A Cup of Conversation – April 2020

It has been reported that Abe Lincoln once summed up his thoughts on trade by declaring, “I don’t know much about the tariff but I do know that if my wife buys her cloak in America, we get the money and the cloak, and that American labor is paid for producing it; if she buys her cloak abroad, we get only the cloak, the other country gets the money, and foreign labor receives the benefit.”

That’s called “Lincoln Log math;” so simple a child can understand. I guess reading by candlelight also afforded the night vision to navigate through the politics of man’s darker nature.

Our director of operations informed me an important shipment of materials is in jeopardy due to both the lengthy Chinese New Year delay and a pandemic killer virus raging thru mainland China. Factories are closing, shipping logistics a mess and no end in sight. We just want the materials to package our products. A generation ago, these products were manufactured here at home and didn’t require weeks crossing oceans and cultural divides before reaching us.

Some things sound good but just don’t work. Nevertheless, we keep inventing new ways to fail in what never works instead of making better old ways that do work. Why? There’s a parable¹ about first calculating the full cost of building a tower before construction begins lest one runs out of funds, never completing the project and suffering ridicule. This applies to far more than building a tower and certainly applies to any calculation transforming a free society into something less free. These folks do the political calculus to reach a perceived social equality but can’t prove the real-world math of opportunity. They confuse equality with opportunity. If the neighbor to my left is willing to work harder and take more risk than the neighbor to my right, the two neighbors should only be equal in opportunity, not economic outcome because human nature functions poorly any other way.

Let’s remove the final obstacles to opportunity, allow outcome to run its course and still provide help to those that legitimately can’t help themselves. Want to eradicate real poverty in less than one generation? Do just one thing. Create access to free-market, competitive, primary charter and private schools in the inner-cities. Is there a more powerful use of tax revenue than empowering economically trapped parents with choice and opportunity to safe, quality education for their kids?

There’s a statistical correlation between highly taxed, first-world nanny-state countries and anti-depressant consumption. Think Scandinavia. There’s a recent report by the United Nations ranking the “happiest” nations on earth. Scandinavian nations ranked in the top five! The same nation(s), however, ranked the highest on the planet in anti-depressant consumption, highest murder rate in Western Europe and male deaths by alcoholism, per capita. If they’re serious, we shouldn’t let the United Nations officiate a children’s international soccer tournament much less global socio-economic data.

We see this lack of common sense and basic arithmetic across all social strata. Kids taking on mortgage-size student debt even before the first “real-job” paycheck. How’s that working out for anyone not a doctor or a K Street lawyer? Clearly, they didn’t do the math or had anyone capable of calculating for them. Couples getting married without the emotional and spiritual commitment to go beyond the harsh breakers of not enough money or agreement how to manage what they have. The seasonal waves of “irreconcilable differences” pile-drives them onto the reefs of deep regret and devastation.

Voters pulling the lever at the ballot box based on nothing but the emotion of getting something for nothing and virtue signaling to the world only to wake up with a just a third of their paycheck left before the first bag of groceries. When that happens, the feel-good of subsidizing free stuff for everyone doesn’t feel so good, especially waking for work at dark-thirty when the neighbors won’t because they really don’t have to anymore.

These things are real world math in the societal equation. Strictly in the language of the millennial, we suck at math. What we don’t suck at is giving generously to those in need. We are the most generous nation on earth. No one even comes close. Many countries would collapse without the dollars we send them in monetary gifts and near zero-interest loans. Far more importantly, our private giving leads the world. We are a compassionate people willing to help those less fortunate. Giving is one of the only things where math can be thrown out the window. Of course, one front-running politician wanting to be leader of the free world said they don’t believe in private giving to charitable institutions, rather charity only when government doles it out. Breathtaking.

I beg you please just do the math.

¹ Luke 14:28