Truths about the economy

By Kevin J. Price

During the Great Depression the United States government was taking the fast track towards a command economy. Gold was being confiscated and individuals were thrown in jail for "not charging enough" as FDR tried to fundamentally change the US economy. As a result of this "change," the American Economic Foundation (a group I worked with in the 1990s) was formed to remind the American people about the economic principles that work. That organization laid out a set of principles -- called the Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom, which eloquently explains how freedom works without the polarizing political language that seems to dominate the debate today. Here are those list of principles, without my commentary. Look at our economic situation through these truths and you will be the person others look to for answers.

1. "Nothing in our material world can come from nowhere or go nowhere, nor can it be free: everything in our economic life has a source, a destination, and a cost that must be paid."

2. "Government is never a source of goods. Everything produced is produced by the people, and everything that government gives to the people, it must first take from the people."

3. "The only valuable money that government has to spend is that money taxed or borrowed out of the people's earnings. When government decides to spend more than it has thus received, that extra unearned money is created out of thin air, through the banks, and, when spent, takes on value only by reducing the value of all money, savings, and insurance."

4. "In our modern exchange economy, all payroll and employment come from customers, and the only worthwhile job security is customer security; if there are no customers, there can be no payroll and no jobs."

5. "Customer security can be achieved by the worker only when he cooperates with management in doing the things that win and hold customers. Job security, therefore, is a partnership problem that can be solved only in a spirit of understanding and cooperation."

6. "Because wages are the principal cost of everything, widespread wage increases, without corresponding increase in production, simply increase the cost of everybody's living."

7. "The greatest good for the greatest number means, in its material sense, the greatest goods for the greatest number which, in turn, means the greatest productivity per worker."

8. "All productivity is based on three factors: 1) natural resources (NR), whose form, place and condition are changed by the expenditure of 2) human energy (HE) (both muscular and mental), with the aid of 3) tools (T)."This is straight forward enough. These three factors make up the totality of the economy. As a formula, this is seen as NR + HE x T = Man's Material Welfare."

9. "Tools are the only one of these three factors that man can increase without limit, and tools come into being in a free society only when there is a reward for the temporary self-denial that people must practice in order to channel part of their earnings away from purchases that produce immediate comfort and pleasure, and into new tools of production. Proper payment for the use of tools is essential to their creation."

10. "The productivity of the tools--that is, the efficiency of the human energy applied in connection with their use--has always been highest in a competitive society in which the economic decisions are made by millions of progress-seeking individuals, rather than in a state-planned society in which those decisions are made by a handful of all-powerful people, regardless of how well-meaning, unselfish, sincere and intelligent those people may be."

I suggest you share this list with others. Your friends and family will find them profound and simple. More importantly they are not tainted with a political agenda. With them, those you know might join you in questioning the change we are suffering from today.
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Kevin Price
Host, Price of Business, M-F at 11 am on CBS Radio News
Frequently found on Strategy Room at FoxNews.com
Syndicated columnist whose articles appear on a variety of media outlets.
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