Freedom
It’s Not the ATMs, Mr. President!
I was tempted to use a different head-line on this one:
“It’s Not the ATMs, Stupid!”
That would be a take-off on Bill Clinton’s famous slogan against President George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign when he remarked, “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” while trying to frame the most important issue of that presidential campaign cycle.
But I don’t want to be be disrespectful to the president of the United States. I don’t believe he’s stupid and I greatly respect the office.
Yet, he sure said a dumb thing on the NBC Today Show on on June 15, 2011 that will come back to haunt him during the 2012 presidential campaign.
It also revealed a lack of understanding of basic economics.
Here’s what he said…
In a Today show interview with Ann Curry, President Obama talked about one of the reasons he thought employment numbers have been slow to rebound–self-service automation–specifically kiosks and ATMs.
In the interview, he said, “There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. All these things have created changes in the economy. “
According to the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein, ATM Industry Association CEO Mike Lee sent him an email response that said, in part, that “President Obama should never use ATMs as an example of how technology replaces human labor because ATMs today play a critical role in providing extensive employment in the ATM and cash-in-transit industries.”
Economics 101: Innovation multiplies jobs–it doesn’t shrink them.
No, it’s not the ATMs, Mr. President!
It’s bad economic policies. In the past three years we have done all the wrong things to try and create jobs. Government intervention and growth doesn’t do it.
And it’s pretty scary that at the highest levels of our current government, they just don’t seem to understand how wealth is created, how jobs are made, and what economic drivers are essential for prosperity.
Now I will be the first to admit that economic theory in its various forms can be hard to understand. That’s why so many people call it an imperfect science.
But for the past twenty-five years, Shirley and I have home-schooled our kids on the tenets of modern free enterprise capitalism. Those basics include:
- It is individuals, and the businesses they start, that create wealth. Government doesn’t create wealth. It only distributes it according to its goals and desires.
- Tools are essential to increasing productivity. The more-and-better tools that man creates (including ATMs), the more wealth (capital) can be generated.
- Over the past five hundred years, the creation of the middle class–which has grown exponentially worldwide–has been due to the wonderful development in technology which has increased jobs– never taken away opportunities to get ahead.
Yes, it is true, whenever man innovates, or new technologies are created, then older jobs and trades go away. Certain jobs are lost when new technologies are introduced.
For example, there are millions of people in America today named “Smith.” They wear that surname because many of their ancestors were “back smiths” who worked with metals that were essential to an agricultural society. They made horseshoes, plows, and other metal objects that were vital for industry for hundreds of years.
But machines eventually took their place–did a better job of making metal objects–and all the “smiths” of the world had to move on to other professions.
Did the “Smith Family” suffer from these changes in technology? Maybe for a time. But I can guarantee that there are more wealthy, employed and prosperous “Smiths” in America today than in any other historical period. Innovation didn’t create long-lasting job loss. It actually became a vehicle for greater wealth among the Smith clan.
There are two classic examples of economic change–producing more jobs not less jobs–in the past few hundred years. The first was the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the economic and cultural conditions of the times. It began in England, then subsequently spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world.
The Industrial Revolution was a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. In the two centuries following 1800, the world’s average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world’s population increased over 6-fold. In the words of Nobel Prize winner Robert E. Lucas, Jr., “For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth. … Nothing remotely like this economic behavior has happened before.”
In other words, using machines to do more for human beings did not decrease jobs or prosperity. It greatly multiplied job opportunities for billions of people. World population actually exploded because it was easier for people to live and work.
Starting in the later part of the 18th century, there was a transition in parts of Great Britain’s manual labour and animal–based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. It started with the mechanization of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of coal. Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways.
The introduction of steam power produced dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries. The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world, a process that continues as industrialization. The impact of this change on society was enormous.
What are those impacts? More wealth, a higher standard of living, more jobs, and greater opportunities for all.
The Information Revolution
The second great quantum leap in job creation and increased prosperity has been the Information Revolution that has taken place in our lifetime–in the past thirty or forty years. Much of it took place through the invention of one tiny object: the micro-chip.
Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Peter Tanous share the amazing benefits of that little innovation in their groundbreaking book, The End Of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy If We Let It Happen:
“The dawning of the age of the microchip and all the attendant, fabulous technological advances have played a vital role in this wild and wonderful ride. Ingenious and daring entrepreneurs from Bill Gates to Fred Smith (there’s that name again!) to Larry Ellison to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched whole new industries and made billions of dollars for themselves and billions more for workers and society. More wealth was created in the United States in the past twenty-five years than in the previous two hundred. In 1967 only one in 25 families earned an income of $100,000, whereas now, almost one in four families do.”
