What’s Wrong with the World

such a savings arrangement of necessity withholds wealth that would otherwise be available to put into raising and training “new labor”, i.e. children, and it is arguable that there is actually a better overall return on having children than on saving the money until retirement.

I find this argument for something like social security extremely puzzling. Here's why: All the people currently working are being taxed over 7 percent of their wages to put into Social Security, while their employers are being required to pay the employer portion of another 8 percent or so of their wages. These _are_ people currently raising and training new labor, and the money is coming from them either way--regardless of whether it is going into their own voluntary retirement savings or being taken from them by taxation to pay current SS obligations. In fact, the opposite argument has usually been made for SS: Namely, that if retirement saving were made voluntary, too many people would not save enough. Presumably if they didn't save enough, one reason for some people would be that they are instead putting more of the money into raising and training their children. (Perhaps because they agree with Mueller that this offers a better return on investment, or perhaps just because they feel like it.) A program like SS _certainly_ doesn't encourage putting more money into raising children. How could it? The money has to be taken from the generation presently working _somehow_ for a generational wealth transfer, and then the money isn't there for the presently working generation to put into their children.

This point is entirely aside from the fact that SS as currently practiced (which perhaps Mueller doesn't support) tells people that they are _entitled_ to the money later at retirement and are so entitled _because_ they were taxed all those years, when in fact that makes no sense of what actually happened to the money. They are given the impression that they are getting back their own money which was being forcibly taken for savings, when in fact it was always going right out immediately to current retirees. It is this entitlement mindset--the refusal to admit that SS is a form of welfare program--that prevents means-testing for SS, which would be just one small step toward trying to prevent the insolvency of the program. The pretense that the money _is_ being saved for retirement when it isn't is, of course, the reason why many people refer to the present SS system as a Ponzi scheme. Of course, if the scheme were better-run and the money really were being saved for the current generation's retirement rather than being funneled out to current retirees, there would be no reason even to think of contrasting it with saving for retirement! But I would say, for the reason I gave above, that Mueller's argument can't hold even if we simply admit outright (and modify the system so as to admit outright) that the generational wealth transfer is a form of welfare for the otherwise impoverished or destitute elderly.

Mueller does not claim that you can "get there from here" readily, in the sense of being able to assume people will "get with" a new plan and change their behavior overnight, though he does seem to think that such motivational change is achievable BY MAKING the system more rationally related to economic reality - then people will be more readily able to choose what really does make sense economically. I think it's a little rosy, but since I think we are scheduled for hell in a handbasket pretty soon anyway, I can live with trying something that could be pretty topsy-turvy for a while.

Mueller thinks that SS needs some vast and desperate changes, including the main one of reducing the tax rate to something like 2 or 3 percent. I don't recall whether he mentions the employer portion, I will have to go look that up. But at 2% instead of 7%, that can change motivations to some extent. I don't think it's enough, because NOW we have a populace that is so self-centered on personal delights that they can't be bothered to "invest" in children even when they can readily afford it anyway: it is not just the rich, the upper middle class don't have more than 2 kids by choice not directly constrained by economics.

This point is entirely aside from the fact that SS as currently practiced (which perhaps Mueller doesn't support) tells people that they are _entitled_ to the money later at retirement and are so entitled _because_ they were taxed all those years, when in fact that makes no sense of what actually happened to the money.

Yeah, I think that Mueller is missing some stuff in human motivations here also. But on this particular point, his changes would make it clear that SS is NOT, in any sense at all, like a retirement plan where it's your money you are getting back. It is simply and directly a wealth transfer system, from those currently earning to those currently in need. That washes away some of the entitlement stuff - but not enough, in my opinion.

I think that he misses the point on SS in other ways too, because in his system he more or less seems to actually discourage the notion of saving for your retirement instead of putting the money into kids, if you are on the cusp where it's one or the other and definitely not both. I think that this can't be a truly human solution, because it ignores human motivations a little too glibly: the parent shouldn't want to be wholly reliant on the beneficence of others for a wholly foreseeable future need, relying on beneficence should more limited to the unplannable.

Nevertheless, the arguments around the underlying premise are fascinating: by definition, putting money into capital investments for "the long haul" (which is what retirement is, mostly), of necessity requires expecting the return to continue generating profit on and on and on decades later - which means SOMEBODY has to generate the kids who will, decades later, provide the labor for which the capital can be a productive tool, or that capital will just sit around stagnating. (Good time to recall the fool's answer to getting caught in a rain: "I will just stand under a tree, and when the rain soaks through this tree I will move to another." If nobody has the kids, investing capital for decades later can't still be used productively decades later.) If by hypothesis the profits from invested and worked capital are supposed to be split according to a definite allocation (1/3 capital, 2/3 labor is what Mueller suggests), and you deduct from each of these groups the inherent costs associated with being productive (losses on bad investments for the capital side, expenses of living on the labor side), whatever you have leftover must represent the relative net capacity of investing in the one versus the other, all other things being equal. I find it a little difficult to believe that after you subtract the costs associated with putting labor into active production you can leave enough left over for new labor production that outperforms putting the money into capital re-investment. I don't see how Mueller is going to make the numbers work to make it more economically productive to have kids than to put the money into a good mutual fund.

But then, I don't grasp the details on the numbers, the way Mueller does. That's why I say it will take an army of economists to check his claims and see if they hold water. It certainly is theoretically possible: the 2-parent family is an immensely productive social unit, capable of a great deal of energy and creativity.

Well, any time someone starts talking about _making_ it more profitable to do x than to do y, I get a little nervous. It sounds artificial.

But aside from that, my point was purely that *any* amount of money taken in taxation for intergenerational wealth transfer is by definition not being used by the person taxed for raising his own kids. So it's difficult to see why having that money taken for an intergenerational wealth transfer encourages raising kids more than having that money put voluntarily into a private retirement fund. _Where_ the money is going (be it 3% or 7%) doesn't seem prima facie to make a difference to whether you are motivated to use the rest of your money for raising children. So I find it puzzling as to how even his envisaged SS system is supposed to encourage you to raise children rather than saving for your own retirement. If it's just a matter of lowering the taxation rate taken for SS, I'm all in favor of it, but in that case the contrast doesn't lie between intergenerational wealth transfer and retirement savings. It lies between a _larger_ intergenerational wealth transfer (with our current percentages of taxation) and a smaller one (with his suggested lower rate of taxation).

To be honest, I don't understand a couple of the features of this idea. But I failed to include an essential feature: that the benefit rate will also be decreased to match. Mueller says of his plan:

It would cut payroll taxes immediately, thus getting rid of the Social Security "surplus," which Congress has simply been using to fund deficits in the rest of the federal budget. In exchange, there would be a matching reduction in the level of future retirement benefits (prorated for the share of working years that each worker received the tax cut), eliminating expected future deficits [in SS, not in the federal budget - Tony]. Families would be free but not required to put the payroll tax-cut money into financial retirement accounts; for most families with children, education would be a more pressing (and higher yielding) investment.

Since the plan reduces current payroll taxes and future benefits in the same proportion, the rate of return per dollar of payroll contribution would be higher than under any of the other alternatives, which involve tax increases and benefit cuts...

Perhaps I was reading more into this than I should have, here he seems to mean a better return to the parents by investing in education for the children, but at least so far as the passage goes, he assumes the children already exist and the decision isn't whether to have them but to get them (more?, better?) education.

I don't see how the parents can possibly reap a benefit for their old age care by investing in their children's education instead of in some retirement account, except by expecting the kids to directly pay for the parents' care and expenses. Which clearly is STILL a generational transfer, just not one directed by government. It could well be the case that the increase in the kids' income from better and more education would more than offset the loss in SS benefits, but in human terms it would have to not only more than offset so that the disposable wealth of the kids was markedly increased, but the higher amounts in the kids' income would need to be clearly understood as Mom & Dad's retirement pot, which leaves precious little room for (a) kids who fail to be productive, (b) kids who are highly productive but not generating an income - such as priests, nuns, and missionaries, and (c) economic downturns that put not only the kids' income into jeopardy but the parents' as well. This is, indeed, part of the "distribution function" at work, but it seems impossible to see how that's going to work out even for the choice of investing in education instead of in a retirement account, much less the choice to have a (nother) kid instead of saving.

Which is why I had doubts about the concept. It may be that the only way it could work is tied to Mueller's general tax plan, which is equally interesting: a flat tax, but not on "income" per se, but on business transfers (both for compensation and for dividends), at about 18%. And get rid of the personal income tax system altogether. I am equally doubtful about this, I think that it harbors some really big hidden chasms, and I think it more likely that a less revolutionary method of fixing his main concern could be had. He objects primarily to the unequal treatment of capital and labor in the tax arena:

From these considerations, it becomes obvious that the apparent progressivity of an income tax results merely from the inconsistent definitions of labor and property income. When maintenance and depreciation of property are deducted from property income but human maintenance and depreciation are not deducted from labor income, the distribution of income seems progressive. But when both are treated alike, nearly identical "progressivity" of the tax burden is achieved. simply by applying a flat tax rate to the properly defined income.

Well, seems to me that the personal exemption amount JUST IS a form of deduction of the maintenance of labor, as is the medical deduction. And nothing prevents us from imposing the same rate of tax on personal income as business and property income. So, it seems to me that the current system, with more modest tweaks than completely re-writing the tax system from top to bottom, would actually be capable of doing what he wants.

I interpret his comment about a better rate of return as being based simply on the assumption that _whatever_ the people choose to do with the money they aren't being taxed will yield a better rate of return to them than putting it into a pure wealth transfer like SS. Which is doubtless true. That would apply (and he seems to agree here) whether they put the additional money they have (because of lower taxes) into a private retirement savings account for themselves or into their children's education.

I don't have any brilliant comments on his tax proposal. You're right that it sounds radical. One of the major problems here is that we have such huge government deficits that it seems as though no reasonable taxation system can possibly deal with that problem. In other words, we may be sunk no matter what we do. Sorry to sound like Eeyore.

The most interesting stuff in economics right now is scholarship that focuses on intersection between economics and population genetics.

I really strongly disagree with his reasoning on the Good Samaritan. If his view is actually as stated it has been deconstructed and eliminated. Not at all the traditional understanding.

What I can do for my own self is limited by economics, and what I'm *both* willing and able to spend on myself, so naturally what I can do for others will be too. But it seems to me a straight read of the passage indicates that self is clearly the limiting factor. If I see someone that has a certain need and no one to help, it is natural to see what I'll do for him in terms of what I'd do for myself. Without this understanding, the concept of neighbor love entirely falls apart. In my view, the whole point of it is that the limits should be external to me, and not within myself except as I would do for myself.

If I see someone with a need of something I couldn't or wouldn't do for myself in those circumstances, then there's no obligation for me to do it. I think that the neighbor principle doesn't necessarily have anything to do with economics. It very, very often, if not usually, has to do with time and effort. I taught an oppositional-child neighbor girl who couldn't read by 11 years of age to read painstakingly after finally engineering her into a position that she couldn't wriggle out of for years. She'll graduate from high school this year, and she's the sweetest girl anyone could ever imagine. Reading is my life-force like Peter of Celles. I thought about that neighbor love thing at the time, and I rejected other's counsel to "back off" based on just this sort of reasoning. That girl was going to read if it killed us both, and for a long time I thought it might. Obviously, she has no legitimate father, and her mother was fine with it. The weak Christian moral experts in the church not so much. I remember thinking at the time "no neighbor of mine is going to grow up without knowing how to read" with a fair amount of anger about the state of affairs of a girl not reading like that, and the incoherent advice of the moral experts in our churches just made me angrier still and more determined.

The neighbor love principle is in fact subversive of biological and legal understandings of a whole lot of things. I came to faith in a fundamentalist church, which isn't an insult in my view BTW. Since then I attend supposedly more sophisticated Christian churches, but most of them just sneak in the back door the old prioritization scheme of the fundamentalists with different language. 1-God, 2-family or spouse or whatever, and keep going from there. It's unlivable. It is impossible to practice, and unhealthy to try. We adopt people into our families spiritually and morally and treat them as our own. The world doesn't blow up, and right-thinking Christians can perfectly well navigate it as they always have. We don't treat every family member the same because each has different needs and we have different capacities to meet them. And we don't do this for everyone because it is impossible to know very many people very well.

