More spending does not help the economy

The united States' president and congress are running scared of an economic recession, and are trying to redistribute wealth to encourage spending. They think that giving everyone, except the rich, artificial money will encourage spending, which will raise key "economic indicators" and help them win reelection.

Economists today discuss the economy in terms of consumer spending. Is that all we are - a machine of 300 million spenders stuck in an endless cycle of creating often things and consuming them? We heard the call for more spending after 9/11, when Bush called on Americans to go shopping as a civic duty to help the economy, as if buying something you don't need will benefit us. Those who call for more spending have a flawed view of the economy.

A healthy economy is characterized by voluntary productivity and free exchange. An economy that relies on everyone spending and buying more than they want or need is not a healthy economy. Efforts to prop it up by artificially encouraging spending just makes the economy more unbalanced. If we do buy things we don't really need, we are forced to work harder (making more useless things?) to earn more and support our spending. Advice to spend more is not making us more productive, it's just making us busier.

We need to stop obsessing with growth in corporate income, personal wages and the economy as a whole. An individual can be perfectly happy without an increase in income each year, especially if he would have to do more for that increase in income. In a free economy, growth will come with innovation and population growth, but it isn't something you can force from the top. With pressure from factors like high oil prices, economic activity may even shrink. This is normal and temporary. Let's not make it worse by calling for artificial spending.

Weekly food expenditures

This page gives photo examples of weekly food expenditures for families all over the world, including the $500 German food bill and food for eleven Egyptians at under $70.

A break from the intellectual

My brother Joel and I doing some Parkour moves.

Right-wingers

In the last century, right-wing types had a simple way of describing patriotic congressional representatives like Ron Paul, who championed limited federal government, believed in natural rights, respected the oath they swore to uphold, and eschewed Wilsonian-style foreign policy: “conservative.”

Read the article by Isabel Lyman here.

Teenagers can work, think, fight and love.

"Teenagers can work, think, fight and love. The law prohibits all of it." - R. Cort Kirkwood

Kirkwood writes an article "Adolescence: A Heresy" arguing that modern society makes our teenagers into adolescents - essentially, big children - instead of making them into responsible adults. Reviewing Roger Epstein's book The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen. Epstein, an expert psychologist, says that our society is preventing children from becoming adults.

We put our children and even young adults into strictly regimented factory schools (including Sunday schools). We keep children away from adults, don't expect adult behavior or responsibility, even prohibit it: teens can't work or drive until 16, can't marry or enter into a contract or smoke until 18, though in past societies such actions were common. All they're allowed or expected to do is go to school, consume food and entertainment, and have no-commitment sex. No wonder they rebel. Teens are capable of far more, as Kirkwood tells us:

At age 14, Andrew Jackson fought in the American War for Independence, was captured by the British. He was also orphaned. David Crockett, hero at the Alamo, struck out on his own at age 12 and returned home four years later a full-grown man. Audie Murphy, who left grade school to support his 11 brothers and sisters, won 33 combat and other service decorations during World War II before he was 20. And David Farragut, chief of the federal navy during the War of Northern Aggression, commanded his first ship at age 12.

Kirkwood is author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans to Know and Admire

Honey more effective than cough drugs

ABC news reports that a spoonful of buckwheat honey before bed treats coughs better than over-the-counter medication.

The article notes that honey is inappropriate for children under 1 or 2 years old, but cough and cold medicines are inappropriate for children under 6.

I was out-skinflinted

Skinflint: A miser, one who goes to extremes to save money.

So yesterday, I saw an old man raking leaves at a township hall across from the chapel. He put the leaves into two large plastic bags, and I went to ask him if I could have one of the bags of leaves to help feed my goat in the winter. I don't want my family to have to buy grain or hay, or rake the leaves ourselves.

The man replied that he re-used the bags - this was the third year he had used them. They were heavy plastic, and where they were torn he had repaired them with duct tape. So no leaves for me.

Link for the day:

Alice Brock, owner of "Alice's Restaurant", talks about taking what you have and making something amazing. Which is how she created Cream of Salt and Pepper Soup. Find the recipe and her insight here on NPR's show This I Believe.