And millions of new jobs were created as a result of the Information Revolution. The tiny machines didn’t take jobs away–they exploded the opportunities for people to create wealth.
I sometimes wonder what many men and women did a hundred years ago when there was no such thing as hardware and software–or electronics. Think how many “geeks” have come into their own because one little mechanical innovation allowed them to use some God-given abilites that the hoe and plow never offered.
The lesson is extremely clear: Improved technology grows jobs if you’re willing to look for the possibilities.
And here’s where we get down to the troubling aspect of President Obama’s comments. Producing jobs and prosperity is really the result of a worldview–a “faith” that is always dreaming of more opportunities and improvements in life, family, and human culture.
Because what is really multiplied when technology enhances human life, even taking away some short-term job occupations in the process, is that it gives human beings a greater opportunity to be creative–to think through how the latest innovation can be enhanced and expanded. Greater leisure through better tools produces more time for creative thinking–and that valuable activity greatly multiplies human activity (i.e. jobs).
Better tools–like ATM machines–give us the time to use our creative imaginations to explore new ideas, make new applications, and create more products. We’re not enslaved to the ancient technologies or limitations.
Machines multiply creativity–if we believe there’s a Creator to follow and a world to improve.
That’s where the worldview is crucial: God. Man made is His creative image. A mandate to improve the world. Faith to do so by his power and grace. Innovation. Improvement. Jobs. Prosperity.
We need to say to ourselves “It’s the worldview, stupid!”
Then have faith and imagination to keep improving that world for our benefit and his glory.
Gas at $4 a Gallon? Here’s Why
When gas prices edged up fifty cents a gallon during the George Bush years, the mainstream media cried bloody murder trying to smear the Administration.
Yet under the Obama administration, gas prices have DOUBLED–with hardly a peep from those same news outlets.
Why?
Because it was never about prices. It was about bringing down a conservative president then, and propping up a liberal (socialist) one now.
The leftist media actually want gas prices to rise because they desire to take Americans out of their cars and into centrally-planned light rail systems the people don’t want to use. They want to promote wind, solar, and other renewable resources to “save the planet.”
It’s a huge “con” which is about nothing but control.
Controlling people. Limiting freedom.
America has plenty of energy resources to power everything we use–at far lower prices:
- We have vast oil reserves, including ANWAR, which if it had been developed ten years ago, would be making a significant contribution to lower fuel prices now.
- We have immense shale oil deposits that could be harvested.
- We possess the world’s greatest largest reserves of natural gas.
But there’s been a conspiracy in the past twenty years in this nation to place so-called environmental concerns over the future of powering America. Most of those”concerns” are just plain bunk.
It’s time we called the charade and demanded that American energy companies be allowed to do what’s necessary to bring down gasoline prices and provide complete energy independence from a chaotic Middle East.
The following article by the Heritage Foundation is right on the beam. Read it and let your voice by heard. RB.
“Obama’s Anti-Drilling Agenda Costs Jobs Across America”
President Obama’s hometown of Chicago is nearly 1,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. But like many other communities across the country, it is suffering the consequences of his Administration’s anti-drilling agenda.
Illinois accounted for $376.2 million in shallow-water drilling expenditures over the past three years, according to an analysis by 14 oil and gas companies that spend money on vendors and subcontractors. The bulk of that money—$242.2 million—was spent in the Chicago district represented by Representative Danny Davis (D–IL).
It’s fresh evidence that Obama’s anti-drilling agenda is having a ripple effect across America since last year’s oil spill, claiming jobs not just in Louisiana and Texas but also in communities far removed from the shipyards in the Gulf of Mexico.
The study from the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition paints a picture of the nationwide economic ramifications. Obama can’t even be blamed for playing politics. Five of the states that benefit most from shallow-water drilling backed him as a candidate in 2008. And Democrats represent many of the congressional districts that stand to lose millions.
The cost in jobs is startling. A new analysis by Louisiana State University professor Joseph Mason projects national job losses at 19,000 from the drilling moratorium, with wage losses at $1.1 billion. About one-third of those jobs are located outside the Gulf region.
Nearly a year after imposing his anti-drilling agenda, it’s quite clear that Obama is carrying out misguided policies causing widespread harm.
