Author Archives: Everette Hatcher III

My name is Everette Hatcher III. I am a businessman in Little Rock and have been living in Bryant since 1993. My wife Jill and I have four kids (Rett 24, Hunter 22, Murphey 16, and Wilson 14).

June 6, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 6) verses 20-23 RAISING KIDS WHO COUNT by Adrian Rogers

My son, obey your father’s commands,
    and don’t neglect your mother’s instruction.

Proverbs 6New Living Translation

Lessons for Daily Life

My child,[a] if you have put up security for a friend’s debt
    or agreed to guarantee the debt of a stranger—
if you have trapped yourself by your agreement
    and are caught by what you said—
follow my advice and save yourself,
    for you have placed yourself at your friend’s mercy.
Now swallow your pride;
    go and beg to have your name erased.
Don’t put it off; do it now!
    Don’t rest until you do.
Save yourself like a gazelle escaping from a hunter,
    like a bird fleeing from a net.

Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones.
    Learn from their ways and become wise!
Though they have no prince
    or governor or ruler to make them work,
they labor hard all summer,
    gathering food for the winter.
But you, lazybones, how long will you sleep?
    When will you wake up?
10 A little extra sleep, a little more slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest—
11 then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit;
    scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

12 What are worthless and wicked people like?
    They are constant liars,
13 signaling their deceit with a wink of the eye,
    a nudge of the foot, or the wiggle of fingers.
14 Their perverted hearts plot evil,
    and they constantly stir up trouble.
15 But they will be destroyed suddenly,
    broken in an instant beyond all hope of healing.

16 There are six things the Lord hates—
    no, seven things he detests:
17 haughty eyes,
    a lying tongue,
    hands that kill the innocent,
18 a heart that plots evil,
    feet that race to do wrong,
19 a false witness who pours out lies,
    a person who sows discord in a family.

20 My son, obey your father’s commands,
    and don’t neglect your mother’s instruction.
21 Keep their words always in your heart.
    Tie them around your neck.
22 When you walk, their counsel will lead you.
    When you sleep, they will protect you.
    When you wake up, they will advise you.
23 For their command is a lamp
    and their instruction a light;
their corrective discipline
    is the way to life.
24 It will keep you from the immoral woman,
    from the smooth tongue of a promiscuous woman.
25 Don’t lust for her beauty.
    Don’t let her coy glances seduce you.
26 For a prostitute will bring you to poverty,[b]
    but sleeping with another man’s wife will cost you your life.
27 Can a man scoop a flame into his lap
    and not have his clothes catch on fire?
28 Can he walk on hot coals
    and not blister his feet?
29 So it is with the man who sleeps with another man’s wife.
    He who embraces her will not go unpunished.

30 Excuses might be found for a thief
    who steals because he is starving.
31 But if he is caught, he must pay back seven times what he stole,
    even if he has to sell everything in his house.
32 But the man who commits adultery is an utter fool,
    for he destroys himself.
33 He will be wounded and disgraced.
    His shame will never be erased.
34 For the woman’s jealous husband will be furious,
    and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge.
35 He will accept no compensation,
    nor be satisfied with a payoff of any size.

Footnotes

Raising Kids That Count

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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
  6. GIVE THEM REASONABLE RESTRICTIONS
    1. Proverbs 6:20-23
  7. GIVE THEM A LISTENING EAR
    1. Proverbs 18:13-15
    2. We need to be willing to listen when they want to talk.
  8. 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
  9. 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.

Related posts:

Seeing Jesus in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job

July 16, 2013 – 1:28 am

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 28, 2013 – 1:23 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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 23, 2013 – 1:35 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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 21, 2013 – 1:05 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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 16, 2013 – 1:23 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 RogersCurrent Events | Tagged Gene BartowJohn Wooden | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 14, 2013 – 1:44 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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 9, 2013 – 1:10 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 RogersCurrent Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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 RogersCurrent 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 EventsUncategorized | 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

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)

Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes

June 11, 2013 – 1:55 am

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

The Humanist takes on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

May 20, 2013 – 1:13 pm

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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 RogersCurrent 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 RogersCurrent 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 […]

Dan Mitchell : ”My left-leaning friends have never been able to provide an example, either now or at some point in the past, of a poor nation becoming a rich nation by imposing higher taxes and a bigger burden of government spending”

This article below reminds me of this quote by Milton Friedman:

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. 

The Ideal Fiscal Policy for Poor Nations

As part of a conference organized by the Face of Liberty International in Nigeria, I reviewed realworldevidence to explain the recipe needed for poor nations to become rich nations. With an emphasis on fiscal policy, of course.


I think much of what I said is common sense backed by hard data.

Indeed, the evidence is so clear that I put together a never-answered-question challenge back in 2020 (which built upon an earlier version from 2014).

Why is it “never-answered”?

Because my left-leaning friends have never been able to provide an example, either now or at some point in the past, of a poor nation becoming a rich nation by imposing higher taxes and a bigger burden of government spending.

Yet supposed experts in economic development for decades have pushed foreign aid in failed effortsturn poor countries into rich countries.

More recently (and even more preposterously), international bureaucracies like the OECDUN, and IMF have been arguing that higher taxes and bigger government are needed to promote economic development.

For all intents and purposes, my argument is based on the fact that western nations became rich in the 1800s and early 1900s when they had very low taxes and very small governments.

And if you don’t have 20 minutes to watch the above video, the most important charts come from a column I wrote back in 2018.

The first chart shows that there was a stunning reduction in poverty in western nations over a 100-year time period.

And the second chart shows that this near-miraculous improvement occurred before those nations had welfare states or any other forms of redistribution spending.

P.S. Rule of law (rather than arbitrary rule by kings, chiefs, emperors, and dictators) is a necessary prerequisite for growth. And weak rule of law is an even bigger challenge in the developing world than bad advice from international bureaucracies.

Milton Friedman on Money 8/28/2006

An Interview with Milton Friedman

By Milton Friedman

Categories: Article

By Milton Friedman, Sep 4 2006

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I recently sat down with Milton Friedman, a few days before his 94th birthday, to discuss the impact of two of his most important contributions to economics and liberty: A Monetary History of the United States, 1870-1960 [co-written] with Anna Schwartz, and Capitalism and Freedom. The ideas in both books had tremendous influence on the economic and intellectual landscape.

You can listen to our two-part podcast conversation on EconTalk:

For help with listening to podcasts, go to the EconTalk FAQ.

The following transcript consists of excerpts from that conversation.

Russell Roberts
Features Editor

Russ Roberts: Welcome to EconTalk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I’m your host, Russ Roberts, of George Mason University. My guest today is Milton Friedman. Milton is a senior research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the 1976 Nobel Laureate in Economics and a hero to millions in the United States and around the world for his insights and actions on behalf of economics and liberty.

Russ Roberts: Milton, I’d like our conversation to focus on the ideas contained in two of your books, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, a massive scholarly work, and Capitalism and Freedom, a slim monograph on the principles of a free society.

Let’s begin with the Monetary History of the United States. Written with Anna Schwartz. Published in 1963, it was an extraordinarily detailed and careful study of the role of money in the economy. And among many important insights, it made the case that inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. When that book was published, what was the reaction of the profession to its scholarship?

Milton Friedman: The profession on the whole appreciated its scholarship. As I remember as best I can, there were three different reviews in three different professional journals, all of which were highly favorable even though—I think—two out of the three [reviews] were written by strong Keynesians.

Russ Roberts: And what was its impact in affecting the way the profession, at least in the short run, looked at the role of money?

Milton Friedman: I find that a very hard question to answer. Obviously, many things were going on in the world. Bretton Woods was on. The 1960s were a period of pretty good prosperity. On the whole, during the ’50s and the ’60s, it looked as if the Keynesian interpretation was right. After all, during that period, we had relatively prosperous countries, relatively stable prices, and relatively low interest rates.

It was a golden era, as it were, and everybody was said to be operating on Keynesian lines. What really changed the public perception and also the professional perception was the experience of the 1970s. During the 1970s, you had a combination that under Keynesian analysis could not exist. You had high inflation and high unemployment at the same time—named stagflation—and that combination was really ruled out by the simple kind of Keynesian analysis that was in vogue. But it was that experience which more than anything else led to a basic change in public and intellectual attitudes toward money.

Russ Roberts: So the scholars and the public had to try to puzzle out why this seeming impossibility was definitely occurring.

Milton Friedman: Yes and no. Because of our book, because of Bob Lucas’ work, we had predicted that this would happen and, therefore, it was like an experiment. You wait and see what happens and the predicted results happened.

Russ Roberts: There was a lens to look through to explain what was going on.

Milton Friedman: Sure, because this lens had predicted that you could have both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.

Russ Roberts: I was an undergraduate and a graduate in the 1970s and my textbooks at the undergraduate level—not the graduate level, because I attended a small university in the Midwest I think you used to have an affiliation with, the University of Chicago—but as an undergraduate, my textbooks talked about all the different theories of inflation—cost push, cost pull, the role of unions, the role of industrial concentration and, of course, the possibility that Milton Friedman, this maverick thinker was right, that money had something to do with it.

It’s my impression that’s not true anymore; that the intellectual environment understands today that inflation is caused by a rapid growth in the money supply.

Milton Friedman: I think it does. I think that’s clear and the last 30 years, last 20 years I should say, has done a great deal to rub that in because every central bank has come to accept the view that it’s responsible for inflation.

Russ Roberts: Let’s talk about those central banks. What role do you think the Monetary History had—and the related work around it, of course—in influencing central bankers in focusing on the money supply in its role of affecting inflation?

Milton Friedman: I think it had a great deal of effect. I think what was most important was a chapter in the Monetary History that dealt with the Great Depression. The difficulty of having people understand monetary theory is very simple—the central banks are good at press relations. The central banks hire people and the central banks employ a large fraction of all economists so there is a bias to tell the case—the story—in a way that is favorable to the central banks.

But the Great Depression was such a major event and such a disaster that there was no way in which you could talk it away, although they tried to do so. If you read the annual reports of the Federal Reserve Board or its testimony before Congress, you will find that as late as 1933, at the very depths of the depression, it’s talking about how much worse things would have been if the Fed hadn’t behaved so well.

But the evidence was so clear. You had a decline in the quantity of money by a third from 1929 to 1933 and that coincided with the decline in the economy by half or so. When you have 25 percent of the working force unemployed, you can’t just talk it away.

Russ Roberts: But at the time, the main lesson that people drew from that was that capitalism is broken.

Milton Friedman: Absolutely. The lesson people drew was that it was a fault of business. It was a market failure. But I think the reason they drew that lesson was because of the way in which the self interest of the monetary authorities led them to promote it.

Russ Roberts: And you could toss in the self-interest of FDR in painting himself as a savior despite the severe recession of 1938.

Milton Friedman: But that would have been the same for them even if they had recognized the cause, only they would have concentrated more on doing—on abolishing the Fed or on reformulating the Fed. But the reason why the public and the intellectuals at large held to that perception was because that was what they were being told by the authorities.

Russ Roberts: And so it justified a great deal of government intervention in the economy at the time, obviously.

Milton Friedman: Oh, it certainly did.

Russ Roberts: And you’re suggesting that the Monetary History was the beginning of a revision toward a different perspective.

Milton Friedman: Well, I don’t know. On the ideological side, there were other things at work. Hayek’sRoad to Serfdom, which was published in 1945 made the ideological case. I don’t know what role the Monetary History played in the public at large but in terms of the monetary authorities, in terms of money, there’s no doubt that it played a considerable role.

Russ Roberts: And that chapter on the Great Depression must have alarmed them greatly about their potential for doing harm.

Milton Friedman: Exactly, exactly.

Russ Roberts: And at that time, in the 1960s, there was a lot of debate about what the role of the central bank should be and because inflation was relatively low, there was much less attention paid to that role.

Milton Friedman: Here and there, there were things like the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which was arguing against the Federal Reserve policy and which was arguing that they should pay more attention to the quantity of money, but they were mavericks. But so far as the bulk of the population, the bulk of the profession, the bulk of the people hired by the monetary authorities, they all were Keynesians.

Russ Roberts: Focusing on the central bank role, going back again to the ’70s when I was in school and shortly after your book came out, the focus was on the money supply—the quantity of money, counting it, controlling it through open market operations.

Something changed in the last 25 or 30 years. That’s not what Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke talk about. They talk about other things and they play with that short-term interest rate, not the so-called stock of money that you focused on so intensely in the book.

Milton Friedman: That’s what the talk about but that’s not what they do.

Russ Roberts: What do they do?

Milton Friedman: They use the short-term interest rate as a way of controlling the quantity of money. If you look at the statistics, the rate of change of the quantity of money from month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, it has never been so low as it has been over the last 20 years.

I don’t believe there’s another 20-year period in the history of the country in which you can find so steady a rate of growth in the quantity of money and that can’t all be an accident. That’s because they use the short-term interest rate. Look at it in the simplest possible way.

The Fed says the short-term interest rate should be 4.5 percent. How do they keep it there? By buying and selling securities on the open market. Now you’re Mr. Bernanke; you’re Mr. Greenspan. You’re watching that. And with the current short-term interest rate, you find that the quantity of money is starting to creep up more rapidly than you really want. Well, then you will tend to be favorable to raising to a higher rate of interest.

At that higher rate of interest, the demand for money is less and so the supply of money under that phenomenon, instead of having to sell government bonds to keep it there, they have to buy government bonds to keep it there or vice versa. Maybe I’m getting it mixed up. But in any event, the short-term interest rate is a tool with which you can control the quantity of money.

Russ Roberts: But they don’t talk about it that way.

Milton Friedman: No, they don’t talk about it that way.

Russ Roberts: Why do you think that is? Do you have any idea?

Milton Friedman: I don’t know. I’ve always been puzzled by why they insist on using the interest rate rather than the quantity of money.

If you really carried out the logic concerning the quantity of money, you deprive the Federal Reserve of anything to do. Suppose the Federal Reserve said it was going to increase the quantity of money by 4 percent a year, year after year, week after week, month after month. That would be a purely mechanical project. You could program a computer to do that.

Russ Roberts: Like an indexed mutual fund takes away the fun of being a fund manager.

Milton Friedman: Right. That’s part of the reason. But the main reason, I think, is different. It’s that the central bank associates with banks. It regards itself as sort of a mentor of the banking system and, to the individual bank, it doesn’t believe it creates a quantity of money. That doesn’t make any sense to them.

What they deal with are interest rates and therefore, it’s natural and so many of the central bankers are themselves from the banking industry. They’re bankers. And so it’s natural for them to think in terms of interest rates and, moreover, when they think in terms of interest rates, they’ve got all kinds of interest rates—short-term interest rates, long-term interest rates—all kinds of excuses for exercising power or thinking they’re exercising power.

Russ Roberts: Taking credit for exercising power.

Milton Friedman: I’ve always been in favor of abolishing the Federal Reserve and substituting a machine program that would keep the quantity of money going up at a steady rate.

Russ Roberts: And over the last 20 years or so, they’ve approximated that.

Milton Friedman: Come closer to approximating it. Absolutely.

Russ Roberts: And I would argue, and I assume you would as well, that the relative stability of the U.S. economy over the last 20 years is a reflection of that steady growth in the money supply.

Milton Friedman: I think there’s no doubt at all.

Russ Roberts: The non-erratic path.

Milton Friedman: It’s a golden period. It’s a period in which you had declining inflation but a fairly steady rate, a steady level. You had only three recessions, all of them brief, all of them mild. I don’t believe you can find another 20-year period in American history. But it’s interesting to note that so far as the international acceptance of monetary control is concerned, it was started by the Bank of New Zealand, not by the Federal Reserve Bank.

It was some time in the 1980s when New Zealand essentially came close to privatizing its central bank. It set up a situation in which the governor of the Central Bank of New Zealand had a contract with the government in which he agreed to keep the price level—inflation—within a certain bound; 0 to 3 percent or 0 to 2 percent. And if he did not do so, he could be fired.

Russ Roberts: Not decapitated, merely fired.

Milton Friedman: Merely fired.

Russ Roberts: But it still concentrated his mind sufficiently.

Milton Friedman: Oh, yes. And Don Brash was appointed as the first governor of the Central Bank of New Zealand. He’s now the leader of the opposition in the New Zealand Parliament. But at the time, he came from business. He was a businessman and he is an extraordinarily able and effective fellow and he took this job on at the time when New Zealand had a very high inflation rate and he succeeded in living up to his contract.

And that really set the pattern. It was the New Zealand experience, I’m sure, that had more to do with other central banks around the world adopting inflation targeting than the United States experience.

Russ Roberts: Because it was so dramatically effective in New Zealand?

Milton Friedman: It was the first time that anybody had explicitly adopted an inflation target. So that was something that everybody observed. And, secondly, it was so dramatically effective.

Russ Roberts: So are you optimistic about the role the central bank will continue to play in that inflation and price level story? You said we’ve had a golden era of 20, 25 years of stable prices, steady growth with only minor—by historical standards—minor recessions. Are you optimistic about the next 25 years?

Milton Friedman: I have great difficulty not being optimistic about it. All the evidence would seem to be optimistic. On the other hand, I can’t hold back a doubt. Governments want to spend money and sooner or later, governments are going to want to spend money without taxing it and the only way to do that is to print money—to create inflation.

Inflation is a form of taxation. How long will governments be able to resist the temptation? And particularly as people become adjusted to being in a world of stable inflation. They will be bigger suckers as it were. It will be easier to get a lot out of it. If everybody anticipated inflation, you couldn’t get anywhere by inflating.

Russ Roberts: But once you get people lulled into the expectation of a lack of it, there’s the potential to exploit it. Let me ask the question in a different way. A lot of people credit Alan Greenspan with the expansion and success. They give Paul Volcker some credit as well at the early part of this period that we’re talking about.

But they make it sound like the key to success in monetary policy is you just got to get the right person in the job. When Ben Bernanke or whoever is following him comes in, there’s this absurd microscopic examination of the aura and vapors around such a person. And you’re suggesting it really has nothing to do with it.

Milton Friedman: Well, how is it that New Zealand can do it. How is it that Australia can do it. How is it that Great Britain can do it. These are all countries which followed New Zealand. New Zealand started it. But then Australia and Great Britain also adopted inflation targeting.

Russ Roberts: Well, they just happened to find the right guy in each of those places.

Milton Friedman: Oh, they were all lucky. Absolutely. (Laughter.) I’ve always felt that the big defect politically of the Federal Reserve is precisely that so much depends on unelected representatives. The central bank is treated as if it were the Supreme Court. That’s why during the Depression, there was no effective controls on the central bank. There were members of Congress who knew what to do and who trying to get the Fed to do it but they had no way to do so.

Russ Roberts: There was no incentive directly. There was an indirect incentive, of course, which was humiliation and the stigma which has endured. They had no idea at the time of how bad that would turn out—how those decisions would look in retrospect. But you’re suggesting that the disadvantage of the current system is a lack of accountability.

Milton Friedman: Right.

Russ Roberts: But the alternative, the elected system, has the problem that you mentioned earlier of the temptation to exploit the ability to create money to increase revenue.

Milton Friedman: But that’s why what you want—if possible—is a mechanical system. If there was any virtue to the gold standard, it was that virtue. Maybe you could create the same thing now. My favorite proposal really is a little bit more sophisticated—or less sophisticated if you want to look at it that way—than a straight increase in the quantity of money. I would—if I had my choice—freeze the amount of high-powered money. Not increase it.

Russ Roberts: High-powered money being bills and cash.

Milton Friedman: High-powered money is the currency plus bank reserves.

Russ Roberts: Okay.

Milton Friedman: I would freeze that and hold it constant and have it as sort of a natural constant like gravity or something. Now, you would think that that’s a bad idea because there would be no provision for expansion; however, high-powered money is a small fraction of total money and the ratio of total money to high-powered money has been going up over time. So the economy would create more money and on average, you would have a pretty stable money growth and a pretty stable monetary system.

Russ Roberts: What do you think the odds are of that happening?

Milton Friedman: Zero.

Russ Roberts: Zero? Well, that’s a small number, zero. I wish you were a little more optimistic.

Milton Friedman: No, I don’t think it’ll happen unless there is another catastrophe like the Great Depression. But other than that, it’s not going to happen. I think the real danger of this [the current monetary system] breaking down is there’s no danger of it breaking down into a Great Depression. The real danger is it’ll break up into an inflation.

When I see in the Federal Reserve reports that the inflation anticipation for 10, 20 years is on the order of 2 percent a year, I find it very hard to believe it. Sooner or later, the government’s going to get out of hand.

Russ Roberts: But this current run is a lovely illustration of your ideal— a non-discretionary, mechanistic rule. The average person finds it very unappealing. Discretion always seems to be better than rules.

Milton Friedman: That’s right.

Russ Roberts: What you’re saying is that with that discretion—which is not ideal in your world—yet with that discretion, they have followed the rule.

Milton Friedman: Yes.

Russ Roberts: So far. They’ve given the impression to the world that they are wise and careful engineers at the helm of the monetary system and yet they have acted as robots.

Milton Friedman: That’s right.

Russ Roberts: What a wonderful example of a lack of damage done by that discretion. So far. But I understand your pessimism.

Russ Roberts: Milton, let’s turn to Capitalism and Freedom. In the book, you lay out the principles of what you call liberalism. Sometimes you call it liberalism, sometimes 19th Century liberalism. Sometimes you’ve called it classical liberalism. And you advocate there a limited role for government in the legal and monetary system and maximal freedom and responsibility for the individual. And in that book, which was published in 1962, but based on lectures, I think, that you gave in the late 1950s—

Milton Friedman: 1956.

Russ Roberts: So the ideas in that book are 50 years old this year. And in 1956 and thereafter in the book in 1962, you argued for a volunteer army, flexible exchange rates, a monetary rule for stable prices, educational vouchers, privatizing Social Security and a negative income tax. At the time, those ideas were not conservative at all—

Milton Friedman: They were very radical.

Russ Roberts: Some people might call them conservative but you called them liberal because they were about freedom. They were considered either conservative or whacky. What was the reaction to the book when it came out?

Milton Friedman: I don’t know. I really don’t know how to answer that question because when it came out, it did not receive a great deal of attention to begin with. It was reviewed in no major newspaper. The New York Times didn’t review it. The only reviews were in professional magazines. It was reviewed in the American Economic Review, in the Economic Journal and other major professional journals but it got very little public attention.

Russ Roberts: And I’m surprised it was actually reviewed there. A book like that today would be much less likely to be reviewed in the American Economic Review or Economic Journal. It was a polemic of sorts. That’s a little strong.

Milton Friedman: It was a polemic.

Russ Roberts: It was a treatise. It was a manifesto.

Milton Friedman: But by that time, I had acquired a considerable reputation as an economist in professional economics. There was a good deal in this book, however, which was of professional economics importance. What you’ve mentioned—floating exchange rates—and the monetary stuff. It was polemic but it wasn’t primarily polemic.

Russ Roberts: And it’s not written in a polemical style.

Milton Friedman: No, it tried to be a rational argument and it tried to consider the evidence for the points that are made. But you’re stressing how much has since been achieved from it.

Russ Roberts: Correct.

Milton Friedman: But I’ve always stressed the opposite. If you look at the list in Chapter 1 or 2—I have a long list of things government ought not to be doing.

Russ Roberts: And it’s not exhaustive. You say at the end of it this is just the beginnings of a list.

Milton Friedman: The only one of those that has really been achieved is a volunteer army.

Russ Roberts: Right. We’ve made some inroads potentially on agricultural price supports which is, I think, the first thing you list on that page. There was actually somewhat serious talk about changing them. But you’re right. You could argue the glass is half empty. But as, again, someone who came of intellectual age in the 1970s and who was sympathetic to the ideas in the book, to put it mildly, advocating those ideas at the time, any of the ones we’ve talked about on the positive side that actually happened or are close to happening, was a recipe for being treated as a buffoon or a fool or a heartless person. I think it’s an extraordinary intellectual and policy experiment over the last 50 years that so many of those things have come to pass.

Milton Friedman: And what’s happened is that the public attitude has changed tremendously. In 1945, 1950, at the end of the war, intellectual opinion was almost wholly collectivist. Everybody was a socialist. They may not have used the term but that’s what they were. However, practice was not socialist. Practice was free enterprise.

The role of government at that time was such smaller than it has since become and from 1945 on to 1980, what you had was galloping socialism. Government took over more and more control. Government spending went from about 20 percent of national income—government federal, state and local—to about 40 percent of national income until Reagan came along.

But Reagan was able to do what he did because in that 20-year period, intellectual opinion had changed. What had before been a hypothesis was now fact. You now could see what the government did and people didn’t particularly like what the government did. So public attitudes about government had changed very much over that period and I think maybe Capitalism and Freedom added a little of that but I think experience was much more responsible.

Russ Roberts: At the time, the other side of the intellectual argument, the socialist or communist side, was doing quite poorly. But we were not aware of it. The Soviet Union was doing much, much worse than it appeared to be doing.

Milton Friedman: Sure.

Russ Roberts: And so if we had had the facts about the Soviet Union, the experiential case for capitalism and markets might have been even stronger. But it really is rather remarkable that given the intellectual apologists for the Soviet Union of the day, how much the tide changed in public opinion despite the lack of direct evidence that we had.

Milton Friedman: We had very little direct evidence outside the United States and I think it was the evidence of the government in the United States that was playing a role.
But I really have never done any serious work on trying to trace the course of general public opinion except as it worked for the politics of it. Reagan could never have gotten elected if there had not been a big change in public opinion. He could not have been elected in 1950.

Russ Roberts: And Goldwater was not electable in 1964 who in many ways was the most free market candidate of the 20th Century. Yet George W. Bush, who is not much of a classical liberal, did at least talk about what he described as privatizing Social Security, a topic that Reagan might think was a good idea but I don’t think ever talked about it publicly, advocated it, never made it a campaign issue. I think probably afraid of it, perhaps correctly so.