There is a fear of not having the definite lines of the biological and legal, but there are definite lines on another way. That is the point of the neighbor love principle. Just not the same ones in terms of nature, and yet fully within human nature if properly understood in Christian terms. Yet we could cite literature, art, and the common experience of millions of real people here and now to show this isn't some sort of dangerous idealism properly understood. Even recent Hollywood movies have had some beautiful representations of neighbor love that are highly realistic, and the naturalness and beauty of it.

I look forward to reading the book, and I certainly will now, but I strongly advise people to think about Mueller's view as presented here on neighbor love, and compare to past understanding of it. This is not your father's Christian neighbor love, and we shouldn't be seduced by it.

I think C. S. Lewis says rightly that neighbor love is a type of family "foreign-policy", and has some long-forgotten wisdom on the topic that is highly unpopular now. It's a pity. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/02/003-marriage-in-counterpoint-and-harmony-11

I'm glad that Mueller takes on Singer for denying that propinquity has any moral importance. Reaffirming the moral importance of propinquity is very important for public policy. Otherwise we get this idea of a gigantic pile of all the world's goods and services and of my having as much of a duty to help someone I do not know thousands of miles away ("help" them, of course, by turning my money over to the central Wise Controllers who will redistribute it) as to help someone I actually know personally and whose needs I can personally assess and try to meet based on better knowledge.

Actually, Lewis explicitly affirms the principle of propinquity, though I'm not at all sure I agree with him about "crippling and endangering your own position." But as to whether he made a distinction between duties to those immediately around you and others, he expressly did and even emphasized God's "forcing them" on your attention--in other words, the Providential basis of gradations of responsibility.

There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. I am speaking now of "charities" in the common way. Particular cases of distress among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it were, forces upon your notice, may demand much more: even to the crippling and endangering of your own position. (Mere Christianity, p. 82)

That girl was going to read if it killed us both, and for a long time I thought it might.

Yes, Mark, THAT girl. The one that lived right near you. Not the girl in Kuala Lumpur who can't read, and WON'T EVER read, because you would not give up your life in a cushy location, move to Kuala Lumpur, and tackle her problem.

People are neighbors because God throws them near to us. Near can be near in many ways, and physical propinquity is just the first way, because we are enfleshed things, and our bodies are in a place. We know that there are people starving somewhere in Sudan, but we don't send THIS plate of food to them right this instant because - well, why? Why Mark? Why are you not starving yourself from having sent out all your food (or food money, I don't care) to people who are also starving, maybe starving even more than you? And the same with your other goods? Why do you have a place to live, rather than give it up to poor mothers with babies who have nothing? Why do you have a computer, instead of taking the money and giving it to the poor?

We ALL of us, every single one of us, use physical goods in this world when others DON'T have access to those or equal goods, and without a doubt there is somewhere some needy person whose generic, fundamental need to have that amount of that sort of good is even stronger than yours: maybe he is nearer death, maybe he is more ill, maybe he is colder, maybe he will use the food to better effect, giving greater glory to God, maybe MORE people than just him will benefit from his getting the food. You cannot ever know that YOUR need for the food, in a generic "what total good in the world will this do if I consume this good instead of giving it up to someone else?" will ever be answered in such a way that YOU are the best person to get the good after all. NEVER. And even if you took all your food over to a needy person and gave it to him, and went without, you could NEVER know that that needy person was the best one to give it to, instead of some other, nor, indeed, could that needy person ever know that HE should consume it rather than give it up to someone else whose (theoretical) claim on the good out of need might be even stronger.

No. That way madness lies. Our call to relieve the needs of others must have limits and criteria for those limits. Christ explicitly provides one criterion for the limits in Good Samaritan story, that of nearness. In this passage, he doesn't explicitly state other criteria, but he does implicitly. And he does it explicitly in other places: love your neighbor as yourself, for example. But Christ also showed us, by example, that this does NOT mean passing up each and every good that comes your way because there could be someone else in need: "that perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor". The passages have to be compatible. Christ does not spell out that compatibility in excruciating detail, that's left to his Church as needed.

But it seems to me a straight read of the passage indicates that self is clearly the limiting factor.

Sorry, that's another passage, not the Good Samaritan.

My family and I have taken on just the sorts of projects that you describe, Mark. And sometimes that's just what God is asking, and you put yourself at God's disposal to turn yourself inside out if that's what it takes. On the other hand, I have seen families that seem to go out of their way to find these needs, turn themselves upside down trying to meet them, and end up with situations where their own kids are uneducated, are untrained in the faith, are emotional basketcases, eventually are living ship-wrecks of immoral behavior. It is impossible that God wants us to take on these works of mercy at the expense of our own prior duties and obligations. But that means that we HAVE prior duties sometimes, and that means there is a hierarchy of needs to be met. Since neighborliness is defined by nearness, our obligation to love our neighbor by giving him worldly help is determinated by nearness, among other criteria specifying the hierarchy.

An interesting and almost too obvious point about adoption (I speak as an adoptee) is that one chooses to adopt but has _automatically_ the responsibility for the biological children one bears. Adoption cannot and should not be forced on anyone. But a mother who abandons her own child on the street (another newborn was just found on a garbage pile in America, this time in Jersey City--I saw the link on Drudge five minutes ago) deserves to be prosecuted. Behold: The providential basis of natural, and presumably unchosen, responsibility. The greater, and automatic, responsibility one has to one's own children than to someone else's children.

By the way, and apropos of nothing else in the thread, I find myself grinning a bit that Mueller advocates a return to hard currency. Hey, at least I'm not the only crazy person in the world. And this guy has written a book that some people even respect. And he's not even considered a knee-jerk conservative! Nor, AFAIK, does he work for the Von Mises Institute. Heh and heh.

Here's another article on gold.

http://www.eppc.org/publications/why-the-next-successful-president-will-end-the-reserve-currency-curse/

Interestingly, Mr. Mueller is not the only one out there.

http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/the-reagan-bush-clinton-era

This reminds me of Peter Singer's famous argument about obligation to charity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml

It goes:

suffering and death caused by lack of food, shelter, or medical care are bad if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it Sacrifice' here means without causing anything else comparably bad to happen, or doing something that is wrong in itself, or failing to promote some moral good, comparable in significance to the bad thing that we can prevent for example: if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This may ruin my clothes but that would be insignificant while the death of the child would be very bad we can reduce avoidable death and suffering by giving to famine relief etc. and the cost of doing so is a morally insignificant reduction in our standard of living This argument applies both to immediate emergency famine relief and long term development aid. therefore we ought to give to famine relief etc.

Of course, what immediately seems to be the problem with this (though I do agree with the larger obligation for charity) is that it basically equates murder to not putting five dollars in the jar at the pizza place. Or, for that matter, it's murder to go and get pizza as opposed to just buying food from the dollar store. And the article notes this.

Believe it or not, I actually e-mailed Dr. Feser about this, and his reply was pretty much exactly the same as Tony's; an appeal to the principle of subsidiarity and out obligations to those nearest to us first.

Ugh, the formatting of the article got messed up in the blockquote. Sorry. You can find it easily by clicking on the link, at any rate.

No. That way madness lies. Our call to relieve the needs of others must have limits and criteria for those limits.

Everything has limits, yes.

Sorry, that's another passage, not the Good Samaritan.

It seemed to me you referred to two passages, including Matthew 22 I thought:

Secondly, Christ’s expression of the second great commandment uses a benchmark to understand how to love your neighbor: as yourself. Not that you love your neighbor in EXACTLY the same way as you love yourself (or you would feed him when you are hungry, or take a bath when he is filthy), as he is not you; rather, love him on the same basis as you love yourself: as a person made in the image of God.

My family and I have taken on just the sorts of projects that you describe, Mark. And sometimes that's just what God is asking, and you put yourself at God's disposal to turn yourself inside out if that's what it takes. On the other hand, I have seen families that seem to go out of their way to find these needs, turn themselves upside down trying to meet them, and end up with situations where their own kids are uneducated, are untrained in the faith, are emotional basketcases, eventually are living ship-wrecks of immoral behavior. It is impossible that God wants us to take on these works of mercy at the expense of our own prior duties and obligations. But that means that we HAVE prior duties sometimes, and that means there is a hierarchy of needs to be met. Since neighborliness is defined by nearness, our obligation to love our neighbor by giving him worldly help is determinated by nearness, among other criteria specifying the hierarchy.

Well Tony, in terms of your personal understanding of scope this is all well and fine, but I don't see how you incorporate the breadth of Christian work in the past or now in this area with these categories. There are, just for example, American Christians working all around the world right now from a sense of mission. Maybe some shouldn't be, I don't know. But I know that many are called to do so and are giving their lives for what are now new neighbors because of it. I don't know of the emotional basketcases you speak of, but it sounds like you're talking about people donating money to remote lands for what people should know money itself can't help much. That is madness. An awful lot of causes are quite dubious. Just yesterday someone at a store asked me to donate to "hungry children of America". Huh? But I would like to hear the real examples of those you know personally. I don't disbelieve you, but I'd really like to know since I've heard this same type of story over and over since running in Christian circles and never met a single one yet, or anyone with first-hand knowledge of one. Frankly, I was coming to the conclusion after this long that it was more a Christian folk-tale so I'm interested to know since I don't know. If you could give me some dirt on these folks you know so I'd know what type of people fall into this and how I'd really like that.

Well, Mark, there was the famous African missionary David Livingstone, whose children grew up not knowing him. That seems like an example to me. According to La Wik (for what that's worth), even Livingstone regretted that. I had read elsewhere that his wife Mary ended up in the poor house in his absences in Africa, though just at the moment I haven't been able to confirm that. If true, it would be an example of what Tony is talking about, since Livingstone wasn't supporting her because he was off doing missionary work in Africa.

Here's another example, nearer to our own time, Mark: Some friends of mine were posting, with great sympathy, recently on Facebook the story of some well-intentioned people who got arrested by the trigger-happy government of some African country when they went there to try to pick up a child they had adopted. Some of their paperwork wasn't in order, and they were treated like human traffickers for several days. I don't think I heard if they were ever allowed to bring home the African child they were in process of adopting. But that wasn't the worst part of the story. The worst part of the story was that they had, very foolishly in my judgement, gone to pick up the adoptee *with their biological children*. There were at least two, and they were fairly young. I don't have all the details. Their biological children were taken from them in Africa while the parents were in prison, and pretty much anything could have happened to them. Eventually the family was reunited and allowed to come home. I'm not saying that I know the biological children will grow up basket-cases, but it must have been incredibly traumatic for them and was a risk the parents absolutely should not have taken. One parent should have gone alone to pick up the child they were adopting. But it was part of this whole beneficent idea that "we're going _as a family_ to bring _our new son_ home," etc. etc. Some of my friends were rather resentful and thought me hard-hearted when I suggested that taking the other children with them was _deeply_ negligent and naive on the part of the parents.

I believe that incident arises from the parents' not having enough of a sense of their special obligations, whatever else they do, to keep safe the children they already have.

Take a look at this article for another example of what Lydia's talking about. Heartbreaking and a little bit chilling:

http://20schemes.com/does-god-really-want-us-to-put-our-children-in-harms-way-on-the-mission-field/

Mueller thinks that SS needs some vast and desperate changes, including the main one of reducing the tax rate to something like 2 or 3 percent. I don't recall whether he mentions the employer portion, I will have to go look that up. But at 2% instead of 7%, that can change motivations to some extent. I don't think it's enough, because NOW we have a populace that is so self-centered on personal delights that they can't be bothered to "invest" in children even when they can readily afford it anyway: it is not just the rich, the upper middle class don't have more than 2 kids by choice not directly constrained by economics.

I don't think this would work because the system is barely holding together at the current tax rates. Dropping them to 2% for Social Security from 6.2% from the employee would only hasten the death of the system unless the system is aggressively means-tested. Though really, it should be means-tested. Someone with a large 401k, a lot of private assets and/or at least one pension should not be eligible to get it (same is true of double dipping between military and civilian government pensions).

