show this. The twenty-sixth chapter of Job verse 8, “He wraps up the waters in His clouds and the cloud does not burst under them.” God collects the evaporated water in the clouds and the clouds as…as thin as they are, as seemingly weak as they are…hold the water. They hold massive, massive amounts of water as we well know who have lived through severe storms when those clouds bring that water, collecting it off the sea as they go and bursting upon the land even to the degree of hurricanes and their horrific deluges.

There is in Psalm 33:7, and I don’t want to go to every passage, I’ll skip a few. Psalm 33:7, “He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap.” This pictures the great ocean reservoir. “He lays up the deeps in storehouses.” God’s storehouse for the water is the deep, is the ocean.
In Job 38:22 it says, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?” That is to say, have you ever ascended into heaven and gone into a cloud?

Water is an amazing thing. I was reading this week about a mole…m-o-l-e…. It is a collection of molecules and in one mole of water which is 18 grams of water, you have six-hundred-billion-trillion molecules. It is a staggering amount of material in one mole of water. And this massive amount of water moves in this continual cycle that God has designed and simply explained in Scripture not as a scientific explanation but almost in each case either to show the ignorance of man and the inability of man to ascend into the place where God dwells, or to use as an illustration of some spiritual truth.

You can see that we evangelicals do actually have evidence to back up the claim that the Bible is both historically and scientifically accurate. Let me quote from Adrian Rogers who was my pastor when I was growing up at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1970’s and you can hear the whole message on You Tube under the title, “Adrian Rogers: How You Can Be Certain the Bible Is the Word of God [#1725] (Audio).”

QUOTE FROM ADRIAN ROGERS:

Skeptics seem to think that the Bible is full of scientific errors. However, before an individual can make that assertion, they had better make sure they know both science and Scripture. You see, I have heard unbelievers state that the Bible is not a book of science, but a book of religion, which is basically true. It is not written to teach us about science, but to teach us about God. But the God of salvation and the God of creation are the same. Science doesn’t take God by surprise. A close look at Scripture reveals that it is scientifically accurate.

Every now and then science may disagree with the Bible, but usually science just needs time to catch up. For example, in 1861 a French scientific academy printed a brochure offering 51 incontrovertible facts that proved the Bible in error. Today there is not a single reputable scientist who would support those supposed “facts,” because modern science has disproved them all!

The ancients believed the earth was held up by Atlas, or resting on pillars, or even seated on the backs of elephants. But today we know the earth is suspended in space, a fact the Word of God records in Job 26:7: “He . . . hangeth the earth upon nothing.” God revealed the facts of cosmology long before man had any idea of the truth.

For centuries man believed the earth was flat, but now we know the earth is a globe. The prophet Isaiah, writing 750 years before the birth of Christ, revealed that “God sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The word translated here as “circle” was more commonly translated “sphere.” In other words, Isaiah explained that the earth was a globe centuries before science discovered it.

When Ptolemy charted the heavens, he counted 1026 stars in the sky. But with the invention of the telescope man discovered millions and millions of stars, something that Jeremiah 33:22 revealed nearly three thousand years ago: “The host of heaven cannot be numbered.” How did these men of God know the truth of science long before the rest of the world discovered it? They were moved by the Holy Spirit to write the truth. God’s Word is not filled with errors. It is filled with facts, even scientific facts.

When the black plague was killing one quarter of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century, it was the church, not science, that helped overcome the dread disease. The leaders in the church noticed the instructions given by the Lord to Moses in Leviticus 13:46: “All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.” These early believers did not know microbiology or understand what germs were, but they could understand a clear teaching to quarantine someone who was sick. So they followed the Biblical dictum, quarantined those sick with the plague, and stopped it from spreading. The Bible had its science correct even before man discovered the truth! Don’t accept the charge that the Bible is filled with scientific errors. Modern science seems determined to explain God away, and refuses to acknowledge any evidence of the supernatural. But the science of Scripture is one reason to accept the Bible as God’s word.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, cell ph 501-920-5733,

—

Francis Schaeffer

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 7 | The Age of Non-Reason

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 8 | The Age of Fragmentation

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human D…

1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaefer

Featured Artist is Yaacov Agam

Article Talk

Yaacov Agam (Hebrew: יעקב אגם) (born 11 May 1928) is an Israeli sculptor and experimental artist widely known for his contributions to optical and kinetic art.