I remember in my youth, again going back to the ’70s, talking about eliminating Social Security was an invitation to be described as a person who wanted to see old people die in the streets “as they did before the 1930s” as if somehow Social Security had prevented this from happening, which is bizarre given the level of Social Security in the 30s.

Milton Friedman: Of course.

Russ Roberts: —and all the private mechanisms we have for taking care of ourselves. And so, obviously, Capitalism and Freedom played a role. You mentioned earlier The Road to Serfdom by Hayek in affecting public opinion. There was definitely an intellectual foundation laid for these public opinion changes that gave people something to hold onto.

Milton Friedman: Well, we know that, for example—we happen to know—that Reagan read Capitalism and Freedom before I ever met him and, clearly, that’s a way in which a book has influence.

Russ Roberts: But it also has influence through affecting the electorate who—

Milton Friedman: Oh, sure.

Russ Roberts: And Free to Choose, a book we haven’t mentioned yet, which was a documentary on public television at first and then I think the book followed the documentary or was it the other way around?

Milton Friedman: The book was based on the documentary but appeared in print before the documentary. What happened was we finished all the work on the documentary in the spring of ’79 and we spent the summer of ’79 using the transcripts of the program as a basis for Free to Choose book and Harcourt Brace did a remarkable job of publishing the book. We went to the printers in September and it was in the bookstores in December. Jovanovich—at the time, it was Harcourt Brace Jovanovich—Bill Jovanovich was very much of a fellow thinker and he contributed to our program.

Russ Roberts: In what way?

Milton Friedman: Oh, to begin with, the first step in creating the program was that I gave a series of lectures all over the country on the subjects that were going to be in the program to provide material for the producer and directors to weave into film. And he gave us a contract for publishing the transcripts of those lectures.

Russ Roberts: So that helped finance the trip. The book and the TV series, which reached millions, obviously, helped as well with the ideas of Capitalism and Freedom which probably didn’t sell quite as well —marketed by the University of Chicago Press—but with similar ideas.

Milton Friedman: No, no. The University of Chicago Press did a good job in marketing considering the absence of book reviews. After all, Capitalism and Freedom has sold something like 600,000 copies. Free to Choose has sold over a million copies. And we found it very fascinating to observe the way sales of Capitalism and Freedom went. To begin with, they were relatively few. And then they gradually started to increase and it was entirely person to person—word of mouth.

Russ Roberts: And it is a book that’s still quite topical.

Milton Friedman: The basic principles that we believe in are going to stay the same for the next thousand years. That aspect of it will never go out of date. What goes out of date are the particular applications. We still find Adam Smith’s book, Wealth of Nations well worth reading even though it’s published in 1776.

Russ Roberts: Yes, it is surprisingly informative.

Milton Friedman: It certainly is and it’s so well written.

Russ Roberts: I think a huge part of your success—obviously not the logic but the success of the ideas—is your ability to communicate clearly and effectively to a non-technical audience.

Milton Friedman: Well, I’m not a stylist the way Smith was. The modern economist who really I think matches that is George Stigler.

Russ Roberts: Absolutely. He had a graceful pen. And it was a pen probably, not a keyboard, if I had to guess.

Milton Friedman: Oh, there’s no doubt that it was a pen.

Russ Roberts: I know you can give us the empirical evidence. Let me ask you about another idea in Capitalism and Freedom that you later elaborated on in a Sunday New York Timesmagazine story in the early 1970’s. You wrote there: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits, so long as it stays within the rules of the game which is to say engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

I feel that that view of business, the one that says it should maximize its profits, is increasingly under attack and there’s a strong activism afoot in the land to turn corporations and businesses into social organizations, welfare agencies, charitable organizations. One, do you agree with me? Do you think that’s true? And two, what can we do about it? Any ideas?

Milton Friedman: I think it’s absolutely true. There’s no doubt that that’s—the view that there are many stakeholders and not only the shareholders has spread. And business itself propagates the idea because it’s good public relations. They spend money entirely with a view to the bottom line but label it social responsibility spending.

And that sentence, I think, is still just as true as it ever was and I’ve never seen an occasion to change my view about that. Suppose a business wants to do charity. What is it that gives it any special ability to do charity properly? The XYZ Company, in addition to producing XYZ trucks, also wants to be socially responsible and so it does what it thinks is charity. What is its special capacity for that?

It may know how to make trucks but does it know the right way to spend charitable money? And whose money is it spending? It’s spending somebody else’s money. It’s a very bad practice. Business has had such a big incentive to label itself socially responsible—it’s primarily responsible for that conception.

Russ Roberts: Yeah, I worry about that slippery slope as they brag about how well they’ve done in those different dimensions. I’d like them to brag about how profitable they are. That means they’ve produced something that people enjoy, are willing to pay for and have found a way to produce it at a lower cost.

Milton Friedman: The truth of the matter is that the only way anybody can make money is by producing something that people want to buy, but it can give away money without meeting that restriction.

Russ Roberts: That reminds me of one explanation for why people, I think, lean on businesses to indulge other activities besides producing products well. It’s the Willie Sutton theory of why you rob banks—that’s where the money is.

The Chicago City Council recently passed an ordinance requiring large retailers—mainly Wal-Mart and Target—to pay at least $10.00 an hour in wages and $3.00 an hour in benefits.

If you ask the proponents why should Wal-Mart finance a higher standard of living for their workers, why should the investors of Wal-Mart, the stockholders, and Target, be the ones that finance that, I think the answer would be “Well, they have the money.”

That ignores, of course, the incentive effects that then result. They’re the last people that you’d want to have finance this because it discourages them from creating jobs for low skill people. But I think that first order effect of “Well, they’ve got the money, they write the checks so therefore they’ve got the responsibility” has a huge appeal to the average person.

Milton Friedman: But it’s always been true that business is not a friend of a free market. I have given a lecture from time to time under the title Suicidal Impulses of the Business Community,something like that, and it’s true. It’s in the self-interest of the business community to get government on its side. It’s in the self-interest of a particular business. Look at this crazy business about ethanol. Who’s benefiting from that?

Russ Roberts: Farmers. Corn farmers.

Milton Friedman: No, the farmers aren’t benefiting.

Russ Roberts: The landowners.

Milton Friedman: What’s the company that produces it?

Russ Roberts: Archer Daniels Midland. So of course, they lobby and talk about the enormous environmental benefits of ethanol.

Milton Friedman: But the real puzzle—puzzle isn’t quite the right word—the real problem here is where do you find the support for free markets? If free markets weren’t so damn efficient, they could never have survived because they have so many enemies and so few friends. People think of capitalism or free markets as something that obviously is supported by business. People think that if a business party is a party in politics, it will promote free market. But that’s wrong. It will be in the self-interest of individual businesses to promote a tariff here and a tariff there, to promote the use of ethanol—

Russ Roberts: Special regulations for its competitor that apply just by chance to its competitors but not to itself—

Milton Friedman: That’s right.

Russ Roberts: —or that they already comply with but their competitors don’t happen to comply with.

Milton Friedman: And it’s so hard in general, so much harder, to repeal anything government is doing than it is to get it to do it. There are so many stupid things that government is doing that, clearly, it would be in the self-interest of the public at large to have repealed. Who would—who can really on logical grounds defend sugar quotas? There’s no way of defending sugar quotas.

Russ Roberts: You don’t think it’s a big national security issue? [laughter]

Milton Friedman: That was why they were imposed. Because of Cuba. They were initially imposed against Castro. But once you got them, you couldn’t get rid of them.

Russ Roberts: It’s a good example because the beneficiaries are very few.

Milton Friedman: They’re very few.

Russ Roberts: We understand that politically that gives them a certain reason to be loud in talking to the representatives but you’d think the fewness of them would eventually be decisive in overturning it but it has not.

Milton Friedman: No, it’s not, because it’s an advantage. If 50 percent of the people were sugar farmers, you couldn’t possibly have sugar quotas, because it costs too much to the others. But if 1% of the people are sugar producers, for each dollar that they get, that’s divided among 99 people so it’s only one cent to the individual.

Russ Roberts: So their incentive to yell is small— which brings us back to a question that you write about in Capitalism and Freedom. Issue by issue, it’s easy to make the case for discretion.

When you see the cumulative effect of going issue by issue, you really can make the case for principles. You give the example in the book of freedom of speech. Obviously, a lot of Americans are against freedom of speech.

Milton Friedman: Oh, sure.

Russ Roberts: And if you went issue by issue, you’d find a lot of speech that would be voted down as not appropriate and yet we sustain it through enough people believing that it’s a good thing.

Milton Friedman: But even here, with the campaign finance laws, we’re reducing freedom of speech drastically.

Russ Roberts: That gets back to your point about businesses wanting government to protect them. In this case, the business is the industry of government. Politicians like the protection that campaign finance laws gives them.

Milton Friedman: Yeah.

Russ Roberts: That’s a very tough one when they regulate themselves. They do tend to be a little self-interested there. It’s very sad.

Milton Friedman: But how do we get that repealed? What politician is going to come up and make a big fight on repealing the McCain-Feingold legislation.

Russ Roberts: Although the Supreme Court occasionally does speak up and suggest that this is not really consistent with the Constitution.

Milton Friedman: Well, the Supreme Court is not a very strong support in some cases. Look at what it did with property—with eminent domain. The Kelo case is not really a good advertisement for a free market Supreme Court.

Russ Roberts: But ironically, it did produce a backlash at the state and local level against using it.

Milton Friedman: The Institute of Justice—which is a remarkably good organization—has been promoting that backlash against it and they’ve been doing a very good job. It may well be that you’ll end up with a stronger support for property than you originally had. But that wasn’t the intention of the Supreme Court.

Russ Roberts:

Let’s go back to the difficulty of repealing bad laws. You mentioned sugar quotas, sugar price supports, as an example. What role do you think economic illiteracy, a lack of understanding on the part of the public of the full effects of legislation, plays in sustaining laws that are described as in the national interest but are really serving special interests?

Milton Friedman: Very little. Because it’s not in the self-interest of the recipients to figure it out. What housewife is going to spend the time to save the extra money—maybe it’s $5.00 or $10.00 a year she pays extra on sugar? It doesn’t pay to try to figure out. What you’re dealing with is rational ignorance. The rational part is what I want to emphasize. It’s not ignorance that is avoidable because it’s rational to be ignorant.

Yet somehow, people do get it. Minimum wages have become less popular than they used to be. They’ve been trying to pass a rise in the minimum wage for years and they haven’t passed one. And that’s because, I think, there is more understanding of the economic merits or demerits of it than there used to be—more people recognize the effect of a higher minimum wage on the employment of the poor.

Russ Roberts: On the flip side, the living wage, which are these local ordinances or like the one in Chicago we spoke about earlier, gets attention and often passes.

And if anything, you’d think there the effects are going to be more stark in a local area—employers have more choices to leave the area which they wouldn’t have at the federal level. On the case of gasoline price controls, true, no one clamors for price controls but we have all these implicit price controls—threats by attorney generals to prosecute gougers in the wake of Katrina or worse, vaccine manufacturers who might have the gall to charge a market-clearing price.

Instead we have the president of the United States two winters ago begging people to not use the vaccine if they’re not really at risk, instead of using the price mechanism which is so much more effective. It seems to be a paradoxical pattern? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Milton Friedman: I don’t think there’s anything very paradoxical about it. First place, we are now only 20 or 30 years from when we had price controls [on gasoline]. And so a large fraction of the population had personal experience with it. Twenty or 30 years from now, after there’s nobody living who had experience with price controls, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come back again.

We have to keep ourselves open to the facts. The facts are that the world has become better and better over time. The 19th Century was better than the 18th Century. The 20th Century was better than the 19th Century. The 21st Century is going to be better than the 20th Century. There was once an article back in, oh, 1780 or something, which said how many people lived in free countries and how many lived in the rest—non-free.

And the ratio of people who live in free countries to the total population of the world has surely been going up throughout this whole—these past two centuries. It went up most dramatically recently when the Berlin Wall fell, when the Soviet Union went out of existence. So there’s reason to be optimistic.

Somehow or other, these stupid individuals who vote these bad laws seem to have enough sense to keep from voting laws bad enough to create a negative GNP. So I think in the end, you’ve got to remain an optimist.

Russ Roberts: I share your optimism and I like the long-term perspective. On any one day, you can always get depressed about what’s going on in Washington or in city hall but the long-term trend is toward more freedom and a higher standard of living and although it seems very difficult for people to recognize that, they’re always moaning; the educated class is always moaning about how things have never been worse. We stand on the brink of a precipice either because we have a trade deficit or China or manufacturing jobs are in decline or the inequality due to this, that or the other, or immigration. There’s always some threat to our prosperity that’s imminent and yet we manage to keep going.

Milton Friedman: And yet—another thing on the glass being half empty. While everybody complains about Bush’s tax cuts, nobody really is in favor of higher taxes. There’s no broad sentiment, no broad move [to raise taxes].

Russ Roberts: I want to ask you about George Stigler who you mentioned earlier. Stigler was an observer of the political scene. He was a political economist who described why things were the way they were but he felt it was a waste of time to be an advocate, a preacher, a proselytizer for a particular philosophy or ideology because politicians face these incentives and you’re not going to change what they do. Being an advocate for this policy or that policy or trying to increasing liberty—as you have—is a Quixotic endeavor. Is that a fair assessment of his view?

Milton Friedman: There’s a lot of truth to it. George always used to say, “Milton wants to change the world. I just want to observe it.” But it wasn’t true. That was what he would say. But after all, you never heard George say a good thing about bigger government. You never heard him in any way express views that differed from yours and my views about what we ought to be doing. So I think that was a little bit of a show that he put on.

Russ Roberts: But he didn’t spend as much time as you have professionally.

Milton Friedman: No, no. He did spend much more time on observing.

Russ Roberts: And you have spent a great deal of time obviously on observing but a sizeable amount of time on urging or prodding or pushing politicians and others—the rest of us—to advocate for smaller government and more individual freedom.

Milton Friedman: I have.

Russ Roberts: As a person who spent a lot of time in the—not just in the academic vineyard but in the policy vineyard, do you look back on that as fruitful work?

Milton Friedman: I really had two lives. One was as a scientist—as an economist—and one was as a public intellectual. And everybody more or less does his major scientific work at a relatively early age And it’s kind of natural, I think, that people switch from the one area to the other. Really until the 1970s, I did not have much contact in politics whatsoever.

I had some but not much. But then, I think increasingly as the scientific side of my life matured and I happened to know more people in politics, my interests and my activities switched to some extent. I think what really motivated it more than anything else was when I was writing columns for Newsweek.

Russ Roberts: Which was fun, I assume.

Milton Friedman: It was fun. It was fine. I found it a very challenging thing to do and it made me—forced me—to keep up with the current affairs that were going on and also it brought me into contact with people who were active in politics.

Russ Roberts: Did colleagues other than George voice an opinion about you spending your time that way? I know at that point in your life, you were already incredibly respected and successful but—

Milton Friedman: No. No.

Russ Roberts: For a young scholar, it’s not the best use of time often.

Milton Friedman: I always told my students that if they went to Washington, they shouldn’t stay there more than two years or they’ll get ruined. And in general, I’ve argued to youngsters who came up to me and wanted to be ideologists, wanted to promote an ideological view, that they first better get themselves established as an economist or as a scholar and get a good job and then they could afford to do it.

Russ Roberts: What advice would you give to those who love liberty and would like to see its cause thrive? You talked about some optimism, that the broad historical trends are good. Anything in the short run that you think would be useful or good for people to be aware of or take advantage of?

Milton Friedman: I think people have to do what they want to do. I think that the best thing that people can do who want to promote the free market is to talk about the free market, to think about the free market, to write about the free market and to get into arguments.

Russ Roberts: Something you’ve spent a lot of time at.

Milton Friedman: I’ve had a lot of experience in it, a great deal.

Russ Roberts: That’s good advice. Thank you, Milton.


*See Milton Friedman’s biography in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

To post a followup to this essay, go to EconTalk.org.

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Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has long been recognized as one of our most important economic thinkers and a leader of the Chicago school of economics. He is the author of many books and articles in economics, including A Theory of the Consumption Function and A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna J. Schwartz). Friedman also wrote extensively on public policy, always with a primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of…

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Back in 2006 Russ Roberts asserted, ”I recently sat down with Milton Friedman, a few days before his 94th birthday, to discuss the impact of two of his most important contributions to economics and liberty: A Monetary History of the United States, 1870-1960 [co-written] with Anna Schwartz, and Capitalism and Freedom”

Milton Friedman on Money 8/28/2006

An Interview with Milton Friedman

By Milton Friedman

Categories: Article

By Milton Friedman, Sep 4 2006

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I recently sat down with Milton Friedman, a few days before his 94th birthday, to discuss the impact of two of his most important contributions to economics and liberty: A Monetary History of the United States, 1870-1960 [co-written] with Anna Schwartz, and Capitalism and Freedom. The ideas in both books had tremendous influence on the economic and intellectual landscape.

You can listen to our two-part podcast conversation on EconTalk:

For help with listening to podcasts, go to the EconTalk FAQ.

The following transcript consists of excerpts from that conversation.

Russell Roberts
Features Editor

Russ Roberts: Welcome to EconTalk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I’m your host, Russ Roberts, of George Mason University. My guest today is Milton Friedman. Milton is a senior research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the 1976 Nobel Laureate in Economics and a hero to millions in the United States and around the world for his insights and actions on behalf of economics and liberty.

Russ Roberts: Milton, I’d like our conversation to focus on the ideas contained in two of your books, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, a massive scholarly work, and Capitalism and Freedom, a slim monograph on the principles of a free society.

Let’s begin with the Monetary History of the United States. Written with Anna Schwartz. Published in 1963, it was an extraordinarily detailed and careful study of the role of money in the economy. And among many important insights, it made the case that inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. When that book was published, what was the reaction of the profession to its scholarship?

Milton Friedman: The profession on the whole appreciated its scholarship. As I remember as best I can, there were three different reviews in three different professional journals, all of which were highly favorable even though—I think—two out of the three [reviews] were written by strong Keynesians.

Russ Roberts: And what was its impact in affecting the way the profession, at least in the short run, looked at the role of money?

Milton Friedman: I find that a very hard question to answer. Obviously, many things were going on in the world. Bretton Woods was on. The 1960s were a period of pretty good prosperity. On the whole, during the ’50s and the ’60s, it looked as if the Keynesian interpretation was right. After all, during that period, we had relatively prosperous countries, relatively stable prices, and relatively low interest rates.

It was a golden era, as it were, and everybody was said to be operating on Keynesian lines. What really changed the public perception and also the professional perception was the experience of the 1970s. During the 1970s, you had a combination that under Keynesian analysis could not exist. You had high inflation and high unemployment at the same time—named stagflation—and that combination was really ruled out by the simple kind of Keynesian analysis that was in vogue. But it was that experience which more than anything else led to a basic change in public and intellectual attitudes toward money.

Russ Roberts: So the scholars and the public had to try to puzzle out why this seeming impossibility was definitely occurring.

Milton Friedman: Yes and no. Because of our book, because of Bob Lucas’ work, we had predicted that this would happen and, therefore, it was like an experiment. You wait and see what happens and the predicted results happened.

Russ Roberts: There was a lens to look through to explain what was going on.

Milton Friedman: Sure, because this lens had predicted that you could have both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.

Russ Roberts: I was an undergraduate and a graduate in the 1970s and my textbooks at the undergraduate level—not the graduate level, because I attended a small university in the Midwest I think you used to have an affiliation with, the University of Chicago—but as an undergraduate, my textbooks talked about all the different theories of inflation—cost push, cost pull, the role of unions, the role of industrial concentration and, of course, the possibility that Milton Friedman, this maverick thinker was right, that money had something to do with it.

It’s my impression that’s not true anymore; that the intellectual environment understands today that inflation is caused by a rapid growth in the money supply.

Milton Friedman: I think it does. I think that’s clear and the last 30 years, last 20 years I should say, has done a great deal to rub that in because every central bank has come to accept the view that it’s responsible for inflation.

Russ Roberts: Let’s talk about those central banks. What role do you think the Monetary History had—and the related work around it, of course—in influencing central bankers in focusing on the money supply in its role of affecting inflation?

Milton Friedman: I think it had a great deal of effect. I think what was most important was a chapter in the Monetary History that dealt with the Great Depression. The difficulty of having people understand monetary theory is very simple—the central banks are good at press relations. The central banks hire people and the central banks employ a large fraction of all economists so there is a bias to tell the case—the story—in a way that is favorable to the central banks.

But the Great Depression was such a major event and such a disaster that there was no way in which you could talk it away, although they tried to do so. If you read the annual reports of the Federal Reserve Board or its testimony before Congress, you will find that as late as 1933, at the very depths of the depression, it’s talking about how much worse things would have been if the Fed hadn’t behaved so well.

But the evidence was so clear. You had a decline in the quantity of money by a third from 1929 to 1933 and that coincided with the decline in the economy by half or so. When you have 25 percent of the working force unemployed, you can’t just talk it away.

Russ Roberts: But at the time, the main lesson that people drew from that was that capitalism is broken.

Milton Friedman: Absolutely. The lesson people drew was that it was a fault of business. It was a market failure. But I think the reason they drew that lesson was because of the way in which the self interest of the monetary authorities led them to promote it.

Russ Roberts: And you could toss in the self-interest of FDR in painting himself as a savior despite the severe recession of 1938.

Milton Friedman: But that would have been the same for them even if they had recognized the cause, only they would have concentrated more on doing—on abolishing the Fed or on reformulating the Fed. But the reason why the public and the intellectuals at large held to that perception was because that was what they were being told by the authorities.

Russ Roberts: And so it justified a great deal of government intervention in the economy at the time, obviously.

Milton Friedman: Oh, it certainly did.

Russ Roberts: And you’re suggesting that the Monetary History was the beginning of a revision toward a different perspective.

Milton Friedman: Well, I don’t know. On the ideological side, there were other things at work. Hayek’sRoad to Serfdom, which was published in 1945 made the ideological case. I don’t know what role the Monetary History played in the public at large but in terms of the monetary authorities, in terms of money, there’s no doubt that it played a considerable role.

Russ Roberts: And that chapter on the Great Depression must have alarmed them greatly about their potential for doing harm.

Milton Friedman: Exactly, exactly.

Russ Roberts: And at that time, in the 1960s, there was a lot of debate about what the role of the central bank should be and because inflation was relatively low, there was much less attention paid to that role.

Milton Friedman: Here and there, there were things like the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which was arguing against the Federal Reserve policy and which was arguing that they should pay more attention to the quantity of money, but they were mavericks. But so far as the bulk of the population, the bulk of the profession, the bulk of the people hired by the monetary authorities, they all were Keynesians.

Russ Roberts: Focusing on the central bank role, going back again to the ’70s when I was in school and shortly after your book came out, the focus was on the money supply—the quantity of money, counting it, controlling it through open market operations.

Something changed in the last 25 or 30 years. That’s not what Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke talk about. They talk about other things and they play with that short-term interest rate, not the so-called stock of money that you focused on so intensely in the book.

Milton Friedman: That’s what the talk about but that’s not what they do.

Russ Roberts: What do they do?

Milton Friedman: They use the short-term interest rate as a way of controlling the quantity of money. If you look at the statistics, the rate of change of the quantity of money from month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year, it has never been so low as it has been over the last 20 years.

I don’t believe there’s another 20-year period in the history of the country in which you can find so steady a rate of growth in the quantity of money and that can’t all be an accident. That’s because they use the short-term interest rate. Look at it in the simplest possible way.

The Fed says the short-term interest rate should be 4.5 percent. How do they keep it there? By buying and selling securities on the open market. Now you’re Mr. Bernanke; you’re Mr. Greenspan. You’re watching that. And with the current short-term interest rate, you find that the quantity of money is starting to creep up more rapidly than you really want. Well, then you will tend to be favorable to raising to a higher rate of interest.

At that higher rate of interest, the demand for money is less and so the supply of money under that phenomenon, instead of having to sell government bonds to keep it there, they have to buy government bonds to keep it there or vice versa. Maybe I’m getting it mixed up. But in any event, the short-term interest rate is a tool with which you can control the quantity of money.

Russ Roberts: But they don’t talk about it that way.

Milton Friedman: No, they don’t talk about it that way.

Russ Roberts: Why do you think that is? Do you have any idea?

Milton Friedman: I don’t know. I’ve always been puzzled by why they insist on using the interest rate rather than the quantity of money.

If you really carried out the logic concerning the quantity of money, you deprive the Federal Reserve of anything to do. Suppose the Federal Reserve said it was going to increase the quantity of money by 4 percent a year, year after year, week after week, month after month. That would be a purely mechanical project. You could program a computer to do that.

Russ Roberts: Like an indexed mutual fund takes away the fun of being a fund manager.

Milton Friedman: Right. That’s part of the reason. But the main reason, I think, is different. It’s that the central bank associates with banks. It regards itself as sort of a mentor of the banking system and, to the individual bank, it doesn’t believe it creates a quantity of money. That doesn’t make any sense to them.

What they deal with are interest rates and therefore, it’s natural and so many of the central bankers are themselves from the banking industry. They’re bankers. And so it’s natural for them to think in terms of interest rates and, moreover, when they think in terms of interest rates, they’ve got all kinds of interest rates—short-term interest rates, long-term interest rates—all kinds of excuses for exercising power or thinking they’re exercising power.

Russ Roberts: Taking credit for exercising power.

Milton Friedman: I’ve always been in favor of abolishing the Federal Reserve and substituting a machine program that would keep the quantity of money going up at a steady rate.

Russ Roberts: And over the last 20 years or so, they’ve approximated that.

Milton Friedman: Come closer to approximating it. Absolutely.

Russ Roberts: And I would argue, and I assume you would as well, that the relative stability of the U.S. economy over the last 20 years is a reflection of that steady growth in the money supply.