For practical reasons, I don't think Social Security can be fixed. The main one being demographics. The boomers are close to a 1:1 ratio between them and Generations X and Millennial combined. Whatever claim the elderly might have to some inter-generational assistance cannot stack up against the claim that the latter generations have to a moral right to put their labor first and foremost to support their immediate families or to create one in the first place. These two factors seem to be just about always ignored by the people who say Social Security can be fixed without such a radical transformation as to be unrecognizable.

Social Security can always be fixed with general revenue, I'm afraid. And by the time it comes to that, when financial pressure compel it, the preponderance of voters dependent on SS will make such a move inevitable.

As with any goldbug argument this always the question of how, as a practical matter, we go back to some sort of gold-based system? Does Mueller address this?

I heartily agree with Mike that SS should be aggressively means-tested. Unfortunately, Paul is probably right that it never will be. Mind you, means-testing it would amount to an admission to current and soon-to-be retirees that they've been lied to with all the talk about a trust fund and their money and what they are entitled to as a result of the trust fund and so forth. But as with any Ponzi-like situation, the fact is that they _have_ been lied to, and it only makes the pain worse the longer we put off recognizing that fact. Treating it as a straightforward welfare program for the elderly would make lots of differences. It might even make some people eligible who wouldn't otherwise have worked "enough" years to be eligible (widows who have been stay-at-home mothers, for example). But for the most part it would lessen the demands on the system.

Social Security can always be fixed with general revenue, I'm afraid.

I think that remains to be seen. Most of the sources I've seen say that government already consumes about 35-40% of the GDP through taxation. Adding another trillion or two in taxes would badly hurt the economy and the most likely reaction would be higher wage earnings "going Galt." We're already at a point where that is starting to happen; the number of taxation expatriates is soaring these days.

Medicare is the real elephant in the room here. I've seen Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker throw out 9% as the annual growth rate, and haven't seen anything to contradict that in the MSM. By about 2025 Medicare will be at parity with the Social Security and Defense budgets combined.

Of course, there is the fact that in the current budget entitlements are already about 100% of the federal tax revenues...

Unfortunately, Paul is probably right that it never will be.

I agree that it is unlikely, but would say that pouring additional general funds into it will hasten its demise. My generation is saddled with college loan debt, terrible job prospects and a terrible economy. Going that route will only further build up intergenerational conflict as even the hold outs begin to realize the whole system exists to transfer wealth to the elderly. Considering the fact that the elderly are, today, already the richest segment of Americans, I don't foresee anything positive coming out of this.

My guess is that the Boomers will be faced with either a systemic collapse of the economy as they try to get their entitlements, costs be damned, or Gen X and Millennial may end up threatening armed revolution if their political and economic interests always take the back seat to the Boomers. Even most of the Boomers I know who are self-identified staunch conservatives won't give up their Social Security and Medicare under any circumstances, which is why I have no faith in our political future on this front.

Even most of the Boomers I know who are self-identified staunch conservatives won't give up their Social Security and Medicare under any circumstances, which is why I have no faith in our political future on this front.

Well, if they are still working, maybe they could be offered a carrot in the form of reduced tax rates on their present (probably fairly high) earnings, for as long as they can keep working, in return for concomitantly reduced benefits when they do finally retire. I know a lot of people are not planning the early-ish retirements that were once just an expected thing.

Re social security: A devastating currency collapse and hyperinflation has the ability to alter the political calculus in the US in myriad ways, both good and bad. Barring such an event (the avoidance of which is unlikely in my estimation) I agree with the pessimistic outlook for meaningful reform.

Re gold standard: Can't happen. The ECB marks its gold reserves to market every quarter, meaning the euro was structured specifically to float against gold bullion with bullion serving as the new primary reserve asset. And since Europe is a large economy (on par with the US) that does a lot of trade with the US and the world, they have the pricing power to outflank any gold price that the US would try to defend. This article explains the mechanics:

http://victorthecleaner.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/currency-wars-why-the-united-states-cannot-return-to-a-gold-standard/

~~This won’t drill you into sleep at every third page, as books like “The Unintended Reformation” will, it is quite lively and engaging.~~

Apples and oranges. Gregory's book is a work of intellectual history. Mueller's book is a study of some specific aspects of economics. Both excellent, imo, but quite different in intent and approach. (I read Gregory twice and found him anything but tiresome.)

For a book that has a certain moral/philosophical resonance with Mueller see the Skidelskys' How Much is Enough? It also puts forth a critique of modern economics based on classical and Christian pre-Enlightenment ideas.

You could probably get Democrats/Leftists on board with transitioning SS into a social welfare program with means testing etc, but Republicans would never go for it. They derive too much support from old people who don't want anyone touching their benefits.

To be clear, I would dearly love to see SS phased out, and I strongly suspect it's unconstitutional (a perspective that I gather is considered rather radical). But it is no more constitutional as a Ponzi-like fake retirement savings program than as a frank federal welfare program for truly needy elderly and disabled people and orphans, and the latter is more honest, which is important, and probably less fiscally ruinous, which is also important.

Well Livingston is the most extreme example possible. And at one time missionaries were expected to die on the mission field and expected to lose children there too. I'm not arguing that is should be that way necessarily, but you can't judge people from the past by present standards. And then there is the fact that being a missionary in a great many places is dangerous and they are sometimes taken hostage and/or killed even now.

I live a few blocks away from a multigenerational mission family to the ME in a dangerous part of the world, and I work among scores of people who've served in a great variety of things from hospital ships to army chaplains. And neither they nor their families seem like basketcases. I was asking Tony for examples that he knew since his words indicated personal experience, not whether he'd heard of David Livingstone or missionaries or their children that have been killed. I assume he has since I have.

But the bottom line is that none of this would justify modifying classical interpretations of critical passages of the Bible to try to dissuade people from doing something. This is the area of application, not interpretation. Changing one to suit the other is a very bad idea. Why have a Bible at all?

Love of self was always considered to be natural. It was never considered something that would need to be explained to anyone, but rather something we all do naturally. If it weren't this foundational passage has little meaning nor would the parable of the GS have been intelligible to its original listeners. As I've already found out the hard way, in terms of application there is no shortage of idealistic rejectionism based on conflicts that arise over the definition of neighbor love, so being as local as one can get solves nothing.

Well I'm out. Flame me as you will. I'm just surprised by the casual re-interpretation of foundational passages to suit present desires to convey certain things.

I don't think this would work because the system is barely holding together at the current tax rates.

Well, as I said later with a quote, Mr. Mueller says you drop the future benefits to the person at the same rate. What that does is cut off the portion of the tax today that goes out of the system to fund general costs, doing nothing for retiree costs. Then the person can either invest that money saved on tax either in a retirement account or somewhere else that will return even better, like kids' education. I don't know if that works in the sense of actually providing the same income in the long run. But it stands to reason that it works a lot better (for retirement purposes) than frittering the money away on today's consumption of other passing goods. It could hardly help do better than that.

As I see it, the underlying problem is that SS as it currently stands inherently interposes motivational suicide to the very factors that would be necessary to make it work, such as: a stable worker to retiree ratio. It is impossible for any SS system to "work" when the system projects benefits based on a specific ratio, but the system itself causes that ratio to not come about. I think what Mr. Mueller intends is going back and restoring some kind of link for the two. I can't figure out how what he does actually achieves it successfully, but as I said I don't understand the concept sufficiently.

Medicare is the real elephant in the room here.

In my opinion, Medicare is the easiest to "do something about" in a policy sense, because nobody has promised the elderly a specific dollar amount of benefits. So creatively speaking, there is room to craft some spending limits on Medicare that people could accept. Part of the problem in Medicare is new, highly expensive procedures that weren't even dreamt of 15 years ago, keeping a retiree alive an extra 5 years. There is plenty of room for solutions to rein that in. Without Big Brother telling everyone what care they can get.

Re gold standard: Can't happen....This article explains the mechanics:

Andrew, all this article does is say that it can't be done under a certain set of assumptions. Like, that the standard be a fixed on specific dollar instead of the sort of thing the Euro does. And that banking continues to run as it has for quite a while, inventing credit out of thin air:

This is no surprise because the banking system typically creates additional credit over time – this is their job after all. When the total volume of credit expands, the real value of the currency unit is devalued, and so the currency unit will eventually be worth less than the intrinsic value of the weight of gold to which it is linked.

Take away 3 or 4 of his easily dealt-with assumptions (like fractional reserve banking) because they are part of the problem anyway, and his "can't happen" falls apart.

In any case, if there is a true melt-down, the question won't be whether we can go back to a gold standard, only which kind.

but I don't see how you incorporate the breadth of Christian work in the past or now in this area with these categories. There are, just for example, American Christians working all around the world right now from a sense of mission.

Yes, Mark, one of my brothers spent 20 years doing mission work in a different hemisphere, and another member of my immediate family is doing it right this moment. I am well aware of the need for Christians to work apostolically all around the world.

You will notice that I did NOT say that nearness is the ONLY criterion determining the hierarchy of needs and goods and action thereon.

Since neighborliness is defined by nearness, our obligation to love our neighbor by giving him worldly help is determinated by nearness, among other criteria specifying the hierarchy.

One might notice that missionary work to far lands among the Apostles did NOT start immediately after Pentacost, even though Christ told them quite explicitly "go and teach all nations." They took time. And St. Paul's catalog of offices includes those who stay at home taking care of things, too. Common sense and experience indicates that we pay attention when God sends us (through others, usually) a call from farther away, and this can constitute a call to apply ourselves beyond our proximate neighbors. (Which is why I said Near can be near in many ways, and physical propinquity is just the first way, ). Early in our marriage, my wife and I received a request to consider helping out a seminarian in Ghana, Africa. We took it on, providing both financial assistance (usually minor, sometimes more) and moral and social support, and for 10 years we have seen this man function as a priest working in his native land, and then in ANOTHER continent because his bishop received requests from other places that have transplanted Ghanians.

The Lord calls people to go where He wills. Sometimes far away, but not usually. Commonly, He fashions a call on us through our local neighbor, the one actually close by. As you described.

Other criteria take into account: what resources we have, what dependencies we have, what personal strengths and weaknesses we must deal with (St. Therese of Liseaux wanted to be a missionary, but her health would not permit it), and even our personal tastes and preferences (sometimes to quell them, sometimes to use them): God once used me out of the blue to teach some math to one specific homeless person trying to pass the GED, because I teach math. I didn't go out and find him, God put us together. He put us physically in proximity to each other, and that's HOW I came to recognize a need that I could meet. Just like the Good Samaritan.

Frankly, I was coming to the conclusion after this long that it was more a Christian folk-tale so I'm interested to know since I don't know.

I had a specific family in mind, who has sunk enormous effort into outreach in the local community, activity after activity, but at the same time neglected to prudently sink comparable effort into preparing their kids to go to the kind of college that would properly support their Christian faith - only to see kids walk away from that faith during or after college. I won't be more specific than that.

I'm just surprised by the casual re-interpretation of foundational passages to suit present desires to convey certain things.

Obviously, you have a different specific "take" on what foundational meaning the passage has in itself than I do. My take intended to convey what St. Thomas Aquinas said about obligations to neighbor, who himself was guided by (obviously) the Bible itself and also St. Augustine. I don't think, whether I (or those saints) are right or wrong, that you can easily dismiss their stance as being in bad faith, as stemming from rot in the heart and soul that simply repudiates Jesus' message.

If I see someone that has a certain need and no one to help, it is natural to see what I'll do for him in terms of what I'd do for myself.

If you are on your way to the hospital to help out as a volunteer for a shift you offered to take, and on the way you pass by a homeless person, do you stop going to the hospital to take care of the homeless person? Maybe, but often the only thing you can do for the homeless person either takes time (which you offered to the hospital) or money (which you might not have right now). You make a judgment call, and sometimes the judgment call is: in order for me to do what God is asking me for X, I cannot stop and take care of Y. The Apostles did the same thing: "“It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.

But the bottom line is that none of this would justify modifying classical interpretations of critical passages of the Bible to try to dissuade people from doing something.

I was suggesting that we should indeed be "doing something," and that it is subject to a rational rule, not just a jumble of "if you hear of some need, take care of it immediately."