Yaacov Agam
יעקב אגם
Yaacov Agam in front of a building he decorated in Tel Baruch, Tel Aviv, Israel
Born	Yaakov Gipstein May 11, 1928 (age 94) Rishon LeZion, Mandatory Palestine
Citizenship	Israeli
Education	The Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, the Kunstgewerbe Schule
Occupation	Sculptor and experimental artist
Known for	Contributions to opticaland kinetic art

Fire and Water Fountain, Tel Aviv 2015

BiographyEdit

Yaacov Gibstein (later Agam) was born in Israel, which, at that time was called Mandate Palestine. His father, Yehoshua Gibstein, was a rabbi and a kabbalist.^[1]

Agam trained at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, before moving to Zürich, Switzerland in 1949, where he studied under Johannes Itten (1888–1967) at the Kunstgewerbe Schule, and was also influenced by the painter and sculptor Max Bill (1908–1994).

In 1951 Agam moved to Paris, France, where he still lives.^[2]

Artistic careerEdit

Agam’s first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Craven, Paris, in 1953,^[3] and he exhibited three works at the 1954 Salon des Réalités Nouvelles^[4]and at the Le Mouvement exhibition at the Galerie Denise René, Paris, in 1955.

Agam’s work is usually abstract, kinetic art, with movement, viewer participation and frequent use of light and sound. His works are placed in many public places. His best-known pieces include Double Metamorphosis III (1965), Visual Music Orchestration (1989), the fountain at the La Défensedistrict in Paris (1975) and the Fire and Water Fountain in the Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986). He is also known for a type of print known as an “Agamograph”, which uses barrier-grid animation to present radically different images, depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The lenticulartechnique was executed in large scale in the 30 ft (9.1 m) square “Complex Vision” (1969), mounted on the facade of the Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.^[5]

Agam had a retrospective exhibition in Paris at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in 1972, and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1980, among others. His works are held in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art^[6]and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.^[7]

He is the subject of two 20th century documentary films by American filmmaker Warren Forma: Possibilities of Agam (1967) and Agam and… (1980).

In 1996, he was awarded the Jan Amos ComeniusMedal by UNESCO for the “Agam Method” for visual education of young children.

He designed and created the winner’s trophy for the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest that was held in Jerusalem.^{[citation needed]}

In 2009, at age 81, Agam created a monument for the World Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan titled Peaceful Communication with the World. It consists of nine 10m high hexagonal pillars positioned in a rhomboid formation. The sides of the pillars are painted in different patterns and hues..^[8]

One of Agam’s more notable creations is the Hanukkah Menorah at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York City, sponsored by the Lubavitch Youth Organization. The 32-foot-high, gold colored, 4,000-pound steel structure is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Recordsas the “world’s largest Hanukkah menorah”.^[9]^[10]

In May 2014, Agam’s piece Faith- Visual Pray was presented to Pope Francis by El Al Israel Airlines‘s president, David Maimon. The piece included significant symbols of both Jewish and Christian faiths.^[11]

Agam’s work commands the highest prices of any Israeli artist. In a Sotheby’s New York auction in November 2009, when his 4 Themes Contrepointwas sold for $326,500, he said: “This does not amaze me … my prices will go up, in keeping with the history I made in the art world.”^[12]

In 2018, the Yaacov Agam Museum of Art (YAMA) opened in the artist’s hometown of Rishon LeZion, Israel.^[13] Agam told the Jerusalem Post that it is “the only museum in the world that is dedicated to art in motion.”^[14]

Fountain in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv
Work by Agam at the Sheba Medical Center, Israel
Facade of Dan Hotel, Tel Aviv
Eighteen Levels (1971)
Lighting of World’s Largest Menorah in New York City (2016)
Work by Agam in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado(2022)

—

Proverbs 3New Living Translation

Trusting in the Lord

3 My child,^[a] never forget the things I have taught you.
    Store my commands in your heart.
²If you do this, you will live many years,
    and your life will be satisfying.
³Never let loyalty and kindness leave you!
    Tie them around your neck as a reminder.
    Write them deep within your heart.
⁴Then you will find favor with both God and people,
    and you will earn a good reputation.