Milton Friedman: I think there’s no doubt at all.

Russ Roberts: The non-erratic path.

Milton Friedman: It’s a golden period. It’s a period in which you had declining inflation but a fairly steady rate, a steady level. You had only three recessions, all of them brief, all of them mild. I don’t believe you can find another 20-year period in American history. But it’s interesting to note that so far as the international acceptance of monetary control is concerned, it was started by the Bank of New Zealand, not by the Federal Reserve Bank.

It was some time in the 1980s when New Zealand essentially came close to privatizing its central bank. It set up a situation in which the governor of the Central Bank of New Zealand had a contract with the government in which he agreed to keep the price level—inflation—within a certain bound; 0 to 3 percent or 0 to 2 percent. And if he did not do so, he could be fired.

Russ Roberts: Not decapitated, merely fired.

Milton Friedman: Merely fired.

Russ Roberts: But it still concentrated his mind sufficiently.

Milton Friedman: Oh, yes. And Don Brash was appointed as the first governor of the Central Bank of New Zealand. He’s now the leader of the opposition in the New Zealand Parliament. But at the time, he came from business. He was a businessman and he is an extraordinarily able and effective fellow and he took this job on at the time when New Zealand had a very high inflation rate and he succeeded in living up to his contract.

And that really set the pattern. It was the New Zealand experience, I’m sure, that had more to do with other central banks around the world adopting inflation targeting than the United States experience.

Russ Roberts: Because it was so dramatically effective in New Zealand?

Milton Friedman: It was the first time that anybody had explicitly adopted an inflation target. So that was something that everybody observed. And, secondly, it was so dramatically effective.

Russ Roberts: So are you optimistic about the role the central bank will continue to play in that inflation and price level story? You said we’ve had a golden era of 20, 25 years of stable prices, steady growth with only minor—by historical standards—minor recessions. Are you optimistic about the next 25 years?

Milton Friedman: I have great difficulty not being optimistic about it. All the evidence would seem to be optimistic. On the other hand, I can’t hold back a doubt. Governments want to spend money and sooner or later, governments are going to want to spend money without taxing it and the only way to do that is to print money—to create inflation.

Inflation is a form of taxation. How long will governments be able to resist the temptation? And particularly as people become adjusted to being in a world of stable inflation. They will be bigger suckers as it were. It will be easier to get a lot out of it. If everybody anticipated inflation, you couldn’t get anywhere by inflating.

Russ Roberts: But once you get people lulled into the expectation of a lack of it, there’s the potential to exploit it. Let me ask the question in a different way. A lot of people credit Alan Greenspan with the expansion and success. They give Paul Volcker some credit as well at the early part of this period that we’re talking about.

But they make it sound like the key to success in monetary policy is you just got to get the right person in the job. When Ben Bernanke or whoever is following him comes in, there’s this absurd microscopic examination of the aura and vapors around such a person. And you’re suggesting it really has nothing to do with it.

Milton Friedman: Well, how is it that New Zealand can do it. How is it that Australia can do it. How is it that Great Britain can do it. These are all countries which followed New Zealand. New Zealand started it. But then Australia and Great Britain also adopted inflation targeting.

Russ Roberts: Well, they just happened to find the right guy in each of those places.

Milton Friedman: Oh, they were all lucky. Absolutely. (Laughter.) I’ve always felt that the big defect politically of the Federal Reserve is precisely that so much depends on unelected representatives. The central bank is treated as if it were the Supreme Court. That’s why during the Depression, there was no effective controls on the central bank. There were members of Congress who knew what to do and who trying to get the Fed to do it but they had no way to do so.

Russ Roberts: There was no incentive directly. There was an indirect incentive, of course, which was humiliation and the stigma which has endured. They had no idea at the time of how bad that would turn out—how those decisions would look in retrospect. But you’re suggesting that the disadvantage of the current system is a lack of accountability.

Milton Friedman: Right.

Russ Roberts: But the alternative, the elected system, has the problem that you mentioned earlier of the temptation to exploit the ability to create money to increase revenue.

Milton Friedman: But that’s why what you want—if possible—is a mechanical system. If there was any virtue to the gold standard, it was that virtue. Maybe you could create the same thing now. My favorite proposal really is a little bit more sophisticated—or less sophisticated if you want to look at it that way—than a straight increase in the quantity of money. I would—if I had my choice—freeze the amount of high-powered money. Not increase it.

Russ Roberts: High-powered money being bills and cash.

Milton Friedman: High-powered money is the currency plus bank reserves.

Russ Roberts: Okay.

Milton Friedman: I would freeze that and hold it constant and have it as sort of a natural constant like gravity or something. Now, you would think that that’s a bad idea because there would be no provision for expansion; however, high-powered money is a small fraction of total money and the ratio of total money to high-powered money has been going up over time. So the economy would create more money and on average, you would have a pretty stable money growth and a pretty stable monetary system.

Russ Roberts: What do you think the odds are of that happening?

Milton Friedman: Zero.

Russ Roberts: Zero? Well, that’s a small number, zero. I wish you were a little more optimistic.

Milton Friedman: No, I don’t think it’ll happen unless there is another catastrophe like the Great Depression. But other than that, it’s not going to happen. I think the real danger of this [the current monetary system] breaking down is there’s no danger of it breaking down into a Great Depression. The real danger is it’ll break up into an inflation.

When I see in the Federal Reserve reports that the inflation anticipation for 10, 20 years is on the order of 2 percent a year, I find it very hard to believe it. Sooner or later, the government’s going to get out of hand.

Russ Roberts: But this current run is a lovely illustration of your ideal— a non-discretionary, mechanistic rule. The average person finds it very unappealing. Discretion always seems to be better than rules.

Milton Friedman: That’s right.

Russ Roberts: What you’re saying is that with that discretion—which is not ideal in your world—yet with that discretion, they have followed the rule.

Milton Friedman: Yes.

Russ Roberts: So far. They’ve given the impression to the world that they are wise and careful engineers at the helm of the monetary system and yet they have acted as robots.

Milton Friedman: That’s right.

Russ Roberts: What a wonderful example of a lack of damage done by that discretion. So far. But I understand your pessimism.

Russ Roberts: Milton, let’s turn to Capitalism and Freedom. In the book, you lay out the principles of what you call liberalism. Sometimes you call it liberalism, sometimes 19th Century liberalism. Sometimes you’ve called it classical liberalism. And you advocate there a limited role for government in the legal and monetary system and maximal freedom and responsibility for the individual. And in that book, which was published in 1962, but based on lectures, I think, that you gave in the late 1950s—

Milton Friedman: 1956.

Russ Roberts: So the ideas in that book are 50 years old this year. And in 1956 and thereafter in the book in 1962, you argued for a volunteer army, flexible exchange rates, a monetary rule for stable prices, educational vouchers, privatizing Social Security and a negative income tax. At the time, those ideas were not conservative at all—

Milton Friedman: They were very radical.

Russ Roberts: Some people might call them conservative but you called them liberal because they were about freedom. They were considered either conservative or whacky. What was the reaction to the book when it came out?

Milton Friedman: I don’t know. I really don’t know how to answer that question because when it came out, it did not receive a great deal of attention to begin with. It was reviewed in no major newspaper. The New York Times didn’t review it. The only reviews were in professional magazines. It was reviewed in the American Economic Review, in the Economic Journal and other major professional journals but it got very little public attention.

Russ Roberts: And I’m surprised it was actually reviewed there. A book like that today would be much less likely to be reviewed in the American Economic Review or Economic Journal. It was a polemic of sorts. That’s a little strong.

Milton Friedman: It was a polemic.

Russ Roberts: It was a treatise. It was a manifesto.

Milton Friedman: But by that time, I had acquired a considerable reputation as an economist in professional economics. There was a good deal in this book, however, which was of professional economics importance. What you’ve mentioned—floating exchange rates—and the monetary stuff. It was polemic but it wasn’t primarily polemic.

Russ Roberts: And it’s not written in a polemical style.

Milton Friedman: No, it tried to be a rational argument and it tried to consider the evidence for the points that are made. But you’re stressing how much has since been achieved from it.

Russ Roberts: Correct.

Milton Friedman: But I’ve always stressed the opposite. If you look at the list in Chapter 1 or 2—I have a long list of things government ought not to be doing.

Russ Roberts: And it’s not exhaustive. You say at the end of it this is just the beginnings of a list.

Milton Friedman: The only one of those that has really been achieved is a volunteer army.

Russ Roberts: Right. We’ve made some inroads potentially on agricultural price supports which is, I think, the first thing you list on that page. There was actually somewhat serious talk about changing them. But you’re right. You could argue the glass is half empty. But as, again, someone who came of intellectual age in the 1970s and who was sympathetic to the ideas in the book, to put it mildly, advocating those ideas at the time, any of the ones we’ve talked about on the positive side that actually happened or are close to happening, was a recipe for being treated as a buffoon or a fool or a heartless person. I think it’s an extraordinary intellectual and policy experiment over the last 50 years that so many of those things have come to pass.

Milton Friedman: And what’s happened is that the public attitude has changed tremendously. In 1945, 1950, at the end of the war, intellectual opinion was almost wholly collectivist. Everybody was a socialist. They may not have used the term but that’s what they were. However, practice was not socialist. Practice was free enterprise.

The role of government at that time was such smaller than it has since become and from 1945 on to 1980, what you had was galloping socialism. Government took over more and more control. Government spending went from about 20 percent of national income—government federal, state and local—to about 40 percent of national income until Reagan came along.

But Reagan was able to do what he did because in that 20-year period, intellectual opinion had changed. What had before been a hypothesis was now fact. You now could see what the government did and people didn’t particularly like what the government did. So public attitudes about government had changed very much over that period and I think maybe Capitalism and Freedom added a little of that but I think experience was much more responsible.

Russ Roberts: At the time, the other side of the intellectual argument, the socialist or communist side, was doing quite poorly. But we were not aware of it. The Soviet Union was doing much, much worse than it appeared to be doing.

Milton Friedman: Sure.

Russ Roberts: And so if we had had the facts about the Soviet Union, the experiential case for capitalism and markets might have been even stronger. But it really is rather remarkable that given the intellectual apologists for the Soviet Union of the day, how much the tide changed in public opinion despite the lack of direct evidence that we had.

Milton Friedman: We had very little direct evidence outside the United States and I think it was the evidence of the government in the United States that was playing a role.
But I really have never done any serious work on trying to trace the course of general public opinion except as it worked for the politics of it. Reagan could never have gotten elected if there had not been a big change in public opinion. He could not have been elected in 1950.

Russ Roberts: And Goldwater was not electable in 1964 who in many ways was the most free market candidate of the 20th Century. Yet George W. Bush, who is not much of a classical liberal, did at least talk about what he described as privatizing Social Security, a topic that Reagan might think was a good idea but I don’t think ever talked about it publicly, advocated it, never made it a campaign issue. I think probably afraid of it, perhaps correctly so.

I remember in my youth, again going back to the ’70s, talking about eliminating Social Security was an invitation to be described as a person who wanted to see old people die in the streets “as they did before the 1930s” as if somehow Social Security had prevented this from happening, which is bizarre given the level of Social Security in the 30s.

Milton Friedman: Of course.

Russ Roberts: —and all the private mechanisms we have for taking care of ourselves. And so, obviously, Capitalism and Freedom played a role. You mentioned earlier The Road to Serfdom by Hayek in affecting public opinion. There was definitely an intellectual foundation laid for these public opinion changes that gave people something to hold onto.

Milton Friedman: Well, we know that, for example—we happen to know—that Reagan read Capitalism and Freedom before I ever met him and, clearly, that’s a way in which a book has influence.

Russ Roberts: But it also has influence through affecting the electorate who—

Milton Friedman: Oh, sure.

Russ Roberts: And Free to Choose, a book we haven’t mentioned yet, which was a documentary on public television at first and then I think the book followed the documentary or was it the other way around?

Milton Friedman: The book was based on the documentary but appeared in print before the documentary. What happened was we finished all the work on the documentary in the spring of ’79 and we spent the summer of ’79 using the transcripts of the program as a basis for Free to Choose book and Harcourt Brace did a remarkable job of publishing the book. We went to the printers in September and it was in the bookstores in December. Jovanovich—at the time, it was Harcourt Brace Jovanovich—Bill Jovanovich was very much of a fellow thinker and he contributed to our program.

Russ Roberts: In what way?

Milton Friedman: Oh, to begin with, the first step in creating the program was that I gave a series of lectures all over the country on the subjects that were going to be in the program to provide material for the producer and directors to weave into film. And he gave us a contract for publishing the transcripts of those lectures.

Russ Roberts: So that helped finance the trip. The book and the TV series, which reached millions, obviously, helped as well with the ideas of Capitalism and Freedom which probably didn’t sell quite as well —marketed by the University of Chicago Press—but with similar ideas.

Milton Friedman: No, no. The University of Chicago Press did a good job in marketing considering the absence of book reviews. After all, Capitalism and Freedom has sold something like 600,000 copies. Free to Choose has sold over a million copies. And we found it very fascinating to observe the way sales of Capitalism and Freedom went. To begin with, they were relatively few. And then they gradually started to increase and it was entirely person to person—word of mouth.

Russ Roberts: And it is a book that’s still quite topical.

Milton Friedman: The basic principles that we believe in are going to stay the same for the next thousand years. That aspect of it will never go out of date. What goes out of date are the particular applications. We still find Adam Smith’s book, Wealth of Nations well worth reading even though it’s published in 1776.

Russ Roberts: Yes, it is surprisingly informative.

Milton Friedman: It certainly is and it’s so well written.

Russ Roberts: I think a huge part of your success—obviously not the logic but the success of the ideas—is your ability to communicate clearly and effectively to a non-technical audience.

Milton Friedman: Well, I’m not a stylist the way Smith was. The modern economist who really I think matches that is George Stigler.

Russ Roberts: Absolutely. He had a graceful pen. And it was a pen probably, not a keyboard, if I had to guess.

Milton Friedman: Oh, there’s no doubt that it was a pen.

Russ Roberts: I know you can give us the empirical evidence. Let me ask you about another idea in Capitalism and Freedom that you later elaborated on in a Sunday New York Timesmagazine story in the early 1970’s. You wrote there: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits, so long as it stays within the rules of the game which is to say engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

I feel that that view of business, the one that says it should maximize its profits, is increasingly under attack and there’s a strong activism afoot in the land to turn corporations and businesses into social organizations, welfare agencies, charitable organizations. One, do you agree with me? Do you think that’s true? And two, what can we do about it? Any ideas?

Milton Friedman: I think it’s absolutely true. There’s no doubt that that’s—the view that there are many stakeholders and not only the shareholders has spread. And business itself propagates the idea because it’s good public relations. They spend money entirely with a view to the bottom line but label it social responsibility spending.

And that sentence, I think, is still just as true as it ever was and I’ve never seen an occasion to change my view about that. Suppose a business wants to do charity. What is it that gives it any special ability to do charity properly? The XYZ Company, in addition to producing XYZ trucks, also wants to be socially responsible and so it does what it thinks is charity. What is its special capacity for that?

It may know how to make trucks but does it know the right way to spend charitable money? And whose money is it spending? It’s spending somebody else’s money. It’s a very bad practice. Business has had such a big incentive to label itself socially responsible—it’s primarily responsible for that conception.

Russ Roberts: Yeah, I worry about that slippery slope as they brag about how well they’ve done in those different dimensions. I’d like them to brag about how profitable they are. That means they’ve produced something that people enjoy, are willing to pay for and have found a way to produce it at a lower cost.

Milton Friedman: The truth of the matter is that the only way anybody can make money is by producing something that people want to buy, but it can give away money without meeting that restriction.

Russ Roberts: That reminds me of one explanation for why people, I think, lean on businesses to indulge other activities besides producing products well. It’s the Willie Sutton theory of why you rob banks—that’s where the money is.

The Chicago City Council recently passed an ordinance requiring large retailers—mainly Wal-Mart and Target—to pay at least $10.00 an hour in wages and $3.00 an hour in benefits.

If you ask the proponents why should Wal-Mart finance a higher standard of living for their workers, why should the investors of Wal-Mart, the stockholders, and Target, be the ones that finance that, I think the answer would be “Well, they have the money.”

That ignores, of course, the incentive effects that then result. They’re the last people that you’d want to have finance this because it discourages them from creating jobs for low skill people. But I think that first order effect of “Well, they’ve got the money, they write the checks so therefore they’ve got the responsibility” has a huge appeal to the average person.

Milton Friedman: But it’s always been true that business is not a friend of a free market. I have given a lecture from time to time under the title Suicidal Impulses of the Business Community,something like that, and it’s true. It’s in the self-interest of the business community to get government on its side. It’s in the self-interest of a particular business. Look at this crazy business about ethanol. Who’s benefiting from that?

Russ Roberts: Farmers. Corn farmers.

Milton Friedman: No, the farmers aren’t benefiting.

Russ Roberts: The landowners.

Milton Friedman: What’s the company that produces it?

Russ Roberts: Archer Daniels Midland. So of course, they lobby and talk about the enormous environmental benefits of ethanol.

Milton Friedman: But the real puzzle—puzzle isn’t quite the right word—the real problem here is where do you find the support for free markets? If free markets weren’t so damn efficient, they could never have survived because they have so many enemies and so few friends. People think of capitalism or free markets as something that obviously is supported by business. People think that if a business party is a party in politics, it will promote free market. But that’s wrong. It will be in the self-interest of individual businesses to promote a tariff here and a tariff there, to promote the use of ethanol—

Russ Roberts: Special regulations for its competitor that apply just by chance to its competitors but not to itself—

Milton Friedman: That’s right.

Russ Roberts: —or that they already comply with but their competitors don’t happen to comply with.

Milton Friedman: And it’s so hard in general, so much harder, to repeal anything government is doing than it is to get it to do it. There are so many stupid things that government is doing that, clearly, it would be in the self-interest of the public at large to have repealed. Who would—who can really on logical grounds defend sugar quotas? There’s no way of defending sugar quotas.

Russ Roberts: You don’t think it’s a big national security issue? [laughter]

Milton Friedman: That was why they were imposed. Because of Cuba. They were initially imposed against Castro. But once you got them, you couldn’t get rid of them.

Russ Roberts: It’s a good example because the beneficiaries are very few.

Milton Friedman: They’re very few.

Russ Roberts: We understand that politically that gives them a certain reason to be loud in talking to the representatives but you’d think the fewness of them would eventually be decisive in overturning it but it has not.

Milton Friedman: No, it’s not, because it’s an advantage. If 50 percent of the people were sugar farmers, you couldn’t possibly have sugar quotas, because it costs too much to the others. But if 1% of the people are sugar producers, for each dollar that they get, that’s divided among 99 people so it’s only one cent to the individual.

Russ Roberts: So their incentive to yell is small— which brings us back to a question that you write about in Capitalism and Freedom. Issue by issue, it’s easy to make the case for discretion.

When you see the cumulative effect of going issue by issue, you really can make the case for principles. You give the example in the book of freedom of speech. Obviously, a lot of Americans are against freedom of speech.

Milton Friedman: Oh, sure.

Russ Roberts: And if you went issue by issue, you’d find a lot of speech that would be voted down as not appropriate and yet we sustain it through enough people believing that it’s a good thing.

Milton Friedman: But even here, with the campaign finance laws, we’re reducing freedom of speech drastically.

Russ Roberts: That gets back to your point about businesses wanting government to protect them. In this case, the business is the industry of government. Politicians like the protection that campaign finance laws gives them.

Milton Friedman: Yeah.

Russ Roberts: That’s a very tough one when they regulate themselves. They do tend to be a little self-interested there. It’s very sad.

Milton Friedman: But how do we get that repealed? What politician is going to come up and make a big fight on repealing the McCain-Feingold legislation.

Russ Roberts: Although the Supreme Court occasionally does speak up and suggest that this is not really consistent with the Constitution.

Milton Friedman: Well, the Supreme Court is not a very strong support in some cases. Look at what it did with property—with eminent domain. The Kelo case is not really a good advertisement for a free market Supreme Court.

Russ Roberts: But ironically, it did produce a backlash at the state and local level against using it.

Milton Friedman: The Institute of Justice—which is a remarkably good organization—has been promoting that backlash against it and they’ve been doing a very good job. It may well be that you’ll end up with a stronger support for property than you originally had. But that wasn’t the intention of the Supreme Court.

Russ Roberts:

Let’s go back to the difficulty of repealing bad laws. You mentioned sugar quotas, sugar price supports, as an example. What role do you think economic illiteracy, a lack of understanding on the part of the public of the full effects of legislation, plays in sustaining laws that are described as in the national interest but are really serving special interests?

Milton Friedman: Very little. Because it’s not in the self-interest of the recipients to figure it out. What housewife is going to spend the time to save the extra money—maybe it’s $5.00 or $10.00 a year she pays extra on sugar? It doesn’t pay to try to figure out. What you’re dealing with is rational ignorance. The rational part is what I want to emphasize. It’s not ignorance that is avoidable because it’s rational to be ignorant.

Yet somehow, people do get it. Minimum wages have become less popular than they used to be. They’ve been trying to pass a rise in the minimum wage for years and they haven’t passed one. And that’s because, I think, there is more understanding of the economic merits or demerits of it than there used to be—more people recognize the effect of a higher minimum wage on the employment of the poor.

Russ Roberts: On the flip side, the living wage, which are these local ordinances or like the one in Chicago we spoke about earlier, gets attention and often passes.

And if anything, you’d think there the effects are going to be more stark in a local area—employers have more choices to leave the area which they wouldn’t have at the federal level. On the case of gasoline price controls, true, no one clamors for price controls but we have all these implicit price controls—threats by attorney generals to prosecute gougers in the wake of Katrina or worse, vaccine manufacturers who might have the gall to charge a market-clearing price.

Instead we have the president of the United States two winters ago begging people to not use the vaccine if they’re not really at risk, instead of using the price mechanism which is so much more effective. It seems to be a paradoxical pattern? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Milton Friedman: I don’t think there’s anything very paradoxical about it. First place, we are now only 20 or 30 years from when we had price controls [on gasoline]. And so a large fraction of the population had personal experience with it. Twenty or 30 years from now, after there’s nobody living who had experience with price controls, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come back again.

We have to keep ourselves open to the facts. The facts are that the world has become better and better over time. The 19th Century was better than the 18th Century. The 20th Century was better than the 19th Century. The 21st Century is going to be better than the 20th Century. There was once an article back in, oh, 1780 or something, which said how many people lived in free countries and how many lived in the rest—non-free.

And the ratio of people who live in free countries to the total population of the world has surely been going up throughout this whole—these past two centuries. It went up most dramatically recently when the Berlin Wall fell, when the Soviet Union went out of existence. So there’s reason to be optimistic.

Somehow or other, these stupid individuals who vote these bad laws seem to have enough sense to keep from voting laws bad enough to create a negative GNP. So I think in the end, you’ve got to remain an optimist.

Russ Roberts: I share your optimism and I like the long-term perspective. On any one day, you can always get depressed about what’s going on in Washington or in city hall but the long-term trend is toward more freedom and a higher standard of living and although it seems very difficult for people to recognize that, they’re always moaning; the educated class is always moaning about how things have never been worse. We stand on the brink of a precipice either because we have a trade deficit or China or manufacturing jobs are in decline or the inequality due to this, that or the other, or immigration. There’s always some threat to our prosperity that’s imminent and yet we manage to keep going.

Milton Friedman: And yet—another thing on the glass being half empty. While everybody complains about Bush’s tax cuts, nobody really is in favor of higher taxes. There’s no broad sentiment, no broad move [to raise taxes].

Russ Roberts: I want to ask you about George Stigler who you mentioned earlier. Stigler was an observer of the political scene. He was a political economist who described why things were the way they were but he felt it was a waste of time to be an advocate, a preacher, a proselytizer for a particular philosophy or ideology because politicians face these incentives and you’re not going to change what they do. Being an advocate for this policy or that policy or trying to increasing liberty—as you have—is a Quixotic endeavor. Is that a fair assessment of his view?

Milton Friedman: There’s a lot of truth to it. George always used to say, “Milton wants to change the world. I just want to observe it.” But it wasn’t true. That was what he would say. But after all, you never heard George say a good thing about bigger government. You never heard him in any way express views that differed from yours and my views about what we ought to be doing. So I think that was a little bit of a show that he put on.

Russ Roberts: But he didn’t spend as much time as you have professionally.

Milton Friedman: No, no. He did spend much more time on observing.

Russ Roberts: And you have spent a great deal of time obviously on observing but a sizeable amount of time on urging or prodding or pushing politicians and others—the rest of us—to advocate for smaller government and more individual freedom.

Milton Friedman: I have.

Russ Roberts: As a person who spent a lot of time in the—not just in the academic vineyard but in the policy vineyard, do you look back on that as fruitful work?

Milton Friedman: I really had two lives. One was as a scientist—as an economist—and one was as a public intellectual. And everybody more or less does his major scientific work at a relatively early age And it’s kind of natural, I think, that people switch from the one area to the other. Really until the 1970s, I did not have much contact in politics whatsoever.

I had some but not much. But then, I think increasingly as the scientific side of my life matured and I happened to know more people in politics, my interests and my activities switched to some extent. I think what really motivated it more than anything else was when I was writing columns for Newsweek.

Russ Roberts: Which was fun, I assume.

Milton Friedman: It was fun. It was fine. I found it a very challenging thing to do and it made me—forced me—to keep up with the current affairs that were going on and also it brought me into contact with people who were active in politics.

Russ Roberts: Did colleagues other than George voice an opinion about you spending your time that way? I know at that point in your life, you were already incredibly respected and successful but—

Milton Friedman: No. No.

Russ Roberts: For a young scholar, it’s not the best use of time often.

Milton Friedman: I always told my students that if they went to Washington, they shouldn’t stay there more than two years or they’ll get ruined. And in general, I’ve argued to youngsters who came up to me and wanted to be ideologists, wanted to promote an ideological view, that they first better get themselves established as an economist or as a scholar and get a good job and then they could afford to do it.

