Speaker 1: Welcome back.
Speaker 2: Joining us now is David Bonson. He's the owner of
Speaker 2: the Bonson Group. It manages five point seven billion and
Speaker 2: client assets, and he's the author of many books. He's
Speaker 2: had one that came out earlier this year which I'm
Speaker 2: interested in talking to him about, is called Full Time
Speaker 2: Work and the Meaning of Life. I think that's very important,
Speaker 2: that's something we all need to think about. Very interested
Speaker 2: to talk to David. Always as familiar, as I said
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the program, with his father, Greg Bonson,
Speaker 2: who was a Christian apologist, and he was not apologizing
Speaker 2: for Christianity, he.
Speaker 1: Was explaining it. That's what apologist means.
Speaker 2: He was an excellent made excellent intellectual arguments in support
Speaker 2: of the existence of God of Christianity. So it's great
Speaker 2: to have you on and to meet you. Thank you
Speaker 2: for joining us.
Speaker 3: David, Well, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit first about the economy, and
Speaker 2: as somebody who manages a wealth fund, I'm sure you're
Speaker 2: watching very closely, as everybody does, what's happening with interest rates.
Speaker 2: We're seeing the stock market, of course, is soaring, but
Speaker 2: that's not too hard I guess if you in check
Speaker 2: money through that from the Federal Reserve. What is your
Speaker 2: take on what is going to be happening with interest rates?
Speaker 3: Well, interest rates are definitely going to be going lower,
Speaker 3: and the debate is only about what the speed at
Speaker 3: which they lower them effectively. Housing is the issue that
Speaker 3: they frozen the housing market first by creating a bubble
Speaker 3: in housing by keeping rates way too low for way
Speaker 3: too long, and then by hiking them so violently and quickly,
Speaker 3: you really created a two tier housing system where there
Speaker 3: are a significant amount of people paying something around three
Speaker 3: percent on their mortgage and they have no interest in
Speaker 3: losing that low cost mortgage. And then there's all the
Speaker 3: people who would organically naturally be wanting to buy a
Speaker 3: home right now, either a first time home or even
Speaker 3: just moving to a new home kind of upgrading. Whatever
Speaker 3: they may be doing is their life situation allows for.
Speaker 3: But they don't want to pay seven percent for a mortgage.
Speaker 3: So the Fed's policies are driven by the fact that
Speaker 3: they know a lot of debt in our country is
Speaker 3: going to be resetting. The United States government and all
Speaker 3: its infinite wisdom, has chosen not to lock the rates
Speaker 3: of most of its debt it's only about sixteen percent
Speaker 3: of our total debt that is in long term maturities
Speaker 3: where you recall the twenty year and thirty year yields.
Speaker 3: The interest rates a few years ago, we're two percent.
Speaker 3: They are now paying five percent on six month money,
Speaker 3: one year money. So all that money is going to
Speaker 3: come do and that's really a big portion of why
Speaker 3: the FED needs to be lowering rates, and they will
Speaker 3: do so. The stock market, David, I don't think is
Speaker 3: about the FED putting money in per se that always
Speaker 3: helps the valuation. If the FED is injecting liquidity, it
Speaker 3: can kind of artificially help prime the pump a bit,
Speaker 3: but that gets old after a while, and they've been
Speaker 3: doing that for fifteen years. Earnings are very high, I mean,
Speaker 3: corporate profits are very high, and the FED can't really
Speaker 3: control that, and so I think the stocks are largely
Speaker 3: about growing corporate profits combined with high valuation. And I
Speaker 3: would argue probably too high a valuation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when we look at the places where there's
Speaker 2: been this kind of a feeding frenzy about artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: I felt for the longest time that you know, regardless
Speaker 2: of what happens with it, and you can say there's
Speaker 2: a lot of very useful things that it looks very
Speaker 2: much like a repeat of the dot com bust to me,
Speaker 2: I don't know what do you think about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I write about it a lot, so I tend
Speaker 3: to agree. Trust your intuition a little because you're onto
Speaker 3: something there, my friend. The bones of the Internet were
Speaker 3: all that were making money in the nineties, the ciscos
Speaker 3: and the people that made the networks, the servers, the routers.
Speaker 3: They were making all the money. But nobody could really
Speaker 3: figure out how the Internet companies were going to make money.
Speaker 3: And then about ninety five percent of them went out
Speaker 3: of business, and a few of them ended up making
Speaker 3: a huge amount of money, the Amazons and Googles and
Speaker 3: ebays that survived. It's very similar, toy I. No one
Speaker 3: has been able to explain who's going to actually make
Speaker 3: money from it, how they're going to use it. It's
Speaker 3: all the back end. The kitchen is making the money,
Speaker 3: but not the dining room, and that's your NVIDIAs and
Speaker 3: things like that. I believe it's very overhyped, and even
Speaker 3: if it isn't, it's so priced in. The assumptions I
Speaker 3: think are very similar to nineteen ninety nine two thousand
Speaker 3: tech boom, and I'm quite confident it's not going to
Speaker 3: end well.