I see nothing remotely radical or "reinterpreting" about what Tony, taking it from Mueller, said about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In fact, it sounds rather like the portrayal of the Pharisees in Scripture to "place burdens on men's backs" to do all sorts of things to support people they know not at all while simultaneously being unable to take care of the needs immediately around them. Naturally, this question of "immediately around" vs. "far away" has taken on more bite in an age of instant information and rapid travel, and it was in some ways a question that Jesus wouldn't have been likely explicitly to address in a parable in 1st century Palestine. Nonetheless, the applicability of the Good Samaritan's situation is pretty obvious: He _saw_ the man because the man was right there beside the road, and he was able to do something immediate and personal to help him. Just as Lewis says about people forced upon our notice.

Unfortunately, nowadays with fake accidents and what-not, calling 911 might be the better course of action, but the Samaritan didn't have that option.

Either way, the Singer-esque approach that puts everyone in a big pile and recognizes no special concentric circles of responsibility could not be farther from the whole spirit of the tale of the Good Samaritan. After all, from a utilitarian perspective, perhaps the priest and Levite who passed by on the other side could have made an argument that they were doing something more profitable to the greatest good of the greatest number.

I invited John Mueller to comment here on the discussion. He graciously did, in an email to me. Before I give his response, I must make a precautionary point:

Due to circumstances outside his control, Mr. Mueller is not in a position to engage in a free-for-all discussion here, we are very lucky to get any of his thoughts. Please accommodate yourself to the presumption that he will be unable to respond to individual points in follow-up. And please be polite, of course.

I don't recall any other reviewer actually asking me for a comment, and since I try to respond to every request that I reasonably can, in this case I'd like to oblige by responding to the points you (and others in response to your review) have raised.

Perhaps most gratifying to me was your comment, "Although this is a serious book, it is not a tome written for scholars alone, Mr. Mueller is writing for the intelligent everyman. And he succeeds – this is truly readable." Trying to get that balance right -- being understandable to and readable by the intelligent layman, while also defensible against the potential objections of PhD economists -- was the biggest challenge in writing Redeeming Economics.

Since I think you did a pretty good job of summarizing what I consider the most important basic insights of the "AAAs"--Aristotle and Augustine, as combined by Aquinas--let me try to address some of your reservations.

First, regarding the division of national income between labor and property compensation, I think I did much more than merely take the past historical average as normative, so I believe it's not true that "What Mueller does NOT do is get into any kind of careful discussion of the relative allocation."

I give a fairly detailed and empirically supported theory on this question. In the chapter on domestic economy (10), I note that "Our inherently 'matrimonial' nature [Aristotle and Augustine's term] means that an economic event, whether simple or complex, consisting entirely of isolated and unrelated individuals is not only unsustainable; it’s unexplainable. It would require that everyone be, literally, 'self-made' men and women—which have never existed anywhere, despite the assumptions of modern economic theory."

This is why, using the homely example of a children's lemonade stand, I outline the principles which explain not just how a product like lemonade is made, the prices at which it is sold, and the compensation of its producers, but also where the producers themselves -- in this case, the children and their parents -- came from. I show that "in a competitive market, each factor is compensated in proportion to the share it contributes to the total value of the final product" (215). (I also discuss the nature of uncompetitive markets, which permit exploitation.)

I note that the average two-thirds/one-third split between gross labor and property compensation "implies that workers contribute about two-thirds and owners of productive property about one-third, on average, of any additional output" (270). But I also note that "this remarkably stable average conceals exactly the same systematic differences we found in the levels and sources of labor and property compensation of American families," which showed that rates of labor compensation vary systematically by age, sex, education and marital status.

Building on the lemonade stand analogy, I similarly consider (in chapter 12) the principles of economic policies designed to influence the rates of labor or property compensation, and explain which policies actually help, and which result in hurting, the intended beneficiaries, often despite the best intentions. In later chapters on political economy I apply the same principles to show that the civilian unemployment rate is systematically linked to the share of labor compensation in total national income after subtracting taxes and adding social benefits.

Much of the discussion sparked by your review seemed to focus on two areas: the details of my proposed reforms to balance the Federal budget while reforming the Federal income tax and social benefits, and the feasibility and desirability of restoring the gold standard for the U.S. dollar.

The essence of the proposed income tax reform is to tax labor and property income as far as possible alike for tax purposes, at a single low rate, without any exclusions, deductions or credits, except a single credit for "human maintenance" equal to the combined income and payroll tax rates, up to the poverty level plus the average cost of health insurance, intended to correspond to the deduction for keeping productive property in working order.

I think one confusion can be cleared up fairly easily. In your subsequent discussion of Social Security reform, I'm afraid you misremembered the proposal as "reducing the [payroll] tax rate to something like 2 or 3 percent." In fact, it was to reduce payroll tax rates by those percentage points, thus returning payroll taxes to workers to invest in their children or the financial markets, while commensurately reducing the promised future retirement benefits, thus balancing the pay-as-you-go pension system permanently.

Here I think the distinction between true public goods and quasi-public goods, on which you rightly focused, is important. Social security benefits are a quasi-public good, received only by covered workers and their beneficiaries, which is why the system was designed and should always remain self-financing out of workers' current payroll contributions.

In trying to summarize the basic issues regarding "intergenerational transfer," I noted that "we all need to be fed, clothed, sheltered, and transported, whether or not we earn income. Our income typically exceeds consumption during parenthood and the 'empty nest,' while consumption exceeds income during childhood and retirement. This last fact creates what I call the 'retirement gap.' When people retire, labor compensation falls to zero, yet consumption is usually much higher than the property income from earlier saving. The basic problem is how to fill this gap without forgoing retirement, suffering a sharp fall in consumption during retirement, or lowering total lifetime earnings and consumption (which is what happens if early in life one invests more in lower-yielding property and less in higher-yielding human capital).

"Without government, the retirement gap can be bridged only by love—a gift from someone (most often one’s adult children) whose own consumption is thereby reduced. Pay-as-you-go Social Security solved the retirement problem by providing an asset that the private financial markets cannot. While a financial account is essentially a claim on property, a pay-as-you-go Social Security retirement pension amounts to a share in a diversified human capital mutual fund. Social Security makes it possible for workers, by pooling a fraction of their income, to transfer labor compensation from their working years to retirement, and to surviving dependents after their deaths. However, once pay-as-you-go benefits have closed the retirement gap, any further expansion of benefits necessarily comes at the expense of lower investment in either children or productive property" (297-98). (I go on to predict that the projected expansion of social benefits would inflict "demographic winter" on the U.S., as it already has done on most other developed countries. And indeed since the book was published, the most recent figures show that the U.S. birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple.)

But why can't the private markets replicate Social Security? Because to safeguard human dignity, we no longer allow even voluntary slavery or indentured servitude. Allowing such private contracts, as Milton Friedman noted when first proposing them, would be "economically equivalent to the purchase of a share in an individual’s earning capacity and thus to partial slavery.”

Regarding the arguments for restoring the gold standard, you "wonder whether we could construct a system based on several metals instead of just one." While conceding that many ideal systems might be and have been created on chalkboards (or their modern equivalent), I focus always on actual experience. The standard for the U.S. dollar has always alternated between some precious metal--first silver, then gold--and inconvertible legal tender paper money. After discussing the injustice in exchange caused by significant inflation or deflation, in chapter 16 I compare the various American monetary regimes and show that the greatest long-term price stability and least short-run price variability occurred under the classical gold standard, against which the current monetary system fares poorly. I have also shown that this superiority of the classical gold standard remains when we add to the comparison the real rate of economic growth and the least volatility of those growth rates. In the book and elsewhere I show that basing the international monetary system on the inconvertible paper dollar is at the root of the loss of Federal budget discipline, chronic episodes of commodity-led inflation and deflation (most recently in 2000-09), and the loss of U.S. international competitiveness.

Many thanks again for your thoughtful review, for the thought-provoking discussion it triggered, and for inviting me to comment.

All the best,
John Mueller

Mr. Mueller corrects my mis-remembered data on his SS tax rate change. He is absolutely correct, I made mistakes in recalling some points. I apologize, a reviewer is supposed to check his facts, and I did not. The reason is that I bought the work as a Kindle book, and I found it extremely difficult to look up specific passages the way I normally do. I have not adjusted to the electronic mode yet. I should have made the effort anyway, so I will go submit myself for the proverbial 50 lashes with a wet noodle. And I would strongly suggest everyone buy the physical version for another reason: the Kindle version cannot show Mr. Mueller's charts and graphs properly - they are too small, and can't be re-sized. At least not on the base-model Kindle, I don't know about other models.

Tony, our disagreement may be much ado about nothing. While I don't think a true gold standard is in the future, that is not to say I don't think gold will play an important role in righting the global monetary ship. It will, since I see the world transitioning from a debt-based system of saving to an equity-based system with gold bullion at the center and floating in price so that bullion can value currencies rather than having currencies try to value bullion which is what a gold standard attempts to do.

I am very sympathetic to Mr. Mueller's analysis of economic performance under a gold standard. And I agree that when trade balances are settled in gold bullion, as under a gold standard, economic growth can really take off. But when economic growth accelerates so does credit and when credit is denominated in bullion you run into problems, like a lack of gold. This is why the dollar (and the pound) was accepted as reserves at the central bank level in 1922 at Genoa. The monetary authorities hadn't yet conceptualized the idea of allowing gold to float -- still being stuck in the convention that the gold price must be fixed -- and there wasn't enough gold at the fixed price to handle the amount of international trade that had developed since the turn of the century. So paper gold (dollars and pounds) was added to bullion as acceptable reserves at the institutional level. (See: The Age of Inflation by Jacques Reuff)

I think we have a more substantive disagreement over the nature of banking and fractional reserves. Foundational to this question is gaining an understanding of what money is. I think if you look at history, rather than some theory, what you see is that money is and always has been credit. Distilling this even further, you see that money is really a concept. It is our ability to mentally associate the values of many different goods and services in relation to each other that constitutes the money concept. And we denominate these relational values in credit or currency. The use of a token (paper dollars, seashells) just allows us to standardize prices and make the relational values easier to remember and compare. This is why electronic fiat currency works so marvelously for conducting trade (settling trade is another matter) since a medium of exchange requires only a token that people will agree to accept. You run into problems when people save in currency, which is nothing more than a token for trade. And if you are not saving in currency, then what does it matter to you if banks have fractional reserves?

And if you are not saving in currency, then what does it matter to you if banks have fractional reserves?

It is inflationary and has the effect of stealing the sovereign's claim to being the sole source of new currency being issued.

Mike T, but if no one is saving in currency than banks can't issue credit frivolously and thus inflation is tamed.

Sovereigns, via central banks, retain the ability to influence the general price level of the realm through open market operations. But sure, add some sensible regulations such as limits on the amount of sovereign debt the banking sector can finance, this is what the ECB has done in the Eurozone. (The Eurozone is an interesting case, where the nations of the euro have ceeded some of their monetary sovereignty to a central bank not directly under their control in return for price stability and independence from dollar monetary policy).

It's a little difficult to save in something other than currency when the government taxes the heck out of you, not indexed for the very inflation you were trying to protect yourself against, if you save in anything else. If I purchase, say, an original work of art that I believe will grow in value, hoping thereby to save in something other than currency, here are some disadvantages I face:

1) I have to pay sales tax on the purchase price of the painting and frame. That happens to be 6% in my state.

2) My homeowner's insurance company may or may not cover the value of the painting in the event of a fire, depending on its value, if I don't report it as an especially valuable collectible item and pay higher premiums. So that's up in the air. (I admit, that one isn't a government-generated disadvantage, but it is a disadvantage that doesn't accrue to saving currency as long as it's in the bank rather than under my mattress.)

3) I must keep a record of the basis (the amount I paid for the painting), and if I ever sell it to try to realize my investment, I have to pay a whopping 28% federal collectibles tax on the capital gain, which is (unjustly) not indexed for inflation.

4) I have to pay some kind of state tax on the gain, also not indexed for inflation. I haven't checked what that percentage is.