Russ Roberts: What advice would you give to those who love liberty and would like to see its cause thrive? You talked about some optimism, that the broad historical trends are good. Anything in the short run that you think would be useful or good for people to be aware of or take advantage of?

Milton Friedman: I think people have to do what they want to do. I think that the best thing that people can do who want to promote the free market is to talk about the free market, to think about the free market, to write about the free market and to get into arguments.

Russ Roberts: Something you’ve spent a lot of time at.

Milton Friedman: I’ve had a lot of experience in it, a great deal.

Russ Roberts: That’s good advice. Thank you, Milton.


*See Milton Friedman’s biography in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

To post a followup to this essay, go to EconTalk.org.

RELATED CONTENT 
A Conversation with Milton Friedman

Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has long been recognized as one of our most important economic thinkers and a leader of the Chicago school of economics. He is the author of many books and articles in economics, including A Theory of the Consumption Function and A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna J. Schwartz). Friedman also wrote extensively on public policy, always with a primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of…

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June 5, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 5) MY POSTCARD IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER

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Listen to me, my son! I know what I am saying; listen! Watch yourself, lest you be indiscreet and betray some vital information. For the lips of a prostitute[a] are as sweet as honey, and smooth flattery is her stock-in-trade. But afterwards only a bitter conscience is left to you,[b] sharp as a double-edged sword. She leads you down to death and hell. For she does not know the path to life. She staggers down a crooked trail and doesn’t even realize where it leads.

Young men, listen to me, and never forget what I’m about to say: Run from her! Don’t go near her house, lest you fall to her temptation and lose your honor, and give the remainder of your life to the cruel and merciless;[c] 10 lest strangers obtain your wealth, and you become a slave of foreigners. 11 Lest afterwards you groan in anguish and in shame when syphilis[d] consumes your body, 12 and you say, “Oh, if only I had listened! If only I had not demanded my own way! 13 Oh, why wouldn’t I take advice? Why was I so stupid? 14 For now I must face public disgrace.”

15 Drink from your own well, my son—be faithful and true to your wife. 16 Why should you beget children with women of the street? 17 Why share your children with those outside your home? 18 Be happy, yes, rejoice in the wife of your youth. 19 Let her breasts and tender embrace[e] satisfy you. Let her love alone fill you with delight. 20 Why delight yourself with prostitutes, embracing what isn’t yours? 21 For God is closely watching you, and he weighs carefully everything you do.

22 The wicked man is doomed by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. 23 He shall die because he will not listen to the truth; he has let himself be led away into incredible folly.

I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite cities!!!!

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, his son Marston Hefner, and his girlfriend, October 2010 Playboy Playmate of the Month Claire Sinclair, pose with a group of Playboy Playmates as they celebrate Hugh Hefner‘s 85th birthday and Marston Hefner’s 21st birthday at the Palms Casino Resort April 9, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Below is the postcard I sent:

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8-28-16

Dear Hugh,

While in Las Vegas I always try to go to church and my favorite church is HOPE COMMUNITY CHURCH where I heard the message THE TALK:AN HONEST CONVERSATION ABOUT GOD’S DESIGN FOR SEX just last September. The pastor Vance Pittman is from Memphis where I grew up. You can google this message and listen to it yourself. I thought of you when Vance said:

How has the GREAT SEXUAL REVOLUTION OF THE 1960’s brought great transformation to our society? Why do so many even in our secular society look back to the 1950’s as the GOOD OLE DAYS! It is because of all the HURT, PAIN and SCARS since then. Proverbs 5:18-19 says:

18 Let your fountain be blessed,
    and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19     a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
    be intoxicated[a] always in her love.

Andy Stanley in his book THE NEW RULES FOR LOVE, SEX AND DATING wrote: When we ignore God’s relational purpose for sex…when we rip sex out of its divinely designed relational context…we hurt ourselves. 

From Everette Hatcher, P.O.Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, PS: Jesus loves you Hugh and I do too! If your mother GRACE was here she would be telling the same thing too!!!!!

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I wrote to Hefner in an earlier letter these words:

Don’t you see that Solomon was right  when he observed life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture and he then concluded  in Ecclesiastes 2:11:

“All was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”

Notice this phrase UNDER THE SUN since it appears about 30 times in Ecclesiastes. Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

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Hugh Hefner Hedonist: How Many Souls Did He Lead Astray?

Lord God only knows how many souls Hefner lead astray by his promotion of hedonism.

Pic source: slideshare.net/SammieGSmith/03-march-9-2014-proverbs-solomon-when-wisdom-was-not-enough-32359140

Sinful Solomon: “……..Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” [Ecclesiastes 12:13]

“…….Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment……” [Ecclesiastes 9:11]

The God / Man Holy Christ:“………For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?………” [Gospel of Mark 8:35-37]

“………Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself………” [Gospel of Matthew 22: 37-39]

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Avoiding Emotional Adultery

As I began to delve once again into God’s Word, I recognized three steps I should have taken when faced with the temptation.

by Judy Starr

In her book, The Enticement of the Forbidden, Judy Starr tells about the intense attraction she felt toward another man during a mission trip in the Caribbean. She and her husband, Stottler, had begun the mission trip together, and she stayed on after he left because of other responsibilities. Her story here begins at the point when she returned home from the project.

My decision before God to remain faithful and return home came solely from my will, because my heart ached to stay with Eric. As I moved through the motions of boarding the plane home, numbness overtook my senses. Nothing seemed real.

The plane finally touched down in California. The grace of God, along with the counsel and prayers of others, had brought me home. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. As if moving through a haze, I staggered down the ramp to meet my husband. The weight of despondency dragged at every step. I had phoned Stottler, revealing part of the story, and I told him I was coming home. Now it was time to face him. By God’s grace there had been nothing physical between Eric and me, but emotional infidelity seemed equally as painful.

When we arrived at our house, Stottler and I sat tensely on the couch, my legs shaking with fear, anticipation, and exhaustion. Weary of the battle against God, I yearned for His fellowship again. I missed having a tender heart that could sense His leading. I also hurt over the anguish I had caused my sweet husband. But the healing of my relationships with God and Stottler was only possible if I began making right choices.

When we choose to sin, problems and sufferings will drag behind us like a ball and chain. The only way to break the chain is to deal with the root cause—confess the sin. So I told Stottler how I felt about Eric. I told him that I had seriously considered staying in the Caribbean. Then I asked for his forgiveness.

I am enormously blessed to have a godly husband. We cried together many times, and we began the process of rebuilding what I had so quickly torn down. Yet for a time, my emotions continued to bleed.

Addiction and withdrawal

Much like a drug addict in isolation, I experienced withdrawal symptoms from Eric. In many ways, an affair is similar to an alcohol or drug addiction. The process of breaking free brings intense feelings of pain, anxiety, and depression. For several months I longed to be with Eric, and a continual dull throb lodged in my heart. Life often seemed bleak, and the future uninviting.

Although I don’t remember having thoughts of suicide, they are not uncommon for people mired in affairs. A woman can’t imagine life without her lover, yet she also recognizes the grief she is causing her family. Suicide may seem the only way out. But time does heal wounds. As the days wore into months, my internal hemorrhaging slowed to a drip, then finally began to close.

It was a slow process back. I had constructed a brick wall between God, Stottler, and myself through one bad choice at a time. Now I needed to make good choices one at a time to tear down that wall. Although the process was painful, each day became a little easier—as long as I stayed away from Eric.

What I should have done

As I began to delve once again into God’s Word, the Lord clearly showed me three steps I should have taken when faced with the temptation toward Eric. These steps also apply to any woman who chooses to rebuild her marriage after making poor choices.

Step 1: Be honest with yourself. Looking back on my entire scenario in the Caribbean, I wondered if the romance with Eric was unavoidable. I alone was responsible for the preparations and daily operations of the boat project. Therefore, each day I had to work closely with a charming captain while being surrounded by an enticing, seductive setting. Was all the heartache avoidable? The answer: absolutely! I could have stopped myself before the infatuation ever began.

Through my disastrous choices, I learned a very important truth: Never underestimate the power of attraction! When attracted to a man, it’s easy to convince ourselves that the feelings could never really grow, so we try to rationalize them away.

Yet we can so quickly begin daydreaming about this attraction: I wonder where he is right now. I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. When can we talk again? Of course, this friendship is harmless. I would never want anything to happen—I just enjoy his company.

I had those thoughts. They are an open door to a roomful of deadly cobras. The enemy wants you to believe those little lies so that he can slowly ease you into the room. And once you’re in, you will be bitten. Playing with poison will ruin your life.

As we begin toying with an attraction, by necessity we hide our feelings and actions from our husband. The Lord says, “Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil” (Proverbs 12:20). Deceit always leads to further deceit as sin takes us further and further into danger. It’s so much easier to close the door and never step into the snake pit in the first place!

Step 2: Be honest with God. I believe that what made me the most vulnerable for my involvement with Eric was my lack of daily time in God’s presence. Nothing in my life has had the consistent power to transform me more than my daily times of reading the Bible and praying.

For several months previous to the Caribbean project, I had been ignoring God’s daily call to come away with Him for a time of refreshment and renewal. By the time I arrived on the boat and met the captain, I had a wall of poor choices blocking my sensitivity to the Lord. Because I had allowed my heart to become spiritually insensitive, I refused to bring my feelings toward Eric to the Lord. I refused to acknowledge His conviction, seek His perspective, and rely on His strength to resist my wandering emotions. It was a recipe for disaster.

I am convinced that the most critical element in protecting your marriage is your personal time alone with God. It is irreplaceable. There are no substitutes—not listening to Christian music or Christian radio, not going to church or attending Bible studies. Only as we spend regular one-on-one time in prayer with the Father and time reading His Word will we keep our heart sensitive to obeying His voice in the face of temptation.

Step 3: Be honest with your husband. Once Stottler and I were aboard the boat, it was only a matter of days before I knew a strong attraction existed between Eric and me. But I failed to use the protection that God had provided to help me lock the door on temptation—honesty with my husband.

As soon as I felt that excitement of attraction toward Eric, I should have told Stottler. Telling your husband is a marvelous way to dispel the mystery of a secret intrigue. As long as no one knows, you nurture that attraction, create romantic scenarios in your mind, and dream the fantasy. But as soon as you invite your husband into the fantasy bubble, it bursts. Its ugliness is exposed. And though revealing the temptation to your husband may feel uncomfortable at the time, doing so will save you both from incredible long-term heartache.

God gives our husbands to us as an umbrella of protection. Their prayers for us are God-ordained coverings of shelter. If I had told Stottler immediately upon sensing my attraction to Eric, my thoughts would have been exposed and Stottler could have prayed for me. His prayers and wisdom could have strengthened me to remain sensitive to God’s leading throughout my dealings with Eric. My accountability friends should have been told as well. Giving an account to others is a wonderful deterrent to disobedience.

I also should have determined never to be alone with Eric and sought Stottler’s accountability on this as well. When the need arose to work with Eric, my husband or one of the team members should have been included.

No secrets

Upon returning home to California, I developed a “No Secrets Policy” toward Stottler. What a relief it was to have the closet door opened and all the darkness exposed! My No Secrets Policy relates to any area of my marriage or my walk with God that will affect my relationship with Stottler. For example, feelings of attraction to another man, past moral indiscretions, impure fantasies, and a stagnant fellowship with the Lord can all create a wedge in a marriage if not dealt with immediately.

Honesty, however, is not an excuse for a lack of restraint in our words. The No Secrets Policy does not give me the right to say anything to my husband that pops into my head, especially on those days when I feel like spitting nails. Spewing every negative thought I may have toward Stottler in a moment of anger or physical depression is a sure way to drive a wedge into our relationship. Those moments require self-control.

Honesty protects both our husbands and us. It helps our husbands know our predisposition toward certain temptations so that they can help us face those challenges. By revealing to Stottler any current temptation I may be facing, he can help me to avoid further disasters. And if I continue pursuing the temptation, I will have to tell him. What a wonderful deterrent that is! It’s easier to just resist the temptation in the first place than to reveal my failure to my husband after the fact.

If establishing honesty in your marriage means exposing an affair from your past, proceed carefully. Make sure you have confessed your sin to the Lord and that your heart is broken over your wrongdoing. Then think through how to reveal this news, knowing that it will most likely elicit strong emotions.

When you reveal a previous or current indiscretion, your husband will very likely be upset. Therefore, you may want to talk with a pastor or a Christian counselor first to receive his wisdom on how to share a dark secret. If your husband has been known to be abusive, ask someone to accompany you. Although building a foundation of honesty may be frightening, keep in mind the words of Dr. Willard Harley: “As painful as it is to discover an affair, very few ever divorce because of it. In most cases, both spouses make adjustments that help avoid a repeat. But without the truth, there is little assurance that it will not happen again.”

Adapted by permission from The Enticement of the Forbidden by Judy Starr. Published by LifeConneXions, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, Copyright ©2004 by Judy Starr. All rights reserved.

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DAN MITCHELL ARTICLE “Courtesy of the Tax Foundation, here are the states that have lowered personal income tax rates and/or corporate income tax rates in 2021 and 2022!”

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The Feel-Good Map of 2022

I’ve already shared the “feel-good story” for 2022, so today I’m going to share this year’s feel-good map.

Courtesy of the Tax Foundation, here are the states that have lowered personal income tax rates and/or corporate income tax rates in 2021 and 2022. I’ve previously written about these reforms (both this year and last year), but more and more states and lowering tax burdens, giving us a new reason to write about this topic.

The map is actually even better than it looks because there are several states that don’t have any income taxes, so it’s impossible for them to lower rates. I’ve labelled them with a red zero.

And when you add together the states with no income tax with the states that are reducing income tax rates, more than half of them are either at the right destination (zero) or moving in that direction.

That’s very good news.

And here’s more good news from the Tax Foundation. The flat tax club is expanding.

I prefer the states with no income taxes, but low-rate flat taxes are the next best approach.

P.S. According to the Tax Foundation, New York and Washington, D.C. have moved in the wrong direction. Both increased income tax burdens in 2021. No wonder people are moving away.

P.P.S. If I had to pick the states with the best reforms, I think Iowa and Arizona belong at the top of the list.

Texas vs. California, Part VII

To begin the seventh edition of our series comparing policy in Texas and California (previous entries in March 2010, February 2013, April 2013, October 2018, June 2019, and December 2020), here’s a video from Prager University.

There will be a lot of information in today’s column, so if you’re pressed for time, here are three sentences that tell you what you need to know.

California has all sorts of natural advantages over Texas, especially endless sunshine and beautiful topography.

Texas has better government policy than California, most notably in areas such as taxation and regulation.

Since people are moving from the Golden State to the Lone Star State, public policy seems to matter more than natural beauty.

Now let’s look at a bunch of evidence to support those three sentences.

We’ll start with an article by Joel Kotkin of Chapman University.

If one were to explore the most blessed places on earth, California, my home for a half century, would surely be up there. …its salubrious climate, spectacular scenery, vast natural resources… President Biden recently suggested that he wants to “make America California again”. Yet…he should consider whether the California model may be better seen as a cautionary tale than a roadmap to a better future… California now suffers the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate in the country, and the widest gap between middle and upper-middle income earners. …the state has slowly morphed into a low wage economy. Over the past decade, 80% of the state’s jobs have paid under the median wage — half of which are paid less than $40,000…minorities do better today outside of California, enjoying far higher adjusted incomes and rates of homeownership in places like Atlanta and Dallas than in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Almost one-third of Hispanics, the state’s largest ethnic group, subsist below the poverty line, compared with 21% outside the state. …progressive…policies have not brought about greater racial harmony, enhanced upward mobility and widely based economic growth.

Next we have some business news from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Business leaders fear tech giant Oracle’s recent announcement that it is leaving the Bay Area for Austin, Texas, will lead to more exits unless some fundamental political and economic changes are made to keep the region attractive and competitive. “This is something that we have been warning people about for several years. California is not business friendly, we should be honest about it,” said Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the UC Berkeley Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics.Bay Area Council President Jim Wunderman said… “From consulting companies to tax lawyers to bankers and commercial real estate firms, every person I talk with who provides services to big Bay Area corporations are telling me that their clients are strategizing about leaving…” Charles Schwab, McKesson and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have all exited the high-cost, high-tax, high-regulation Bay Area for a less-expensive, less-regulated and business-friendlier political climate. All of them rode off to Texas. …the pace of the departures appears to be increasing. …A recent online survey of 2,325 California residents, taken between Nov. 4 and Nov. 23 by the Public Policy Institute of California, found 26% of residents have seriously considered moving out of state and that 58% say that the American Dream is harder to achieve in California than elsewhere.

Are California politicians trying to make things better, in hopes of stopping out-migration to places such as Texas?

Not according to this column by Hank Adler in the Wall Street Journal.

California’s Legislature is considering a wealth tax on residents, part-year residents, and any person who spends more than 60 days inside the state’s borders in a single year. Even those who move out of state would continue to be subject to the tax for a decade… Assembly Bill 2088 proposes calculating the wealth tax based on current world-wide net worth each Dec. 31. For part-year and temporary residents, the tax would be proportionate based on their number of days in California. The annual tax would be on current net worth and therefore would include wealth earned, inherited or obtained through gifts or estates long before and long after leaving the state. …The authors of the bill estimate the wealth tax will provide Sacramento $7.5 billion in additional revenue every year. Another proposal—to increase the top state income-tax rate to 16.8%—would annually raise another $6.8 billion. Today, California’s wealthiest 1% pay approximately 46% of total state income taxes. …the Legislature looks to the wealthiest Californians to fill funding gaps without considering the constitutionality of the proposals and the ability of people and companies to pick up and leave the state, which news reports suggest they are doing in large numbers. …As of this moment, there are no police roadblocks on the freeways trying to keep moving trucks from leaving California. If A.B. 2088 becomes law, the state may need to consider placing some.

The late (and great) Walter Williams actually joked back in 2012that California might set up East German-style border checkpoints. Let’s hope satire doesn’t become reality.

But what isn’t satire is that people are fleeing the state (along with other poorly governed jurisdictions).

Simply state, the blue state model of high taxes and big government is not working (just as it isn’t working in countries with high taxes and big government).

Interestingly, even the New York Times recognizes that there is a problem in the state that used to be a role model for folks on the left.

Opining for that outlet at the start of the month, Brett Stephens raised concerns about the Golden State.

…today’s Democratic leaders might look to the very Democratic state of California as a model for America’s future. You remember California: People used to want to move there, start businesses, raise families, live their American dream. These days, not so much. Between July 2019 and July 2020, more people — 135,400 to be precise — left the state than moved in… No. 1 destination: Texas, followed by Arizona, Nevada and Washington. Three of those states have no state income tax.

California, by contrast, has very high taxes. Not just an onerous income tax, but high taxes across the board.

Californians also pay some of the nation’s highest sales tax rates (8.66 percent) and corporate tax rates (8.84 percent), as well as the highest taxes on gasoline (63 cents on a gallon as of January, as compared with 20 cents in Texas).

Sadly, these high taxes don’t translate into good services from government.

The state ranks 21st in the country in terms of spending per public school pupil, but 27th in its K-12 educational outcomes. It ties Oregon for third place among states in terms of its per capita homeless rate. Infrastructure? As of 2019, the state had an estimated $70 billion in deferred maintenance backlog. Debt? The state’s unfunded pension liabilities in 2019 ran north of $1.1 trillion, …or $81,300 per household.

Makes you wonder whether the rest of the nation should copy that model?

Democrats hold both U.S. Senate seats, 42 of its 53 seats in the House, have lopsided majorities in the State Assembly and Senate, run nearly every big city and have controlled the governor’s mansion for a decade. If ever there was a perfect laboratory for liberal governance, this is it. So how do you explain these results? …If California is a vision of the sort of future the Biden administration wants for Americans, expect Americans to demur.

Some might be tempted to dismiss Stephens’ column because he is considered the token conservative at the New York Times.

But Ezra Klein also acknowledges that California has a problem, and nobody will accuse him of being on the right side of the spectrum.

Here’s some of what he wrote in his column earlier this month for the New York Times.

I love California. I was born and raised in Orange County. I was educated in the state’s public schools and graduated from the University of California system… But for that very reason, our failures of governance worry me. California has the highest poverty rate in the nation,when you factor in housing costs, and vies for the top spot in income inequality, too. …but there’s a reason 130,000 more people leave than enter each year. California is dominated by Democrats, but many of the people Democrats claim to care about most can’t afford to live there. …California, as the biggest state in the nation, and one where Democrats hold total control of the government, carries a special burden. If progressivism cannot work here, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?

Kudos to Klein for admitting problems on his side (just like I praise the few GOPers who criticized Trump’s big-government policies).

But his column definitely had some quirky parts, such as when he wrote that, “There are bright spots in recent years…a deeply progressive plan to tax the wealthy.”

That’s actually a big reason for the state’s decline, not a “bright spot.”

I’m not the only one to recognize the limitations of his column.

Kevin Williamson wrote an entire rebuttal for National Review.

Who but Ezra Klein could survey the wreck left-wing Democrats have made of California and conclude that the state’s problem is its excessive conservatism? …Klein the rhetorician anticipates objections on this front and writes that he is not speaking of “the political conservatism that privatizes Medicare, but the temperamental conservatism that” — see if this formulation sounds at all familiar — “stands athwart change and yells ‘Stop!’”…California progressives have progressive policies and progressive power, and they like it that way. That is the substance of their conservatism. …Klein and others of his ilk like to present themselves as dispassionate pragmatists, enlightened empiricists who only want to do “what works.” …Klein mocks San Francisco for renaming schools (Begone, Abraham Lincoln!) while it has no plan to reopen them, but he cannot quite see that these are two aspects of a single phenomenon. …Klein…must eventually understand that the troubles he identifies in California are baked into the progressive cake. …That has real-world consequences, currently on display in California to such a spectacular degree that even Ezra Klein is able dimly to perceive them. Maybe he’ll learn something.

I especially appreciate this passage since it excoriates rich leftists for putting teacher unions ahead of disadvantaged children.

Intentions do not matter very much, and mere stated intentions matter even less. Klein is blind to that, which is why he is able to write, as though there were something unusual on display: “For all the city’s vaunted progressivism, [San Francisco] has some of the highest private school enrollment numbers in the country.” Rich progressives have always been in favor of school choice and private schools — for themselves. They only oppose choice for poor people, whose interests must for political reasons be subordinated to those of the public-sector unions from which Democrats in cities such as San Francisco derive their power.

Let’s conclude with some levity.

Here’s a meme that contemplates whether California emigrants bring bad voting habits with them.

Though that’s apparently more of a problem in Colorado rather than in Texas.

And here’s some clever humor from Genesius Times.

P.S. My favorite California-themed humor (not counting the state’s elected officials) can be found here, hereherehere, and here.

High-tax states are languishing but  zero-income-tax states such as Texas are growing rapidly!!!!

Much of my writing is focused on the real-world impact of government policy, and this is why I repeatedly look at the relative economic performance of big government jurisdictions and small government jurisdictions.

But I don’t just highlight differences between nations. Yes, it’s educational to look at North Korea vs. South Korea or Chile vs. Venezuela vs. Argentina, but I also think you can learn a lot by looking at what’s happening with different states in America.

So we’ve looked at high-tax states that are languishing, such as California and Illinois, and compared them to zero-income-tax states such as Texas.

With this in mind, you can understand that I was intrigued to see that even the establishment media is noticing that Texas is out-pacing the rest of the nation.

Here are some excerpts from a report by CNN Money on rapid population growth in Texas.

More Americans moved to Texas in recent years than any other state: A net gain of more than 387,000 in the latest Census for 2013. …Five Texas cities — Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Fort Worth — were among the top 20 fastest growing large metro areas. Some smaller Texas metro areas grew even faster. In oil-rich Odessa, the population grew 3.3% and nearby Midland recorded a 3% gain.

But why is the population growing?

Well, CNN Money points out that low housing prices and jobs are big reasons.

And on the issue of housing, the article does acknowledge the role of “easy regulations” that enable new home construction.

But on the topic of jobs, the piece contains some good data on employment growth, but no mention of policy.

Jobs is the No. 1 reason for population moves, with affordable housing a close second. …Jobs are plentiful in Austin, where the unemployment rate is just 4.6%. Moody’s Analytics projects job growth to average 4% a year through 2015. Just as important, many jobs there are well paid: The median income of more than $75,000 is nearly 20% higher than the national median.

That’s it. Read the entire article if you don’t believe me, but the reporter was able to write a complete article about the booming economy in Texas without mentioning – not even once – that there’s no state income tax.

But that wasn’t the only omission.

The article doesn’t mention that Texas is the 4th-best state in the Tax Foundation’s ranking of state and local tax burdens.

The article doesn’t mention that Texas was the least oppressive state in the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Soft Tyranny Index.

The article doesn’t mention that Texas was ranked #20 in a study of the overall fiscal condition of the 50 states.

The article doesn’t mention that Texas is in 4th place in a combined ranking of economic freedom in U.S. state and Canadian provinces.

The article doesn’t mention that Texas was ranked #11 in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index.

The article doesn’t mention that Texas is in 14th place in the Mercatus ranking of overall freedom for the 50 states (and in 10th place for fiscal freedom).

By the way, I’m not trying to argue that Texas is the best state.

Indeed, it only got the top ranking in one of the measures cited above.

My point, instead, is simply to note that it takes willful blindness to write about the strong population growth and job performance of Texas without making at least a passing reference to the fact that it is a low-tax, pro-market state.

At least compared to other states. And especially compared to the high-tax states that are stagnating.

Such as California, as illustrated by this data and this data, as well as this Lisa Benson cartoon.

Such as Illinois, as illustrated by this data and this Eric Allie cartoon.

And I can’t resist adding this Steve Breen cartoon, if for no other reason that it reminds me of another one of his cartoons that I shared last year.

