Economics and God’S Truth Are Not Rocket Science

By Jim Fulkrod

This book was written to help people understand that economics is a behavioral science and there are reasons for some economic policy working and other failing. The book is not meant to be a text book but only give the reader what they need to ask the questions they need to find the answers they need to be a more informed voter. These questions are; how will people acting in their own best interest respond and how is force being used? We often try to make thing more complicated then they need to be. With any behavioral science, it is simply people acting in their own best interest, or the rational man concept that we need to focus on. Many things may sound good, but will they work?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514487549

Jim Fulkrod

James (Jim) Fulkrod, born in Alton, IL 1957. Graduated from Milton High School in Wisconsin, 1975. Worked my way through college by working in restaurants, auto body shops, truck and tractor tire shops, farms, construction and other jobs that I can no longer remember, and so far I have seen two of my past jobs on the TV show Dirty Jobs. After eight years of hard work I graduated from Millsap College in Jackson MS in 1983 with a B.A. degree in Economics. After graduating continued working in restaurants and Theatre Management. Continued my education and graduated from University of Wisconsin Whitewater in 1990 with a MBA degree in Finance. In October of 1990 opened the first packing and shipping store in Rock county Wisconsin. After selling my packing and shipping business in 2005 we moved to the St. Louis area and purchase a print shop in North St. Louis County.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Economics is not rocket science. People want to make economics harder than it is, but it is simply the study of choices. What do we do with the resources we have? How do you and I decide to do what we do? We all do what we believe is in our own best interest; this is human nature, and it is known as the rational-man concept. This does not mean we will not do things to help other people. We still do because we want to and we believe it is in our best interest. The rational-man concept is also one of the keys to understanding why some economic policies work and some do not. Whatever we do to affect the economy, people acting in their own best interest will make the policies work or fail. Economics is a behavioral science. In a behavioral science we study the environment, the change introduced into the environment, and the changes resulting from the change in the environment. It does not matter if you are left wing, right wing or that middle of the bird, moderate; the facts produced by the changes are what they are.

This is also a good time to talk about force and how it works because force is another key factor for economic policies working or not. With force, we can generally keep people from doing what they want to do but should not do. This is why society has always had laws against murder, robbery, etc. When people show this type of bad behavior, we put them in jail to keep them from doing it again. Even here we need a general consensus that this is the right thing to do. Remember the Prohibition? It was a major failure because there was no general consensus that drinking alcohol was wrong. The one thing that force has never been effective at is making people do what they don’t want to do. Absurdity can sometimes help illustrate a point. Let us say a law is passed that everyone had to buy a gun to keep the crime rate down. Not everyone believes this is the case and people will find a way not to buy a gun or maybe they just buy a toy water gun. When forcing people to do what they do not want to do, people can be pretty creative in finding ways not to do it. Facts are what they are, and the rational-man concept, along with how force is being used, will make our economic policies work or fail. We cannot fight human nature and win when it comes to economics. We must understand human nature and work with it to be successful. Being able to put ourselves in the shoes of those affected by the policies and being honest with ourselves is critical to understanding what will work and why. This is true for noneconomic laws as well. All laws are concerned with our behavior and the use of force. For example, how fast do we drive on a city street?

I am writing this simple book to give the person who never had an economic class, or those who did but found it harder to understand than it should have been partly because of the language economists use, a basic understanding of economics. The comedian Gallagher once said, For five dollars and in five minutes I could give you the knowledge the average college graduate has five years after graduation. I thought that was funny, and I also believed there was a fair amount of truth in it as well. What I hope to do is give you the Gallagher summary for economics. It might take longer than five minutes to do so. It might take five hours but hopefully you will remember what you need to know to be a more informed voter. In a liberal arts degree, students study economics so they will be a more informed voter, and considering how much economic policies affects our lives, why not be a more informed on economic issues? Another thing about education we should know is that its purpose is to make us wise and not intelligent. An intelligent person knows lots of facts and information, whereas a wise person knows how to find answers to their questions. Education’s purpose is to give us the tools we need to find answers to our questions as we go through life. You can say that education teaches us how to think so we are able to find answers to our questions. Sometimes I think our educational system may be more concerned with teaching kids what to think rather than how, so they can find answers to their questions. Hopefully after reading this you will have the tools you need to get answers to your economic questions. It is important to know why and how things work so we can make better personal choices and be better-informed voters. This is not an economic text book. Its purpose is to help give you the tools you need to ask the right questions to get the answers you need.