⁵Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
⁶Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.

⁷Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom.
Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
⁸Then you will have healing for your body
and strength for your bones.

⁹Honor the Lord with your wealth
and with the best part of everything you produce.
¹⁰Then he will fill your barns with grain,
and your vats will overflow with good wine.

¹¹My child, don’t reject the Lord’s discipline,
and don’t be upset when he corrects you.
¹²For the Lord corrects those he loves,
just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.^[b]

¹³Joyful is the person who finds wisdom,
    the one who gains understanding.
¹⁴For wisdom is more profitable than silver,
    and her wages are better than gold.
¹⁵Wisdom is more precious than rubies;
    nothing you desire can compare with her.
¹⁶She offers you long life in her right hand,
    and riches and honor in her left.
¹⁷She will guide you down delightful paths;
    all her ways are satisfying.
¹⁸Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her;
    happy are those who hold her tightly.

¹⁹By wisdom the Lord founded the earth;
by understanding he created the heavens.
²⁰By his knowledge the deep fountains of the earth burst forth,
and the dew settles beneath the night sky.

²¹My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment.
    Hang on to them,
²²for they will refresh your soul.
    They are like jewels on a necklace.
²³They keep you safe on your way,
    and your feet will not stumble.
²⁴You can go to bed without fear;
    you will lie down and sleep soundly.
²⁵You need not be afraid of sudden disaster
    or the destruction that comes upon the wicked,
²⁶for the Lord is your security.
    He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap.

²⁷Do not withhold good from those who deserve it
when it’s in your power to help them.
²⁸If you can help your neighbor now, don’t say,
“Come back tomorrow, and then I’ll help you.”

²⁹Don’t plot harm against your neighbor,
for those who live nearby trust you.
³⁰Don’t pick a fight without reason,
when no one has done you harm.

³¹Don’t envy violent people
or copy their ways.
³²Such wicked people are detestable to the Lord,
but he offers his friendship to the godly.

³³The Lord curses the house of the wicked,
but he blesses the home of the upright.

³⁴The Lord mocks the mockers
but is gracious to the humble.^[c]

³⁵The wise inherit honor,
but fools are put to shame!

—

Bill Elliff

Proverbs 3

5 PROMISES THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

May 13, 2020

The Bible is full of promises (over 7,000). It is God’s operating system. He commands us to do something, promising a great reward when we obey. If you think clearly about this and know something about the nature of God, you will understand that this is all for our good. God is not trying to rule over us to merely show His power … He’s seeking to help those He’s created find the best path for their lives. Notice 5 commands in the opening verses of Proverbs 3 and their glorious promises.

1. OBEDIENCE

If you remember and obey Me from the heart, I will give you life and peace.

My son, do not forget my teaching, But let your heart keep my commandments; For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. (Proverbs 3:1-2)

2. BALANCE

If you balance your life with kindness and truth, you will find favor with God and man.

Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. (Proverbs 3:3-4)

3. TRUST

If you trust me with all your heart in all your ways, I will lead you.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

4. HUMILITY

If you stay humble and fear Me and turn from evil, I will heal and refresh your body.

Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. (Proverbs 3:7-8)

5. GENEROSITY

If you honor me materially by always giving Me the first fruits, I will provide all your needs.

Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce; So your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. (Proverbs 3:9-10)

Every man or woman must decide if they believe God. Will He do what He promised? Even without the promises, the path that God outlines here for us is the best path. But God motivates us and blesses us with the promised results if we will simply listen and follow.

Father, thank You for the incredible simplicity of Your commands and Your promises. Thank You that You are not trying to harm me when You give me direction, but to help me step into the best life. Give me grace to understand and simply obey You … and then, be grateful for Your faithfulness.