Speaking of humor, this Chuck Asay cartoon speculates on how future archaeologists will view California. And this joke about Texas, California, and a coyote is among my most-viewed blog posts.

All jokes aside, I want to reiterate what I wrote above. Texas is far from perfect. There’s too much government in the Lone Star state. It’s only a success story when compared to California.

P.S. Paul Krugman has tried to defend California, which has made him an easy target. I debunked him earlier this year, and I also linked to a superb Kevin Williamson takedown of Krugman at the bottom of this post.

P.P.S. Once again, I repeat the two-part challenge I’ve issued to the left. I’ll be happy if any statists can successfully respond to just one of the two questions I posed.

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June 4, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY ( PROVERBS 4)

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Proverbs 4 “A Brighter Light”

BY KAYLENE YODER //  2 COMMENTS

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,
               shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” Pr.4:18

Maybe this morning you watched the sun rise. First there was a small hue of pink. As time wore on the sky became brighter & brighter until finally the sun itself peeped over the horizon giving a grand display of light. 

When we first come to love Jesus & the path of righteousness, we have and hold on to a small flicker of hope. As we hold on to and cultivate this small flicker of hope & light, we notice it becomes brighter, growing bigger, stronger and spreading into more areas of our lives. This light penetrates all corners of our hearts and scatters sin and darkness. We become stronger in our faith, more sure of our hope, more reliant on our Maker. 

Just like rays from the sun becoming brighter & brighter, so are we as we continue to cultivate this hope. Our light for Jesus becomes brighter & brighter, until one day in glory we have a great blazing crescendo of light bursting into the gates of heaven. (I say burst, because I don’t plan to make my entrance with hesitation & timidity!) Oh, what a glorious display of unending, everlasting beauty and perfection!

In today’s reading, verses 20-27, encourage us to pay attention to God’s words, hide them in well guarded hearts, speak purely and in truth, to stay encouraged and keep looking ahead, to watch how we walk and to not stray to evil ways.

Stay focused! Stay true! Eyes on Jesus to keep your perspective right! Don’t let your light grow dim! He deserves a great display.

      “Hold on to instruction, do not let it go;
        guard it well, for it is your life.”Pr.4:13

Instruction obeyed, the flicker of hope & faith held on to,

gives life,

strengthens life,

lengthens life,

speaks life,

breathes life,

is to be your very life.

Hold on to it.

I love the Book of Proverbs and two of my favorite preachers have preached through it and they are Adrian Rogers and John MacArthur. Some of the finest sermons I have heard by Adrian Rogers are in Proverbs such as the Peril of Pride, God’s Grace in the Workplace, God’s Miracle Medicine, God wants me to Prosper, Fathers who teach their children to be wise, God’s Answer to Anger, The Battle of the Bottle, Raising Kids that Count, How to be the Father of a Wise Child, Financial Freedom, What Does the Word of God Say About Government?, Friendship Factor, God’s Way to Wealth, Wisdom and Happiness, The Playboy’s Payday, The Incomparable Worth of Wisdom, How to Answer a Skeptic, How to Guard Your Heart, Treasuring Truth, Finding God’s Way in a Dark Day, Crossing God’s Deadline, Innocent Blood, and Sermon on Gossip.

Proverbs 4

 NLT  

< Proverbs 3Proverbs 4Proverbs 5 >

The Beneficence of Wisdom

41 My children, listen when your father corrects you. Pay attention and learn good judgment, 2 for I am giving you good guidance. Don’t turn away from my instructions. 3 For I, too, was once my father’s son, tenderly loved as my mother’s only child. 4 My father taught me, “Take my words to heart. Follow my commands, and you will live. 5 Get wisdom; develop good judgment. Don’t forget my words or turn away from them. 6 Don’t turn your back on wisdom, for she will protect you. Love her, and she will guard you. 7 Getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do! And whatever else you do, develop good judgment. 8 If you prize wisdom, she will make you great. Embrace her, and she will honor you. 9 She will place a lovely wreath on your head; she will present you with a beautiful crown.” 10 My child, listen to me and do as I say, and you will have a long, good life. 11 I will teach you wisdom’s ways and lead you in straight paths. 12 When you walk, you won’t be held back; when you run, you won’t stumble. 13 Take hold of my instructions; don’t let them go. Guard them, for they are the key to life.

14 Don’t do as the wicked do, and don’t follow the path of evildoers. 15 Don’t even think about it; don’t go that way. Turn away and keep moving. 16 For 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. 17 They eat the food of wickedness and drink the wine of violence! 18 The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, which shines ever brighter until the full light of day. 19 But the way of the wicked is like total darkness. They have no idea what they are stumbling over.

20 My child, pay attention to what I say. Listen carefully to my words. 21 Don’t lose sight of them. Let them penetrate deep into your heart, 22 for they bring life to those who find them, and healing to their whole body. 23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. 24 Avoid all perverse talk; stay away from corrupt speech. 25 Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you. 26 Mark out a straight path for your feet; stay on the safe path. 27 Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil.

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10 Videos of sermons below by Adrian Rogers on Proverbs:

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April, 16, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY ( PROVERBS 16) 16:28 ”A troublemaker plants seeds of strife;    gossip separates the best of friends!” King Solomon on the scoffer Part 11 of series on King Solomon’s words (Verses listed by Adrian Warnock)(Done 12-20-13) Proverbs chapters 16, 19, 22 and 26

April 16, 2022 – 1:43 am

– Proverbs 16 New Living Translation 16 We can make our own plans,     but the Lord gives the right answer. 2 People may be pure in their own eyes,     but the Lord examines their motives. 3 Commit your actions to the Lord,     and your plans will succeed. 4 The Lord has made everything for his own purposes,     even the […]

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April 15, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 15) Things Animals Don’t Do Proverbs 15:13 

April 15, 2022 – 1:29 am

– Proverbs 15New Living Translation 15 A gentle answer deflects anger,    but harsh words make tempers flare. 2 The tongue of the wise makes knowledge appealing,    but the mouth of a fool belches out foolishness. 3 The Lord is watching everywhere,    keeping his eye on both the evil and the good. 4 Gentle words are a tree of life;    a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. […]

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April 14, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 14) What Does the Word of God Say About Government? Adrian Rogers Proverbs 14:23

April 14, 2022 – 1:39 am

– Proverbs 14New Living Translation 14 A wise woman builds her home,    but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. 2 Those who follow the right path fear the Lord;    those who take the wrong path despise him. 3 A fool’s proud talk becomes a rod that beats him,    but the words of the wise keep them safe. 4 Without […]

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April 13, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 13)  How to Be the Father of a Wise Child Adrian Rogers Proverbs 1, 13

April 13, 2022 – 1:43 am

— Proverbs 13New Living Translation 13 A wise child accepts a parent’s discipline;[a]    a mocker refuses to listen to correction. 2 Wise words will win you a good meal,    but treacherous people have an appetite for violence. 3 Those who control their tongue will have a long life;    opening your mouth can ruin everything. 4 Lazy people want much but get little,    but […]

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April 12, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 12) Adrian Rogers God’s Miracle Medicine PROVERBS 12:25

April 12, 2022 – 1:44 am

Proverbs 12New Living Translation 12 To learn, you must love discipline;    it is stupid to hate correction. 2 The Lord approves of those who are good,    but he condemns those who plan wickedness. 3 Wickedness never brings stability,    but the godly have deep roots. 4 A worthy wife is a crown for her husband,    but a disgraceful woman is like cancer in his bones. 5 The […]

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April 11, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY ( PROVERBS 11) Proverbs 11:1 “Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight” John Hagee “God’s truth is not on a sliding scale; His values never change. What He considered sin in the Garden of Eden is still sin today”

April 11, 2022 – 1:44 am

— John Hagee Devotional 5th October 2020 Today’s Message Scripture: Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight – Proverbs 11:1 God detests dishonest scales; they cause rage and disgust to burn within Him. Why? Dishonest scales give privilege to some and abuse others when “the Lord is the […]

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April 10, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 10) John MacArthur on Proverbs “Pursue your work” (Also Adrian Rogers: God’s Grace in the Workplace) Chapter 10 verse 4, “Poor is he who works with a negligent hand but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely. But he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully. Teach your son to work and to plan ahead in his work.”

April 10, 2022 – 1:45 am

– Proverbs 10 New Living Translation Proverbs 10 New Living Translation The Proverbs of Solomon 10 The proverbs of Solomon: A wise child[a] brings joy to a father;     a foolish child brings grief to a mother. 2 Tainted wealth has no lasting value,     but right living can save your life. 3 The Lord will not let the godly […]

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April 9, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 9) Adrian Rogers “Friends” Proverbs 17:17  Proverbs13:20 Proverbs 15:12 Proverbs1:20-22 Proverbs 9:1-4 Proverbs 14:15; 22:3; Proverbs 26:11; 27; Proverbs 17:10

April 9, 2022 – 1:09 am

– Proverbs 9New Living Translation 9 Wisdom has built her house;    she has carved its seven columns.2 She has prepared a great banquet,    mixed the wines, and set the table.3 She has sent her servants to invite everyone to come.    She calls out from the heights overlooking the city.4 “Come in with me,” she urges the simple.    To those who lack good judgment, […]

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April 8, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 8) Adrian Rogers God’s Way to Health, Wealth and Wisdom – October 2019 Proverbs 2 and 8

April 8, 2022 – 1:49 am

Sermon Overview – Proverbs 8New Living Translation Wisdom Calls for a Hearing 8 Listen as Wisdom calls out!    Hear as understanding raises her voice!2 On the hilltop along the road,    she takes her stand at the crossroads.3 By the gates at the entrance to the town,    on the road leading in, she cries aloud,4 “I call to you, to all of you!    I […]

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April 7, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 7) PROVERBS 7 MY 8/23/16 POSTCARD FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER

April 7, 2022 – 1:18 am

_____ Proverbs 7 New Living Translation Proverbs 7 New International Version Warning Against the Adulterous Woman 7 My son,(A) keep my words     and store up my commands within you. 2 Keep my commands and you will live;(B)     guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. 3 Bind them on your fingers;     write them on the tablet of […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersAtheists Confronted | Edit | Comments

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April 6, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 6) Adrian Rogers “The Peril of Pride” Proverbs 6:16 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked 

April 6, 2022 – 1:15 am

— Proverbs 6New Living Translation Lessons for Daily Life 6 My child,[a] if you have put up security for a friend’s debt    or agreed to guarantee the debt of a stranger—2 if you have trapped yourself by your agreement    and are caught by what you said—3 follow my advice and save yourself,    for you have placed yourself at your friend’s mercy.Now swallow […]

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

April 5, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 5) Adrian Rogers Financial Freedom

April 5, 2022 – 1:02 am

— Financial Freedom Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones. Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall […]

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April 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

April 4, 2022 – 1:54 am

— 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,2 for I am giving you good guidance.    Don’t turn away from my instructions.3 For I, too, was once my father’s son,    tenderly loved as my mother’s only child. 4 My father taught me,“Take my words to heart.    Follow my commands, […]

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

April 3, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 3) Blessed are those who find wisdom. . . . She is more precious than rubies. — Proverbs 3:13-15

April 3, 2022 – 1:00 am

— Wisdom: More Precious Than Rubies  A  Scripture Reading — Proverbs 3:13-20 Blessed are those who find wisdom. . . . She is more precious than rubies. — Proverbs 3:13-15 The book of Proverbs presents two women of different character. One is Wisdom personified. “She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her” […]

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

April 2, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 2) 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

April 2, 2022 – 1:57 am

— Storing Up Truths  A  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 […]

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April 1, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 1) Adrian Rogers “How to Be the Father of a Wise Child” “scorners delight in their scorning” (1:22)

April 1, 2022 – 2:32 am

— Proverbs 1New Living Translation The Purpose of Proverbs 1 These are the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel. 2 Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline,    to help them understand the insights of the wise.3 Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives,    to help them do what is right, just, […]

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March 31, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 31) Adrian Rogers on Alcohol

March 31, 2022 – 2:09 am

__________ Proverbs 31:4 “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink,”BUT WASHINGTON’S STATE DEPT RUNS UP TAB OF $180,000 FOR MONTH OF SEPTEMBER!!! Proverbs 31 New Living Translation The Sayings of King Lemuel 31 The sayings of King Lemuel contain this message,[a] […]

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March 30, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 30) Scripture Reading — Proverbs 30:7-9; Luke 12:13-21

March 30, 2022 – 1:54 am

— How Much Is Enough?  A  Scripture Reading — Proverbs 30:7-9; Luke 12:13-21 Godliness with contentment is great gain. — 1 Timothy 6:6 In Jesus’ parable, a man receives far more than he needs for his health and well-being. But instead of sharing his abundance with people who don’t have enough, he hoards the surplus and plans to take […]

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March 29, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 29) VERSE 11 “Fools vent their anger  but the wise quietly hold it back.” Adrian Rogers God’s Answer to Anger

March 29, 2022 – 1:21 am

— Proverbs 29New Living Translation 29 Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept criticism    will suddenly be destroyed beyond recovery. 2 When the godly are in authority, the people rejoice.    But when the wicked are in power, they groan. 3 The man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father,    but if he hangs around with prostitutes, his wealth is wasted. 4 A just […]

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March 28, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 28) Those who trust in themselves are fools, but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.Proverbs 28:26

March 28, 2022 – 1:37 am

— Held by God  A  Scripture Reading — Proverbs 28:18-28 Those who trust in themselves are fools, but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.Proverbs 28:26 —  As we rushed to catch a flight out of Brazil, rains pouring down the hillside changed the roadway into a river. Passing trucks threw sheets of water on our […]

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March 27, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 27) As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart. — Proverbs 27:19

March 27, 2022 – 1:44 am

— Your “Heart Condition”  A  Scripture Reading — Proverbs 27:19-27 As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart. — Proverbs 27:19 While chasing prey, cheetahs can run about 60 miles per hour, but only in short spurts. This fast cat’s speed is limited to sprints because of its small heart. Endurance at that speed […]

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

March 26, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 26) Scripture Reading — Judges 2:16-19; Proverbs 26:5, 11-12

March 26, 2022 – 1:47 am

— Where’s the Problem  A  Scripture Reading — Judges 2:16-19; Proverbs 26:5, 11-12 They would not listen to their judges… — Judges 2:17 God heard Israel’s cries of distress and often raised up judges to lead and save the people from their enemies. Through Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, and others, God gave the land rest for forty and even eighty […]

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March 25, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 25) “Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof, when thy neighbor hath put thee to shame” (Proverbs 25:8). Adrian Rogers God’s Answer to Anger

March 25, 2022 – 1:22 am

— Proverbs 25New Living Translation More Proverbs of Solomon 25 These are more proverbs of Solomon, collected by the advisers of King Hezekiah of Judah. 2 It is God’s privilege to conceal things    and the king’s privilege to discover them. 3 No one can comprehend the height of heaven, the depth of the earth,    or all that goes on in […]

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March 24, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 24) Wisdom’s Rare and Beautiful Treasures “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established” . — Proverbs 24:3

March 24, 2022 – 1:50 am

— Wisdom’s Rare and Beautiful Treasures  A  Scripture Reading — Proverbs 24:3-4 By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established. . . . — Proverbs 24:3 A Japanese pastor friend, with whom we worked for many years as missionaries, gave us a beautiful bronze statue of hawks lifting off in flight. He had […]

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March 23, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 23)(Proverbs 23:31).”Don’t gaze at the wine, seeing how red it is, how it sparkles in the cup, how smoothly it goes down.”  Adrian Rogers on alcohol in proverbs

March 23, 2022 – 1:24 am

— Proverbs 23New Living Translation 23 While dining with a ruler,    pay attention to what is put before you.2 If you are a big eater,    put a knife to your throat;3 don’t desire all the delicacies,    for he might be trying to trick you. 4 Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich.    Be wise enough to know when to quit.5 In the blink […]

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March 22, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 22) Adrian Rogers: The Techniques of Training Children Proverbs 22:6 “Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.”

March 22, 2022 – 1:28 am

— Proverbs 22New Living Translation 22 Choose a good reputation over great riches;    being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold. 2 The rich and poor have this in common:    The Lord made them both. 3 A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.    The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. 4 True humility and fear of the Lord    lead to […]

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March 21, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 21) Adrian Rogers on Proverbs “How To Be The Father Of A Wise Child” PROVERBS 21: “If you punish a mocker, the simpleminded become wosw”

March 21, 2022 – 1:06 am

Adrian Rogers on Proverbs “How To Be The Father Of A Wise Child” Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970’s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a […]

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March 20, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 20) The godly walk with integrity; blessed are their children who follow them. verse 7 RAISING KIDS WHO COUNT by Adrian Rogers

March 20, 2022 – 1:55 am

— Proverbs 20New Living Translation 20 Wine produces mockers; alcohol leads to brawls.    Those led astray by drink cannot be wise. 2 The king’s fury is like a lion’s roar;    to rouse his anger is to risk your life. 3 Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor;    only fools insist on quarreling. 4 Those too lazy to plow in the right […]

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March 19, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 19) “The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression. The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass” (Proverbs 19:11-12). Adrian Rogers God’s Answer to Anger

March 19, 2022 – 1:23 am

— Proverbs 19New Living Translation 19 Better to be poor and honest    than to be dishonest and a fool. 2 Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good;    haste makes mistakes. 3 People ruin their lives by their own foolishness    and then are angry at the Lord. 4 Wealth makes many “friends”;    poverty drives them all away. 5 A false witness will not go unpunished,    nor will a […]

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March 18, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 18) Adrian Rogers’ sermon outline for “Raising Kids that Count” v 15 “Intelligent people are always ready to learn.”

March 18, 2022 – 1:03 am

We have to listen to our kids chapter 18 tells us in verse 13: 13 Spouting off before listening to the facts    is both shameful and foolish. Proverbs 18 New Living Translation Proverbs 18 New Living Translation   18 Unfriendly people care only about themselves;    they lash out at common sense. 2 Fools have no interest in understanding;    they only want […]

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March 17, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 17) ADRIAN ROGERS ”The friendship Factor” Proverbs 17:17 “A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.”

March 17, 2022 – 1:50 am

— Proverbs 17New Living Translation 17 Better a dry crust eaten in peace    than a house filled with feasting—and conflict. 2 A wise servant will rule over the master’s disgraceful son    and will share the inheritance of the master’s children. 3 Fire tests the purity of silver and gold,    but the Lord tests the heart. 4 Wrongdoers eagerly listen to gossip;    liars pay close attention […]

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John macarthur – Walking in Wisdom, Part 1   March 16, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 16) v 22 Discretion is a life-giving fountain to those who possess it, but discipline is wasted on fools.

March 16, 2022 – 1:33 am

— Proverbs 16New Living Translation 16 We can make our own plans,    but the Lord gives the right answer. 2 People may be pure in their own eyes,    but the Lord examines their motives. 3 Commit your actions to the Lord,    and your plans will succeed. 4 The Lord has made everything for his own purposes,    even the wicked for a day of disaster. 5 The Lord detests the proud;    they will surely be […]

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March 15, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 15)  “The Lord will destroy the house of the proud” (Proverbs 15:25).  Adrian Rogers “The Peril of Pride”

March 15, 2022 – 1:02 am

— Proverbs 15New Living Translation 15 A gentle answer deflects anger,    but harsh words make tempers flare. 2 The tongue of the wise makes knowledge appealing,    but the mouth of a fool belches out foolishness. 3 The Lord is watching everywhere,    keeping his eye on both the evil and the good. 4 Gentle words are a tree of life;    a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. […]

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March 14, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY ( PROVERBS 14)  Adrian Rogers: God’s Grace in the Workplace [#1019] (Audio) Proverbs 14:23 “In all labor there is profit.”

March 14, 2022 – 11:41 pm

—- Proverbs 14 New Living Translation Proverbs 14New Living Translation 14 A wise woman builds her home,    but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. 2 Those who follow the right path fear the Lord;    those who take the wrong path despise him. 3 A fool’s proud talk becomes a rod that beats him,    but the words of the […]

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March 13, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 13) v 24 “Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them” John MacArthur article: Parenting in an Anti-Spanking Culture

March 13, 2022 – 1:48 am

— Parenting in an Anti-Spanking Culture Articles  Deuteronomy 6:6–7; Proverbs 10:13; Proverbs 13:24; Proverbs 19:18; Proverbs 22:15; Proverbs 23:14; Ephesians 6:4 Proverbs 13New Living Translation 13 A wise child accepts a parent’s discipline;[a]    a mocker refuses to listen to correction. 2 Wise words will win you a good meal,    but treacherous people have an appetite for violence. 3 Those who control their tongue will have a […]

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March 12, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 12)

March 12, 2022 – 1:00 am

verse 25 “Worry weighs a person down;” Sermon Overview Scripture Passage: Proverbs 12:25 A heavy heart is the beginning of misery, and we were never meant to carry the load. A burdened soul breaks the spirit. A broken spirit thins the immunity of the body. The body then begins to wither, and we get ill. In […]

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March 10, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 10) The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it” (Proverbs 10:22) Adrian Rogers on Proverbs

March 10, 2022 – 1:03 am

— Proverbs 10 New Living Translation — Proverbs 10New Living Translation The Proverbs of Solomon 10 The proverbs of Solomon: A wise child[a] brings joy to a father;    a foolish child brings grief to a mother. 2 Tainted wealth has no lasting value,    but right living can save your life. 3 The Lord will not let the godly go hungry,    but he refuses to […]

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March 9, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 9) v So don’t bother correcting mockers;They will only hate you

March 9, 2022 – 1:02 am

— Proverbs 9New Living Translation 9 Wisdom has built her house;    she has carved its seven columns.2 She has prepared a great banquet,    mixed the wines, and set the table.3 She has sent her servants to invite everyone to come.    She calls out from the heights overlooking the city.4 “Come in with me,” she urges the simple.    To those who lack good judgment, […]

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March 8, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 8) v 11 For wisdom is far more valuable than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with it.

March 8, 2022 – 1:01 am

— Proverbs 8New Living Translation Wisdom Calls for a Hearing 8 Listen as Wisdom calls out!    Hear as understanding raises her voice!2 On the hilltop along the road,    she takes her stand at the crossroads.3 By the gates at the entrance to the town,    on the road leading in, she cries aloud,4 “I call to you, to all of you!    I raise my […]

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March 7, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 7) The immoral woman

March 7, 2022 – 1:01 am

— Proverbs 7 New Living Translation Proverbs 7New Living Translation Another Warning about Immoral Women 7 Follow my advice, my son;    always treasure my commands.2 Obey my commands and live!    Guard my instructions as you guard your own eyes.[a]3 Tie them on your fingers as a reminder.    Write them deep within your heart. 4 Love wisdom like a sister;    make insight a beloved […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Edit | Comment

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Daily Wire and Matt Walsh’s ‘What is a Woman’ Documentary Sheds Light on Disturbing Transgender Agenda 

Daily Wire and Matt Walsh’s ‘What is a Woman’ Documentary Sheds Light on Disturbing Transgender Agenda

Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire’s “What Is a Woman?” documentary discusses the gender identity crisis in America with a variety of experts and activists (Photo: The Daily Wire)

“I’ve heard people say that there are no differences between male and female. Those people are idiots.”

Thus begins the Daily Wire host Matt Walsh’s new “What Is a Woman?” documentary, which highlights the left’s ever-growing reluctance and inability to define gender. Think that defining the qualities of men and women is easy for most people today? Think again.

While some may struggle to “figure out” women, Walsh identifies that Western culture’s obsession with gender identity has paralyzed people from defining what a woman is. As the documentary progresses, we see further evidence that the transgender narrative has not only rejected the definitions of “man” and “woman” as insensitive and transphobic, but has dismantled the very concept of universal truth and reality.

Fittingly released on the first day of “Pride Month,” Walsh’s documentary is a thought-provoking, humorous, yet often emotional and disturbing film that illuminates the contradictory and dangerous narrative of the transgenderagenda.

In the documentary, Walsh interviews “the experts,” such as “gender-affirming” therapists, sex change surgeons, and gender ideology professors (most of whom are transgender themselves or members of the LGBTQ+ community), asking them, “What is a woman?” The majority of responders say they have no idea how to define womanhood or refuse to answer the question, calling it bigoted and pointless. Not only are they unable to provide a simple definition of a woman, but they find the entire concept offensive and transphobic.

The documentary begins on a humorous note, as Walsh asks a family therapist, “How do I know if I’m a woman? I mean I like scented candles and I watch ‘Sex and the City.’”

“What a great question!” the therapist (who has every indication of being a woman) says, nodding and smiling encouragingly.

“So, what is a woman?” Walsh asks. A disconcerted look enters the counselor’s eye: “Great question! But I’m not a woman, so I can’t really answer that.”

“I thought therapy would make me less confused,” Walsh said. Us too, Matt.

So, he takes to the streets to ask the common American if they can solve this conundrum. Surprisingly, most of the interviewees responded to the “what is a woman?” question with a blank stare and nervous laughter. Most said it couldn’t be defined and said they would accept Walsh as a woman if that’s what he believed he was.

Especially entertaining is Walsh’s trip to the Women’s March—surely they’ll know what a woman is if they’re marching for them, right? But no, the marching women either ignored Walsh or yelled, “Why are you here?”—insinuating that he was a man (without even asking his gender identity, the audacity!) and that a man had no right to attend a women’s march. “How can you have a women’s march if you don’t know what a woman is?” he asked. Touché.

What is the female gender, according to the transgender community? Walsh spoke with a transgender surgeon who differentiated between sex and gender, saying that sex-change surgery is “altering the physical characteristics of an individual to fit better with a gender identity that is female.” In that case, what is a woman, according to this surgeon? “A woman is a combination of your physical attributes, what you’re showing to the world and the gender clues you give, and hopefully those match your gender identity.”