Speaker 2: And of course there's another backroom involved in that that's
Speaker 2: kind of emerging, and that is supplying power for this
Speaker 2: massively power hungry artificial intelligence. And I guess one of
Speaker 2: the things it's just an ordinary person I'm looking at
Speaker 2: this and saying, well, they're going to make all these
Speaker 2: small nuclear reactors, and they're creating companies as Sam Altman
Speaker 2: did to cater to that need, but they're going to
Speaker 2: be consuming all that power even as they shut down
Speaker 2: our grid. I mean, we really are seeing kind of
Speaker 2: a two tier society here, I think, and especially we
Speaker 2: can see it when it comes to energy. But I
Speaker 2: guess a lot of people are just looking at it
Speaker 2: as an investment opportunity. And I guess it is an
Speaker 2: investment opportunity. But you know, from somebody who's just now
Speaker 2: on the sidelines, I'm wondering, you know, am I going
Speaker 2: to have utility bills that are going to be four
Speaker 2: to ten times higher than they are now? Is it
Speaker 2: going to be unreliable as well? While the artificial intelligence is,
Speaker 2: you know, powering itself as his own private nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that there's a couple of different things
Speaker 3: around once, and it's complicated enough that I hesitate to
Speaker 3: bore our listeners with the details. But I will say this,
Speaker 3: the people need to learn that are like city doesn't
Speaker 3: grow on trees, but it does come from the ground
Speaker 3: oil and gas and of course coal power electricity production.
Speaker 3: The state of Virginia right now, twenty six point seven
Speaker 3: percent of its electricity is being used for data center.
Speaker 3: Now that's a high data center state, and other states
Speaker 3: are not so high, but that's massive. People can say
Speaker 3: whatever they want, you're not going to get the electricity
Speaker 3: without natural gas. So we're going to either embrace what
Speaker 3: God has given us in the ground or we're not.
Speaker 3: But if people don't want utility bills to go higher,
Speaker 3: the solution is readily available in the beautiful per Median
Speaker 3: basin period.
Speaker 2: Well, I've gotten a great more. Let's talk about the
Speaker 2: politics though, the interest rates. You know, this is a
Speaker 2: lot of people are saying, well, okay, the Federal Reserve
Speaker 2: is pumping this for the election to make current administration
Speaker 2: look good.
Speaker 1: What is your take on that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I'm a lifetime movement conservative. I've written multiple things,
Speaker 3: both academically and more targeted for Layman about monetary policy
Speaker 3: and the FED. I'm often very critical, but this is
Speaker 3: one thing where I just want to say to my
Speaker 3: conservative friends, the political conspiracy theory makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 3: You can't help the incumbent ticket, which in this case
Speaker 3: is now Vice President Harris a month before the election.
Speaker 3: If you wanted to help, you don't raise rates five
Speaker 3: percent in one year, which is what they did in
Speaker 3: the prior year. The economic narrative is very well baked in,
Speaker 3: and a half of a percent a few weeks before
Speaker 3: absentee ballots does and did absolutely nothing to help anybody.
Speaker 3: I have plenty of criticism I can give towards Chairman Powell,
Speaker 3: but he is not a political actor. There's no love
Speaker 3: lost between him and President Biden. I happen to know
Speaker 3: that firsthand. I think that whether they're making good decisions
Speaker 3: or bad decisions, they're not making political ones. So it's
Speaker 3: just one area where i'd defend them. And again, if
Speaker 3: somebody wanted to say, oh, the FED has kind of
Speaker 3: hurt the election outcome a bit, it would be the
Speaker 3: other way. I mean, they you know, it's very hard
Speaker 3: for president to get re elected when they tighten monetary policy.