—

Fathers Who Teach Their Children to Be Wise

June 20, 2021 Save Article

Proverbs

Why do some children adore their fathers and others hate them? What’s the difference between fathers? Sometimes children are caught up in the mistakes and mindset of fathers who won’t do what they should to guide those children into a safe, secure haven. The fathers’ own pride and arrogance make shipwreck both of their own lives and their children’s. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’ve observed one characteristic in almost all fathers whose children love and follow them. I’ll tell you what it is in a moment.

The book of Proverbs is a veritable owner’s manual on how to raise a wise child. From the first chapter, it says the proverbs were written, in large part, so we would come…

…to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion—A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel…. Wisdom calls aloud outside; she raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses, at the openings of the gates in the city she speaks her words: “How long, you simple [naïve, immature] ones, will you love simplicity? For scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge. (Proverbs 1:2-5; 20-22)

Underline three words in this passage: simple, scorners, and fools. A child isn’t born a scorner or a fool. A long road leads to the evolution of a fool.

Children need your guidance and protection.

They’re easily molded. “Simple” in verse 22 means open and naïve; children’s minds and hearts are plastic—easily shaped, innocent.

They lack understanding. There comes a time when the child must be guided from innocence into wisdom and maturity.

They can be quickly led into error. A child is an easy target for Hollywood, false religions, and sinful friends. They’re so open, they’ll believe anything. They’re like a sponge. They can be tricked and misled; they’re living in constant danger, sitting ducks for bad influences.

“The simple believes every word…” (Proverbs 24:15). “A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself: but the simple pass on and are punished” (Proverbs 22:3).

The young tend to think they’re indestructible, not weighing the future, easy to mislead.

The older child needs godly correction.

Look at the word “scorner.” Little children aren’t scorners yet but heads up, dads: the older children, if not guided by dad and mom, take the next step down—they become the scorners/scoffers.

They get their jollies from being the smart-alecky kids, the teenage cynics, the mockers at the university. It breaks my heart to say it, but most teenagers in America now are scorners. Scorners can break a parent’s heart.

They defy instruction because “scorners delight in their scorning” (Proverbs 1:22).
“A wise son heeds his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke” (Proverbs 13:1).

Scorners will fire back at you. (See Proverbs 9:8.) They won’t listen. It’s like talking to a brick wall—they’ll tune you out. “A scoffer does not love one who corrects him, nor will he go to the wise” (Proverbs 15:12).

He’ll never come and say, “Dad, I need help. Will you help me out?” When you try to correct the scorner, he’ll look at you and say with his eyes, “I hate your guts.”

They’re on a track for destruction.
“He who despises the Word will be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:13).

If they laugh at the Word of God, they may laugh their way right into Hell. Scorners are very hard to reach, but there is yet hope; they can still be reclaimed.

Catch them before they self-destruct.

First, there was the simple—naïve, open, carefree. But if he’s not taught, he will become a scorner. We all carry that fallen nature. Then the scorner, if not restrained by parents, becomes a person the Bible designates “a fool.” The scorner is insolent, but the fool is immovable—rebellious, arrogant, and wicked.

A fool will reject wisdom.
“And fools hate knowledge” (Proverbs 1:22).

“The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness” (Proverbs 15:14).

He ridicules righteousness.
“Fools mock at sin” (Proverbs 14:9).

This is why we have sitcoms that laugh at drunkenness, glorify adultery, mock marriage, promote homosexuality and relish perversion. Who does that? Fools.

He rejoices in iniquity.
“Folly is joy to him who is destitute of discernment…” (Proverbs 15:21).

His moral sense is so perverted, he calls good evil and evil good. His heart is hardened, his conscience is seared, and his mind is defiled.

He rejects reproof.
God will chasten those who are His own. “For whom the Lord loves, He chastens…” (Hebrews 12:6). But reproof and correction are lost on a fool. “Rebuke is more effective for a wise man than a hundred blows on a fool” (Proverbs 17:10).

Trying to reprove the fool will get you nowhere. Don’t even try. He won’t hear you. He is intransigent. If he were wise, he would repent when God chastised him.

God gives us little children who begin life innocent and open. But if you’re not careful, society will turn them into smart alecks.

Dad, if they’re not rescued when they become scorners or smart alecks, they’ll become fools. The fool is on the fast track to Hell.