And job losses aren’t the only consequence. The Obama Administration’s deliberate delay in issuing permits for both deepwater and shallow-water drilling has led to a sharp decline in oil production for the Gulf of Mexico this year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts the figure at 240,000 fewer barrels every day.
With gas prices hovering around $3.56 per gallon nationwide, now is not the time to lower production. The only way to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil is to produce more of it here at home.
The recent approval of new drilling permits for the Gulf of Mexico is a welcome and long overdue move by the Administration, but it’s nothing to celebrate. The pace of permitting is far below the historical average, and there’s no indication that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) has any desire to return production to a pre-spill level.
Until that happens, expect more grim news like the unfortunate circumstances facing Seahawk Drilling, which was forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a direct result of the bureaucratic delays at BOEMRE. Seahawk’s president and chief executive Randy Stilley, writing in The Washington Post, painted a dire picture:
The government’s drastic slowdown in the issuance of permits for shallow-water drilling operations—in which companies work in familiar geological formations, typically in less than 500 feet of water, mostly seeking to produce natural gas—has all but crippled the industry. The survivors (for now) like Hercules are staying afloat largely thanks to revenue from operations outside U.S. waters. Put another way, a once-proud industry born in the gulf during the Truman administration can no longer survive on operations in its own back yard.
Unless things change soon, Seahawk Drilling won’t be alone. Businesses located in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California, and New York—top recipients of shallow-water drilling spending—will all face economic consequences as well.
It’s time for lawmakers to take notice. Representative John Sullivan (R–OK), who represents a district with $87.2 million in shallow-water expenditures over the past three years, recognizes the impact. He told us: “Continuing to keep American sources of energy under lock and key by failing to issue drilling permits only serves to place American jobs at risk, drives up costs at the pump and deepens our dependence on foreign oil.”
Things don’t have to be this way. The House of Representatives must continue to conduct rigorous oversight of the Obama Administration, challenging the Administration’s excuses and applying pressure when necessary. America’s energy future depends on it.
The Meaning of the Madison Protests
If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the protests in Madison, Wisconsin–and indeed throughout the Middle East and the world–with great interest and some fear and trepidation.
On the one hand it’s good to see people standing up for what they believe. On the other hand, the Madison protests in particular seem bullyish and quite deceptive–with teachers closing down the schools with faked sick notes and fourteen Democratic law-makers fleeing the state to shirk their legislative responsibilities.
For the protesters, their main justification seems to be that the end justifies the means.
But that principle only applies to despots, tyrants, or anarchists. It does not apply to Judeo-Christian-based republics, their ethics and manners.
Does that give us a hint of the meaning of Madison?
For those who haven’t been following this story, here’s a little background. The 2010 elections saw a large number of conservative governors, legislators, and representatives rise to leadership promising a return to fiscal sanity. Many of them were elected in states where the previous liberal leadership had run up huge budget deficits through unrestrained growth of government workers and services.
In Wisconsin, enter newly elected Governor Scott Walker who inherited a 3.6 billion dollar deficit from the out-going administration. As in many other states, the people elected him to reverse direction and deal with the budget problem caused by egregious spending.
Governor Walker remarked last week: “I’ve said all along the protesters have every right to be there, but I’m not going to let tens of thousands overload or overshadow the millions of people in Wisconsin, the taxpayers of the state, who want us to do the right thing and balance the budget,”
Walker decided to take his budget axe to the root of the problem: the unsustainable and unfair growth of government employee entitlements. He proposed having government workers:
- Pay twelve percent of their own health insurance costs. That seems reasonable.
- Pay five percent of their pensions. That seems fair too.
- Have some limitations on their collective bargaining agreements. (More on that later.)
The first two points are no-brainers. These are modest changes that are totally necessary. We are in a deep recession. People in the private sphere are struggling to make ends meet, and, in some cases, are making draconian cuts to their businesses and lifestyles to survive.
Shouldn’t government workers be asked to make some sacrifices too?
The average America believes so. That’s why deficit-reducing governors, legislators and representatives were swept into office in record numbers in November.
In fact, the problem is much bigger than just asking government workers to give a little. The truth is that times have changed radically in America over the past fifty years.
It might even be necessary to re-define “white collar” and “blue collar” workers.
For most of America’s history, white collar stood for the private sector professionals and business people who wore nice suits and made more money than farmers, factory workers and people in the trades. The blue collar workers were the lower rung of society who got dirty for a living.
