The Press-Dispatch
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C-8 Wednesday, August 7, 2019 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond Watch over your soul Minority View by Walter E. Williams Conflicting Visions Continued on page 9 For the most part, people share common goals. Most of us want poor people to enjoy higher standards of living, greater traffic safe- ty, more world peace, greater racial harmony, cleaner air and water, and less crime. Despite the fact that people have common goals, we of- ten see them grouped into contentious factions, fighting tooth and nail to promote polar opposite government policies in the name of achieving a commonly held goal. The conflict is centered around the means to achieve goals rather than the goals themselves. The policies that become law often have the unintended consequence of sabotaging the achievement of the stated goal. Let's look at a policy pushed by advocacy groups, politicians and poorly trained, perhaps dishonest, economists — mandated increases in the minimum wage. Nobel Prize-winning econ- omist Paul Krugman claimed in a 2014 inter- view with Business Insider that there is actu- ally not much risk of significantly higher wag- es hurting workers. He argued that low-wage workers are in non-tradable industries for which production cannot be moved overseas and are in industries in which labor cannot be easily re- placed by technology. Krugman's vision is one that my George Mason University colleagues and I try to correct. Those who argue that the price of something can be raised without people having a response to it have what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world. For them, labor prices can rise and employers will employ just as much la- bor after the price increase as before. There is no evidence anywhere that people have no re- sponse to the change in price of anything. Plus, the longer a price change remains in effect the greater the response to it. Let's examine Krugman's as- sertion that low-skilled labor can- not be easily replaced by tech- nology. Momentum Machines has built a robot that can "slice toppings like tomatoes and pick- les immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giv- ing you the freshest burger pos- sible." The robot is "more consistent, more sani- tary, and can produce about 360 hamburgers per hour." Let's Pizza is a pizza-making vending ma- chine from Europe that can make four different kinds of pizza in about 2 1/2 minutes. Kay S. Hymowitz's article "The Mother of All Disruptions," in a special issue of City Journal, gives numerous examples of jobs loss through technology. According to The New York Times, 89,000 workers in general merchandise lost their jobs between the beginning of November 2016 and the end of March. And it's not just the U.S. where robots are replacing labor. Foxconn's iPhone-making facility in China has replaced 60,000 workers with robots. The economic phenomenon that people who call for higher minimum wages ignore is that when the price of anything rises, people seek substitutes. We see it with anything. When the price of oil rose, people sought ways to use less of it through purchasing more insulation for their homes and fuel-efficient cars. When the price of beef rose, people sought cheaper substitutes such as pork and chicken. The substitution ef- fect of price changes is omnipresent, but do-gooders and politicians seem to suggest that labor markets are an exception. It's bad enough when do- gooders and politicians have that vi- sion, but it is utterly disgusting and inexcusable for a trained economist to buy into that zero-elasticity vision. It's not just Krugman. On the eve of the 2007 minimum wage increase, 650 of my fellow econ- omists, including a couple of Nobel laureates, signed a petition that read, "We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed." At the time, I wrote that I felt pro- fessional embarrassment for them; however, I felt proud that not a single member of our dis- tinguished George Mason University econom- ic faculty signed the petition. Convincing people of how the world really works in hopes of promoting more humane pol- icies requires examination and falsification of false visions and premises. That's a tough job with little prospect for completion. Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Pursuit of the Cure by Star Parker Ownership, not spending, will shrink wealth gap With the next round of Demo- cratic presidential candidate de- bates upon us, we will surely hear more about government activism to fix racial inequalities. Inequality is real and needs at- tention. According to the Urban Institute, average white household wealth in 2016 was $171,000 compared with average black household wealth of $17,409. Sen. Cory Booker wants govern- ment to make deposits into savings accounts for low-income children to the tune of up to $50,000 each. Sen. Kamala Harris proposes $100 billion in government subsi- dies for black homeownership. These kinds of proposals may win some black votes, but should they? Will they really make blacks and the nation better off? Government anti-poverty spend- ing is not exactly a novel idea. We've been doing it since the 1960s, total- ing, by some estimates, over $20 trillion since then. Has it achieved anything? Changes in the poverty rate are barely discernible. And the wealth gap has just gotten bigger. Per the same Urban Institute da- ta, the wealth gap between white and nonwhite households was $45,188 in 1963, $ 92,045 in 1983 and $153,591 in 2016. If a history of spending massive sums of taxpayer funds without re- sults is not enough to discourage this approach, how about asking where the money will come from? This fiscal year, the federal gov- ernment will spend $4.5 trillion, $ 3.5 of which will be financed by tax revenue, leaving a trillion-dol- lar deficit to finance through bor- rowing. According to the latest "Long Term Budget Outlook" from the Congressional Budget Office, "Large budget deficits over the next 30 years are projected to drive federal debt held by the public to unprecedented levels — from 78 percent of gross domestic prod- uct (GDP) in 2019 to 144 percent by 2049." And, CBO continues, "The