Speaker 3: That's really what they spent most of the Biden term doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course we had a lot of people,
Speaker 2: a lot of people that I talked to, really expected
Speaker 2: them to make a political move, so they expected them
Speaker 2: to lower interest rates significantly, much much earlier in the year,
Speaker 2: so they would have had an effect. And I guess
Speaker 2: that was what people were surprised about. And I guess
Speaker 2: we could speculate about what the intentions of the Fed
Speaker 2: are if they're going to withhold that until the last
Speaker 2: minute and not really have an effect. But let me
Speaker 2: ask you about this, and that is the current Treasury
Speaker 2: Secretary predecessor to Pwell, Janet Yellen, who was at the
Speaker 2: FED for a long time. You know, she has made
Speaker 2: as one person point out recently, so you can look
Speaker 2: at the damage and the threat to the dollars deserve
Speaker 2: status from bricks and other things like that. But the
Speaker 2: person who's done more to damage the reserve status of
Speaker 2: the dollar than anyone else is Jenet Yellen because of
Speaker 2: these sanctions that they impose and other things like that
Speaker 2: basically use this power and wielded it in such a
Speaker 2: way as to effectively destroyed a lot of people believe
Speaker 2: that's the situation. What's your take on that, and on
Speaker 2: the status of the reserve status of the dollar, what
Speaker 2: do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the reserve status of the dollar, by the way,
Speaker 3: is the important part, not the trading status. So when
Speaker 3: people talk about bricks countries utilizing something different, something like
Speaker 3: point one percent of oil went out of petro dollar
Speaker 3: transaction and into let's say Chinese wand is the great example.
Speaker 3: But it's still then reservans. It gets held in reserves,
Speaker 3: and nobody is going to be holding any other currency
Speaker 3: it reserves anytime soon. In terms of foreign exchange, the
Speaker 3: doll is still what people want to hold in reserves,
Speaker 3: but transacting in another currency. I would encourage every country
Speaker 3: to do what they think is best for them, and
Speaker 3: that includes the United States very candidly. The United States
Speaker 3: has been doing what's best for it with its currency.
Speaker 3: That's what makes these other countries upset because what we're
Speaker 3: doing is often not best for them. So be it.
Speaker 3: That's the way it works. I don't believe in one
Speaker 3: world government, but I think make a great point. I
Speaker 3: don't believe that what they did with the Russia sanctions
Speaker 3: is dispositive. I don't think it is going to ruin
Speaker 3: the dollars reserve status, but it marginally does cause other
Speaker 3: countries to wonder could this happen to us? And hopefully
Speaker 3: those countries say, we don't plan to go invade a
Speaker 3: free country anytime soon. However, once you see a country
Speaker 3: using and weaponizing its currency that way, it's not how
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be. And I do think it marginally
Speaker 3: impacted confidence abroad in dollar reserve.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and and I guess one of the things
Speaker 2: that we see now happening with the bricks as they're
Speaker 2: starting to expand. It's been around for a while, but
Speaker 2: you know, in response to this, as they're starting to
Speaker 2: expand it in terms of currency exchanges and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: they're bringing in a you know, most of the oil producers,
Speaker 2: you know, we're coming into this now. Saudi Arabia didn't
Speaker 2: buy into it, but they got really close. And so
Speaker 2: you know what we have done with the petro dollar away,
Speaker 2: we've weaponized that.
Speaker 1: I guess two could play at that game.
Speaker 2: You know that that might be turned around, but it
Speaker 2: almost makes you nostalgic for you know, oil when you
Speaker 2: see what is being imposed on us with all of
Speaker 2: these green regulations that are there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about your.
Speaker 2: Book, though, I would really like to get an idea
Speaker 2: of you know, work in the in the meaning of life.
Speaker 2: You know, how do we balance this thing? This has
Speaker 2: always been a real issue for us, you know what,
Speaker 2: what is important for you to do with your life?
Speaker 2: As Christians? We always wonder, you know, well, now, how
Speaker 2: how should we live now that we're a Christian? What
Speaker 2: is your take on your book? Is full time work
Speaker 2: in the Meaning of Life? Tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about your perspective on that.
Speaker 3: Well, you mentioned my late father, doctor Greg Bonsen, who
Speaker 3: you pointed out as a Christian apologist, a philosopher. He
Speaker 3: raised me in the nurture and admonition of the Lord
Speaker 3: with a biblical worldview. He taught me to think and
Speaker 3: live like a Christian. He was my best friend, the
Speaker 3: smartest human being I've ever been around, and this book
Speaker 3: is essentially it was dedicated to him. He was a
Speaker 3: very hard worker, but I've devoted my life to applying
Speaker 3: Biblical worldview and principles in the domain of finance economics.
Speaker 3: I'm very, very exhausted by Christians that don't know how
Speaker 3: to think like Christians economically, and I view all of
Speaker 3: that as very similar to what my dad did. It's
Speaker 3: just he was in the field of philosophy and theology,
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to do it in the field of
Speaker 3: finding investment, economics, entrepreneurialism. The idea of work as something
Speaker 3: we have to balance with the rest of our life
Speaker 3: is something I take exception to and have a whole
Speaker 3: chapter about it in the book. I don't ever hear
Speaker 3: people talk about marriage life balance or kid life balance.
Speaker 3: We accept that we're always spouses, we're always parents, and
Speaker 3: we're always vocationally committed to some sort of useful productive activity.