We’re in serious trouble in America. In 1962, prayer in public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 1963, Bible reading in schools was deemed “unconstitutional,” but in 1973 the killing of pre-born children somehow became a Constitutional “right.” Then in 1980, the Ten Commandments had to be removed from where they were posted on school walls because, they said, “The child might be tempted to follow them.”

Secular humanists have proven to be great strategists. They latched onto the one segment of life almost every child will pass through—public school—and targeted it to become their “Sunday School” for humanist philosophy. To do that, they had to purge any vestige of Christian influence.

In light of this attack on your children, how can you be the father of a wise child and keep from raising a fool?

Dads, with everything in modern culture fighting against you, you must gear up for this battle.

7 Ways to Be the Father of Wise Children:

1. Expound truth.

Saturate them in the Proverbs. Emblazon the Ten Commandments onto their consciousness. Teach them the Beatitudes, that they might learn these simple, basic truths. It’s your God-given responsibility (See Deuteronomy 6:6-9.) to teach these commandments to your sons, daughters, and grandsons, that your family will survive and your home endure.

The battle is for the mind. As the child thinks, so is he. Get a memorization plan going and make it fun, with rewards when children commit scheduled verses to memory. Get the Word down into their hearts early.

2. Expose sin.

The young and innocent will learn by example when they see discipline fall upon the scorner. Children need to see what happens when sin is exposed and consequences are suffered.

“When the scoffer is punished, the simple is made wise” (Proverbs 21:11).

The worst thing would be for your child to live in a sinful society where he never sees the repercussions of sin. Our children today are insulated; often they don’t see the result of sin. Help them understand. Don’t just expound truth, but expose sin. Take your child down to skid row. Take him to the prisons. Let him see the end result of bad choices.

“Strike a scoffer, and the simple will become wary; Rebuke one who has understanding, and he will discern knowledge” (Proverbs 19:25).

The young think they’re indestructible. You need to pull back the veil.

3. Expel scorners.

Do not let your children hang around with scorners and fools. Just don’t do it. Help them select their friends. That means you may have to be firm and “cast out the scorner.” Show them the door. Impressionable children will succumb to peer pressure.

Open up your house to your child’s friends. Make your home the headquarters for fun. And while they’re there, you can monitor those friends. Peer pressure is not bad if the peers are good. If there’s a smart aleck or a fool, say, “Son, there’s the sidewalk.”

“Cast out the scoffer, and contention will leave; Yes, strife and reproach will cease” (Proverbs 22:10).

Moms and dads, underline this, a good verse for memorization:

“He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20).

4. Express love.

Love your children! Delight in them.

“For whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:12).

Be positive. Avoid negativism. Words can hurt your children more than a slap in the face. Learn to listen. Try to see life from their point of view. They’re facing things you never faced.

5. Be gentle.

This is that one characteristic I mentioned at the beginning, which I’ve seen in all dads whose children love and follow them: They are gentle. That’s what children want out of their dad. Yes, they want a dad they can look up to, who’s the strongest, wisest, smartest, fastest, best dad in the world…but they want him to be gentle! Touch them, hug them, give them non-verbal affection.

6. Be transparent.

Let them know your fears, joys, disappointments, failures, and goals. They already know you’re not perfect; they don’t want you to be a phony.

7. Be available.

Make it a priority that you’re available to your child.

If you feel inadequate—so do I. None of us has what it takes to be this kind of dad. That’s why we need Jesus.

We’ve got to have Christ in our hearts! The Christian life is not difficult, it’s impossible. Only one who can do it, and that’s Jesus.

But He will do it, in and through us, if we’ll let Him. The best thing you can do for your children is to love God with all your heart. Give your heart to Jesus.

Seeing Jesus in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job

July 16, 2013 – 1:28 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 10) Summing up Proverbs study

May 30, 2013 – 1:06 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 9) “Love your neighbor”

May 28, 2013 – 1:23 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 8) “Manage your money”

May 23, 2013 – 1:35 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 7) “Pursue your work”

May 21, 2013 – 1:05 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 6) “Enjoy your wife and watch your words”

May 16, 2013 – 1:23 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 5) “Control your body”

May 14, 2013 – 1:44 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 4) “Bad company corrupts…”

May 9, 2013 – 1:10 am

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 3) “Guard your mind and obey your parents!!”

