We are sometimes criticized for writing about the economy, freedom, etc., on these pages.  Best to focus on pro-life issues, they say.

There is some merit in that assertion.  In our Pro-Life Training Academy (PLTA), we teach pro-life activists how to convince even atheists and communists that abortion is wrong.  Even if they believe we are wrong about politics, economics, etc., that does not justify killing a child.

But it’s important for us to understand how saving children is related to saving the economy.

Over the past 50 years, a deadly idea has been growing in the collective American psyche:  the notion that all of us are “entitled” to whatever we need, and sometimes even what we want, and we have no responsibility to work for it or pay for it.  The list of “entitlements” includes food, shelter, health care, a college education, etc., … and the list is growing.

Entitlement, along with its twin monster Dependency, are cultivated and used by political charlatans as tools for obtaining and consolidating political power.  They make outrageous promises, but of course, those promises must be kept by somebody else (i.e., the productive class), if they can be kept at all.  But it really doesn’t matter if they can be kept or not, because the people on the receiving end are “entitled.”

As to paying for the promises?  Well, somebody else can worry about that tomorrow.

Couple that general sense of entitlement with the non-stop portrayal of free sex on TV, in movies, at school, etc.  Everybody is having sex, nobody gets pregnant, and nobody gets STDs.  In the popular culture, sex is just an expected part of teenage life.  So it’s easy to see how young males would think sex without responsibility is just one more item on their long list of “entitlements.”  All a boy has to do is get a girl to give in to his “request,” and when she does, it’s all good.

Since contraception so often fails or is simply forgotten (source), recourse to abortion is necessary for having sex without responsibility, so abortion must be a “right” as well.  They will even say it, “But if I agree with you about abortion, I’ll have to give up sex!”  Not necessarily, but they might have to accept responsibility, and of course, responsibility is antithetical to entitlement.

Some are more callous than others, “Yep, my girlfriend has the right to kill my child, and I’ll do anything in my power to make sure she does, but the ultimate guilt … er, decision … is hers!”

The more we promote the entitlement philosophy, the more abortions we will have.  The politicians who work hardest to cultivate entitlement/dependency also promote the most extreme child-killing policies, because responsibility and entitlement are incompatible values.

Conversely, although the 2010 elections were not a pro-life mandate, per se, but rather a mandate to roll back entitlements gone wild, the result was a record number of pro-life laws passed at the state level in 2011.  Many of the newly-elected lawmakers who promised fiscal sanity also worked to protect children and moms from abortion.

Furthermore, we must always remind ourselves that the first order of business for the political class is to stay in power.  That means paying off powerful political allies like Planned Parenthood.  They tell us our money will go for food, shelter, education, health care, etc., for people who need it.  But in reality, they take money from the productive class and use much of it to grow the bureacracy and pay off their political friends.

You know about Solyndra, but the half-billion they got is chump change.  Planned Parenthood stands to take in billions of dollars (that’s “billions” with a “b”) annually from ObamaCare (source).  (Annually means every year, for all you people in Rio Linda.)  The more we feed the beast that is our federal government, the more entitlement, dependency, and abortions we will have.

What do you think?  Please comment!

Occasionally, FAB delves provides common-sense commentary on a wide range of important topics.  We’ve mentioned before the toxic effects of excess debt, both private and public.  We’ve also talked about the fact that it’s simply going to take some time to burn that debt off.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of “experts” who encourage us to go on another spending binge at the expense of our children.  (What we’re actually buying is votes for politicians, but we’ll defer that discussion for now.)  These people are often called “Keynesian,” after early 20th-Century economist John Maynard Keynes.

We’ve always believed that (what we thought was) Keynesian economics had many problems.  First of all, it stimulates consumption, not production.  Consumption of consumer trinkets isn’t as beneficial to our economy’s long-term health as is investment in productive capacity and the creation of jobs.  Second, since many of our consumer trinkets actually come from overseas, we might just as easily be stimulating somebody else’s economy instead our own.  Third, it just hasn’t ever seemed to work in our lifetimes.

More recently, we’ve been asking ourselves, “Would Keynes really advocate borrowing trillions of dollars from the Chinese for our children to pay back?”  As it turns out, maybe not.  Here are a couple of well-written articles that explain why Keynes would never have approved of the folly and deceipt being committed by modern politicians in his name:

• One reason why Keynesian stimuli aren’t working: They aren’t Keynesian
• And now a world from a job creator

Wall Street Journal now follows FAB!

Concerning the agreement to extend the current tax rates for 2 years, FAB wrote:

The only good thing about the 2-year extension is that it just postpones the real debate for another 2 years down the road, just in time for the next election cycle.