Speaker 3: And what I argue in the book is the reason
Speaker 3: why is because that's how God made us. That's what
Speaker 3: it means to be made in the image and likeness
Speaker 3: of God. That before sin entered the world, God made
Speaker 3: us to grow the earth, to care for the earth,
Speaker 3: to subdue it, to produce new goods and services. That's
Speaker 3: all I mean by work. We have our needs met
Speaker 3: by meeting the needs of others. I think this is
Speaker 3: a beautiful principle in terms of creational norms, but it's
Speaker 3: a beautiful way to think about our own purpose in life.
Speaker 3: Of course, it doesn't mean that we work twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day anymore than we're looking lovingly in our
Speaker 3: wife's eyes twenty four hours a day. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of priorities, but life doesn't work that way that we're
Speaker 3: just taking hats on and off at different times, all
Speaker 3: at once. I am embodied as a being made an
Speaker 3: image of God, who is to love my wife, love
Speaker 3: my children, and love my career, and devote myself to
Speaker 3: production of goods and services, to growing the earth, to
Speaker 3: fulfilling that created purpose. That's what the book's about.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we often forget that work itself is not a punishment.
Speaker 2: In the fall, it was that work would become much
Speaker 2: harder funishment, right, just like childbirth is not a punishment
Speaker 2: that many in the feminist movement think that it is,
Speaker 2: but it's not. It's just that it's as much harder now.
Speaker 2: And so that's a really good point. Years ago, I
Speaker 2: remember listening to an audiobook by Oz Gennis. It was
Speaker 2: called The Calling, and it came at a point where
Speaker 2: I was in a change in my career, and I
Speaker 2: thought it was very interesting, you know, talking about the
Speaker 2: importance of vocation, which really means a calling. You know,
Speaker 2: God is calling you to do something, and so the
Speaker 2: real key is for all of us to try to
Speaker 2: identify what skills God has given us, I think, and
Speaker 2: then to understand that we have been made for that
Speaker 2: particular type of thing. I mean, what is your take
Speaker 2: on that kind of approach?
Speaker 3: Well, I absolutely loved that book by Oz and in
Speaker 3: fact I talk about it in my own book. Tim
Speaker 3: Keller used the language every good endeavor. I think that
Speaker 3: God made us to go create beauty, to go create efficiency,
Speaker 3: to extract from the raw materials of the earth. You know,
Speaker 3: you and I are using technological equipment right now to
Speaker 3: record all of it exists did at the Garden of
Speaker 3: Eden if you just simply mean the physical compounds, the
Speaker 3: rubbers and plastics and things that would be that were
Speaker 3: derived from the created materials. What happened, and this is
Speaker 3: what the calling I think becomes about, is human ingenuity,
Speaker 3: human acuity, human creativity. Back then, they learned how to
Speaker 3: start a fire, they invented the wheel. You know, today
Speaker 3: they're in vetting iPhones and other things. It's gotten more
Speaker 3: technologically advanced, but in our own calling. The beauty is
Speaker 3: that because God. This is what the left doesn't understand,
Speaker 3: the Marxist utopian vision that views all and it's really
Speaker 3: quite Roussoian that views mankind is all part of a
Speaker 3: collective God, doesn't. He views you differently, me differently, my
Speaker 3: wife differently, this person, that person, and in our individuality,
Speaker 3: some people are poets, some people are plumbers, some people
Speaker 3: are builders, some people are educators, some people are financiers.
Speaker 3: That in individuality is a beautiful thing in the marketplace.
Speaker 3: But it's beautiful because God made it that way out
Speaker 3: of creation and the doctrine of well where we put
Speaker 3: this way, the concept of each of us having our
Speaker 3: own calling, there's nowhere that myself for os Guinness states
Speaker 3: that the entirety of our calling has related to our vocation.
Speaker 3: But nor can one ever say that it isn't a
Speaker 3: part of it. And that's the category error people make
Speaker 3: is to say it's all or none. I would argue
Speaker 3: that no one's calling is divorced from their vocation, but
Speaker 3: the vocation is not the entirety of their calling.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, And he made the point.
Speaker 2: I think he quoted Martin Luther, who said, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have to be a member of the clergy
Speaker 2: in order to serve God. God has put you in
Speaker 2: the farmer who is doing his job and doing it
Speaker 2: to God's glory and living his life to God. He
Speaker 2: is glorifying God. That's where God has put him, and
Speaker 2: that is That was a real key insight, I think
Speaker 2: for me at the time, and I think that's really
Speaker 2: kind of the way that we need to look at it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and mar Martin Luther would use off
Speaker 3: an example of a cobbler with shoes, and I happened
Speaker 3: to know the shoes they were dealing with five six
Speaker 3: hundred years ago were not quite as comfortable as our
Speaker 3: shoes today. So he had a high view of a
Speaker 3: cobbler when the feet weren't even all that comfortable. It's
Speaker 3: called dualism, the sacred secular distinction, and Martin Luther tore
Speaker 3: it down, and much of Protestant theology has been focused
Speaker 3: on this. At the end of the day, the minister
Speaker 3: has a very important vocation, the cobbler, the educator, the
Speaker 3: radio host, the financier. There is not a gnostic higher
Speaker 3: power for those who call themselves pastors versus those who
Speaker 3: are serving the Kingdom of God in these other vocational fields,
Speaker 3: and so tearing down that sacred set distinction is one
Speaker 3: of the great legacies of people like Martin Luther.