Remember, economics is nothing more than the study of choices. Whatever we want to do politically to affect the economy, we must remember: people acting in their own best interests are going to have to make it work, plain and simple. We cannot fight human nature and make our political choices work just because we think they should. Truth is what it is, and it does not care what we think. We are not God. We do not get to decide what economic laws are or are not. Economic laws are not relative. If they were relative, then all economic policies would work, and we would never have a recession or depression. We can only discover what they are, and we better not ignore truth, and yes, there is truth even in economics. With the things God has made, like science, math, and human nature, for example, we know truth because it works. I always found it is best to seek the truth in all things and to do so with intellectual integrity. This means we may have to go where we do not want to and change our thinking. Yes, we do not know everything. We learn as we go through life. Plato once said something to the effect that we argue to find the truth, not to decide who is right or wrong. Who is right or wrong is irrelevant. The truth is what matters. Sometimes, I hear people say, I hate it when they’re right, my question is why? If someone else is right, then we learn something; that is a good thing. Nobody is right all the time, and few are wrong all the time. Learning the truth is always a good thing. Yes, there is truth in physics, biology, and mathematics and yes, economics too, along with other subjects. The more we know and understand about these subjects, the better our world will be. It is even best to seek the truth when it comes to history as well, even if it is not politically correct. History was what it was and because it is His Story and we are imperfect, it is often unpleasant. Like a good friend who is willing to speak up and hold us accountable, history can keep us from making unneeded mistakes. If we do not learn from our mistakes, we will repeat them. I do not like repeating mistakes, and I hope you do not either, so let us try to find the truth concerning economics.

The title of this book has God’s truth as part of it. The reason I have this in the title is that it is hard to talk about truth without God because there would be no truth if there were no God. Yes, I know a lot of people do not want to believe in God, and I understand. How nice would it be if there was no God and we were only accountable to ourselves? The reason the laws of physics, math, biology, and human nature are what they are, is due to the fact that we have an intelligent designer. Some people say evolution answers all the questions concerning the origins of life. Not so fast. Those who believe in the evolution model and yes, it is a model and not a theory, do not even know what the blind-faith issues are concerning evolution. First, evolution and intelligent design are models and not theories. Theories are things we can develop a hypothesis for to test to see if they are true or not. When it comes to the origins of life, we cannot test for it. Models are things we use to explain how we think something may work. We can only ask; which of the two, intelligent design or evolution, has evidence pointing to it?

Here are some blind-faith issues concerning evolution. With evolution, we are told that all elements come from hydrogen, but there is no explanation for where hydrogen comes from. How does something, like hydrogen, come from nothing? For evolution to be true, this had to happen. With evolution, there is also no explanation for how organic matter came from inorganic matter. They do not even try to answer this question. With evolution, if everything is random, then why are we always advancing and not going backwards? For example, hey, we have one-cell amoeba, and now we don’t. Hey, we have one-cell amoeba, and now we don’t. The law of randomness does not allow for us to be always going forward. Some want to argue that time has allowed for forwardness or progress to advance life. Here is the problem: You take one hundred pennies and flip them one hundred times, and you will not only have 50 percent heads and 50 percent tails for the total, but each penny will be at 50 percent of each as well. Never will there ever be one penny at one hundred heads and another at one hundred tails to offset it. The law of randomness does not allow for this. Most people have never been told or taught about how much blind faith there is to believe in evolution. Why, is a good question to ask our school systems. There is no evidence pointing toward the evolution model.

I know the idea of a God, an intelligent designer, an un-cause cause is beyond our ability to comprehend, but does it have evidence pointing to it? Yes, it does. All the law and order in physic, chemistry, biology, and math. If we have an intelligent designer, we would expect law and order with nature. When Darwin came up with his evolution idea, he said that if anything proved to be too complicated to develop one stage at a time, then his theory is false. At the time of Darwin’s book, the cell was thought to have only one part. When I was in high school forty some years ago, the cell had five known parts, and today, with advancements in microscope technology, the last I heard is that there are twenty-six known parts to a cell. How many known parts do you think there will be in another fort years as microscope technology advances even more? Do you know the possibility of a cell developing at one time with all twenty-six known parts? It would be calculated as a permutation. In this case, 26X25X24 all the way down to the number 1. You are talking about one very large number when all is said and done. Then there is archeological evidence that supports intelligent design. For example, there is a layer of the earth known as the Cambrian explosion. This layer is where thousands of fossil records are found for the first time. With intelligent design, you would expect this and with evolution, this would never be the case.

Go figure: we really do have a God. Keeping this in mind will help us understand why and how things really do work, especially when we are dealing with human nature.

CHAPTER 2

Opportunity Cost

When it comes to economics and