These are all the ways in which policy demotivates saving in forms other than currency. Even capital gains in stocks are taxed less exorbitantly than physical items, since the latter are deemed "collectibles." (This apparently also covers actual gold coins and other quantities of precious metal.)

I think we have a more substantive disagreement over the nature of banking and fractional reserves. Foundational to this question is gaining an understanding of what money is. I think if you look at history, rather than some theory, what you see is that money is and always has been credit.

Let me give what I understand to be the real history - I have read it here and there, possibly in unreliable sources, I have no great storehouse of facts other than what I have read. Money in ancient times around the civilized world was often metal coin: copper, silver, and gold for the most part. The medium of exchange was itself valuable in exact proportion to the amount of wealth it was supposed to "represent" (outside of coiners shorting the measure or content of the coin), because it wasn't a symbol of that value. A gold coin is not a token of value, it is valuable to those who want gold for its own non-monetary purposes.

Forward about 2000 years: in Europe, goldsmiths served as storers of people's gold valuables that they didn't want hanging around the house, including surplus coins. In trade, when Jim agreed to purchase a rug for 100 coins, he could not complete the sale until he wrote a note to the Goldsmith to "pay over to Bill 100 of my gold coins" and the seller Bill collected. Of course, Bill then had 100 gold coins that he didn't want to store, so he would ask Goldsmith to accredit the coins to Bill's account. No actual movement of coins needed to happen - unless Bill used Silversmith as his storage facility.

Forward another few years: instead of Jim writing a check draft on his account with Goldsmith for each sale, in the measure of the sale price, we had Goldsmith issue Jim with "notes" indicating that Jim had 500 coins on deposit with Goldsmith. Jim could pass the notes on in any sale where someone accepted Goldsmith's word on the notes. Goldsmith would redeem the notes for gold at the holder's request: Goldsmith's bankers notes became bearer bonds. Nobody had to actually involve Goldsmith to achieve sales, because the seller could hold the notes for the future instead of redeeming them. Banker's notes became promises of future redemption, not merely chits for immediate redemption. The amount of gold promised per note was a concrete, specified weight of gold, say one gram. Given, hypothetically, that Goldsmith was trustworthy, his notes were "worth" that gram of gold, but "worth" by way of a promise.

Forward another few years: Goldsmith realized that he rarely had more than 10 percent of the notes redeemed in a given year. So, he could write notes "for" far more value than he actually held on deposit, and he could easily cover all the requests for redemption. So he start writing notes worth twice, or 3 times his holdings. He would lend out those notes for promises to repay him.

Forward another few years: Bill caught wind of the fact that there were more notes in Goldsmith's name than he had gold, and ran to redeem his notes. Someone else noticed Bill running, and followed him, and cashed in too. A run on the bank developed, and Goldsmith was busted and hung.

money is and always has been credit. Distilling this even further, you see that money is really a concept. It is our ability to mentally associate the values of many different goods and services in relation to each other that constitutes the money concept. And we denominate these relational values in credit or currency. The use of a token (paper dollars, seashells) just allows us to standardize prices and make the relational values easier to remember and compare.

In my old-fashioned opinion, money properly is either an item of value in itself, or it is a token that can be redeemed for an item of value in itself. And thus it constitutes a promise. If you cannot specify at least partly independently of the current market how much of the item of value a token can be exchanged for, you cannot say precisely what the content of the promise is. A paper note's promise not backed by a specific amount of a good is, inherently, an empty promise. The credit aspect is a consequence of a prior, more rooted reality, it is not the base reality. Fractional reserve banking constitutes as originally performed was, at its root reality, writing notes as promises where there was nothing backing up the promise. They were fraud. The only way the lending of notes in excess of the banker's reserves on deposit COULD POSSIBLY WORK was that the people at large using the banker's notes were unaware of the excess. A marketplace where exchanges can happen only when people are unaware of the facts is a marketplace using fraud.

since a medium of exchange requires only a token that people will agree to accept.

Also in my naive opinion, the notion that people permanently will just "go along" with the understanding of how many tokens X will cost in comparison to Y, when behind the scenes the makers of the tokens are undermining any possible, rational ratio of exchange between X and Y because they are destroying all possible content for a rational ratio of exchange for the tokens, is both erroneous and morally poisonous. A monetary system that tries to get people to behave rationally by marketing goods which are surplus to them to others for whom the same goods are necessities, but BASED on an irrational currency to set the exchanges, cannot possibly last long, it requires people to be schizophrenic.

People only "agree to accept" this money because they are flamboozled. It is like everyone climbing a cliff, you are holding on to a rope because the guy ahead of you is also holding on to the rope. Everyone is willing to climb that way if they think the rope is anchored. When it becomes clear that there is nobody up top holding up the rope that they are hanging on to, some people become less than satisfied to use the reasoning "well, Bill ahead of me is still holding on to it". The fact that everyone else still holds on is not as fully satisfying a reason anymore.

I suppose, though, that if the rope is infinitely long, everything is OK, right? See my comments above about the fool caught in the rain, waiting it out under a tree.

Bonds and stocks, ownership shares in private partnerships, money market fund shares, etc.: these are usually denominated in currency, but in substance they are not currency. They are capital lent out at interest, or capital deployed to purchase ownership in, and ownership in the senior capital lenders to, commercial enterprises. This preferable as savings to physical currency or checking accounts. You should have ample cash on hand, of course (hardly a small thing for American families these days!), but beyond that savings in physical currency is a bad idea.

Taxes are an enormous burden. Lydia is emphatically right about that. Even supposedly "low-tax" states take chunks out of everything. In addition to the feds. But my feeling is generally that sound firms can absorb most taxes; it's the lawless Machiavellian regulators that spell doom. Any determined bureaucrat can wield enormous power. Prosperity is subject to their whim.

I was actually referring to individuals rather than firms. Speaking for myself, I'm reluctant to absorb the additional tax burden of saving value in the form of anything that will be taxed that high. However, you're right that savings in stocks and shares also counts as "not saving in currency," and those gains are not taxed as heavily as saving in actual objects (like art-work, coins that appreciate in value, etc.)

Tony, your Goldsmith Tale has much to recommend to it. Most engaging indeed.

No doubt everyone will have their quibbles. I would invite you to include the fact that in addition to deposits, Goldsmith may sell ownership shares in his bank, and seek out creditors to the bank: each of which securities is given a value in a currency (or maybe multiple ones if they also trade on foreign markets) but which is clearly not mere money.

Equity is easy to see. You purchase a piece of ownership. You're one of the proprietors of the business firm. You can expect no currency back if the firm fails. You own a piece of nothing. Doesn't matter how big it is.

More broadly, economy is people. Both debt and equity come down to, at base, the investment of the aging generations in the future production of the rising generations. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the abstractions and forget the real, breathing people, the real struggling families; this is our economy.

Mueller seeks to remind us of this basic breathing humanity beneath all economic abstractions.

Lydia, agreed. But as I said in my first comment, a devastating currency collapse and hyperinflation has the ability to change things, including what we do and do not tax.

Tony, yes I would describe your view as the classic hard money one. I know it well from personal experience. All I can say is there is research that points to credit being prior to both barter and physical monies. David Graeber's anthropological study of the history of debt is an excellent place to look if you ignore his socialist prescriptions towards the end. There is also the famous testimony that Samuel Baker (First National Bank) and JP Morgan gave in 1913 to a dumbfounded Sam Untermeyer, chief counsel to the House Banking and Currency Committee, where both Baker and Morgan stressed that the fundamental principal of banking was credit (character/trust), before money and property.

There are seeds of a different view in your Goldsmith vignette. One could view the goldsmith as someone who is judging the creditworthiness or character of prospective customers and monetizing that credit the person has already earned. Here, the need to first have deposits before credit can be extended is seen as an artificial constraint. The goldsmith (banker) is not taking savings from a saver and then lending them back out to a borrower. The goldsmith (banker) is monetizing credit already earned (in his judgement) and any deposits serve as reserves which have an equity ownership claim in the prospects of the operation. This is in fact how banks operate today and why, for instance, Cyprus was handled the way it was, with depositers taking a haircut to settle up the losses of the banking system.

David Graeber's anthropological study of the history of debt is an excellent place to look if you ignore his socialist prescriptions towards the end.

David Graeber's account is pure bunk in my opinion. I would dispute BOTH the methodological approach he uses and the assumptions he makes. I really think that this is an example of a "clever-silly". Only someone really clever, really quite bright, could possibly have come up with a theory THAT far wrong. No ordinary fool could have managed it. And no ordinary fool could have convinced anyone else to publish the account.

One could view the goldsmith as someone who is judging the creditworthiness or character of prospective customers and monetizing that credit the person has already earned.

This account does not explain why anyone would care tuppence for the banker's note in other (non-bank) transactions. Oh, you have a piece of paper from Isaac Goldsmith saying "one ounce of gold" on it. Big hairy deal! Here, I'll give you a note that says 5 ounces of gold, and 3 scepters of kings too. If credit came first, and banker's notes really amounted to a statement saying "I would be willing to lend Bill 5 ounces of gold", then the seller in a purchase transaction would rightly say to Bill - "hey, that's nice - Goldsmith said he would lend you gold, so you go get the gold from him, and I will sell you these potatoes."

Look, I don't know for a fact WHICH HISTORICALLY came first, the credit or the deposits. I have read accounts which say that the deposits came first. If they are wrong, then the historical record is not what I said above. But if I am right, it is irrelevant whether in theory credit could be first, we actually had deposits first. If actual history here is indicative of what works, then make an argument about what actually DID happen, not whether it "could have" happened a different way.

Mr. Mueller's comments had a link in the penultimate paragraph that did not work earlier. I have fixed it.

Well, there is indirect evidence in things like tally sticks which are understood to be recording and keeping track of credits and debts. The goldsmith view really only works via the regression theorem which says that money and banking emerged out of barter and that barter is primary. But if all economic activity originated in barter then that rules out any kind of term structure or the time dimension to production and consumption before money financing came along and that doesn't seem realistic to me anymore.

I agree that money is a claim check, it is a liability, it is a claim on the resources of the real economy. For money to work it must be able to be redeemed for real goods and services at the margin. If people believe that a token currency will buy them what they need then the the currency will circulate. And I would say that if a currency cannot buy gold (as distinct from being redeemed for gold) then it will not be long for this world.

I would change this one sentence:

For money to work it must be able to purchase real goods and services at the margin.

What's the difference, in your view, Andrew, between buying gold and being redeemed for gold?

Well, there is indirect evidence in things like tally sticks which are understood to be recording and keeping track of credits and debts.

I am not sure which tally sticks you mean. In England, one of the early-ish kings (Edward I ?) decided that all debts to the treasury had to be paid in tally sticks whose crafting were controlled by the king. That developed into accounts related to tally sticks, and an economic system using them. The tally sticks never completely replaced the coinage, though, from what I understand.

But the clear historical fact is that metal coin money pre-dated THOSE tally sticks by at least 1600 years. There were older forms of currency in earlier times, including shells and what-not, but from culture to culture, and city-state to city-state, gold and silver were by far the most useful media of exchange. We have examples of the coins, this is not fancy or guess-work.

The goldsmith view really only works via the regression theorem which says that money and banking emerged out of barter and that barter is primary.

There is certainly some debate about how gold coinage arose in detail, but there is no doubt that it arose in city-states of the Mediterranean at least by 700 BC. The idea that it arose from barter I leave to others. No matter what form of transactional construct existed before coinage, there is absolutely no doubt that there WAS some barter, since we have accounts of it. Exchange from independent group to independent group almost HAD to be by barter or by something similar.

The goldsmith account is from the late 1400s to the 1500s - a long, long time from when barter was the norm. This is not virtually pre-history. Either actual historical record supports my account above, or it doesn't. I am just saying what I have read online. I don't have the independent historical information to validate it certainly, but the accounts I read were accounts claiming to be based on documented sources, not guesses as to "how it might have happened." Maybe they are full of nonsense, I wouldn't know. So give us something better if you think it is unhistorical.

Lydia,

To me, being redeemed implies redemption at a fixed price whereas to buy means to exchange at a price determined by the market.