Speaker 2: I agree, and it's so embedded in the foundation of Christianity,
Speaker 2: the idea that we have different gifts, that we have
Speaker 2: different functions and everything. You know, Paul talks about that
Speaker 2: in terms of the body, you know, how the body
Speaker 2: has different members that have different functions, or talk about
Speaker 2: it in terms of building, you know, living a church
Speaker 2: out of stones, and how there's all these different things
Speaker 2: that are out there and some people are you know,
Speaker 2: given one thing or Jesus talks about the parable of
Speaker 2: the talents. You know, that's now become part of our vernacular,
Speaker 2: just like a vocation has. But you know, he was
Speaker 2: talking about a quantity of money, silver that was given
Speaker 2: to these people, So you know, different we have different quantities,
Speaker 2: different qualities of things that are given to all of us.
Speaker 2: But as you point out, the essence of all of
Speaker 2: this is that God deals with us, not has some
Speaker 2: kind of a collective I say this all the time
Speaker 2: about public health or public education. It's like that's one
Speaker 2: of the problem, is that collective Marxist mentality to cards
Speaker 2: that some kind of a public thing ignoring the individual,
Speaker 2: public health that ignores the health of the individual, public
Speaker 2: education that really doesn't care about the education of the individual.
Speaker 2: And so this collectivism that is there is really kind
Speaker 2: of anesthetical to Christianity and towards the Christian understanding of
Speaker 2: what God has given us in the Bible, but his
Speaker 2: interaction with each of us as individuals. As you just
Speaker 2: pointed out, Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's really two grotesque mistakes that people can make. And
Speaker 3: it's why I believe economics. They talked about the need
Speaker 3: for a distinctly Christian understanding of economics, and you're getting
Speaker 3: to the heart of it. God made us as individuals
Speaker 3: and as members of a community, and a radical individualism
Speaker 3: that does not care about the individual responsibility to their
Speaker 3: neighbor or their family or their community is Unchristian. And
Speaker 3: a radical collectivism that views the dignity of the person
Speaker 3: only when attached to the state or by the way
Speaker 3: to the church. Someone has such a high view of
Speaker 3: church that they say the human is only important in
Speaker 3: the way that they're serving the church. That's not right either.
Speaker 3: But what Christianity does and a biblical anthropology. A biblical
Speaker 3: understanding of the human person sees just like Jesus was
Speaker 3: incarnate fully god fully man, the human person is both
Speaker 3: individual and social. Their dignity comes from their status of
Speaker 3: being an image bearer of God, and they also function
Speaker 3: in a society, They function in families, and so that
Speaker 3: one in the many dynamic of Christianity is unique in
Speaker 3: human history. And candidly it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that absolutely is. I remember interviewing G. Edward
Speaker 2: Griffin and he said, we get so focused on individual
Speaker 2: liberty that we atomize ourselves. And course this is before
Speaker 2: they try to atomize us with the twenty twenty lockdown
Speaker 2: and all the isolate each and every one of us,
Speaker 2: real hardcore, but have to work collectively for individual liberty.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what you're talking about, is that you
Speaker 2: cannot lose that sense of community. That's something that we
Speaker 2: were created for, that's something that really fulfills us, and
Speaker 2: we can't live that out individually. So when you talk
Speaker 2: about how Christians think of economics, I guess that is
Speaker 2: really what you're looking at. Are there other aspects of
Speaker 2: that that you would talk about?
Speaker 3: Well, well, certainly I believe that understanding economics being humans
Speaker 3: acting around scarcity, how we allocate scarce resources. And there's
Speaker 3: four or five words in there that seem really simple.
