The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers But the Economy Never Does by George Gilder
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Gilder is always an encouraging author, and this book is no exception. If you have a hunch that the world is run by monetary monkeyshines, this book will make the case.
Gilder constantly harps about how it’s morals, not money, that are needed to fix the lives of the poor, but has remained ignorant to the fact that his hyper-growth, monetize-everything, supply-side policies are a major contributor to those moral issues. The economy can only manage a constant state of growth by turning more and more things into commodities or by making us feel more and more dependent on accumulating more of the commodities that are already out there. Are we better off now that we spend millions of dollars on exercise instead of just working outdoors, millions of dollars on… Read more »
I have not read Gilder, and my comment is only my take. Pre Fed, the U.S. Dollar used to gain in value with time. If you held a dollar in your pocket, it bought more as time went by. I have also read that this virtuous management of currency coincided with the greatest economic growth in history. Today, a dollar loses half its value over a working man’s life. The Biblical verse on “God hates an unequal measure” seems apropos here. While the financiers can build in systems that keep themselves at or above parity with that dollar half-life, the… Read more »
A baseball analogy to monetary policy using Home Plate at 17 inches as the “equal measure”
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/10/06/17-inches/
Jonathan reminds me of several young men who used to live in Moscow. They were adept at pontificating with many words and seas of print, but completely missed the scriptural issues at hand. Our nation is in shambles because of bad morals; bad morals because we stepped away from Christian doctrine and biblical standards in government, business and in just about every aspect of our lives. Christians in general fail to study the Bible and how to apply it to our lives today. Proverbs tells us that God hates diverse weights and measures yet we see no problem in our… Read more »
I think you might have misread me Dave. I was NOT saying that morals are not important. In fact, the complete opposite – I was saying that morals are foundational. But like you, I believe that good systems and good morals go hand-in-hand. You argue against current aspects of the system, saying things need to change, and say that morality is also foundational. So did I. The issue that I have with Gilder’s argument is that he claims that poor morals among the poor are the issue, but then advocates for a system that not only encourages those poor morals,… Read more »