Andrew, could you say in fifty words or less (for my sake, not that I'm accusing you of usually being verbose) what you propose that the U.S. do to develop sound money? Or even sounder money than we presently have? For example, something to do with limiting the Fed's ability to print dollars, perhaps?

Tony, I don't deny that coinage goes back a long time. But the question is did gold coinage mean back then what hard money advocates mean by it today? I don't think so. Were gold coins in antiquity money, as Ron Paul thinks of money, or were they just tradeable wealth? You may not like this but I'm going to quote an anonymous internet source as an authority. It's difficult to do better since all the books with this perspective will only be written after the dollar reserve system ends. The full excerpt is long and is found here: http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/11/moneyness.html It begins a short way down the post in blue text. I find the source credible, you may feel differently.

Gold, that wonderful metal that has all the unique qualities to function as our one and only wealth medium, and we just can't use it without altering its purpose. You know, the Lydians had it right, back around 430 BC. They didn't struggle with the concepts of money, like we do today. They just stamped whatever pieces of gold they found laying around and kept it for trade. There was no need to clarify for certain that their gold money needed properties of "utility", store of value, medium of exchange, etc. etc.. They didn't need to identify these qualities were in gold before they stopped questioning if it was safe to use gold as savings. Gold was owned and the knowledge that people owned it and carried it for trade was alone enough to make it "worth its weight as wealth".

You see, back in antiquity there existed another property that could override our need for modern definitions of tradable wealth. That property was found in the one identifying mark of wealth that transcended all ages; real possession!(smile) This factor and this one factor alone had the ability to activate all the other modern attributes of money properties, even when the knowledge of these attributes was unknown in the ancient era. Come now, Alexander the Great didn't know about "utility" did he? (grin)

++++++++++++++

We were first alerted to the "gold is money" flaw years ago. When considering the many references to gold being money, in ancient texts, several things stood out. We began to suspect that those translations were somewhat slanted. I saw many areas, in old text, where gold was actually more in a context of; his money was in account of gold or; the money account was gold or; traded his money in gold. The more one searches the more one finds that in ancient times gold was simply one item that could account for your money values. To expand the reality of the thought; everything we trade is in account of associated money values; nothing we trade is money!

The original actual term of money was often in a different concept. In those times barter, and their crude accounts of the same, were marked down or remembered as so many pots, furs, corn, tools traded. Gold became the best accepted tradable wealth of the lot and soon many accountings used gold more than other items to denominate those trades. Still, money was the account, the rating system for value, the worth association in your head. Gold, itself, became the main wealth object used in that bookkeeping.

This all worked well for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years as fiat was never so well used or considered. Over time, society became accustomed to speaking of gold in the context of money accounting. Translations became all the more relaxed as gold and money accounting terms were mingled as one in the same. It was a subtle difference, then, but has become a major conflict in the money affairs of modern mankind; as gold receipts became fiat gold and bankers combined fiat money accounting with gold backing.

Lydia,

The US is backed into a corner. There is no solution that will not be ugly. Really, the best option for the government would be to use these last few precious months/years of dollar exorbitant privilege to stockpile food and supplies for distribution for when the currency collapse begins. And then when the collapse (foreign rejection of US currency and treasury debt) is in full swing choose to hyperinflate the debt away so that the national finances can begin with a clean slate. Then, under the new dollar currency, mimic the euro structure and place the national gold stock with the Federal Reserve and quickly join Europe and the BIS as they form a new market for physical gold bullion, which will of course be tax free. (If our government is at all rational, they will not tax or confiscate gold instead choosing to tax the resultant commerce which will be far more valuable to them) International trade will take it from there and the rebuilding will begin.

This is actually how I see it playing out anyway, except for the government stockpiling. I think individual families will have to do this themselves. Unfortunately, most won't.

I think the only way to avoid a currency collapse would be to institute a crash program to become fully energy independent quickly and once achieved to cancel the debt and go full autarky with Mexico and Canada as possible exceptions. We don't have the will or the time for this option. Plus, trading with the world is much better than not.

Andrew, I got 2.5 paragraphs in saying" "that's what I said". Then I hit a brick wall.

In those times barter, and their crude accounts of the same, were marked down or remembered as so many pots, furs, corn, tools traded. Gold became the best accepted tradable wealth of the lot and soon many accountings used gold more than other items to denominate those trades.

You don't need an "account" (memory-serving physical record) for trades that are straight up, this for that, here and now. The things themselves change hands, no further record of the exchange is needed. It is only if you try to do "exchanges" that are not straight up this-for-that where you need an account: some transaction where there is a "this now" for some "that-later", where you need an agreed RECORD that testifies to the "that-later." To gloss over this as if ALL transactions need an account is a bad mistake. And clearly making complex "this-now for that-later" type transaction is not going to happen right at first, in the earliest days of a given market only actual immediate direct exchanges take place because nobody will know for sure there will even be a "later".

In a developed market where there is enough regularity for people to believe, nay assume conditions will hold steady long enough for "that-paid-later" even to make sense in a transaction, the regularity cannot help but establish a kind of at least partial system of standard pricing, or AT LEAST standard ways you find agreed pricing - using standard weights and measures, for example to denote the agreed amounts. You won't get an agreement "this now for that later" if the "that" is going to be measured by a nebulous basket size that may range from 1 qt to 15 gallons. We KNOW how much THIS NOW is, it is right there in front of us. It is measuring the THAT LATER that needs to be standardized. So such transactions require a developed market with some degree of standardization.

Still, money was the account, the rating system for value, the worth association in your head. Gold, itself, became the main wealth object used in that bookkeeping.

Any system that has that much of a developed regular market to have standards about conducting half-exchange today for the other half-exchange later, will already have had gold or some other actual tradable wealth object (whether shells or carved stones or what) show up as an "accepted tradable wealth" for all direct transactions. That is to say, you won't have a system of "let's make a record (account) of this agreement on a "this-today for that-later" type transaction where you didn't already have a pretty solid thing of wealth that was already noted as being the most commonly used wealth-object to be used for denoting values of the transaction. Or, at least, very, very soon after: it is conceivable that you could have a transfer record that says "I am giving up 10 bushels of wheat today for 9 bushels of potatoes in 3 months", without ever using ANY intermediate denotation of valuation at all. You don't need money or a medium to make that kind of record. The account (record) needs nothing other than the 2 end products themselves. Record keeping would not REQUIRE a medium of value-denotation.

What is not conceivable is that there arose a system of recording exchange contracts using as an "accounting" device of value something whose exchange "value" was, right from the very first, ONLY AND SOLELY, a purely fictional assignment as such within the contracts. In the early days of such recording, nobody could or would actually enter into a contract that said "I will give you 5 orion-stars worth of wheat for 5 orion-stars worth of potatoes", because nobody could say what an "orion-star" was worth in wheat or potatoes to start with, 'cause they didn't exist, being purely fictional. They could only draft a contract record for exchange by using, as the medium of measure of value, something that was already changing hands for transactions, and for which there was ALREADY a strong degree of reliability on the usual exchange rate of the medium for a great many items. In other words, to use "grams of gold" in the contract as the medium of measure in the account requires as such that grams of gold already are being exchanged readily for both wheat and potatoes, (in straight-up non-recorded non-accounting exchanges) and that those exchanges had settled down to a regular "going rate" of exchange for both items in relation to gold.

At the start of recording, using an account with a medium requires the denoted medium already have its own value before being used for accounting, for record keeping.

To expand the reality of the thought; everything we trade is in account of associated money values; nothing we trade is money!

To contract the thought back to REAL reality: it is impossible for accounts about value to precede already attributed value in already existing exchanges. Just impossible.

You don't need an "account" (memory-serving physical record) for trades that are straight up, this for that, here and now. The things themselves change hands, no further record of the exchange is needed.

Why not? If money is just an association of values then why wouldn't you keep track of those associations for future reference? Your building up a price system.

And clearly making complex "this-now for that-later" type transaction is not going to happen right at first, in the earliest days of a given market only actual immediate direct exchanges take place because nobody will know for sure there will even be a "later".

We simply disagree on the prevalence of credit arrangements between people who trusted one another in the distant past.

That is to say, you won't have a system of "let's make a record (account) of this agreement on a "this-today for that-later" type transaction where you didn't already have a pretty solid thing of wealth that was already noted as being the most commonly used wealth-object to be used for denoting values of the transaction.

Yes, the author is describing gold becoming the unit of account in trade because of its wide acceptability which came about because it had intrinsic value to people. But I think you misunderstand a subtle aspect of what this author is saying. Note that I just said "gold becoming the unit of account" not "gold becoming money". What the author is saying is that gold was used in the accounting of trade but that doesn't mean that gold was necessarily used in every transaction that was recorded. Gold traded widely enough that most people would have known the gold price for things and people traded on the basis of the gold price.

The euro is an irredeemable fiat currency and yet it circulates just fine. Full convertability was phased in over a few years so that a price/exchange system could be established. So a medium of exchange doesn't need to be inherently valuable to circulate in an economy, but it better be able to purchase things that are inherently valuable. The problem, as I've said, is not using token money in exchange but saving in token money.

Mike T, but if no one is saving in currency than banks can't issue credit frivolously and thus inflation is tamed.

If no one is saving in currency then that most realistically means we have been reduced to a barter economy. But the real issue here isn't the currency, it's the issuance of credit that is fungible with currency with no real backing. If a bank can turn a $100 deposit into the "basis" for a $1,000 loan the bank has functionally issued $900 worth of new currency because its debt is functionally interchangeable with sovereign-issued currency.

This is not an inherent "feature" of currency. Governments used to consider this a form of fraud and/or counterfeiting and took punitive action appropriate for it. We tolerate it today because America is addicted to cheap credit. Forcing banks to issue only what debt their reserves can pay up immediately would kill that which means our sense of prosperity would end very quickly.

Why not? If money is just an association of values then why wouldn't you keep track of those associations for future reference? Your building up a price system.

People don't just start writing down things for the heck of it when the time, energy, and resources for writing them down (and storing them intact) are expensive. Keeping track of those associations for future reference requires a reason to want to keep track of them, and that in effect requires that there is enough regularity to your marketplace that you think there will be a future that looks a lot like today, or at least a future in which the same market will be functioning. Two tinkers meeting for the first time at a cross-ways, where both are on their way to completely new (different) territory and will never pass this way again, won't need or want to "record" that they exchanged 3 knives for 2 pans: They have no reason to think these trading conditions will ever repeat themselves. Thinking that recording has any bearing for the future requires an already existing stable market. Which means that it PRE-supposes a great many transactions in the past.

No, you don't bother with tracking "association of values" until after you have something that approximates a stable system.

We simply disagree on the prevalence of credit arrangements between people who trusted one another in the distant past.

We disagree on whether people could have "trusted one another" without already having had transactions that built that trust. Human nature doesn't change. People trust complete strangers a LOT less than they trust well-known neighbors, for obvious reasons. People trust each other when they have experienced dealings with them, and the dealings panned out as spoken. You cannot rationally give unlimited credit to a complete stranger who walks into town with nothing on his back, asking "hey, can I have enough credit to buy a house so I work?"

As far as I can tell, the "credit-first" theories unfailingly just don't look far enough back into the prior sequence of events.

What the author is saying is that gold was used in the accounting of trade but that doesn't mean that gold was necessarily used in every transaction that was recorded. Gold traded widely enough that most people would have known the gold price for things and people traded on the basis of the gold price.

But that's EXACTLY what I said. Only, I added that this trading with and OF gold (even though not as a universal medium) preceded accounting for trades in terms of gold.

Obviously, you have a different specific "take" on what foundational meaning the passage has in itself than I do. My take intended to convey what St. Thomas Aquinas said about obligations to neighbor, who himself was guided by (obviously) the Bible itself and also St. Augustine. I don't think, whether I (or those saints) are right or wrong, that you can easily dismiss their stance as being in bad faith, as stemming from rot in the heart and soul that simply repudiates Jesus' message.

Well I'd love to be enlightened on how Aquinas differs from my view, but you didn't do that by citing anything.

If you are on your way to the hospital to help out as a volunteer for a shift you offered to take, and on the way you pass by a homeless person, do you stop going to the hospital to take care of the homeless person?