May 7, 2013 – 1:43 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 2) What does it mean to fear the Lord?

May 2, 2013 – 1:13 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)

The Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

July 8, 2013 – 12:01 am

https://bidding-test.devops.iponweb.net/automattic/dio-passback.html

Why is Solomon so depressed in Ecclesiastes? by Brent Cunningham

July 3, 2013 – 7:00 am

Robert Leroe on Ecclesiastes (Mentions Thomas Aquinas, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, King Solomon, King Rehoboam, Eugene Peterson, Chuck Swindoll, and John Newton.)

June 19, 2013 – 1:30 am

Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes

June 11, 2013 – 1:55 am

Ecclesiastes: Solomon with Life in the Fast Lane

June 3, 2013 – 1:19 am

Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Ecclesiastes a scathing and self-deprecating attack on hedonism and secular humanism by Solomon

May 31, 2013 – 1:17 am

Solomon was right in his cynicism–unless……unless there is a God who created us and cares about us

May 22, 2013 – 1:34 am

The Humanist takes on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

May 20, 2013 – 1:13 pm

Tom Brady , Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 3)

December 23, 2011 – 11:12 am

Adrian Rogers on gambling

July 18, 2013 – 12:44 am

Book of Ecclesiastes

July 17, 2013 – 1:40 am

https://bidding-test.devops.iponweb.net/automattic/dio-passback.html

Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers: Are fathers necessary?

July 16, 2013 – 12:43 am

Tom Brady, Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 2)

December 22, 2011 – 11:56 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell: The only thing Biden actually did was to preside over a period of rising prices!

November 2, 2022 – 6:32 pm

—

Astounding Example of White House Chutzpah

While Donald Trump issued some inanely illiteratetweets to promote protectionism, Joe Biden has made a fool of himself with tweets on a wider range of issues.

Jaw-dropping economic illiteracy about gas prices.
Using make-believe numbers to promote class warfare.
Adding to the debt while claiming to do the opposite.
Once again using make-believe numbers on taxation.

The easy response to all this nonsense is to jump on the Biden-is-a-befuddled-old-man bandwagon.

That may be good for a few laughs, and I’m a big fanof political humor (even when it targets my side).

But the more accurate assessment is that Biden is a politician and he’s doing what comes naturally to politicians – which is to spin, lie, dissemble, and prevaricate.

And if you think I’m being too critical, we have a new tweet from the White House that breaks all records for chutzpah.

I don’t know what’s most galling about this tweet.

Is it that the White House is taking credit for Social Security’s automatic COLAs (cost of living adjustments) even though that’s been part of the law for 50 years?
Is is that the White House is trying to make it seem like good news that we’ve had very high inflation, which is the only reason why the COLAs are so large?

In either case, the only thing Biden actually did was to preside over a period of rising prices (which, in the interest of fairness, is mostly not his fault).

I’ll close with the observation that I would be happy if politicians basically did nothing other than make false claims of “leadership.” It’s when they start enacting new laws that things usually get worse (and that’s definitely been true during the Biden years).

P.S. We’ve also seen brassy tweets from the campaign arm for Democratic members of the House of Representatives.

Assessing the Biden Economy

According to polling data, President Biden is not getting good grades for economic policy.

Part of that is because of inflation, though I’ve repeatedly pointed out that the blame belongs with the Federal Reserve rather than Biden. And the big mistake from the Fed took place before Biden even took office.

Unfortunately, the President is not trying to make things better. His appointments to the Fed suggest he doesn’t understand the need for good monetary policy.

And all of his major legislative initiatives (the so-called stimulus, the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, the pork-filled infrastructure legislation, and the cronyist handouts to the semiconductor industry) have increased the size and scope of government.

For what it’s worth, I think Biden’s big challenge – both politically and economically – is that Americans are losing ground. Simply stated, prices are increasing faster than incomes.

But that isn’t stopping the Administration from trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

Alan Rappeport of the New York Times reported a few days ago that the Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is claiming that Bdenomics is a big success.