Speaker 3: But if we have a different understanding of what or
Speaker 3: who the human person is, how they are to act,
Speaker 3: what scarcity means, and what our aim is to be
Speaker 3: defining the goal of economics. So I think that the
Speaker 3: last one hundred years the central planner, the collectivists what
Speaker 3: they refer to as the Kinesian school of economics. I
Speaker 3: believe mankind fundamentally exists to consume, and we need central
Speaker 3: planners that can kind of steward the affairs. In a way,
Speaker 3: view economics as a math and science that if you
Speaker 3: get the formula just right, everyone can consume to their
Speaker 3: hearts content. But I start with a very different viewpoint
Speaker 3: from the Bible that mankind was not made to consume,
Speaker 3: but to produce, and in fact, we cannot consume until
Speaker 3: we first produce, and in fact, we generally can't consume
Speaker 3: until someone else produces, because the vast majority of our
Speaker 3: consumption comes because of other people's productive activity in this
Speaker 3: interconnected economy. In fact, it happens so quickly we just
Speaker 3: take it for granted all the time that we're sitting
Speaker 3: here using microphones and equipment, and that other people built
Speaker 3: from their own technical expertise, not our own. The distinctly
Speaker 3: Christian understanding of economics does not only view the efficiency
Speaker 3: of allocation of resources as important, but the morality the
Speaker 3: shaloam that we're after for human beings to flourish. And
Speaker 3: I think a lot of Christians over spiritualize it to
Speaker 3: say all that matters is the spiritual domain, and other
Speaker 3: materialists make it only about the physical domain. But God
Speaker 3: makes it about both God's son incarnate and economics has
Speaker 3: to address all of this, and so allocation of scarcity
Speaker 3: is an important topic. I think public policy matters, but
Speaker 3: it isn't the definition of economics. The proper view of
Speaker 3: economics does not have this tax rate over that tax rate,
Speaker 3: but tax rates matter, but it gets first principles right.
Speaker 3: And those first principles have to view mankind as a
Speaker 3: being made in the image of God, who has an
Speaker 3: eternal destiny, has been tainted by sin because of the
Speaker 3: doctrine of the fall, and now we have to look
Speaker 3: at there are imperfectible systems on this side of glory
Speaker 3: and where freedom comes in, and freedom of exchange, working
Speaker 3: with one another optimizes the conditions for human flourishing. That's
Speaker 3: my aim in Christian economics.
Speaker 2: Oh that's very interesting, well said. You've talked about Kanesianism.
Speaker 2: Of course, now we've got something which is really a
Speaker 2: fitting for our society right now, a very very dumbed
Speaker 2: down version of Kansianism called modern monetary theory. You must
Speaker 2: have something to say about MMT. I call it the
Speaker 2: magic money trick. As you know, definits don't matter, and
Speaker 2: there's nothing at all in terms of they don't even
Speaker 2: try to come up with a some kind of a
Speaker 2: mathematical justification for that, just kind of throw it out there.
Speaker 1: That's where we are, this idiocracy. I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Canes would have been appalled by m MT, and
Speaker 3: frankly the most famous Kinesians today Larry Summers, who I
Speaker 3: respect a great deal even though I disagree with them
Speaker 3: a lot, and Paul Krugman, who I don't respect great deal,
Speaker 3: but he's certainly a leading voice there vehemently against MT
Speaker 3: as well. MMT is essentially just a delusion that we
Speaker 3: can allow unlimited amounts of liabilities to be printed without impact,
Speaker 3: and that the government can reverse inflationary effects via taxation.
Speaker 3: It's not really taken seriously by credible economists, But fundamentally,
Speaker 3: I would suggest that it doesn't come from a flawed
Speaker 3: economic theory. It comes from a flawed moral idea of
Speaker 3: the relationship between the citizen and the state. Why do
Speaker 3: we need unlimited MMT. We only need unlimited MMT because
Speaker 3: we apparently have such limited self government as human beings
Speaker 3: that we need a king. We need to pay for
Speaker 3: a larger and larger messianic state. So, going back to
Speaker 3: first Samuel and all the way through human history, MMT
Speaker 3: is just a way to pay for and statism is
Speaker 3: itself a sin that is caused by human beings not
Speaker 3: taking enough responsibility in their own lives.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think of the personification of MMT as the two
Speaker 2: that I call first La La Harris and Alexandria occasional cortex.
Speaker 1: I look at the two of them.
Speaker 2: As the personification of that kind of argument, because it's
Speaker 2: simply about, you know, I'm in charge here and I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you a handout. And of course, as
Speaker 2: I look at some of the things on the horizon,
Speaker 2: some of the things that the technocrats have pushed very hard.
Speaker 1: It seems to.
Speaker 2: Kind of fall in line with a lot of globalist
Speaker 2: talking about a universal basic income. To me, that is
Speaker 2: a universal global kind of Marxism. But we've got the
Speaker 2: technocrats like Elon Musk jumped in on that very hard.
Speaker 2: When Andrew Yang was made that the centerpiece of his campaign,
Speaker 2: he gave millions of dollars for that. We had Bloomberg
Speaker 2: when he was running for president, said well, you know,
Speaker 2: we've had the agrarian society, the industrial society, and now
Speaker 2: the smart ones of us are trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how we're going to take everybody's jobs, and we've got
Speaker 2: to just figure out how we're going to pacify them
Speaker 2: so they don't come after us with guillotines.