How times have changed. Today, the white collar workers are the government folks (plus some professionals and business people). They wear the nice suits and work for a smorgasbord of agencies like the IRS, FAA, FDA, NSA, and thousands more. And today’s blue collar are the self-employed and small business owners who are being strangled by government regulations, fees, and rising taxes to pay for the salaries and benefits of the new government white collar class.
It’s the new American reality–and it’s a huge economic problem.
According to the generally liberal newspaper–USA Today–this growing discrepancy between the salaries of government white collars and private blue collars is exploding. Here’s their take:
“At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.”
“Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.”
“The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.”
“What the data show:
•Benefits. Federal workers received average benefits worth $41,791 in 2009. Most of this was the government’s contribution to pensions. Employees contributed an additional $10,569.
•Pay. The average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000. USA TODAY reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20% more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.
•Total compensation. Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.”
USA Today’s number relate to the federal government work force. But the same escalation in state government entitlements–especially pensions–has followed the national curve.
At a basic level, the current battle in Madison boils down to the simple need of shrinking the size of government and its perks. It will soon spill over to many other American states that are also “government-heavy.”
It’s way past due.
Government service has been historically viewed in this nation as “public service”–a sacrifice one makes for less pay and benefits to “serve” his country. This concept comes directly from the Bible in Romans 13 where government is viewed as a “minister of God for good.” A minister is a servant. He’s not the boss, the wealthy owner, but rather the one who sacrifices for the greater good.
For over two hundred years, America kept to this wise political model.
But over the part few decades the power of government unions has changed all that. Instead of seeing government employment as a “service,” it is now viewed as a right that demands more money and higher benefits than those who pay the bills in the private sector.
Let’s talk about unions for a moment. I was a union member for a short time in my life, and I’m certainly not against the concept. The union movement was born during a time in which private business was neglectful of a number of basic human rights. The early unions helped correct that by encouraging and passing some good child labor laws and eventually the five day work week. I’m not sure that is biblical (six days in the Scripture norm), but it was a healthy step.
Unions helped balance the economic ledger in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.
However, today, unions have become a noose around the neck of business trying to compete in a global marketplace. With basic human rights issues settled decades ago, unions have become primarily a potent liberal political force–without the concurrence of members. They have gotten in bed with state and national lawmakers in raiding the government till for health services and pricey pensions that the average taxpayer cannot afford to underwrite.
Truth be told, union power and their demands are financially raping many state governments. Wisconsin and many other states are broke because the private sector has been forced to support out-of-control government growth and its associated costs.
Now to the controversial part. The union members are saying that the Wisconsin protests are not about paying their fair share of health care and pensions. They say it is about collective bargaining rights. But history is clear on this point: Government unions should not have collective bargaining rights. So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s and every president prior to him. Roosevelt believed government workers were servants of the people, and should never be put in the position where they can paralyze or shut the government down–as they doing in Wisconsin.
Private unions can collectively bargain–not government ones. They are essential to the smooth functioning of a civil society.
If you’re interested in the “facts” about the Wisconsin protests, click here for valuable information.
But there is a bigger meaning to the Wisconsin riots that are destined to hit other cash-strapped states. It is this: A battle is going on for the heart and soul of the American nation. It is a 230 year battle between the forces of liberty and those who look to government controls.
America began in liberty–essentially the first constitutionally-born Christian republic in the history of the world. America’s great experiment in liberty was the result of spiritual revivals, faith in God, morals in society, and godly principles in family life, economics and civil polity.
Over time, the forces of tyranny turned the American nation from a Christian republic to a Christian-based democracy; Then to a secular-based democracy; Following the election of Barack Obama–they were on the verge of changing the American nation into a secular-based social democracy with huge government overreach (programs and entitlements) and a great erosion of freedom.
But the people rose up in 2010. Step one in restoring the American heritage of liberty was the Tea Party movement. Step Two was the landslide November 2010 elections which included the election of Scott Walker as governor of Wisconsin.
We are now entering Step Three in the reformation process–the paring back of bloated governments and its restraints on American competitiveness, greatness and freedom.
Many battles lie ahead in various state capitals. In Washington, D.C., a revitalized House of Representatives is leading the way for federal reforms in the growth of Big Government. It will be a a test of wills, but the cause of liberty is worth fighting.
Step Four will be the 2012 national elections. We need a US president and administration that is committed to scaling back the crippling power of the Entitlement State. We also need a United States Senate that is willing to look at vital tax reform, a balanced budget, and dealing with the federal entitlement monsters of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.
This is the meaning of the Madison protests.
Step Three has begun.
It is a fight for America’s future under God and his principles of freedom.
Will you pray and join the side of liberty?