pros- pect for such high and rising debt poses substantial risks for the na- tion ..." Sometimes it might be reason- able to take a risky plunge into debt, if the investments being made with the funds raised have high po- tential return and payoff. But we're talking here about plunging the nation deeper into debt to spend money in ways that have always failed. Does this make sense to anyone other than politi- cians who might get in office as a result of buying votes? There is a way out of the dark- ness, but it takes principles and courage. Low-income America isn't suffer- ing because of insufficient govern- ment dependence but because of in- sufficient independence — owner- ship. And here we can use govern- ment policy to make things better. Per the Urban Institute, the av- erage savings in retirement ac- counts in 2016 was $157,884 in white households and $25,212 in black households. Black families, according to the report, "have less access to retirement savings vehi- cles and lower participation when they have access." The headline in a recent Wall Street Journal column reads, "Counter Inequality With Private Social Security Accounts." The authors, Jeff Yass and Ste- phen Moore, propose Own Ameri- ca Accounts, private retirement ac- counts to where workers could shift 10 percent of their paycheck from Social Security. The average annual return on So- cial Security over the last 40 years has been about 1 percent per year, according to Yass and Moore, and stocks returned 6 percent per year. With Own America Accounts, an average American could have re- tired in 2016 with between $1 and 2 million in savings over a 40 - to 45 -year working life, per Yass and Moore. net edition yeah, it's that fast! Z M www.PressDispatch.net/Subscribe It's The Press-Dispatch. No matter where you live. Delivered every Wednesday morning! Add it for $5 to your current print subscription or stand-alone for $35/year. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." This is the essence of mankind; we were brought into being by God in His image and were to reside with Him as the epitome of all that is God. There is an irrefutable distinction between God and man, but this does not entail separa- tion. In spite of the fall of mankind into sin, the link to God as our creator and sustainer was not broken, but our closeness was shattered. Jesus quotes Psalms 82:6 which gives foun- dation for claiming fellowship with God: "I have said, you are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." Jesus added, "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;" The psalms are filled with praises where the reader is reassured that he/she can commu- nicate with the Master and to know Him (the prophets reiterate the same message), and Je- sus fulfils the scriptures! God placed within the revelation of His word the purpose of mankind and has assured all those who seek Him, shall see Him face to face, and He promises there is yet an intimate life to come. Therefore, we must "guard our souls" against the carnal desires of life, which will rob us of our place with God. To guard one's soul is not a secret code for life in Christ Jesus. It is a restatement of Peter's admonition, "Save yourselves from this untow- ard generation." Our modern world has produced a standard of living the kings of antiquity could not have even dreamed of enjoying on a daily basis. Yet this way of life has an undertow which defines happiness and favor with God in the accumu- lation of things and sensual pursuits. Almost a century ago, the British economist John May- nard Keyes noticed the shifting to the pursuit of material goods and away from the religious foun- dation of Christianity: "It seems clearer every day that the moral problem of our age is concerned with the love of money, with the habitual appeal to the money motive in 9/10 of the activities of life." Jesus warned of the love of money; the King James Version uses the word mammon, which denotes the use and love of money and materi- al possession as to an end: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Money or commerce is required in daily life. The accumulation of wealth in itself is not sin- ful or betrays one's love for money. The danger comes in the pursuit in excess of the "things" money can buy. The Western way of life demands that to be happy we must become "feel good" addicts. Life revolves around the desire for exotic cars, es- tates, food, sensual love, and possessions. We have displaced our soul-identity with God and allowed ourselves to be enveloped with "the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life." The foundation to Christian contentment and happiness can be found in a simple passage from the psalms: "The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall not want." To chase after the cares of life, we first must abandon our souls, and then we are transformed into beggars who search the abyss for happiness. Contemporary cultural colum- nists have opined that we live in a "rat race" where even though we accumulate things that we want, we are never content. Without saying, a dissatisfied Christian will seek and never be able to find satisfaction because he/she seeks happiness outside of God, and they become servants of the latest "thing." To guard one's soul means to shut out the car- nal world and listen for that "small still voice" for which the prophet Elijah was to listen. To find happiness and contentment requires each of us to become attuned to the spiritu- al demands of the Spirt of God; otherwise, we search for the next "new outbreak" of some claimed manifestation of God or continue to mindlessly entertain ourselves to death with social media. Guarding one's soul means to embrace truth, beauty, and virtue, which are antidotes for evil and carnality, and the daily "gas lighting" of the media. Do not be naive about the world in which we live; Jesus reminded his disciples to be "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." Never- theless, true happiness resides in residing in the Spirit of God and knowing we need noth- ing else. Without a God centered life, life itself be- comes a series of trivial events without mean- ing. Are you guarding your soul? Think about it!