…the Biden administration is pivoting to recast its stewardship of the U.S. economy as a singular achievement. …The case was reinforced on Thursday by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen… Ms. Yellen said the legislation that Mr. Biden signed this year to promote infrastructure investment, expand the domestic semiconductor industry and support the transition to electric vehicles represented what she called “modern supply-side economics.” …After months of being on the defensive in the face of criticism from Republicans who say Democrats fueled inflation by overstimulating the economy, the Biden administration is fully embracing the fruits of initiatives such as the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021.

The editors at the Wall Street Journal are not impressed.

Janet Yellen…tenure as Treasury Secretary hasn’t enhanced her reputation. …the White House is rolling her out in election season to portray the U.S. economy as a Valhalla of growth, fairness and optimism. …If you’re in a green business the White House likes, you’re in clover. If not, you’ll endure the costs of more regulation and taxes. In the Biden era, big government and big business are in political business together.…Ms. Yellen’s whoppers, …including a claim that “the causes of inflation are largely global.” …U.S. inflation has been substantially home-grown. …The Federal Reserve kept the money spigots open for too long, in part to finance the borrowing needed for all of the spending. …Ms. Yellen is also at pains to stress how much fairer the economy is since Mr. Biden took office… She fails to mention that the U.S. economy contracted by about 1% of GDP in the first six months of this year, even as real wages were falling. Real average hourly earnings declined 3% over the 12 months through July, and average weekly earnings by 3.6%. They’ve fallen 4.2% since Mr. Biden took office.

Meanwhile, the latest inflation data has not strengthened Biden’s case.

Jim Tankersley of the New York Times wrote aboutthe issue yesterday.

Hotter-than-expected inflation in August was unwelcome news for President Biden, who has sought to defuse Republican attacks over rising prices in the run-up to November’s midterm elections. …Mr. Biden has claimed progress in the fight against inflation, including with the signing last month of an energy, health care and tax bill that Democrats called the Inflation Reduction Act.…But polls continue to show inflation is hurting Mr. Biden and his party… Mr. Biden threw a belated celebration at the White House on Tuesday to mark his signing of the Inflation Reduction Act. …But the country’s economic reality remains more muddled, as the inflation report underscored. Food prices are continuing to spike, straining lower-income families in particular. …Most importantly — and perhaps most damaging for Mr. Biden and Democrats — Americans’ wages have struggled to keep pace with fast-rising prices, an uncomfortable truth for a president who promised to make real wage gains a centerpiece of his economic program.

Let’s close with this chart, which shows what has happened to inflation-adjusted weekly earnings since Biden took office.

Yes, there was one recent month with good data, but that doesn’t seem like a big cause for celebration.

P.S. Paul Krugman’s defense of Bidenomics is just as weak as Janet Yellen’s (and his criticisms of good presidents are equally weak).

Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve

Free-market economics meets free-market policies at The Heritage Foundation’s Tenth Anniversary dinner in 1983. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose with President Ronald Reagan and Heritage President Ed Feulner.

Since the passing of Milton Friedman who was my favorite economist, I have been reading the works of Daniel Mitchell and he quotes Milton Friedman a lot, and you can reach Dan’s website here.

Mitchell in February 2011.

Wikipedia noted concerning Dan:

Mitchell’s career as an economist began in the United States Senate, working for Oregon Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. He also served on the transition team of President-Elect Bush and Vice President-Elect Quayle in 1988. In 1990, he began work at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, Mitchell worked on tax policy issues and began advocating for income tax reform.^[1]

In 2007, Mitchell left the Heritage Foundation, and joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow. Mitchell continues to work in tax policy, and deals with issues such as the flat tax and international tax competition.^[2]

In addition to his Cato Institute responsibilities, Mitchell co-founded the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, an organization formed to protect international tax competition.^[1]

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980’s and it all came about as he said it would when Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts took place. I wish we would lower taxes now instead of looking for more revenue through raised taxes. We have to grow the economy:

What Mitt Romney Said Last Night About Tax Cuts And The Deficit Was Absolutely Right. And What Obama Said Was Absolutely Wrong.

Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.

Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

Meanwhile, Obama has promised to cut the deficit in half during his first four years – but instead gave America the highest deficits in the history of the entire human race.