Speaker 1: That's what he said.
Speaker 2: And so that's really what the UBI really is is
Speaker 2: it's kind of a pacification. What do you think about
Speaker 2: this trend? And I thought we got a taste of it,
Speaker 2: and I thought we got kind of some conditioning to
Speaker 2: move the overturned window with the lockdowns and the stimulus
Speaker 2: checks and stuff like that. You know, what are your
Speaker 2: concerns about that? It is the antithesis I think of
Speaker 2: what Christians want to see in a society in economics.
Speaker 3: Well, UBI is definitely the antithesis of what Christians want
Speaker 3: to see in the society. But I just think it's
Speaker 3: very important that we're clear as to why we're against it.
Speaker 3: And I fear that many of my conservative friends and
Speaker 3: Christian friends are going to oppose UBI on the basis that, oh,
Speaker 3: we can't afford it, and that's very well true, but
Speaker 3: that's not the fundamental reason I'm opposed to it. I'm
Speaker 3: opposed to it because it robs human beings of their
Speaker 3: God given dignity. I don't necessarily see it as a
Speaker 3: globalist plot, because this could be UBI unfortunately, can be
Speaker 3: done very domestically, country by country, can attempt to implement it,
Speaker 3: and in must case. His fallacy is the sort of
Speaker 3: dystopian fears that various digital progress AI and so forth
Speaker 3: is just simply going to make it impossible for a
Speaker 3: large segment of population to work. And he's wrong about that.
Speaker 3: The digital revolution has been going on for fifty years,
Speaker 3: not for fifty weeks, and the industrial revolution for one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty years. And out of the digital revolution
Speaker 3: we've created fifty one net fifty one million net new jobs. Obviously,
Speaker 3: a lot of people get displaced when their skills are
Speaker 3: no longer needed in a certain task. And on a level,
Speaker 3: I vehemently support retraining, labor dynamism, mobility, having to move
Speaker 3: around into new fields. People that used to sell typewriters
Speaker 3: for a living do not sell typewriters for a living anymore.
Speaker 3: And I don't say it lightly. I think it is difficult,
Speaker 3: but UBI trying to be a stop gap for that
Speaker 3: basically ignores that God made us all to be producers,
Speaker 3: to have dignity, to overcome challenges, to be creative. New
Speaker 3: lines of work, new positions get created out of constantly
Speaker 3: new and evolving technologies. This is by God's design. Virtue
Speaker 3: cannot be disintermediated away. There is a market for people
Speaker 3: of virtue capability competence industry. I think that UBI is
Speaker 3: fundamentally not an economic error, though it's that too. It's
Speaker 3: fundamentally an anthropological error. It doesn't understand the human person.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I think it seems to come from these
Speaker 2: people who seek to consolidate everything and to monopolize everything.
Speaker 2: There's that kind of backing behind it that concerns me.
Speaker 2: Understanding we always have these different technologies that come in
Speaker 2: and impact things, and people use that to then work
Speaker 2: in a different way.
Speaker 1: It's just that at the core of.
Speaker 2: This what I'm seeing from this class of billionaires is,
Speaker 2: as Bloomberg said, you know, we're working very hard to
Speaker 2: make sure you don't have anything to do.
Speaker 1: And that really is a.
Speaker 2: It is something that's just going to destroy human nature
Speaker 2: and it's against our nature as we were just talking
Speaker 2: about it, you know, work and the meaning of life.
Speaker 2: It absolutely destroys that if we allow them to impose
Speaker 2: us on us. And that's the thing. It may not
Speaker 2: be organically there from the technologies, but it can be
Speaker 2: something that if they combine that technology with politics, that
Speaker 2: might be something they try to impose on us. But
Speaker 2: you're absolutely right, we've got to attack it from the
Speaker 2: standpoint of this is really what being a human is about,
Speaker 2: you know, giving us some meaningful work to do and
Speaker 2: the liberty to choose that and whatever our vocation is.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing is, you can't change human nature.