Um Tony, are you saying that there are no circumstances where you'd stop? I doubt it. If he were bleeding to death I'll bet you would stop. If he were in his usual homeless state then you wouldn't. Isn't this basic practical reasoning? What does this have to do with the topic at hand?

What you said in the article gutted the 2nd great commandment of its purpose. You underlined the words "on the same basis" and then said "Taking these two together, then, you properly take good care of yourself out of love for God’s image in you, and you take care of your spouse and family who are almost a second skin to you, and you take care of your extended family, neighbors in lesser ways, and so on."

The 2nd great commandment does not state merely the basis for neighbor love. The basis for neighbor love obviously is God's love. The 2nd commandment is a guide for morality itself. There is no other basis for a 1st order ethic or understanding of the content of morality.

There are natural limitations to altruistic actions. It's just my personal preference to keep central theological doctrines. Or am I supposed to just watch people discard them in some cathartic release of angst over the supposed poor application of them by others?

I see nothing remotely radical or "reinterpreting" about what Tony, taking it from Mueller, said about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In fact, it sounds rather like the portrayal of the Pharisees in Scripture to "place burdens on men's backs" to do all sorts of things to support people they know not at all while simultaneously being unable to take care of the needs immediately around them.

Well I do. Look, caching this out in terms of actively seeking is misguided. There is the question of stewardship and God's providence. I mentioned a couple of sisters without dads who are neighbors of mine, one of which I taught to read but both of which I'm deeply involved. I didn't go out and seek them. They sought me out, and thought reluctant at first I knew I had no legitimate basis to say no based on neighbor-love. And in time I could see God's providence all the way, and that will never change. God chose them for me to minister to and has provide me with the means to do it. Or that's one way of saying it. A euphemism perhaps. Actually, my dad showed me the means to do it by his example of how to take financial risks before I ever met them and that I'd not see the benefits of until after my decision to include them in our family. It's called faith. God chose me to minister to them because he knew I could handle it and would over their entire lifetimes if necessary, and could defend myself against ruthless misguided attacks by those in the church who'd use the same misguided logic to gut the traditional understanding of the 2nd great commandment in service of their idealized view of the family, or community, or whatever the reasons they do it.

Much of life is accepting what and who God sends us. So it is very misguided to see things in terms of idealistically going out and seeking too many obligations. I think most of the time people in fact are wont to positively reject people seeking their help. I think we should have a policy of non-rejection. Is that really controversial? What ever happened to the idea that God provides for us, and we're to be good stewards of that all considered?

What I see now is love being quantified in terms of time and/or money, and then ordered according to a person's place in some ranking on a currently popular cultural metric.

Mark, if you can't dial back the rhetoric you're using, I fear that you won't be able to continue to contribute to the discussion. If you can't figure out a way of suggesting that my position is erroneous without ranting that I "gutted" the second great commandment - if you can't see the difference between repudiating the commandment and an attempt to interpret it (even if erroneous) so as to be able to actually put it into practice, then you aren't really trying hard enough.

The parable is set up to answer the question "and who is my neighbor".

Although Christ does not explicitly answer the question "who is my neighbor for whom I am called to an act of love" in the parable, he does explicitly answer the question "who acts in a neighborly way to the man in need of love." Christ does, however, suggest sort of implicitly an answer to the question "who is my neighbor for whom I am called to an act of love": the 2 who passed by were called to act as neighbor, but did not. Implicitly, it is IN VIRTUE OF THEIR PASSING BY that Christ indicates they are under the obligation of being neighborly. Those who are close by often, perhaps even generally, receive a calling to minister to others by reason of the nearness.

I do not dispute that we are called to minister to others, and that this obligation is very serious, falling under the second Great Commandment. I am attempting to make sense of the PRIORITY, or ordination of the many ways we are called to minister, so that one calling does not disrupt another, more grave calling.

Secunda Secundae, Q 26, A 6:

On the contrary, One's obligation to love a person is proportionate to the gravity of the sin one commits in acting against that love. Now it is a more grievous sin to act against the love of certain neighbors, than against the love of others. Hence the commandment (Leviticus 10:9), "He that curseth his father or mother, dying let him die," which does not apply to those who cursed others than the above. Therefore we ought to love some neighbors more than others.

I answer that, There have been two opinions on this question: for some have said that we ought, out of charity, to love all our neighbors equally, as regards our affection, but not as regards the outward effect. They held that the order of love is to be understood as applying to outward favors, which we ought to confer on those who are connected with us in preference to those who are unconnected, and not to the inward affection, which ought to be given equally to all including our enemies.

But this is unreasonable. For the affection of charity, which is the inclination of grace, is not less orderly than the natural appetite, which is the inclination of nature, for both inclinations flow from Divine wisdom. Now we observe in the physical order that the natural inclination in each thing is proportionate to the act or movement that is becoming to the nature of that thing: thus in earth the inclination of gravity is greater than in water, because it is becoming to earth to be beneath water. Consequently the inclination also of grace which is the effect of charity, must needs be proportionate to those actions which have to be performed outwardly, so that, to wit, the affection of our charity be more intense towards those to whom we ought to behave with greater kindness.

We must, therefore, say that, even as regards the affection we ought to love one neighbor more than another. The reason is that, since the principle of love is God, and the person who loves, it must needs be that the affection of love increases in proportion to the nearness to one or the other of those principles. For as we stated above (Article 1), wherever we find a principle, order depends on relation to that principle.

Reply to Objection 1. Love can be unequal in two ways: first on the part of the good we wish our friend. On this respect we love all men equally out of charity: because we wish them all one same generic good, namely everlasting happiness. Secondly love is said to be greater through its action being more intense: and in this way we ought not to love all equally.

Or we may reply that we have unequal love for certain persons in two ways: first, through our loving some and not loving others. As regards beneficence we are bound to observe this inequality, because we cannot do good to all: but as regards benevolence, love ought not to be thus unequal. The other inequality arises from our loving some more than others: and Augustine does not mean to exclude the latter inequality, but the former, as is evident from what he says of beneficence.

Reply to Objection 2. Our neighbors are not all equally related to God; some are nearer to Him, by reason of their greater goodness, and those we ought, out of charity, to love more than those who are not so near to Him.

Article 7:

On the contrary, It is written (1 Timothy 5:8): "If any man have not care of his own and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." Now the inward affection of charity ought to correspond to the outward effect. Therefore charity regards those who are nearer to us before those who are better.

I answer that, Every act should be proportionate both to its object and to the agent. But from its object it takes its species, while, from the power of the agent it takes the mode of its intensity: thus movement has its species from the term to which it tends, while the intensity of its speed arises from the disposition of the thing moved and the power of the mover. Accordingly love takes its species from its object, but its intensity is due to the lover.

Now the object of charity's love is God, and man is the lover. Therefore the specific diversity of the love which is in accordance with charity, as regards the love of our neighbor, depends on his relation to God, so that, out of charity, we should wish a greater good to one who is nearer to God; for though the good which charity wishes to all, viz. everlasting happiness, is one in itself, yet it has various degrees according to various shares of happiness, and it belongs to charity to wish God's justice to be maintained, in accordance with which better men have a fuller share of happiness. And this regards the species of love; for there are different species of love according to the different goods that we wish for those whom we love.

On the other hand, the intensity of love is measured with regard to the man who loves, and accordingly man loves those who are more closely united to him, with more intense affection as to the good he wishes for them, than he loves those who are better as to the greater good he wishes for them.

Again a further difference must be observed here: for some neighbors are connected with us by their natural origin, a connection which cannot be severed, since that origin makes them to be what they are. But the goodness of virtue, wherein some are close to God, can come and go, increase and decrease, as was shown above (24, 4,10,11). Hence it is possible for one, out of charity, to wish this man who is more closely united to one, to be better than another, and so reach a higher degree of happiness.

Moreover there is yet another reason for which, out of charity, we love more those who are more nearly connected with us, since we love them in more ways. For, towards those who are not connected with us we have no other friendship than charity, whereas for those who are connected with us, we have certain other friendships, according to the way in which they are connected. Now since the good on which every other friendship of the virtuous is based, is directed, as to its end, to the good on which charity is based, it follows that charity commands each act of another friendship, even as the art which is about the end commands the art which is about the means. Consequently this very act of loving someone because he is akin or connected with us, or because he is a fellow-countryman or for any like reason that is referable to the end of charity, can be commanded by charity, so that, out of charity both eliciting and commanding, we love in more ways those who are more nearly connected with us.

So: St. Thomas's take is that we have a greater obligation toward certain people than toward others, and that among the criteria that determines who, greater closeness by blood, by common origin, and by friendship all matter.

I think we should have a policy of non-rejection. Is that really controversial?

It is not controversial when taken as a rule of thumb but not as a universal. Taken as a universal, yes it is controversial, because it implies that a request (or demand) by another can defeat clearly higher obligations or duties when the two are in conflict.

Mark, if you can't dial back the rhetoric you're using, I fear that you won't be able to continue to contribute to the discussion. If you can't figure out a way of suggesting that my position is erroneous without ranting that I "gutted" the second great commandment - if you can't see the difference between repudiating the commandment and an attempt to interpret it (even if erroneous) so as to be able to actually put it into practice, then you aren't really trying hard enough.

Well, what am I supposed to think of Lydia's tying Matthew 23 to the parable of the Good Samaritan? The preceeding verse is: "But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." How exactly does this passage support any view on about people "doing all sorts of things to support people they know not at all while simultaneously being unable to take care of the needs immediately around them."?

So: St. Thomas's take is that we have a greater obligation toward certain people than toward others, and that among the criteria that determines who, greater closeness by blood, by common origin, and by friendship all matter.

Tony, we're not talking about the same passage as I've already said. You've acted like you never even mentioned the 2nd great commandment. I get it.

It is not controversial when taken as a rule of thumb but not as a universal. Taken as a universal, yes it is controversial, because it implies that a request (or demand) by another can defeat clearly higher obligations or duties when the two are in conflict.

That's just silly. Universals aren't always absolute. One universal is don't live beyond one's means or perform services beyond one's abilities and given one's responsiblities. And it's crazy to do anything anyone asks. I don't know what type of moron would interpret not-rejecting people in such a way. Much of what people want does not help them and won't. This is common sense.

God chose me to minister to them because he knew I could handle it and would over their entire lifetimes if necessary, and could defend myself against ruthless misguided attacks by those in the church who'd use the same misguided logic to gut the traditional understanding of the 2nd great commandment in service of their idealized view of the family, or community, or whatever the reasons they do it.

This either an inartful sentence of considerable massiveness, or it is an extraordinarily bizarre statement amalgamating internet debates with personal life. If the latter is the case, I suggest you just back off engaging in internet debates at all. It's clearly not healthy for you.

Well, what am I supposed to think of Lydia's tying Matthew 23 to the parable of the Good Samaritan?

Here's at least some of the obvious answers to that question (and other similar questions when you feel yourself outraged by what you think we've said):

(a) "Hold off commenting until I sober up."

(b) "Reflect that maybe I haven't read my interlocutors carefully enough to grasp their meaning."

(c) "Consider that perhaps I've overlooked certain details of explication."

(d) "Cogitate on the possibility that I've drawn conclusions based on my own assumptions rather than my interlocutors' statements."

(e) "Let it go."

Universals aren't always absolute.

I just figured it out, Paul: English appears not to be Mark's first language. He doesn't mean by words what we mean by them. It sometimes appears that he doesn't mean by them what he means by them either, but admittedly that may be just an appearance.

Mark, if you can't dial back the rhetoric you're using, I fear that you won't be able to continue to contribute to the discussion. If you can't figure out a way of suggesting that my position is erroneous without ranting that I "gutted" the second great commandment

Well, what am I supposed to think of Lydia's tying Matthew 23 to the parable of the Good Samaritan?

Simple: do not try to use a red herring of Lydia's comments to shift blame about your saying that I was gutting the 2nd great commandment - Matt 23 had nothing to do with it.

Secondly, in different terms, don't go around accusing commenters here of gutting Jesus's words unless they intend to say just that.

Also, don't pick fights just for the fun of it, which is what you did here right from the beginning. There was no necessity mis-interpret my comments or Lydia's as defeating the 2nd great commandment.