As if the issue couldn’t get any more confusing, Walsh speaks with a pediatrician and professor who has worked in Planned Parenthood and advocates for “gender and reproductive justice.” She provides “gender affirmation care,” saying that a good doctor is there to listen to the patient and act on what they’re expressing. Walsh asked whether it was ethical for minors to be making life-altering decisions such as taking puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones, since children often have a fantastical, unrealistic interpretation of reality, such as believing in Santa Claus.

“Well, he’s real to them,” the pediatrician said. “But the fact that Santa exists isn’t true,” Walsh countered. “Whose truth are you talking about? It’s very real to the child,” the pediatrician responded.

The documentary makes it clear that Americans can no longer ignore the transgender movement. It is permeating every aspect of society, politics, and education and now targets children as young as preschoolers.

The push for children to define their own realities and irreversibly change their bodies is perhaps what is most disturbing about the transgender agenda. In what other sphere of medicine do patients, especially young children, prescribe both their malady and remedy to the affirmation and acceptance of a counselor or physician? As clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson said to Walsh, “It’s not my job to affirm as a therapist, you come to see me because there’s something wrong.

The fact that the transgender agenda is increasingly targeting young children is what psychiatrist Miriam Grossman finds most disturbing. Grossman explains to Walsh the history of the transgender and sex-ed movement and highlights the unethical, traumatic techniques and flawed studies that have shaped it over the years. “It’s unspeakable what these people have done to our children,” she says.

Not only is the transgender movement harming women’s sports, exposing children to inappropriate material, and encouraging them to reject science and universal truth, it is also irreparably damaging children’s bodies and destroying their futures.

The most moving and persuasive interview occurred with Scott Newgent, a biological female who transitioned to a male as an adult but passionately argues against the rise in gender surgery among children and the subjectivity of gender. “I’m a biological woman that medically transitioned to appear like a man through synthetic hormones and surgery,” Newgent said. “I will never be a man. Is it transphobic for me to tell the truth?”

Newgent describes the details and horrific side effects of gender reassignment surgery that are so conveniently hidden from public discourse. Having undergone multiple surgeries, illnesses, and painful, permanent side effects, Newgent told Walsh, “Nobody would help me, including the doctor who did this to me, because I lost my insurance. I probably won’t live very long.”

Newgent said that the possible risks and side effects were never discussed when considering gender reassignment surgery, and warns parents and anyone considering sex-change surgery that “the truth is that medical transition is experimental.”

Revealing an arm mutilated from skin grafts, Newgent broke down in tears on camera, exclaiming in horror that minor children are regularly operated on without any discussion of the risks and permanence of the surgery, or any discussion as to whether children should ethically be allowed or able to consent to such procedures.

“We’re butchering a generation of children because no one’s willing to talk about anything,” Newgent said. “This is wrong on so many levels. Kids aren’t able to consent.”

The transgender movement is ultimately an attack on scientific fact, the concept of reality, and the meaning of language. No longer are words allowed to mean one thing. No longer is the word “truth” socially acceptable, because who are we to deny “your reality” or “your truth?”

A professor of women (whatever those are, anyway) gender, and sexuality responded to Walsh’s statement that he was seeking the truth with “I’m really uncomfortable with that language of ‘getting to the truth’ because it sounds deeply transphobic to me. The word truth is condescending and rude.”

Sensing that this concept is a purely Western phenomenon, Walsh heads to Nairobi to immerse himself in the customs of a local tribe. In this culture, gender norms and roles are crucial to the survival of the tribe. The men protect and provide, and the women maintain the home and nurture the children. It’s an honor to be a man or a woman in this tribe, and every member knows their distinct duties and privileges.

A group of men laugh in disbelief when Walsh asks what they would do if a man wanted to look and act like a woman—the entire concept is ridiculous and unheard of. “The Maasai people don’t think much about gender,” Walsh observes on the way back home to America, “but they have a firm sense of their identity.”

Instead of solving gender dysphoria and body image discomfort, Americans’ infatuation with identity has only created greater societal instability and refused to answer the most foundational of questions. “What Is a Woman?” succeeds in highlighting the inconsistencies and dangerous agenda of the transgender movement.

Walsh’s angle is particularly effective, as he gives the majority of the screentime to pro-trans activists and medical professionals. The lack of data or persuasive argument for the trans community isn’t the producers’ fault, the “experts” simply couldn’t provide any. Walsh’s sarcastic, borderline-dark sense of humor in the delightfully ridiculous street interviews breaks up the more serious, unsettling information and gives a sense of hope and common sense to the insanity that’s been normalized.

Bold, humorous, thought-provoking, and undeniably chilling, “What is a Woman?” equips its audience to better face the ever-growing reality of the transgender agenda and its far-reaching effects through civil discourse, empathy, and a firm grasp of truth, science, and reality.

At the end of the film, it’s Walsh’s wife who’s the true MVP. “Hey honey, what’s a woman?” Walsh asks. “An adult human female,” she responds.

Of course, who knew it could be that simple?

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

After Life 2 – Man identifies as an 8 year old girl

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After Life on Netflix

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Before I get into the fine article by Brendan O’Neill which I present in its entirety, I wanted to quote Francis Schaeffer who spent his life examining the humanism that now Ricky Gervais embraces!

All humans have moral motions and that is why Ricky Gervais knows it is wrong to let biological men use ladies’ bathrooms!!!!!!

Francis Schaffer in his book THE GOD WHO IS THERE addresses these same issues:

“[in Christianity] there is a sufficient basis for morals. Nobody has ever discovered a way of having real “morals” without a moral absolute. If there is no moral absolute, we are left with hedonism (doing what I like) or some form of the social contract theory (what is best for society as a a hole is right). However, neither of these alternative corresponds to the moral motions that men have. Talk to people long enough and deeply enough, and you will find that they consider some things are really right and something are really wrong. Without absolutes, morals as morals cease to exist, and humanistic mean starting from himself is unable to find the absolute he needs. But because the God of the Bible is there, real morals exist. Within this framework I can say one action is right and another wrong, without talking nonsense.” 117

Francis Schaeffer in the film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?

Francis and Edith Schaeffer

Brendan O’Neill

Ricky Gervais is guilty of blasphemy

He has mocked identity politics – the god of our times

I have long thought that if Life of Brian came out today, it wouldn’t be Christians kicking up a fuss about it — it would be trans activists.

When Monty Python’s classic tale of a man mistaken for a Messiah came to cinemas in 1979, people of faith weren’t happy. They saw it as taking the mick out of Christ and they aired their displeasure noisily. Nuns in New York picketed cinemas. In Ireland the film was banned for eight years.

In 2022 I reckon it would be a very different story. It wouldn’t be Monty Python’s ribbing of the gospels that would outrage the chattering classes — it would be their mockery of trans people.

Life of Brian was way ahead of time. It was Terf before Terf was even a thing. There is a brilliantly observed scene in which Stan of the People’s Front of Judea — or is it the Judean People’s Front? — says he wants to become Loretta.

‘I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta’, says Stan, played by Eric Idle. When the others push back and say he can’t just become a woman, he says: ‘It’s my right as a man.’ Which was remarkably perspicacious.

‘I want to have babies’, says Stan / Loretta. ‘You can’t have babies! You haven’t got a womb!’, barks John Cleese’s Reg. Transphobic or what? To calm things down, Francis (Michael Palin) says they should accept Stan’s desire to be Loretta as being ‘symbolic of our struggle against oppression’. ‘Symbolic of his struggle against reality…’ Reg mutters.

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Imagine if a film or TV show did something like that today. Showed an aspiring ‘trans woman’ being mocked for not having the right body parts to be a woman. Showed a man who wants to be a woman being told — for laughs, remember — that the only thing he’s struggling against is reality.

The cancel-culture mob would kick into action. There’d be a Change.org petition, maybe even a physical protest outside the offices of the production company or streaming service that was foolish enough to broadcast such trans-poking humour. ‘Jokes kill!’, we would be told, day and night.

Hell, JK Rowling can’t even very politely say ‘men aren’t women’ without being subjected to weeks of hatred and violent threats — so heaven help the film company that tried to air a Stan / Loretta skit in these febrile times.

This week, my theory about Life of Brianin 2022 was kind of proven right. For we had the pretty extraordinary sight of Ricky Gervais getting a very free ride for his God-mocking while being dragged into the Twitter stocks for his gags about trans issues.

In his new Netflix special SuperNature, Gervais vents his atheistic spleen. The Christian God is cruel and perverted, he says. Those Christian fundamentalists who believe Aids is the Almighty’s way of punishing gay sex clearly believe in a God who’s up in heaven thinking, ‘I’m sick of all this bumming’. And so just as God once said ‘Let there be light’, according to Gervais in the 1980s He said, ‘Let there be Aids’. What a rotter.

This isn’t the first time Gervais has made fun of God and those who believe in him. He’s famously an atheist. He talks about it all the time. (Rather too much, in my view.) But God-bashing is fine these days. Cool, even. Christians tend to take it in their stride. Believers have mostly kept their counsel following Gervais’s latest mockery of their wicked, ridiculous God.

The same cannot be said of trans activists and their allies. Not even remotely. They have responded with fury to Gervais’s blasphemy against the new god of genderfluidity.

He’s been called all the usual names. Transphobe, Terf, bigot. His crime? Choosing not to adhere to the ideology of transgenderism, daring to dissent from that pseudo-religious mantra we are all now pressured into saying: ‘Trans women are women.’

What’s funny about this spittle-flecked response to Gervais’s trans jokes is that he was really only saying what trans activists themselves have said. He had a bit on ‘old-fashioned women’ — ‘you know, the ones with wombs’ — complaining about born males using their bathrooms. ‘What if he rapes me?’, these women say. To which Gervais, playing the trans activist, responds: ‘What if she rapes you, you… Terf whore.’

Cutting, yes. But also incredibly accurate. Some police forces and courts do indeed refer to rapists as ‘she’ and ‘her’, if that’s how they identify. And, as feminists have pointed out, this results in rape victims being pressured to refer to their rapist with female pronouns. As for the language, anyone who has spent more than five minutes online in recent years will know that that kind of thing is said to gender-critical women all the time.

Like all great blasphemous comics, Gervais is merely shining a light on things that really are said, and things which really do happen, and inviting us, his audience, to laugh and say: ‘Yeah, that is kind of ridiculous.’ Much as Monty Python did with the Bible, in fact.

But, say Gervais’s humourless critics, while the likes of Monty Python were punching up — against God, no less — Gervais is punching down, against vulnerable, marginalised trans people. I don’t buy this at all. Gervais has made it clear that he fully supports rights for trans people. His issue is with the excesses of trans activism and the authoritarianism of identity politics more broadly.

‘I talk about Aids, famine, cancer, the Holocaust, rape, paedophilia’, he says in SuperNature. ‘But no, the one thing you mustn’t joke about is identity politics.’

Absolutely. And that’s because identitarianism is the god of our times. It’s the new religion of the elites, their means of controlling and reprimanding the masses. Ridiculing identity politics is to the 21st century what questioning the authority of God was to the 15th. The woke rage against Gervais really does echo earlier outbursts of intolerant religious fury against anyone who dared to dissent from the Word of God.

A.F. Branco for Jan 12, 2022

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Dennett wearing a button-up shirt and a jacket

I was referred this subject by a tweet by Daniel Dennett which referenced a fine article by Robyn E. Blumner in defense of her boss at the RICHARD DAWKINS FOUNDATION and you can read my response at this link.
Richard Dawkins Cooper Union Shankbone.jpg

Ricky Gervais is a secular humanist just like his good friend Richard Dawkins and it is the humanists who have bought into this trans-identity politics and as a result the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION has stripped Dawkins of his 1996 HUMANIST OF THE YEAR award.

As an evangelical I have had the opportunity to correspond with more more secular humanists that have signed the Humanist Manifestos than any other evangelical alive (at least that has been one of my goals since reading Francis Schaeffer’s books and watching his films since 1979).

Not everyone I have corresponded with is a secular humanist but  many are the top scientists and atheist thinkers of today and hold this same secular views. Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are  Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-),  Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), (Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010),  Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-),  Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), and Michael Martin (1932-), Harry Kroto (1939-), Marty E. Martin (1928-), Richard Rubenstein (1924-), James Terry McCollum (1936-), Edward O. WIlson (1929-), Lewis Wolpert (1929), Gerald Holton(1922-), Martin Rees (1942-), Alan Macfarlane (1941-),  Roald Hoffmann (1937-), Herbert Kroemer (1928-), Thomas H. Jukes(1906-1999) and  Ray T. Cragun (1976-). 

Let me make a few points about Ricky personally and then a few about this comedy routine by the secular humanist Ricky Gervais.

Notice below in AFTER LIFE how he suspects Anne of being a Christian when she tells him “We are not just here for us. We are here for others,“

After Life Ricky GervaisRicky Gervais and Penelope Wilton in ‘After Life’ (CREDIT: Netflix)

(Above) Tony (played by Ricky) and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.

In the fourth episode of season 1 of AFTER LIFE is the following discussion between Anne and Tony:

Tony: My brother-in-law wants me to try dating again.
Anne: Oh excellent! You need some tips.
Tony: why would I need some tips?

Anne: I imagine you are awful with women…Well all men are awful with women but grumpy selfish ones are the worst.

Tony: Let me take notes. This is dynamite.

Tony: I would just be honest. Tell them my situation and tell them what I am going through. Be honest up front.
Anne: So it is all about you then?

Tony: I can’t win can I? I don’t want to date again. I don’t want to live without Lisa.

Anne: But is not just about you is it? That is what I am saying. What if a nice date made her feel good? That might feel nice right? We are just here for us. We are here for others.

Tony: I don’t do the whole God thing I am afraid.

Anne: Neither do I. It is a load of rubbish. All we got is each other. We have to help each other struggle until we die then we are done. No point in felling sorry for ourselves and making everyone else unhappy too. Might as [kill] yourself if you feel that bad.
Tony: Are you sure you want to work for the Samaritans?

Christ came to this world and his followers have changed this world for the better more than any other group that ever existed. When Anne makes the assertions, “But is not just about you is it? That is what I am saying. What if a nice date made her feel good? That might feel nice right? We are not just here for us. We are here for others,” Tony assumes she is a Christian.

If you found yourself in a dark alley late at night, with a group of rough-looking, burly young men walking swiftly toward you, would you feel better knowing they were coming from a Bible study?

If we are only cosmic accidents, how can there be any meaning in our lives? If this is true, which it is in an atheistic world view, our lives are for nothing. It would not matter in the slightest bit if I ever existed. This is why the atheist, if honest and consistent, must face death with despair. Their life is for nothing. Once they are gone, they are gone forever.

I highly recommend Ricky Gervais series AFTER LIFE which is running on NETFLIX because it reminds me of King Solomon trying to find meaning in life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture!!!

God put Solomon’s story in Ecclesiastes in the Bible with the sole purpose of telling people like Ricky that without God in the picture you  will find out the emptiness one feels when possessions are trying to fill the void that God can only fill.

Then in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes Solomon returns to looking above the sun and he says that obeying the Lord is the proper way to live your life. The  answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted. If you need more evidence then go to You Tube and watch the short video:

NOW TO RICKY’S COMEDY:

Brendan O’Neill noted above:

‘I want to have babies’, says Stan / Loretta. ‘You can’t have babies! You haven’t got a womb!’, barks John Cleese’s Reg. Transphobic or what? To calm things down, Francis (Michael Palin) says they should accept Stan’s desire to be Loretta as being ‘symbolic of our struggle against oppression’. ‘Symbolic of his struggle against reality…’ Reg mutters….

He’s been called all the usual names. Transphobe, Terf, bigot. His crime? Choosing not to adhere to the ideology of transgenderism, daring to dissent from that pseudo-religious mantra we are all now pressured into saying: ‘Trans women are women.’

What’s funny about this spittle-flecked response to Gervais’s trans jokes is that he was really only saying what trans activists themselves have said. He had a bit on ‘old-fashioned women’ — ‘you know, the ones with wombs’ — complaining about born males using their bathrooms. ‘What if he rapes me?’, these women say. To which Gervais, playing the trans activist, responds: ‘What if she rapes you, you… Terf whore.’

Ricky  is trying to use common sense (through sarcasm) on people that “GOD GAVE…OVER to depraved [minds]. Romans 1 states:

26 For this reason (M)GOD GAVE THEM OVER  to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural…

28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are…inventors of evil,

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Francis Schaeffer.jpg

Francis Schaeffer later in this blog post discusses what the unbelievers in Romans 1 were rejecting, but first John MacArthur discusses what the unbelievers in the Democratic Party today are affirming and how these same activities were condemned 2000 years ago in Romans 1.

Christians Cannot And MUST Not Vote Democrat – John MacArthur

A Democrat witness testifying before the HouseJudiciary Committee on abortion rights Thursday declared that men can get pregnant and have abortions. This reminds of Romans chapter 1 and also John MacArthur’s commentary on the 2022 Agenda of the Democratic Party:

25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…26 For this reason (M)GOD GAVE THEM OVER  to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are…inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32 but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Here is what John MacArthur had to say:

Now, all of a sudden, not only is this characteristic of our nation, but we now promote it. One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm.

I know from last week’s message that there was some response from people who said, “Why are you getting political?”

Romans 1 is not politics. This has to do with speaking the Word of God through the culture in which we live….it’s about iniquity and judgment. And why do we say this? Because this must be recognized for what it is–sin, serious sin, damning sin, destructive sin.

Dem witness tells House committee men can get pregnant, have abortions

‘I believe that everyone can identify for themselves,’ Aimee Arrambide tells House Judiciary Committee

Aimee Arrambide, the executive director of the abortion rights nonprofit Avow Texas, was asked by Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., to define what “a woman is,” to which she responded, “I believe that everyone can identify for themselves.”
“Do you believe that men can become pregnant and have abortions?” Bishop asked.

“Yes,” Arrambide replied.

The remarks from Arrambide followed a tense exchange between Bishop and Dr. Yashica Robinson, another Democrat witness, after he similarly asked her to define “woman.”

Aimee Arrambide testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on May 11, 2020.  (YouTube screenshot)

Aimee Arrambide testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on May 11, 2020.  (YouTube screenshot) (Screenshot/ House Committee on the Judiciary)

“Dr. Robinson, I noticed in your written testimony you said that you use she/her pronouns. You’re a medical doctor – what is a woman?” Bishop asked Robinson, an OBGYN and board member with Physicians for Reproductive Health.

“I think it’s important that we educate people like you about why we’re doing the things that we do,” Robinson responded. “And so the reason that I use she and her pronouns is because I understand that there are people who become pregnant that may not identify that way. And I think it is discriminatory to speak to people or to call them in such a way as they desire not to be called.”

“Are you going to answer my question? Can you answer the question, what’s a woman?” Bishop asked.

Donna Howard and Aimee Arrambide speaks at Making Virtual Storytelling and Activism Personal during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 14, 2022 in Austin, Texas.

Donna Howard and Aimee Arrambide speaks at Making Virtual Storytelling and Activism Personal during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 14, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Hubert Vestil/Getty Images for SXSW)

“I’m a woman, and I will ask you which pronouns do you use?” Robinson replied. “If you tell me that you use she and her pronouns … I’m going to respect you for how you want me to address you.”

“So you gave me an example of a woman, you say that you are a woman, can you tell me otherwise what a woman is?” Bishop asked.

“Yes, I’m telling you, I’m a woman,” Robinson responded.

“Is that as comprehensive a definition as you can give me?” Bishop asked.

“That’s as comprehensive a definition as I will give you today,” Robinson said. “Because I think that it’s important that we focus on what we’re here for, and it’s to talk about access to abortion.”

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“So you’re not interested in answering the question that I asked unless it’s part of a message you want to deliver…” Bishop fired back.

Wednesday’s hearing, titled, “Revoking your Rights,” addressed the threat to abortion rights after the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion signaled the high court is poised to soon strike down Roe v. Wade.
John MacArthur explains God’s Wrath on unrighteousness from Romans Chapt…

First is what Romans says:

Romans 1:18-32

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Unbelief and Its Consequences

18 For (A)the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who (B)suppress the truth [a]in unrighteousness, 19 because (C)that which is known about God is evident [b]within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For (D)since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, (E)being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not [c]honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became (F)futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 (G)Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and (H)exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [d]crawling creatures.

24 Therefore (I)God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be (J)dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for [e]a (K)lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, (L)who is blessed [f]forever. Amen.

26 For this reason (M)God gave them over to (N)degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [g]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, (O)men with men committing [h]indecent acts and receiving in [i]their own persons the due penalty of their error.

28 And just as they did not see fit [j]to acknowledge God any longer, (P)God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are (Q)gossips, 30 slanderers, [k](R)haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, (S)disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, (T)unloving, unmerciful; 32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of (U)death, they not only do the same, but also (V)give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Here is what John MacArthur had to say:

Now, all of a sudden, not only is this characteristic of our nation, but we now promote it. One of the parties, the Democratic Party, has now made Romans 1, the sins of Romans 1, their agenda. What God condemns, they affirm. What God punishes, they exalt. Shocking, really. The Democratic Party has become the anti-God party, the sin-promoting party. By the way, there are seventy-two million registered Democrats in this country who have identified themselves with that party and maybe they need to rethink that identification.

I know from last week’s message that there was some response from people who said, “Why are you getting political?”

Romans 1 is not politics. The Bible is not politics. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with speaking the Word of God through the culture in which we live. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s not about personalities; it’s about iniquity and judgment. And why do we say this? Because this must be recognized for what it is–sin, serious sin, damning sin, destructive sin.

WHAT HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REJECTED? THE ANSWER IS THE GOD WHO HAS REVEALED HIM SELF THROUGH THE BOOK OF NATURE AND THE BOOK OF SCRIPTURE!

God Is There And He Is Not Silent
Psalm 19
Intro. 1) Francis Schaeffer lived from 1912-1984. He was one of the Christian
intellectual giants of the 20th century. He taught us that you could be a Christian and not abandon the mind. One of the books he wrote was entitled He Is There And He Is Not Silent. In that work he makes a crucial and thought provoking statement, “The infinite- personal God is there, but also he is not silent; that changes the whole world…He is there and is not a silent, nor far-off God.” (Works of F.S., Vol 1, 276).
2) God is there and He is not silent. In fact He has revealed Himself to us in 2 books: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. Francis Bacon, a 15th century scientist who is credited by many with developing the scientific method said it this way: “There are 2 books laid before us to study, to prevent us from falling into error: first the volume to the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the creation, which expresses His power.”
3) Psalm 19 addresses both of God’s books, the book of nature in vs 1-6 and the book of Scripture in vs. 7-14. Described as a wisdom Psalm, its beauty, poetry and splendor led C.S. Lewis to say, “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world” (Reflections on the Psalms, 63).
Trans. God is there and He is not silent. How should we hear and listen to the God who talks?
I. Listen To God Speak Through Nature 19:1-6
God has revealed himself to ever rational human on the earth in two ways: 1) nature and 2) conscience. We call this natural or general revelation. In vs. 1-6 David addresses the wonder of nature and creation.

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History

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Dan Mitchell on SOCIAL SECURITY: “The ideal approach is to take the current pay-as-you-go entitlement and turn it into a system of personal retirement accounts!”

Social Security’s Ever-Closer Fiscal Crisis

As part of my recent appearance on The Square Circle (we discussed Uvalde police, gun control, and Ukraine), I said that the new Social Security numbers were the under-reported story of the week.

For more details, I was referring to the latest Trustees Report, published yesterday by the Social Security Administration.

Most people, when that annual report is released, focus on when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money. But since the Trust Fund only contains IOUs, I view that as a largely irrelevant number.

Instead, I immediately look at Table VI.G9, which shows how much revenue is being collected and how much money is being spent every year.

Here is that data displayed in a chart. The left side shows actual fiscal numbers from 1970 to 2021 while the right side shows the projections between 2022 and 2100.

As you can see in the chart, revenues going into the system (the blue line) are growing rapidly.

But you also can see that Social Security spending (the orange line) is expanding even faster.

And when spending grows faster than revenue, one consequences is more red ink.

This next chart shows that annual deficits between now and 2100 will total $56 trillion.

At the risk of understatement, these two charts should be very sobering. Especially since they only show the taxes, spending, and red ink for Social Security.

If we also add the fiscal aggregates for other entitlement programs, it would be abundantly clear why we face a “crisis” and a “train wreck.”

So how do we solve this mess. I’ve written about the needed reforms for Medicare and Medicaid, so let’s focus today on Social Security.

The ideal approach is to take the current pay-as-you-go entitlement and turn it into a system of personal retirement accounts.

Many nations around the world have adopted this approach, most notably Chile and Australia.

But as I noted two years ago, there will be a big “transition” challenge if the United States decides to modernize.

P.S. I mentioned “public choice” at the end of that clip. You can click here to learn more about the economic analysis of political choices.

P.P.S. I mentioned that Chile and Australia have created personal retirement accounts. You can also learn about reforms in Switzerland, Hong Kong, Netherlands, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, Israel, and Sweden.

In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount.  I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.

In this episode “How to Stay Free” Friedman makes the statement “What we need is widespread public recognition that the central government should be limited to its basic functions: defending the nation against foreign enemies, preserving order at home, and mediating our disputes. We must come to recognize that voluntary cooperation through the market and in other ways is a far better way to solve our problems than turning them over to the government.”

