I recently came across an article discussing “Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom.” This was put together by a depression era group (now disbanded as far as I can tell) called the American Economic Foundation. You can read the full article here, but I wanted to summarize the ten points and then look into each of them in more detail as time permits.
The purpose of this exercise, is to provide a tool kit, or at least a framework, with which to think about the issues as we begin to confront and combat our local SJWs and to help us filter out the nonsense that we are subjected to on a daily basis by those on the left.
A basic grounding in Economics along with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the structure of the Constitution as written will provide the foundation needed to turn back the leftist dogma as it comes up.
So to begin (my comments in parenthesis like this one):
- Nothing in our material world can come from nowhere or go nowhere, nor can it be free: everything in our economic life has a source, a destination, and a cost that must be paid. (Short version – no such thing as a free lunch.)
- Government is never a source of goods. Everything produced is produced by the people, and everything that government gives to the people, it must first take from the people. (Think Compulsion and Coercion.)
- The only valuable money that government has to spend is that money taxed or borrowed out of the people’s earnings. When government decides to spend more than it has thus received, that extra unearned money is created out of thin air, through the banks, and, when spent, takes on value only by reducing the value of all money, savings, and insurance. (Think Debt, Deficit and Inflation.)
- In our modern exchange economy, all payroll and employment come from customers, and the only worthwhile job security is customer security; if there are no customers, there can be no payroll and no jobs. (Government cannot provide job security in a market economy. And by market economy I mean Capitalism.)
- Customer security can be achieved by the worker only when he cooperates with management in doing the things that win and hold customers. Job security, therefore, is a partnership problem that can be solved only in a spirit of understanding and cooperation. (Partners not adversaries.)
- Because wages are the principal cost of everything, widespread wage increases, without corresponding increase in production, simply increase the cost of everybody’s living. (Damn those minimum wage increase zealots.)
- The greatest good for the greatest number means, in its material sense, the greatest goods for the greatest number which, in turn, means the greatest productivity per worker. (Capitalism. Capitalism is the way this works.)
- All productivity is based on three factors: 1) natural resources (NR), whose form, place and condition are changed by the expenditure of 2) human energy (HE) (both muscular and mental), with the aid of 3) tools (T). (Labor and Capital but not the fallacious Marxist use of the ideas.)
- Tools are the only one of these three factors that man can increase without limit, and tools come into being in a free society only when there is a reward for the temporary self-denial that people must practice in order to channel part of their earnings away from purchases that produce immediate comfort and pleasure, and into new tools of production. Proper payment for the use of tools is essential to their creation. (Technology is important and better tools make better products and requires Capital accumulation.)
- The productivity of the tools–that is, the efficiency of the human energy applied in connection with their use–has always been highest in a competitive society in which the economic decisions are made by millions of progress-seeking individuals, rather than in a state-planned society in which those decisions are made by a handful of all-powerful people, regardless of how well-meaning, unselfish, sincere and intelligent those people may be. (Regardless of how well-meaning, central planning does not work.)