Well I'd love to be enlightened on how Aquinas differs from my view, but you didn't do that by citing anything.

So after I cited 2 articles from St. Thomas that pretty much stated exactly what I had put forward, as different from the view what Mark claimed, he answers with this:

Tony, we're not talking about the same passage as I've already said. You've acted like you never even mentioned the 2nd great commandment. I get it.

Which is a non-sequitur in 2 ways: (a) the second sentence doesn't even scan with the first; and (b) neither sentence nor both together respond in the least to the citations showing how St. Thomas's teaching differs from Mark's view.

For what it's worth, there's a fair bit of unfortunate guilt-tripping that does go on vis a vis foreign adoption, basically asking people "Why aren't you all doing this?" Sincere people get on-fire for the issue of foreign adoption and needy children in foreign lands and then write blog posts and columns more or less implying that Christian couples who say that they don't believe they are called to do that are wimping out.

To be clear, I'm not in any way saying that that is what Mark is saying, so don't get that idea, Mark.

What I'm saying is that that is a fairly mild but still, in my opinion, troubling example of what happens in the Christian community when people start denying or even questioning that our first responsibility is to the children God has actually given us.

For what it's worth, there's a fair bit of unfortunate guilt-tripping that does go on vis a vis foreign adoption, basically asking people "Why aren't you all doing this?" Sincere people get on-fire for the issue of foreign adoption and needy children in foreign lands and then write blog posts and columns more or less implying that Christian couples who say that they don't believe they are called to do that are wimping out.

Then say that. I've heard people say this from the pulpit and approved of it. The problem comes in trying to make a principle that doesn't contradict scripture that also discourages this. There is no such principle. This is a matter of practical wisdom and application, and not to be fought out at the level of interpretation, which is exactly what I said at the start.

Secondly, in different terms, don't go around accusing commenters here of gutting Jesus's words unless they intend to say just that.

And don't judge things by their abuse, where this all began. Especially when you claim exaggerated claims of personal witness of abuses for rhetorical effect. Remember how this began?

I have seen families that seem to go out of their way to find these needs, turn themselves upside down trying to meet them, and end up with situations where their own kids are uneducated, are untrained in the faith, are emotional basketcases, eventually are living ship-wrecks of immoral behavior. It is impossible that God wants us to take on these works of mercy at the expense of our own prior duties and obligations.

Which you answered like this:

I had a specific family in mind, who has sunk enormous effort into outreach in the local community, activity after activity, but at the same time neglected to prudently sink comparable effort into preparing their kids to go to the kind of college that would properly support their Christian faith - only to see kids walk away from that faith during or after college. I won't be more specific than that.

So you claim knowledge of one family who didn't get their kids into private school as the basis for saying you have seen people turn themselves into "emotional basketcases, eventually are living ship-wrecks of immoral behavior"? Wow. And private school would have fixed all that right?

But not to worry, Lydia has your back with the example of David Livingston? Can you say "straw-man"?

Look Tony and Lydia, I'm sure you think I'm quite mean, but the Christian elitism and paternalism you display is pretty objectionable. I really do wonder if you really believe average people without the supposed elite credentials you imagine yourselves to have can interpret the plain passages of scripture without your help. This elitist attitude makes me pretty angry, because as far as I can see there is every reason to think, and in fact all the real evidence we have, to suggest that those who perform Christian service are better adjusted and have better adjusted families than those who don't, not less. I see evidence every day that people have a better understanding of the way to serve their own families by serving others. Many of these people can't quote Aquinas on anything. Whatever else it is, the Christian life isn't a zero sum game, and any hints that it might be should be repudiated with extreme prejudice.

I don't have the slightest idea where the "elitism" claim is coming in. I'm neither a Thomist nor a scholar of St. Thomas. I don't claim any special expertise in interpreting Bible passages that might or might not be relevant to this subject. I haven't even brought up the Bible references that would probably be the _most_ relevant to it. (And if I do, I suppose Mark will get all upset and call me some weird name, so I won't bother.) But I do think there's quite a bit of misguided enthusiasm and that harm comes of it. Mark, you haven't yet addressed the chilling article linked above by the Masked Elephant. In it, in case you don't want to bother reading it, a former missionary asks whether God wants us to put our children in harm's way and apparently answers, "Yes." This isn't David Livingstone. This is somebody right now, in the 21st century. The author talks about taking his kids to Brazil where they came down with what sounds like dysentery, then taking them to a so-called "hospital" that was a house of horrors. He talks about their nearly dying. And throughout (we were talking about "elitism," were we?) he can barely conceal his inclination to sneer at parents who are horrified by this and think it's their responsibility to protect their kids from such risks. You know, those are parents who apparently want to raise their kids in a safe little bubble.

Right now he's salving his missions conscience by deliberately living in a tough housing project in Edinburgh where there are apparently no small number of sex offenders. _That'll_ show anybody who thinks he is unwilling to risk his children's safety for the sake of the Lord's Work.

This kind of thing is Not Good. To put it mildly. And it's characteristic of several movements in evangelical Christianity that are going on right now. I don't know whether they have their Catholic counterparts or not. If anything, the elitism lies with the people who are urging these courses of action on people to prove that they have a truly "missional mindset."

Here's another one: I have plenty of respect for the five men who were killed by the Auca Indians in the story told in Through Gates of Splendor, though I think they should have been more wiling to defend themselves when push came to shove.

But most people don't know that they were also trying to entice the *extremely dangerous* Aucas to come up to one missions house where one of the missionary wives, then *heavily pregnant*, was living. One of the anecdotes tells of the native "watchman" (to whom they had deliberately been giving only an empty gun) running and asking the wife to give him ammunition because he had seen an Auca near the house. She refused. Moreover, ignoring his pleas to come back to the house, she went out on the path near the house seeking the Auca, holding an ax in her hand as a gift, and calling out, "Friend, friend." She was seven or eight months pregnant at the time. Fortunately, she didn't find the Auca.

That was wrong. Sorry, but it was wrong. She had no right to risk the life of her unborn child in that way. Yet that is supposed to be heroic.

The problem comes in trying to make a principle that doesn't contradict scripture that also discourages this. There is no such principle.

Sure there is: take care of higher and more proximate obligations before lower and more remote obligations. Well backed up by Christ's explicit reprimand of Pharisees who gave of their substance (in excess of the law's requirement) to the temple instead of taking care of their own parents.

Look Tony and Lydia, I'm sure you think I'm quite mean,

No,no, of course not. Just wrong. Very nice people can be completely wrong, and you're not even completely wrong, just partly.

So you claim knowledge of one family who didn't get their kids into private school as the basis for saying you have seen people turn themselves into "emotional basketcases, eventually are living ship-wrecks of immoral behavior"? Wow. And private school would have fixed all that right?

Who said anything about private school? I know large numbers of people who went to private school who are in terrible emotional shape, whose outward lives suggest that they are in terrible moral shape, I would never suppose getting your kid into private school would have "fixed all that." Wouldn't even have thought it. No, the fact that I didn't go into detail about further effects was in regard to the fact that I explicitly SAID I didn't want to get into further specifics: absence of stated specifics isn't evidence of there being none. There was more, I chose not to get into it. But I will add this: they repeatedly used as an argument for getting their kids involved in morally dangerous activities that it was "important to have their kids be the 'leaven' to those around them". Basically the same attitude Lydia was talking about. And

Mark, in your terms, the early Christians could have been accused of elitism for believing something other than the standard common-place rigamarole would be their salvation. Key in objections about "special sacraments" (i.e. baptism) that are not available to everyone. The early Church Fathers, from Ignatius of Antioch to Hilary of Poitiers and beyond all thought learning and expertise in matters of the faith was important to the entire Church, not just to those with the learning - though never as important as the gift of faith itself. Goodness knows I don't call myself an expert, that's for the Fathers and Doctors.

Lydia, case of risking one's life or an unborn child is an entirely separate question. There is nothing for me to comment on. Children routinely died on the mission field in the past. I don't know what modern missionaries should do. If you have recommendations for guidelines on policies for women on the mission field then you're free to offer them anytime.

If I were to say that mothers should be spending their time dedicated to the well-being of their families on Sunday afternoon rather than arguing with others they'll never meet online, you'd defend your use of the time. And you'd do it on exactly the same basis that anyone else would who spends time serving others.

But somehow it seems like a good idea for you to cast doubt on the ability of other Christians to follow their consciences and the guide of scripture as they do so.

But I will add this: they repeatedly used as an argument for getting their kids involved in morally dangerous activities that it was "important to have their kids be the 'leaven' to those around them". Basically the same attitude Lydia was talking about.

Tony, are you now saying it was flawed ideas and not service of others that was the problem? You seem to have difficulty releasing details relevant to what I was contesting, but you're willing to add details that aren't relevant. In light of that there's nothing for me to comment on.

The problem comes in trying to make a principle that doesn't contradict scripture that also discourages this. There is no such principle.

Sure there is: take care of higher and more proximate obligations before lower and more remote obligations. Well backed up by Christ's explicit reprimand of Pharisees who gave of their substance (in excess of the law's requirement) to the temple instead of taking care of their own parents.

Tony, he's denying the false principle that: “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God” The only thing we have is 1 Timothy 5:8, which defines an ethical floor. But my point about "discouraging this" was about an expansive view where when things we didn't wish happen is attributed backwards in self-serving ways, like some tv drama or the single case you've offered after the "emotional basketcases" and "that way madness lies" bit in the context of neighbor love.

Mark, in your terms, the early Christians could have been accused of elitism for believing something other than the standard common-place rigamarole would be their salvation. Key in objections about "special sacraments" (i.e. baptism) that are not available to everyone. The early Church Fathers, from Ignatius of Antioch to Hilary of Poitiers and beyond all thought learning and expertise in matters of the faith was important to the entire Church, not just to those with the learning - though never as important as the gift of faith itself. Goodness knows I don't call myself an expert, that's for the Fathers and Doctors.

Elitism isn't exclusiveness, skill, or knowledge per se. As I'm using it, it is a belief that most people are not sufficiently qualified to properly judge their self-interests or interpret scripture, and need the guidance of experts.

Tony, he's denying the false principle that: “Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God” The only thing we have is 1 Timothy 5:8, which defines an ethical floor.

is a complete irrelevancy. The "principle" is no principle (even if it were true, that is), it is an ad hoc excuse that they pretend is gussied up by an implied and valid (but not applicable) principle "what I am obligated to give to the Temple I cannot give my parents"> And the comment makes no sense at all as a response - not least because the Mark 7:11 and Matthew 15:5 passages prove that 1 Timothy 5:8 is NOT "all that we have." In any case, using "take care of higher and more proximate obligations first" would indeed discourage the behavior Christ excoriates, and would do so beforehand, not as an after-the-fact lookback.

Tony, are you now saying it was flawed ideas and not service of others that was the problem? You seem to have difficulty releasing details relevant to what I was contesting, but you're willing to add details that aren't relevant. In light of that there's nothing for me to comment on.

Your ability to comment when you aren't commenting, with an absence of facts and a mis-aligned take on the "problem" I was identifying, is in bad faith. You are not even trying to see if there is anything sensible in my comment.

Elitism isn't exclusiveness, skill, or knowledge per se. As I'm using it, it is a belief that most people are not sufficiently qualified to properly judge their self-interests or interpret scripture, and need the guidance of experts.

Because, after all, a word means what Mark says it means at the moment he uses it, and nothing else. Because elitism doesn't (quite) mean exclusiveness generically, and it doesn't mean knowledge, it ALSO must not refer to exclusiveness due to knowledge. And the issue of whether ordinary people - even ones who haven't read the Bible with much attention - are qualified to interpret scripture without even asking whether experts have written on an aspect thereof much less reflecting on such writings in forming their understanding, is a well-settled question, regardless of 5 centuries of Catholic-Protestant debate / wars on the issue of interpretation.

Mark, you shouldn't comment when you (a) haven't any facts; (b) don't understand your interlocutor, (c) don't know how to express your thoughts cogently, or (d) it is too late in the day for you.

To all: I am closing down this thread. Mark has destroyed any capacity to generate useful lines of discussion.