I’ve written about this before. Let’s replay what has happened every single time we’ve ever cut the income tax rate.

The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).

That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.

Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.

People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTER who believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.

So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:

Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit By EDMUND L. ANDREWS Published: July 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: ”unexpected.” But it WASN’T ”unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.

The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.

Meanwhile, liberals also have a perfect record … of FAILURE. They keep raising taxes and keep not understanding why they don’t get the revenues they predicted.

The following is a section from my article, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues“, where I document every single thing I said above:

The Falsehood That Tax Cuts Increase The Deficit

Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.

Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:

In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).

Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”

And what happened?

“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).

Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.

FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.

It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.

Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.

Kennedy said:

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference

“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964

“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.

“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill

Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.

So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues? Hardly:

We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASEof revenue.

So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades. Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.

________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733

________

The Laffer Curve, Part III: Dynamic Scoring

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November 2, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 2) Bill Elliff on Proverbs 2

November 2, 2022 – 2:13 am

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Proverbs 2

WISDOM

May 17, 2021

It is wonderful to have knowledge, but wisdom has an even greater value. Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge precisely and accurately. A wise man is the right man, doing the right thing, saying the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time. He is the most useful man in leadership because he leads from God-initiation.

ITS SOURCE

So, what is the origination of such wisdom? It comes from God. And, true to His giving form, the Lord is waiting to give His Divine wisdom to those who seek Him.

For the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice, and He preserves the way of His godly ones. (Proverbs 2:6-8)

The Lord goes further to indicate what will happen to those who seek wisdom from Him.

Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you to deliver you from the way of evil. (Proverbs 2:9-12)

IF YOU DON’T HAVE WISDOM

… you will be clueless and unprotected in this life. But the man who pursues and receives wisdom from God will discern what is right and just and equitable. He will be able to find “every good course.” He will be protected by discretion and understanding, and his steps will be Divinely delivered from evil. What could be more valuable?

All of this because of a God of perfect wisdom who made us in His image and longs to share His life with us if we will trust Him. But there is one caveat: you must admit your need and pursue wisdom with all your heart. Look at the verbs in the first five verses of this Proverb.

My son, if you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you; make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will discern wisdom. (Proverbs 2:1-4)

The humble man who pursues God relentlessly will receive wisdom. You don’t need a Ph.D. to do this … just a hungry heart.

Lord, I need wisdom. Thank You that you alone are the source. It is not in me. Father, help me pursue wisdom in You, believing that You will gladly and graciously provide all I need. Let me see today what is right, just, equitable, and the good course. Thank You for storing this up for me! And, for speaking this wisdom into my soul as I see You.

At the end of the day, let me give praise to the One alone to whom it is due. For “the LORD gives wisdom!”

Storing Up Truths

Scripture Reading — Proverbs 2:1-11

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you . . . then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. — Proverbs 2:1-5

A subtle, amusing cartoon shows a group of church elders, tired from a lengthy discussion. One of them suggests, “I don’t care who broke the wall of Jericho. I move we have it repaired and take the funds from the facilities budget.”

Most Sunday school students know who “broke the wall of Jericho” and what God said about it (see Joshua 6). Yet, considering its subtle point, the cartoon reminds us that biblical knowledge is declining today even where church attendance may be booming.

Storing up God’s commands and turning our ears to his wisdom doesn’t come naturally. It takes regular Bible reading and reflection. Living as disciples of Jesus Christ, we must make the effort to learn God’s Word—his words and commands.

Wise living calls for serious reading of Scripture. It requires learning details about the life of Jesus as told in the gospels. Learning what Jesus said and did will make us appreciate his ultimate sacrifice. It will encourage us to imitate his life, devoted to obeying his Father’s will.

A wise heart and a knowledgeable walk are pleasant to the soul and yield eternal blessings. Can a true disciple desire anything less? Do you?

Prayer

Life-giving God, grant us the desire to learn the truths and teachings in your Word so that our lives will have a compass to steer us in the right direction as your children. In Christ, Amen.vi

Devotion topics: Wisdom, Bible, Books of the Bible, Proverbs

George Vink