Thursday, March 08, 2007
Today, the Conservapedia honors us with an economics lecture by world renowned economist Andy Schlafly. He's Phyllis Schlafly's kid who isn't the one whom Ann Coulter would call "a faggot". He is well qualified to teach economics because he is a lawyer who specializes in medical malpractice cases accusing doctors of creating cancer through abortion.
Schlafly also is the legal counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a right wing medical organziation that opposes manditory vaccines, opposes HIPPA regulations, and filed a brief defending Rush Limbaugh for his hillbilly heroin usage. I am ready to learn from the economic master now!
Why should we spend a semester learning economics? Why is it important? And what is economics, anyway?
We all need goods and services. The goods that are essential include food, clothes, cars, and books. The services that we need include help by doctors, dentists, teachers, lawyers and barbers.
The Roman Empire actually collapsed due to the lack of the essential goods known as cars. Food, clothing, and shelter was the old standard. Now you don't need shelter so much, just some books, and your car. Hey the car can double as shelter in a pinch! If you get bored, read a book.
Economics is basic to our freedom, and is very influential in determining who we elect. Countries that lack economic freedom often lack religious freedom. If we lack rights in deciding what career to go into, then we will lack rights of worship also.
How we buy and sell things is almost as important as which goods we choose. Since nearly the beginning of the world, something called “money” has been the medium for buying and selling goods and services. The “money” itself has only the value that people assign to it. It can be made of a worthless material, such as green paper.
Ok, I need to trade my rubles in for some freedom money. I want the worthless green paper, not that Canadian funny stuff.
Money is, in many ways, a form of communication. Donating money to a political candidate or a charity makes a statement. Buying expensive clothes, a luxury car, or a certain houses is like free speech. We often judge the value of something by looking at its price. We expect a car that costs $30,000 to have higher quality than a car that costs $15,000. We don’t even have to look at the two cars to have a high probability of being correct in that conclusion. Sometimes the price can be misleading, of course. But often it is a good indicator.
That $250,000 donation to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a statement. It's a statement that you believe in irony. It's my free speech rights to raze down a forest and build a mega mansion on Spotted Owl breeding grounds. If you don't like it, you are a communist who hates free speech. Go back to
Freedom depends on the free exchange of money. Communism and other totalitarian systems consist of government control over how money is earned, saved and spent. Loss of this freedom inevitably results in the loss of freedoms of religion and speech too.
If we tax the wealthy, that means that Karl Marx will take your bibles away, and put you in a Charles Darwin re-education camp where you are required to practice homosexuality. Do you want that for your kids?
Finally, there is the concept of “redistribution”. That is the concept that government should try to even out the wealth in society, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. The process inevitably causes a loss in total societal wealth. Some visualize redistribution as a leaky bucket taking water from one pool and putting it into another, with water leaking out during the transfer. The leak in the bucket corresponds to the direct and indirect costs of the transfer, including salaries for people to do the transfer and disincentives to those affected by it.
These concepts will become clearer for you as the course progresses.
If we redistributed wealth from Paris Hilton, and say open up a community center for single working moms to place their kids, our economy would suffer. When Paris Hilton goes to Europe, and spends $5,000 on a pair of italian shoes, spends $3,500 a night on the luxury suite at a hotel in Milan, she might tip the bellboy $20. He could theoretically buy Paris Hilton's sex tapes off the internet, which I think is owned by some guy in America. You see????
It's true. I can hardly wait for the "advanced" economics lesson from Professor Schlafly. The invisible hand apparently made the people in Jamestown stop being lazy, and ignoring it caused Stalin to starve people in Russia. But, that is for the next lecture. There is enough here to digest for one day.
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