In this episode Milton Friedman makes the point, “There was no widespread public demand for Social Security programs… it had to be sold to the American people primarily by the group of reformers, intellectuals, new dealers, the people associated with FDR. The Social Security is one of the most misleading programs. It has been sold as an insurance program. It’s not an insurance program. It’s a program which combines a bad tax, a flat tax on wages up to a maximum with a very inequitable and uneven system of giving benefits under which some people get much, some people get little.”
Pt 5
Lawrence E. Spivak: I know, I believe, I say I know, I think I know, but I’ll say I believe that you felt, you blame the government for the Great Depression of 1929 through 1933 and of course, you had to blame FDR for all he did, but most people feel that he saved this free economy of ours.
Friedman: Given the catastrophe of the Great Depression, there is no doubt in my mind that emergency government measures were necessary. The government had made a mess. Not FDR’s government, it was the government that preceded him. Although it was mainly the Federal Reserve System which really wasn’t subject to election. But once FDR came in he did two very different kinds of things.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Well, had the government made a mess by what it did or but by what it didn’t do.
Friedman: By what it did. By it’s monetary policies which forced and produced a sharp decline in the total quantity of money. It was a mismanagement of the monetary apparatus. If there had been no federal reserve system, in my opinion, there would not have been a Great Depression at that time. But given that the depression had occurred, and it was a catastrophe of almost unimaginable kind, I do not fault at all, indeed on the contrary I commend Roosevelt for some of emergency measures he took. They obviously weren’t of the best, but they were emergency measures and you had an emergency you had to deal with. And the emergency measure such as relief programs, even the WPA which was a make work program, these served a very important function. He also served a very important function by giving people confidence in themselves. His great speech about the only thing we have to fear is fear itself was certainly a very important element in restoring confidence to the public at large. But he went much beyond that, he also started to change, under public pressure, the kind of government system we had. If you go beyond the emergency measures to the, what he regarded as reform measures, things like NRA and AAA, which were declared unconstitutional, but then from there on to the Social Security system, to the …
Lawrence E. Spivak: Take the Social Security System for a minute. The people wanted that, they wanted that protection. They were frightened, they wanted welfare.
Friedman: Not at all.
Lawrence E. Spivak: When you said pressure, who, pressure from whom?
Friedman: Pressure from people who were expressing what they thought the public ought to have. There was no widespread public demand for Social Security programs. The demands…….
Lawrence E. Spivak: No demand for welfare with 13 million people …….
Friedman: There was a demand for welfare and assistance I was separating out the emergency measures from the permanent measures. Social Security in the first 10 years of its existence, helped almost no one. It only took in money. Very few people qualified for benefits. It wasn’t an emergency measure. It was a long term measure. And it had to be sold to the American people primarily by the group of reformers, intellectuals, new dealers, the people associated with FDR. The Social Security is one of the most misleading programs. It has been sold as an insurance program. It’s not an insurance program. It’s a program which combines a bad tax, a flat tax on wages up to a maximum with a very inequitable and uneven system of giving benefits under which some people get much, some people get little. So that Social Security….
Lawrence E. Spivak: Would you now abolish Social Security?
Friedman: I would not go back on any of the commitments that the government has made. But I would certainly reform Social Security in a way that would end in its ultimate elimination.
Lawrence E. Spivak: If you’re not afraid then of the free market under any circumstances, where cooperation which you find necessary which you believe all to come, fails to come, where competition becomes so fierce and becomes very frequently corrupt and where, all where it becomes stupid. Take for example what’s happening in today’s market, the conglomerates. Which have been seizing up all sorts of, we happen to live in a hotel that’s run by a conglomerate. Why should ITT, for example, run a hotel and how are you going to stop that.
Friedman: Well in the first place, once again,
Lawrence E. Spivak: Without government, without…..
Friedman: Once again, it’s government measures that have promoted the conglomerates. The only major reason we have conglomerates is because they are a very effective way to get around a whole batch of tax legislation. Let me ask a different question. Who is more effected by government regulations, by government controls?
Lawrence E Spivak: I thought I was supposed to ask the questions. But I was warned that you might turn these on me.
Friedman: Well tell me, whose more effected the big fellow who can deal with it or that have a separated department to handle the red tape, or the poor fellow?
Lawrence E. Spivak: The big fellow can always take care of himself under any system.
Friedman: Right, and therefore he’ll want a system which gives the big fellow the least advantage. And the system under which he can get government to help him out, gives him the most advantage, not the least. You say am I afraid of greed, of lack of cooperation. Of course. But we always have to compare the real with the real. What are the real alternatives? And if we look at the record of history, if we go back to the 19th century which everybody always points to as the era of the robber baron who strode around the land and ground the poor under his heel, what do we find? The greatest outpouring of voluntary charitable activity in the history of the world. This University, this University of Chicago is an example. It was founded by contributions by John D. Rockefeller and other people. The colleges and universities throughout the Midwest. If you go back and ask when was the Red Cross founded, when was the Salvation Army founded, when were the Boy Scouts founded, you’ll discover all of that came during the 19th century in the era of unregulated rapacious capitalism.
Lawrence E. Spivak: I’d like to go back for a minute to the question of conglomerates. Granted that what you say that the government policies concentration on central government if you will, or whatever you want to call it, are responsible for the growth of conglomerates. What would we, what should we do about them now? Government try to undue them? Or should anybody try to undue them?
Friedman: No.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Or should you just let them fail?
Friedman: You should let them fail, of course. I am strongly opposed to government bailing any of them out. You should let them fail. The best things you can do in my opinion, are first to have complete free trade so you can have conglomerates in other countries compete with conglomerates in this country. We may have only two or three automobile companies, but there’s Toyota, there’s Volkswagen, competition from abroad is effective. But in the second place…
Lawrence E. Spivak: When do you say complete free trade you mean all over the world?
Friedman: No sir. I mean the U.S. all by itself unilaterally should eliminate all trade barriers. We would be better off if all the countries did the same.
Lawrence E. Spivak: What do you think would happen if we just did it though?
Friedman: I think we’d be very much better off and a lot others would then follow our example. That’s what happened in the 19th Century when Great Britain in 1846 completed removed, unilaterally, all trade barriers so that…..
Lawrence E. Spivak: You don’t think this country would be flooded with goods of all kinds from all over the world, maybe cheaper in that we wouldn’t have great unemployment in this country?
Friedman: What would the people who sold us goods do with their money? They’d get dollars, what would they do with the dollars? Eat them. If they want to send us goods and take dollars in return, we’re delighted to have them. No. That’s not a problem as long as you have a free exchange rate. Because we cannot export without importing, we cannot import without exporting. You would not have a reduction in employment, what you’d have would be a different pattern of employment. You’d have more employment in export industries and less employment in those industries that compete with import. But go back to conglomerates, Larry for a moment. I just want to ask a very different kind of a question. Conglomerates are not very attractive, I would much rather have a lot of small enterprises. But there’s all the difference in the world between a private conglomerate and a government conglomerate. In general, the government conglomerate can get money from you without your agreeing to give it to him. You and I pay for Amtrak and for the postal deficit whether we use the services of Amtrak or the postal deficit or not. I don’t pay your conglomerate unless I rent one of their apartments. I get something for my money. So bad as private conglomerates are, they’re less bad than one of the alternatives.

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June 3, 2022 READING A PROVERB A DAY (PROVERBS 3) Adrian Rogers Fathers Who Teach Their Children to Be Wise Proverbs 1,3, 9, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24

Adrian Rogers: How to Be the Father of a Wise Child (1932)

Proverbs 3New Living Translation

Trusting in the Lord

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 scornerChildren 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.

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Book of Ecclesiastes

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Adrian Rogers: Are fathers necessary?

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

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FRIEDMAN FRIDAY Milton Friedman and “Zero Cost” Expanded Government 

Milton Friedman and “Zero Cost” Expanded Government

By:

Richard McKenzie

President Joe Biden has declared that his proposed $3.5 (or is it $5.5?) trillion “Build Back Better” social agenda will have a “zero” cost—as in $0.00! Why?  Because the added expenditures will be covered by increased revenues drawn from businesses and the “rich.”

The President and other progressive Democrats, who have parroted the Biden claim, should reflect on the wisdom of the late Milton Friedman, who had a knack for crystallizing stark economic truths.

During the early 1980s, when supply-side economics was the rage, Reagan Republicans promoted tax-rate cuts as a means of reviving the economy (because the cuts would increase people’s incentives to work, save, and invest), which Friedman believed distracted them from concern about what was happening to government outlays, which continued to rise throughout the decade.

Friedman framed the fiscal issues of the day differently, and with far greater clarity than anyone else. He admonished everyone (including President Reagan’s advisors), to “Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax. . . If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing.”

And make no mistake, government outlays have risen substantially, especially lately, increasing from $3.9 trillion in 2016 to $6.6 trillion in 2020 (including Covid outlays). Even without passage of the reconciliation bill, the White House estimates that federal outlays will continue their upward march through 2026.

Friedman understood that the real taxes on the economy ultimately come in the form of government outlays siphoning off resources for public purposes that would otherwise be used in the private sector. If the government chooses to build a bridge or road, the concrete and steel could have been used to produce houses and office buildings.

How the added government outlays are financed—through taxes, newly printed dollars and inflation, or debt—is of secondary importance, perhaps only marginally affecting people’s incentives. The costs of expanded government outlays will be incurred through the shift of resources from private-directed uses to public-directed uses.

By declaring that his “Build Back Better” agenda has no costs, President Biden must be confused—if he truly means what he has been saying. He may think that the dollars expended for an expanded array of welfare recipients will come only at the expense of the “rich.” Not so at all. Those transferred dollars will enable the recipients to buy goods they could not otherwise buy, which means they can pull resources away from the production of the variety of goods that ordinary Walmart (and Home Depot and Kroger) shoppers, many with far less-than-privileged means, would have bought.


Richard McKenzie is an economics professor (emeritus) in the Merage Business School at the University of California, Irvine. His latest book is The Selfish Brain: A Layman’s Guide to a New Way of Economic Thinking (2021).

Milton Friedman in 2004. (Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice/Public Domain/via Wikimedia)
T

No, of course not. But it still might happen anyway.

A specter is haunting the Biden administration — the specter of inflation. Past inflations have not only harmed consumers, savers, and people on fixed incomes. They have also brought down politicians. Among the risks to the Democratic congressional majority is a rise in prices that lifts inflation to near the top of voters’ concerns, coupled by the type of Fed rate increase that hits stocks and housing. Inflation is one more signpost on the road to Republican revival, along with illegal immigration, crime, and semi-closed public schools embracing far-left critical race theory.


Milton Friedman’s FREE TO CHOOSE “How to cure inflation” Transcript and Video (60 Minutes)

Image result for milton friedman free to choose

In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount.  I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.“If we could just stop the printing presses, we would stop inflation,” Milton Friedman says in “How to Cure Inflation” from the Free To Choose series. Now as then, there is only one cause of inflation, and that is when governments print too much money. Milton explains why it is that politicians like inflation, and why wage and price controls are not solutions to the problem.

http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=9While many people have a fairly good grasp of what inflation is, few really understand its fundamental cause. There are many popular scapegoats: labor unions, big business, spendthrift consumers, greed, and international forces. Dr. Friedman explains that the actual cause is a government that has exclusive control of the money supply. Friedman says that the solution to inflation is well known among those who have the power to stop it: simply slow down the rate at which new money is printed. But government is one of the primary beneficiaries of inflation. By inflating the currency, tax revenues rise as families are pushed into higher income tax brackets. Thus, inflation transfers wealth and resources from the private to the public sector. In short, inflation is attractive to government because it is a way of increasing taxes without having to pass new legislation to raise tax rates. Inflation is in fact taxation without representation. Wage and price controls are not the cure for inflation because they treat only the symptom (rising prices) and not the disease (monetary expansion). History records that such controls do not work; instead, they have perverse effects on both prices and economic growth and undermine the fundamental productivity of the economy. There is only one cure for inflation: slow the printing presses. But the cure produces the painful side effects of a temporary increase in unemployment and reduced economic growth. It takes considerable political courage to undergo the cure. Friedman cites the example of Japan, which successfully underwent the cure in the mid-seventies but took five years to squeeze inflation out of the system. Inflation is a social disease that has the potential for destroying a free society if it is unchecked. Prolonged inflation undermines belief in the basic equity of the free market system because it tends to destroy the link between effort and reward. And it tears the social fabric because it divides society into winners and losers and sets group against group.(Taxation without representation: Getting knocked up to higher tax brackets because of inflation pt 1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dTWDNKH3c

Volume 9 – How to Cure Inflation

Transcript:
Friedman: The Sierra Nevada’s in California 10,000 feet above sea level, in the winter temperatures drop to 40 below zero, in the summer the place bakes in the thin mountain air. In this unlikely spot the town of Body sprang up. In its day Body was filled with prostitutes, drunkards and gamblers part of a colorful history of the American West.
A century ago, this was a town of 10,000 people. What brought them here? Gold. If this were real gold, people would be scrambling for it. The series of gold strikes throughout the West brought people from all over the world, all kinds of people. They came here for one purpose and one purpose only, to strike it rich, quick. But in the process, they built towns, cities, in places where nobody would otherwise have dreamed of building a city. Gold built these cities and when the gold was exhausted, the cities collapsed and became ghost towns. Many of the people who came here ended up the way they began, broke and unhappy. But a few struck it rich. For them, gold was real wealth. But was it for the world as a whole. People couldn’t eat the gold, they couldn’t wear the gold, they couldn’t live in houses made of gold. Because there was more gold, they had to pay a little more gold to buy goods and services. The prices of things in terms of gold went up.
At tremendous cost, at sacrifice of lives, people dug gold out of the bowels of the earth. What happened to that gold? Eventually, at long last, it was transported to distant places only to be buried again under the ground. This time in the vaults of banks throughout the world. There is hardly anything that hasn’t been used for money; rock salt in Ethiopia, brass rings in West Africa, Calgary shells in Uganda, even a toy cannon. Anything can be used as money. Crocodile money in Malaysia, absurd isn’t it?
That beleaguered minority of the population that still smokes may recognize this stuff as the raw material from which their cigarettes are made. But in the early days of the colonies, long before the U.S. was established, this was money. It was the common money of Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. It was used for all sorts of things. The legislature voted that it could be used legally to pay taxes. It was used to buy food, clothing and housing. Indeed, one of the most interesting sites was to see the husky young fellows at that time, lug 100 pounds of it down to the docks to pay the costs of the passage of the beauteous young ladies who had come over from England to be their brides.
Now you know how money is. There’s a tendency for it to grow, for more and more of it to be produced and that’s what happened with this tobacco. As more tobacco was produced, there was more money. And as always when there’s more money, prices went up. Inflation. Indeed, at the very end of the process, prices were 40 times as high in terms of tobacco as they had been at the beginning of the process. And as always when inflation occurs, people complained. And as always, the legislature tried to do something. And as always, to very little avail. They prohibited certain classes of people from growing tobacco. They tried to reduce the total amount of tobacco grown, they required people to destroy part of their tobacco. But it did no good. Finally, many people took it into their own hands and they went around destroying other people’s tobacco fields. That was too much. Then they passed a law making it a capital offense, punishable by death, to destroy somebody else’s tobacco. Grecian’s Law, one of the oldest laws in economics, was well illustrated. That law says that cheap money drives out dear money and so it was with tobacco. Anybody who had a debt to pay, of course, tried to pay it in the worst quality of tobacco he had. He saved the good tobacco to sell overseas for hard money. The result was that bad money drove out good money.
Finally, almost a century after they had started using tobacco as money, they established warehouses in which tobacco was deposited in barrels, certified by an inspector according to his views as to it’s quality and quantity. And they issued warehouse certificates which people gave from one to another to pay for the bills that they accumulated.
These pieces of green printed paper are today’s counterparts of those tobacco certificates. Except that they bear no relation to any commodity. In this program I want to take you to Britain to see how inflation weakens the social fabric of society. Then to Tokyo, where the Japanese have the courage to cure inflation. To Berlin, where there is a lesson to be learned from the West Germans and how so called cures are often worse than the disease. And to Washington where our government keeps these machines working overtime. And I am going to show you how inflation can be cured.
The fact is that most people enjoy the early stages of the inflationary process. Britain, in the swinging 60’s, there was plenty of money around, business was brisk, jobs were plentiful and prices had not yet taken off. Everybody seemed happy at first. But by the early 70’s, as the good times rolled along, prices started to rise more and more rapidly. Soon, some of these people are going to lose their jobs. The party was coming to an end.
The story is much the same in the U.S. Only the process started a little later. We’ve had one inflationary party after another. Yet we still can’t seem to avoid them. How come?
Before every election our representatives would like to make us think we are getting a tax break. When they are able to do it, while at the same time actually raising our taxes because of a bit of magic they have in their kit bag. That magic is inflation. They reduced the tax rates but the taxes we have to pay go up because we are automatically shoved into higher brackets by the effective inflation. A neat trick. Taxation without representation.
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Pt 2 Many a political leader has been tempted to turn to wage and price controls despite their repeated failure in practice. On this subject they never seem to learn. But some lessons may be learned. That happened to British P
Bob Crawford: The more I work, it seems like the more they take off me. I know if I work an extra day or two extra days, what they take in federal income tax alone is almost doubled because apparently it puts you in a higher income tax bracket and it takes more off you.
Friedman: Bob Crawford lives with his wife and three children in a suburb of Pittsburgh. They’re a fairly average American family.
Mrs. Crawford: Don’t slam the door Daphne. Okay. Alright. What are you doing? Making your favorite dish.
Friedman: We went to the Crawford’s home after he had spent a couple of days working out his federal and state income taxes for the year. For our benefit, he tried to estimate all the other taxes he had paid as well. In the end, though, he didn’t discover much that would surprise anybody.
Bob Crawford: Inflation is going up, everything is getting more expensive. No matter what you do, as soon as you walk out of the house, everything went up. Your gas bills keep going up, electric bills, your gasoline, you can name a thousand things that are going up. Everything is going sky high. Your food. My wife goes to the grocery store. We used to live on say, $60 or $50 every two weeks just for our basic food. Now it’s $80 or $90 every two weeks. Things are just going out of sight as far as expense to live on. Like I say it’s getting tough. It seems like every month it gets worse and worse. And I don’t know where it’s going to end. At the end of the day that I spend nearly $6,000 of my earnings on taxes. That leaves me with a total of $12,000 to live on. It might seem like a lot of money, but five, six years ago I was earning $12,000.
Friedman: How does taxation without representation really effect how much the Crawford family has left to spend after it’s paid its income taxes. Well in 1972 Bob Crawford earned $12,000. Some of that income was not subject to income tax. After paying income tax on the rest he had this much left to spend. Six years later he was earning $18,000 a year. By 1978 the amount free from tax was larger. But he was now in a higher tax bracket so his taxes went up by a larger percentage than his income. However, those dollars weren’t worth anything like as much. Even his wages, let alone his income after taxes, hadn’t kept up with inflation. His buying power was lower than before. That is taxation without representation in practice.
Unnamed Individual: We have with us today you brothers that are sitting here today that were with us on that committee and I’d like to tell you….
Friedman: There are many traditional scapegoats blamed for inflation. How often have you heard inflation blamed on labor unions for pushing up wages. Workers, of course, don’t agree.
Unnamed Individual: But fellows this is not true. This is subterfuge. This is a myth. Your wage rates are not creating inflation.
Friedman: And he’s right. Higher wages are mostly a result of inflation rather than a cause of it. Indeed, the impression that unions cause inflation arises partly because union wages are slow to react to inflation and then there is pressure to catch up.
Worker: On a day to day basis, try to represent our own numbers. But that in fact is not the case. Not only can we not play catch up, we can’t even maintain a wage rate commensurate with the cost of living that’s gone up in this country.
Friedman: Another scapegoat for inflation is the cost of goods coming from abroad. Inflation, we’re told, is imported. Higher prices abroad driving up prices at home. It’s another way government can blame someone else for inflation. But this argument, too, is wrong. The prices of imports and the countries from which they come are not in terms of dollars, they are in terms of lira or yen or other foreign currencies. What happens to their prices in dollars depends on exchange rates which in turn reflect inflation in the United States.
Since 1973 some governments have had a field day blaming the Arabs for inflation. But if high oil prices were the cause of inflation, how is it that inflation has been less here in Germany, a country that must import every drop of oil and gas that it uses on the roads and in industry, then for example it is in the U.S. which produces half of its own oil. Japan has no oil of its own at all. Yet at the very time the Arabs were quadrupling oil prices, the Japanese people were bringing inflation down from 30 to less than 5% a year. The fallacy is to confuse particular prices like the price of oil, with prices in general. Back at home, President Nixon understood this.
Nixon: “Now here’s what I will not do. I will not take this nation down the road of wage and price controls however politically expedient that may seem. The pros of rationing may seem like an easy way out, but they are really an easy way in for more trouble. To the explosion that follows when you try to clamp a lid on a rising head of steam without turning down the fire under the pot, wage and price controls only postpone the day of reckoning. And in so doing, they rob every American of a very important part of his freedom.
Friedman: Now listen to this:
Nixon: “The time has come for decisive action. Action that will break the vicious circle of spiraling prices and costs. I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States for a period of 90 days. In addition, I call upon corporations to extend the wage price freeze to all dividends.”
Friedman: Many a political leader has been tempted to turn to wage and price controls despite their repeated failure in practice. On this subject they never seem to learn. But some lessons may be learned. That happened to British Prime Minister James Callahan who finally discovered that a very different economic myth was wrong. He told the Labor Party Conference about it in 1976.
James Callahan: “We used to think that you could use, spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candor that option no longer exists. It only works on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. That’s the history of the last 20 years.”
Friedman: Well, it’s one thing to say it. One reason why inflation does so much harm is because it effects different groups differently. Some benefit and of course they attribute that to their own cleverness. Some are hurt, but of course they attribute that to the evil actions of other people. And the whole problem is made far worse by the false cures which government adopts, particularly wage and price control.
The garbage collectors in London felt justifiably aggrieved because their wages had not been permitted to keep pace with the cost of living. They struck, hurting not the people who impose the controls, but their friends and neighbors who had to live with mounting piles of rat infested garbage. Hospital attendants felt justifiably aggrieved because their wages had not been permitted to keep up with the cost of living. They struck, hurting not the people who impose the controls, but cancer patients who were turned out of hospital beds. The attendants behaved as a group in a way they never would have behaved as individuals. One group is set against another group. The social fabric of society is torn apart inflicting scars that it will take decades to heal and all to no avail because wage and price controls, far from being a cure for inflation, only make inflation worse.
Within the memory of most of our political leaders, there’s one vivid example of how economic ruin can be magnified by controls. And the classic demonstration of what to do when it happens.
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(Wage and Price Controls don’t work)

Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later.
That’s why in both cases there is a strong temptation to overdo it. To drink too much and to print too much money. When it comes to the cure, it’s the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later.
Pt 3
Germany, 1945, a devastated country. A nation defeated in war. The new governing body was the Allied Control Commission, representing the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. They imposed strict controls on practically every aspect of life including wages and prices. Along with the effects of war, the results were tragic. The basic economic order of the country began to collapse. Money lost its value. People reverted to primitive barter where they used cameras, fountain pens, cigarettes, whiskey as money. That was less than 40 years ago.
This is Germany as we know it today. Transformed into a place a lot of people would like to live in. How did they achieve their miraculous recovery? What did they know that we don’t know?
Early one Sunday morning, it was June 20, 1948, the German Minister of Economics, Ludwig Earhardt, a professional economist, simultaneously introduced a new currency, today’s Deutsche Mark, and in one fell swoop, abolished almost all controls on prices and wages. Why did he do it on a Sunday morning? It wasn’t as you might suppose because the Stock Markets were closed on that day, it was, as he loved to confess, because the offices of the American, the British, and the French occupation authorities were closed that day. He was sure that if he had done it when they open they would have countermanded the order. It worked like a charm. Within days, the shops were full of goods. Within months, the German economy was humming along at full steam. Economists weren’t surprised at the results, after all, that’s what a price system is for. But to the rest of the world it seemed an economic miracle that a defeated and devastated country could in little more than a decade become the strongest economy on the continent of Europe.
In a sense this city, West Berlin, is something of a unique economic test tube. Set as it is deep in Communist East Germany. Two fundamentally different economic systems collide here in Europe. Ours and theirs, separated by political philosophies, definitions of freedom and a steel and concrete wall.
To digress from inflation, economic freedom does not stand alone. It is part of a wider order. I wanted to show you how much difference it makes by letting you see how the people live on the other side of that Berlin Wall. But the East German authorities wouldn’t let us. The people over there speak the same language as the people over here. They have the same culture. They have the same for bearers. They are the same people. Yet you don’t need me to tell you how differently they live. There is one simple explanation. The political system over there cannot tolerate economic freedom. The political system over here could not exist without it.
But political freedom cannot be preserved unless inflation is kept in bounds. That’s the responsibility of government which has a monopoly over places like this. The reason we have inflation in the United States or for that matter anywhere in the world is because these pieces of paper and the accompanying book entry or their counterparts in other nations are growing more rapidly than the quantity of goods and services produced. The truth is inflation is made in one place and in one place only. Here in Washington. This is the only place were there are presses like this that turn out these pieces of paper we call money. This is the place where the power resides to determine how rapidly the amount of money shall increase.
What happened to all that noise? That’s what would happen to inflation if we stop letting the amount of money grow so rapidly. This is not a new idea. It’s not a new cure. It’s not a new problem. It’s happened over and over again in history. Sometimes inflation has been cured this way on purpose. Sometimes it’s happened by accident. During the Civil War the North, late in the Civil War, overran the place in the South where the printing presses were sitting up, where the pieces of paper were being turned out. Prior to that point, the South had a very rapid inflation. If my memory serves me right, something like 4% a month. It took the Confederacy something over two weeks to find a new place where they could set up their printing presses and start them going again. During that two week period, inflation came to a halt. After the two week period, when the presses started running again, inflation started up again. It’s that clear, that straightforward. More recently, there’s another dramatic example of the only effective way to deal with rampant inflation.
In 1973, Japanese housewives going to market were faced with an unpleasant fact. The cash in their purses seemed to be losing its value. Prices were starting to sore as the awful story of inflation began to unfold once again. The Japanese government knew what to do. What’s more, they were prepared to do it. When it was all over, economists were able to record precisely what had happened. In 1971 the quantity of money started to grow more rapidly. As always happens, inflation wasn’t affected for a time. But by late 1972 it started to respond. In early 73 the government reacted. It started to cut monetary growth. But inflation continued to soar for a time. The delayed reaction made 1973 a very tough year of recession. Inflation tumbled only when the government demonstrated its determination to keep monetary growth in check. It took five years to squeeze inflation out of the system. Japan attained relative stability. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid the difficult road the Japanese had to follow before they could have both low inflation and a healthy economy. First they had to live through a recession until slow monetary growth had its delayed effect on inflation.
Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later.
That’s why in both cases there is a strong temptation to overdo it. To drink too much and to print too much money. When it comes to the cure, it’s the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later. That’s why it’s so hard to persist with the cure. In the United States, four times in the 20 years after 1957, we undertook the cure. But each time we lacked the will to continue. As a result, we had all the bad effects and none of the good effects. Japan on the other hand, by sticking to a policy of slowing down the printing presses for five years, was by 1978 able to reap all the benefits, low inflation and a recovering economy. But there is nothing special about Japan. Every country that has had the courage to persist in a policy of slow monetary growth has been able to cure inflation and at the same time achieve a healthy economy.
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Pt 4
The job of the Federal Reserve is not to run government spending; it’s not to run government taxation. The job of the Federal Reserve is to control the money supply and I believe, frankly, I have always believed as you know, that these are excuses and not reasons for the performance.
DISCUSSION
Participants: Robert McKenzie, Moderator; Milton Friedman; Congressman Clarence J. Brown; William M. Martin, Chairman of Federal Reserve 1951_1970; Beryl W. Sprinkel, Executive Vice President, Harris Bank, Chicago; Otmar Emminger, President, Ieutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt West Germany
MCKENZIE: And here at the Harper Library of the University of Chicago, our distinguished guests have their own ideas, too. So, lets join them now.
BROWN: If you could control the money supply, you can certainly cut back or control the rate of inflation. I’d have to say that that prescription is a little bit easier to write than it is to fill. I think there are some other ways to do it and I would relate the money supply __ I think inflation is a measure of the relationship between money and the goods and services that money is meant to cover. And so if you can stimulate the goods, the production of goods and services, it’s helpful. It’s a little tougher to control the money supply, although I think it can be done, than just saying that you should control it, because we’ve got the growth of credit cards, which is a form of money; created, in effect, by the free enterprise system. It isn’t all just printed in Washington, but that may sound too defensive. I think he was right in saying that the inflation is Washington based.
MCKENZIE: Mr. Martin, nobody has been in the firing line longer than you, 17 years head of the Fed. Could you briefly comment on that and we’ll go around the group.
MARTIN: I want to say 19 years.
(Laughter)
MARTIN: I wouldn’t be out here if it weren’t for Milton Friedman, today. He came down and gave us advice from time to time.
FRIEDMAN: You’ve never taken it.
(Laughter)
MCKENZIE: He’s going to do some interviewing later, I warn you.
MARTIN: And I’m rather glad we didn’t take it __
(Laughter)
MARTIN: __ all the time.
SPRINKEL: In your 19 years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Bill, the average growth in the money supply was 3.1 percent per year. The inflation rate was 2.2 percent. Since you left, the money supply has exactly doubled. The inflation rate is average over 7 percent, and, of course, in recent times the money supply has been growing in double-digit territory as has our inflation rate.
EMMINGER: May I, first of all, confirm two facts which have been so vividly brought out in the film of Professor Friedman; namely, that at the basis of the relatively good performance of Western Germany were really two events. One, the establishment of a new sound money which we try to preserve sound afterwards. And, secondly, the jump overnight into a free market economy without any controls over prices and wages. These are the two fundamental facts. We have tried to preserve monetary stability by just trying to follow this prescription of Professor Friedman; namely, monetary discipline. Keeping monetary growth relatively moderate. I must, however, warn you it’s not so easy as it looks. If you just say, governments have to have the courage to persist in that course.
FRIEDMAN: Nobody does disagree with the proposition that excessive growth in money supply is an essential element in the inflationary process and that the real problem is not what to do, but how to have the courage and the will to do it. And I want to go and start, if I may, on that subject; because I think that’s what we ought to explore. Why is it we haven’t had the courage and don’t, and under what circumstances will we? And I want to start with Bill Martin because his experience is a very interesting experience. His 19 years was divided into different periods. In the first period, that average that Beryl Sprinkel spoke about, averaged two very different periods. An early period of very slow growth and slow inflation; a later period of what at the time was regarded as creeping inflation __ now we’d be delighted to get back to it. People don’t remember that at the time that Mr. Nixon introduced price and wage controls in 1971 to control an outrageous inflation, the rate of inflation was four-and-a-half percent per year. Today we’d regard that as a major achievement; but the part of the period when you were Chairman, was a period when the inflation rate was starting to creep up and money growth rate was also creeping up. Now if I go from your period, you were eloquent in your statements to the public, to the press, to everyone, about the evils of inflation, and about the determination on the Federal Reserve not to be the architect of inflation. Your successor, Arthur Burns, was just as eloquent. Made exactly the same kinds of statements as effectively, and again over and over again said the Federal Reserve will not be the architect of inflation. His successor, Mr. G. William Miller, made the same speeches, and the same statements, and the same protestations. His successor, Paul Volcker, he is making the same statements. Now my question to you is: Why is it that there has been such a striking difference between the excellent pronouncements of all Chairmen of the Fed, therefore it’s not personal on you. You have a lot of company, unfortunately for the country. Why is it that there has been such a wide diversion between the excellent pronouncements on the one hand and what I regard as a very poor performance on the other?
MARTIN: Because monetary policy is not the only element. Fiscal policy is equally important.
FRIEDMAN: You’re shifting the buck to the Treasury.
MARTIN: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: To the Congress. We’ll get to Mr. Brown, don’t worry.
MARTIN: Yeah, that’s right.
(Laughter)
MARTIN: The relationship of fiscal policy to monetary policy is one of the important things.
MCKENZIE: Would you remind us, the general audience, when you say “fiscal policy”, what you mean in distinction to “monetary policy”?
MARTIN: Well, taxation.
MCKENZIE: Yeah.
MARTIN: The raising revenue.
FRIEDMAN: And spending.
MARTIN: And spending.
FRIEDMAN: And deficits.
MARTIN: And deficits, yes, exactly. And I think that you have to realize that when I’ve talked for a long time about the independence of the Federal Reserve. That’s independence within the government, not independence of the government. And I’ve worked consistently with the Treasury to try to see that the government is financed. Now this gets back to spending. The government says they’re gonna spend a certain amount, and then it turns out they don’t spend that amount. It doubles.
FRIEDMAN: The job of the Federal Reserve is not to run government spending; it’s not to run government taxation. The job of the Federal Reserve is to control the money supply and I believe, frankly, I have always believed as you know, that these are excuses and not reasons for the performance.
MARTIN: Well that’s where you and I differ, because I think we would be irresponsible if we didn’t take into account the needs and what the government is saying and doing. I think if we just went on our own, irresponsibly, I say it on this, because I was in the Treasury before I came to this __
FRIEDMAN: I know. I know.
MARTIN: __ go to the Fed; and I know the other side of the picture. I think we’d be rightly condemned by the American people and by the electorate.
FRIEDMAN: Every central bank in this world, including the German Central Bank, including the Federal Reserve System, has the technical capacity to make the money supply do over a period of two or three or four months, not daily, but over a period, has the technical capacity to control it.
(Several people talking at once.)
FRIEDMAN: I cannot explain the kind of excessive money creation that has occurred, in terms of the technical incapacity of the Federal Reserve System or of the German Central Bank, or of the Bank of England, or any other central bank in the world.
EMMINGER: I wouldn’t say technically we are incapable of doing that, although we have never succeeded in controlling the money supply month that way. But I would say we can, technically, control it half yearly, from one half-year period to the next and that would be sufficient __
FRIEDMAN: That would be sufficient.
EMMINGER: __ for controlling inflation. But however I __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: It doesn’t move.
FRIEDMAN: I’m an economic scientist, and I’m trying to observe phenomena, and I observe that every Federal Reserve Chairman says one thing and does another. I don’t mean he does, the system does.
MCKENZIE: Yeah. How different is your setup in Germany? You’ve heard this problem of governments getting committed to spending and the Fed having, one way or the other, to accommodate itself to it. Now what’s your position on this very interesting problem?
EMMINGER: We are very independent of the government, from the government, but, on the other hand, we are an advisor of the government. Also on the budget deficits and they would not easily go before Parliament with a deficit which much of it is openly criticized and disapproved by the same bank. Why because we have a tradition in our country that we can also publicly criticize the government on his account. And second, as if happened in our case too, the government goes beyond what is tolerable for the sake of moral equilibrium. We have let it come through in the capital markets. That is to say they have enough interest rates that has drawn public criticism and that has had some effect on their attitude.
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Pt 5
 I think that is a very important point that Dr. Emminger just made because there is not a one-to-one relationship between government deficits and what happens to the money supply at all. The pressure on the Federal Reserve comes indirectly. It comes because large government deficits, if they are financed in the general capital market, will drive up interest rates and then we have the right patents in Congress and their successors pressuring the Federal Reserve to enter in and finance the deficit by printing money as a way of supposedly holding down interest rates. Now before I turn to Mr. Brown and ask him that, I just want to make one point which is very important. The Federal Reserve’s activities in trying to hold down interest rates have put us in a position where we have the highest interest rates in history. It’s another example of how, of the difference between the announced intentions of a policy, and the actual results. But now I want to come to Clarence Brown and ask him, shift the buck to him, and put him on the hot seat for a bit. The government spending has been going up rapidly, Republican administration or Democratic administration. This is a nonpartisan issue, it doesn’t matter. Government deficits have been going up rapidly. Republican administration or Democratic administration. Why is it that here again you have the difference between pronouncements and performance? There is no Congressman, no Senator, who will come out and say, “I am in favor of inflation.” There is not a single one who will say, “I am in favor of big deficits.” They’ll all say we want to balance the budget, we want to hold down spending, we want an economical government. How do you explain the difference between performance and talk on the side of Congress?
BROWN:
FRIEDMAN: I think that is a very important point that Dr. Emminger just made because there is not a one-to-one relationship between government deficits and what happens to the money supply at all. The pressure on the Federal Reserve comes indirectly. It comes because large government deficits, if they are financed in the general capital market, will drive up interest rates and then we have the right patents in Congress and their successors pressuring the Federal Reserve to enter in and finance the deficit by printing money as a way of supposedly holding down interest rates. Now before I turn to Mr. Brown and ask him that, I just want to make one point which is very important. The Federal Reserve’s activities in trying to hold down interest rates have put us in a position where we have the highest interest rates in history. It’s another example of how, of the difference between the announced intentions of a policy, and the actual results. But now I want to come to Clarence Brown and ask him, shift the buck to him, and put him on the hot seat for a bit. The government spending has been going up rapidly, Republican administration or Democratic administration. This is a nonpartisan issue, it doesn’t matter. Government deficits have been going up rapidly. Republican administration or Democratic administration. Why is it that here again you have the difference between pronouncements and performance? There is no Congressman, no Senator, who will come out and say, “I am in favor of inflation.” There is not a single one who will say, “I am in favor of big deficits.” They’ll all say we want to balance the budget, we want to hold down spending, we want an economical government. How do you explain the difference between performance and talk on the side of Congress?
BROWN: Well, first I think we have to make one point. I’m not so much with the government as I am against it.
FRIEDMAN: I understand.
BROWN: As you know, I’m a minority member of Congress.
FRIEDMAN: Again, I’m not __ I’m not directing this at you personally.
BROWN: I understand, of course; and while the administrations, as you’ve mentioned, Republican and Democratic administrations, have both been responsible for increases in spending, at least in terms of their recommendations. It is the Congress and only the Congress that appropriates the funds and determines what the taxes are. The President has no authority to do that and so one must lay it at the feet of the U.S. Congress. Now, I guess we’d have to concede that it’s a little bit more fun to give away things than it is to withhold them. And this is the reason that the Congress responds to a general public that says, “I want you to cut everybody else’s program but the one in which I am most particularly interested. Save money, but incidentally, my wife is taking care of the orphanages and so lets try to help the orphanages,” or whatever it is. Let me try to make a point, if I can, however, on what I think is a new spirit moving within the Congress and that is that inflation, as a national affliction, is beginning to have an impact on the political psychology of many Americans. Now the Germans, the Japanese and others have had this terrific postwar inflation. The Germans have been through it twice, after World War I and World War II, and it’s a part of their national psyche. But we are affected in this country by the depression. Our whole tax structure is built on the depression. The idea of the tax structure in the past has been to get the money out of the mattress where it went after the banks failed in this country and jobs were lost, and out of the woodshed or the tin box in the back yard, get it out of there and put it into circulation. Get it moving, get things going. And one of the ways to do that was to encourage inflation. Because if you held on to it, the money would depreciate; and the other way was to tax it away from people and let the government spend it. Now there’s a reaction to that and people are beginning to say, “Wait just a minute. We’re not afflicted as much as we were by depression. We’re now afflicted by inflation, and we’d like for you to get it under control.” Now you can do that in another way and that without reducing the money supply radically. I think the Joint Economic Committee has recommended that we do it gradually. But the way that you can do it is to reduce taxes and the impact of government, that is the weight of government and increase private savings so that the private savings can finance some of the debt that you have.
FRIEDMAN: There is no way you can do it without reducing, in my opinion, the rate of monetary growth. And I, recognizing the facts, even though they ought not to be that way, I wonder whether you can reduce the rate of monetary growth unless Congress actually does reduce government spending as well as government taxes.
BROWN: The problem is that every time we use demand management, we get into a kind of an iron maiden kind of situation. We twist this way and one of the spikes grabs us here, so we twist that way and a spike over here gets us. And every recession has had higher basic unemployment rates than the previous recession in the last several years and every inflation has had higher inflation. We’ve got to get that tilt out of the society.
MCKENZIE: Wouldn’t it be fair to say, though, that a fundamental difference is the Germans are more deeply fearful of a return to inflation, having had the horrifying experience between the wars, especially. We tend to be more afraid of recession turning into depression.
EMMINGER: I think there is something in it and in particular in Germany the government would have to fear very much in their electoral prospects if they went into such an election period with a high inflation rate. But there is another important difference.
MARTIN: We fear unemployment more than inflation it seems.
EMMINGER: You fear unemployment, but unemployment is feared with us, too, but inflation is just as much feared. But there is another difference; namely, once you have got into that escalating inflation, every time the base, the plateau is higher, it’s extremely difficult to get out of it. You must avoid getting into that, now that’s very cheap advice from me because you are now.
(Laughing)
EMMINGER: But we had, for the last fifteen, twenty years, always studied foreign experiences, and told ourselves we never must get into this vicious circle. Once you are in, it takes a long time to get out of it. That is what I am preaching now, that we should avoid at all costs to get again into this vicious circle as we had it already in ’73_’74. It took us, also, four years to get out of it, although we were only at eight percent inflation. Four years to get down to three percent. So you __
MCKENZIE: Those were __ yes.
EMMINGER: You have, I think, the question of whether you can do if in a gradualist way over many, many years, or whether you don’t need a sort of shock treatment.
____________________________________
her we go into a period of still higher unemployment later on and have it to do all over again. That’s the only choice we face. And when the public at large recognizes that, they will then elect people to Congress, and a President to office who is committed to less government spending and to less government printing of money and until that happens we will not cure inflation
Pt 6
SPRINKEL: The film said it took the Japanese _ what _ four years?
FRIEDMAN: Five years.
SPRINKEL: Five years. But one of my greatest concerns is that we haven’t suffered enough yet. Most of the nations that have finally got their inflations __
BROWN: Bad election speech.
SPRINKEL: __ well, I’m not running for office, Clarence.
(Laughter)
SPRINKEL: Most countries that finally got their inflation under control had 20, 30 percent or worse inflation. Germany had much worse and the public supports them. We live in a Democracy, and we’re getting constituencies that gain from inflation. You look at people that own real estate, they’ve done very well.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
SPRINKEL: And how can we get there without going through even more pain, and I doubt that we will.
FRIEDMAN: If you ask who are the constituencies that have benefited most from inflation there are no doubt, it is the homeowners.
SPRINKEL: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: But it’s also the __ it’s also the Congressmen who have been able to vote higher spending without having to vote higher taxes. They have in fact __
BROWN: That’s right.
FRIEDMAN: __ Congress has in fact voted for inflation. But you have never had a Congressman on record to that effect. It’s the government civil servants who have their own salaries are indexed and tied to inflation. They have a retirement benefit, a retirement pension that’s tied to inflation. They qualify, a large fraction of them, for Social Security as well, which is tied to inflation. So that the beneficial __
BROWN: Labor contracts that are indexed and many pricing things that are tied to it.
FRIEDMAN: But the one thing that isn’t tied to inflation and here I want to come back and ask why Congress has been so __ so bad in this area, is our taxes. It has been impossible to get Congress to index the tax system so that you don’t have the present effect where every one percent increase in inflation pushes people up into higher brackets and forces them to pay higher taxes.
BROWN: Well, as you know, I’m an advocate of that.
FRIEDMAN: I know you are.
MCKENZIE: Some countries do that, of course.
FRIEDMAN: Oh, of course.
MCKENZIE: Canada does that. Indexes the __
BROWN: And I went up to Canada on a little weekend seminar program on indexing and came back an advocate of indexing because I found out that the people who are delighted with indexing are the taxpayers.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
BROWN: Because as the inflation rate goes up their tax level either maintains at the same level or goes down. The people who are least __ well, the people who are very unhappy with it are the people who have to plan government spending because it is reducing the amount of money that the government has rather than watching it go up by ten or twelve billion. You get a little dividend to spend in this country, the bureaucrats do every year, but the politicians are unhappy with it too, as Dr. Friedman points out because, you see, politicians don’t get to vote a tax reduction, it happens automatically.
MCKENZIE: Yeah.
BROWN: And so you can’t go back and in a praiseworthy way tell your constituents that I am for you, I voted a tax reduction. And I think we ought to be able to index the tax system so that tax reduction is automatic, rather than have what we’ve had in the past, and that is an automatic increase in the taxes. And the politicians say, “Well, we’re sorry about inflation, but __”.
FRIEDMAN: You’re right and I want to __ I want to go and make a very different point. I sit here and berate you and you as government officials, and so on, but I understand very well that the real culprits are not the politicians, are not the central bankers, but it’s I and my fellow citizens. I always say to people when I talk about this, “If you want to know who’s responsible for inflation, look in the mirror.” It’s not because of the way you spend you money. Inflation doesn’t arise because you got consumers who are spendthrifts; they’ve always been spendthrifts. It doesn’t arise because you’ve got businessmen who are greedy. They’ve always been greedy. Inflation arises because we as citizens have been asking you as politicians to perform an impossible task. We’ve been asking you to spend somebody else’s money on us, but not to spend our money on anybody else.
BROWN: You don’t want us to cut back those dollars for education, right?
FRIEDMAN: Right. And, therefore, __ well, no, I do.
MCKENZIE: We’ve already had a program on that.
FRIEDMAN: We’ve already had a program on that and there’s no viewer of these programs who will be in any doubt about my position on that. But the public at large has not and this is where we come to the political will that Dr. Emminger quite properly talked about. It is __ everybody talks against inflation, but what he means is that he wants the prices of the things he sells to go up and the prices of the things he buys to go down. But, sooner or later, we come to the point where it will be politically profitable to end inflation. This is the point that __
SPRINKEL: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: __ I think you were making.
SPRINKEL: The suffering idea.
FRIEDMAN: Where do you think the __ you know, what do you think the rate of inflation has to be and judged by the experience of other countries before we will be in that position and when do you think that will happen?
SPRINKEL: Well, the evidence says it’s got to be over 20 percent. Now you would think we could learn from others rather than have to repeat mistakes.
FRIEDMAN: Apparently nobody can learn from history.
SPRINKEL: But at the present time we’re going toward higher and not lower inflation.
MCKENZIE: You said earlier, if you want to see who causes inflation look in the mirror.
FRIEDMAN: Right.
MCKENZIE: Now, for everybody watching and taking part in this, there must be some moral to that. What does need __ what has to be the change of attitude of the man in the mirror you’re looking at before we can effectively implement what you call a tough policy that takes courage?
FRIEDMAN: I think that the man in the mirror has to come to recognize that inflation is the most destructive disease known to modern society. There is nothing which will destroy a society so thoroughly and so fully as letting inflation run riot. He must come to recognize that he doesn’t have any good choices. That there are no easy answers. That once you get in this situation where the economy is sick of this insidious disease, there’s gonna be no miracle drug which will enable them to be well tomorrow. That the only choices he has, do I go through a tough period for four or five years of relatively high unemployment, relatively low growth or do I try to push it off by taking some more of the hair of the dog that bit me and get around it now at the cost of still higher unemployment, as Clarence Brown said, later on. The only choice this country faces, is whether we have temporary unemployment for a short period, as a side effect of curling inflation or whether we go into a period of still higher unemployment later on and have it to do all over again. That’s the only choice we face. And when the public at large recognizes that, they will then elect people to Congress, and a President to office who is committed to less government spending and to less government printing of money and until that happens we will not cure inflation.
____________________________________
FRIEDMAN: And therefore the crucial thing is to cut down total government spending from the point of view of inflation. From the point of view of productivity, some of the other measures you were talking about are far more important.
BROWN
Pt 7
BROWN: But, Dr. Friedman, let me __
(Applause)
BROWN: Let me differ with you to this extent. I think it is important that at the time you are trying to get inflation out of the economy that you also give the man in the street, the common man, the opportunity to have a little bit more of his own resources to spend. And if you can reduce his taxes at that time and then reduce government in that process, you give him his money to spend rather than having to yield up all that money to government. If you cut his taxes in a way to encourage it, to putting that money into savings, you can encourage the additional savings in a private sense to finance the debt that you have to carry, and you can also encourage the stimulation of growth in the society, that is the investment into the capital improvements of modernization of plant, make the U.S. more competitive with other countries. And we can try to do it without as much painful unemployment as we can get by with. Don’t you think that has some merit?
FRIEDMAN: The only way __ I am all in favor, as you know, of cutting government spending. I am all in favor of getting rid of the counterproductive government regulation that reduces productivity and disrupts investment. But __
BROWN: And we do that, we can cut taxes some, can we not?
FRIEDMAN: We should __ taxes __ but you are introducing a confusion that has confused the American people. And that is the confusion between spending and taxes. The real tax on the American people is not what you label taxes. It’s total spending. If Congress spends fifty billion dollars more than it takes in, if government spends fifty billion dollars, who do you suppose pays that fifty billion dollars?
BROWN: Of course, of course.
FRIEDMAN: The Arab Sheiks aren’t paying it. Santa Claus isn’t paying it. The Tooth Fairy isn’t paying it. You and I as taxpayers are paying it indirectly through hidden taxation.
MCKENZIE: Your view __
FRIEDMAN: And therefore the crucial thing is to cut down total government spending from the point of view of inflation. From the point of view of productivity, some of the other measures you were talking about are far more important.
BROWN: But if you concede that inflation and taxes are both part and parcel of the same thing, and if you cut spending __
FRIEDMAN: They’re not part and parcel of the same thing.
BROWN: If you cut spending you __ well, but, you take the money from them in one way or another. The average citizen.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
BROWN: To finance the growth of government.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
BROWN: So if you cut back the size of government, you can cut both their inflation and their taxes.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
BROWN: If you __
FRIEDMAN: I am all in favor of that.
BROWN: All right.
FRIEDMAN: All I am saying is don’t kid yourself into thinking that there is some painless way to do it. There just is not.
BROWN: One other way is productivity. If you can __ if you can increase production, then the impact of inflation is less because you have more goods chasing __
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely, but you have to have a sense of proportion. From the point of view of the real income of the American people, nothing is more important than increasing productivity. But from the point of view of inflation, it’s a bit actor. It would be a miracle if we could raise our productivity from three to five percent a year, that would reduce inflation by two percent.
BROWN: No question, it won’t happen overnight, but it’s part of the __ it’s part of a long range squeezing out of inflation.
FRIEDMAN: There is only one way to ease the __ in my opinion there is only one way to ease the pains of curing inflation and that way is not available. That way is to make it credible to the American people that you are really going to follow the policy you say you’re going to follow. Unfortunately I don’t see any way we can do that.
(Several people talking at once.)
EMMINGER: Professor Friedman, that’s exactly the point which I wanted to illustrate by our own experience. We also had to squeeze out inflation and there was a painful time of one-and-a-half years, but after that we had a continuous lowering of the inflation rate with a slow upward movement in the economy since 1975. Year by year inflation went down and we had a moderate growth rate which has led us now to full employment.
FRIEDMAN: That’s what __
EMMINGER: So you can shorten this period by just this credibility and by a consensus you must have, also with the trade unions, with the whole population that they acknowledge that policy and also play their part in it. Then the pains will be much less.
SPRINKEL: You see in our case, expectations are that inflation’s going to get worse because it always has. This means we must disappoint in a very painful way those expectations and it’s likely to take longer, at least the first time around. Now our real problem has not been that we haven’t tried. We have tried and brought inflation down. Our real problem was, we didn’t stick to it. And then you have it all to do over.
BROWN: Well I would __ I would concede that psychology plays a great, perhaps even the major part, but I do believe that if you have private savings stimulated by your tax system, rather than discouraged by your tax system, you can finance some of that public debt by private savings rather than by inflation and the result will be to ease to some degree the paint of that heavy unemployment that you seem to suggest is the only way to deal with the problem.
FRIEDMAN: The talk is fine, but the problem is that it’s used to evade the key issue: How do you make it credible to the public that you are really going to stick to a policy? Four times we’ve tried it and four times we’ve stopped before we’ve run the course.
(Several people talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: There we leave the matter for tonight, and next week’s concluding program in this series is not to be missed.
(Applause)
From Harper Library, goodbye.

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