The Wall Street Journal now agrees:

But if an angry, let-me-be-clear Barack Obama just looked into the cameras and said he’s coming to get you in two years, what rational economic choice would you make? Spend the profit or gains 2011 might produce on new workers, or bury any new income in the backyard until the 2012 presidential clouds clear?

No matter how much economic bump Mr. Obama gets in 2011 from extending the Bush-era tax rates, the 2012 election will be fought over a deep national anxiety that he rightly identifies but misinterprets.

***

In such a high-stakes world, Barack Obama’s obsession with having it out over the tax tables is a vulnerability. His opponent in 2012 should run straight at it.

If the economy improves, Republicans will say we shouldn’t mess with a formula that’s working, which is a message that will resonate with Independents.  However, Obama will be able to convince many voters that he deserves credit for the improvement, anemic though it might be.   He’ll be trying to get voters to maintain one status quo (himself as President) and change another (tax rates), all at the same time.

If the economy does not improve, Obama will be in a world of hurt.

Of course, as I said, maintaining the current tax rates will not improve the economy, but it will at least avoid another insult.  Other factors might help.  (For example, dramatically cutting deficit spending will do a world of good by improving confidence in government.)  Whatever happens, it will be great political theatre.  The danger for Republicans will be if they try to oversell the effects that maintenance of current tax rates will have.

I’m still looking for something else good in this deal.  They apparently gave us all a one-year reduction on Social Security taxes.  Not so good.  It’s just another give-away program that will do little to stimulate the economy, any more than Porkulus I did.  Plus, more deficit spending just depresses even more our confidence in government even more, which is a huge drag on the economy.

Further, raiding the SS fund will put a few more dollars back into the pockets of working people, but it will be (supposedly) stealing it from their own Social Security fund.  I say supposedly, because in reality, there is no SS fund.  Our SS taxes have become a gigantic slush fund that is used by politicians to hide the true amount of deficit spending.  They “borrow” (a.k.a. steal) our SS money (what they can’t borrow from the Chinese) and never pay it back.  If you account for this borrowing/stealing, the deficit is much, much higher than they say it is.  Harry Reid admitted to the thievery when he told HuffPost, “The money doesn’t come out of Social Security. It comes out of the general fund.”

More deficit, less confidence in government, worse economy.  It will improve, but not as much as it could.

They supposedly extended unemployment benefits, but I don’t believe it lets people collect beyond the current 2-year limit.  It just extends the program that allows people to collect up to 2-years, as compared to the normal limit of 26 weeks or so.  As I understand it.

Here’s the one good thing about this process.  If this bill goes down, we can hope the Republicans in the Senate will block every other piece of lame-duck legislation, as they have promised to do.

When I started this blog earlier this year, one goal was to give you the very best pro-life information and analysis.  Not the daily news that will be forgotten in a month or so, but the stuff that really matters.  As a measure of our success, FAB was recently recognized as the best pro-life blog in all of Karns!

But this is more than a pro-life blog.  As politically active patriots, we share many interests that FAB touches on every now and then.  As it turns out, FAB provides expert economic analysis as well as pro-life commentary.  You are really getting two experts for the price of one!  On September 9, FAB wrote:

The ultimate cause of the economic conflagration was the widespread belief that this economic gravy train—25+ years of Reagan-Bush recovery—would never end.  This belief caused people throw caution to the wind.  They took on way too much debt to buy bigger and bigger houses and other stuff they didn’t need and couldn’t afford.  Lenders lent money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back.  Corporations focused on short-term profits at the expense of long-term stability.  It’s very tempting to throw your money around at the casino if you get the stupid idea that the game won’t let you lose.

To elaborate, the crisis wasn’t created by just one culprit, but by the cumulative effects of more and more greed that manifested itself as risky economic behaviors, especially excess debt, at all levels of society, from the household to the state house (e.g., California and New Jersey) to the halls of Congress.

Well, it appears that the New York Times has finally caught up.  In Gold Fever: Pondering the Causes, NYT chief financial correspondent Floyd Norris observes:

… the problem seems to be perpetual weakness in rich economies that have been hobbled by debt foolishly taken on by people from bankers to subprime home buyers who had one thing in common: a belief that the risk of something going very wrong was all but nonexistent.  (emphasis added)

My mom always said she’d rather be right than rich.  Well, it seems I’ve gotten her wish.

Want some good investment advice?  FAB actually stole this from Somebody Else:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  (Matthew 6:19-21)

More on the way.  By the way, I’m also a Tennessee sports fan, and when we start winning football games, you’ll hear more about that as well.