Speaker 3: And so when they go about trying to do something
Speaker 3: that is intended to alter human nature or even it
Speaker 3: may be many of the advocates of UBI, I do
Speaker 3: not think are being sinister. Some are but some are
Speaker 3: just very naive. They think they're helping people and they're
Speaker 3: not helping them because you can't alter the human nature
Speaker 3: that God made us to be productive. So if you
Speaker 3: take away someone's need to be productive and they become
Speaker 3: a ward of the state, you dole their senses and
Speaker 3: they become an opioid at it, they become an alcoholic,
Speaker 3: they become a melancholy, they become removed from society, they
Speaker 3: become antisocial. So you create a worse result by taking
Speaker 3: people away from what God may them to do. If
Speaker 3: they could just alter human nature, they can say we're
Speaker 3: taking away productive activity from you, and we're reprogramming your
Speaker 3: soul so that you don't need it. Well, that would
Speaker 3: be great, but unfortunately only God can do that, and
Speaker 3: these people ain't God.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And those are the types of things that we
Speaker 2: see always as a part of rehabilitation, you know, giving
Speaker 2: somebody a meaningful line of work and that type of thing. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that is what we have to push back against. And
Speaker 2: I think that is really what we have to offer
Speaker 2: as Christians, one of the many things that we have
Speaker 2: to offer. With that, let's talk what we're talking a
Speaker 2: little bit about politics and some of these other issues.
Speaker 2: I guess it came up yesterday the Republicans are doing
Speaker 2: high fives after Trump's performance at the Chicago Economics Club.
Speaker 2: It was entertaining to watch him slap down this guy.
Speaker 2: But I don't know that there was really anything much
Speaker 2: of any substance. And I guess in the bigger scope
Speaker 2: of things, what do you think in terms of the
Speaker 2: there hasn't been much in terms of policy at all
Speaker 2: that has been put forth. We haven't had debates by
Speaker 2: the major candidates. They haven't debated each other. When they do,
Speaker 2: it typically devolves into kind of a personal back and forth,
Speaker 2: which I thought a lot of the economic issues were
Speaker 2: in that discussion yesterday. But where do you see things
Speaker 2: happening in terms of both Trump as well as a
Speaker 2: Democrat of course, mimicking his policies, saying we need to
Speaker 2: have more tariffs at the border, that type of thing.
Speaker 2: We've had a free trade structure to our economy since
Speaker 2: the early nineteen hundreds. Prior to that, it really was
Speaker 2: very protectionist. That seemed to be what industrial societies were
Speaker 2: all doing, and we had kind of a free trade
Speaker 2: zone and taxes were collected at the border. Then we
Speaker 2: started doing internal taxes with the internal revenue, and the
Speaker 2: central banks are created about that time. What is your
Speaker 2: view of the bigger picture there, regardless of you know,
Speaker 2: whether or not any president could come in and unilaterally
Speaker 2: and immediately impose a sixty percent terra for example, that
Speaker 2: number has been thrown out there. How do you see that?
Speaker 2: You know how the government should be organized in terms
Speaker 2: of its impact on the citizenry, you know, tariffs at
Speaker 2: the border, free trade inside or should we continue to
Speaker 2: go down the same system that we have basically free
Speaker 2: trade but internal taxes.
Speaker 3: Well there's other options that could be on the table too,
Speaker 3: but they aren't. But the first thing I'll say about
Speaker 3: what you brought up at the very beginning, it has
Speaker 3: been the most substanceless campaign for president and human history.
Speaker 3: And that's true that both candidates have deemed it in
Speaker 3: their political best interest to be very shallow on depth
Speaker 3: and policy and details. Both have a different agenda running
Speaker 3: with a different strategy. But no, for those of us
Speaker 3: that are really kind of issue oriented, policy oriented, this
Speaker 3: has not been the campaign for you, and so that
Speaker 3: is what it is. My own view on the tariff
Speaker 3: side is that I'm veheamily against the government needing to
Speaker 3: tell buyers and sellers the terms of such exchange, and
Speaker 3: that countries do not trade with countries, companies trade with companies.
Speaker 3: And if in fact a American importer is being hurt
Speaker 3: by the terms of trade with a foreign exporter, the
Speaker 3: American importer doesn't need Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or
Speaker 3: anyone else to set a tariff to come level the
Speaker 3: playing field. They can simply say, I don't want to
Speaker 3: trade with you. That's what we've done forever, and that's
Speaker 3: what those of us who defend a market economy and
Speaker 3: freedom of exchange believe in as what all of us
Speaker 3: do domestically. Every day, I go to a store, I
Speaker 3: don't like what they're charging. I don't have to shop
Speaker 3: at that store. I can go somewhere else. There is
Speaker 3: national security issues that can come up, but that's not
Speaker 3: what we're talking about when we talk about protectionism. And
Speaker 3: one of the greatest evidences of the weakness of some
Speaker 3: of these arguments is that people change the argument in
Speaker 3: the middle of a sentence. That it can go from
Speaker 3: human rights to national security to protecting jobs in Ohio,
Speaker 3: all in the same sentence and it's got to be
Speaker 3: one or the other. What are we really talking about here? Ultimately,
Speaker 3: I believe that people have to understand when we talk
Speaker 3: about a nineteenth century economy. Tariffs are certainly allowed in
Speaker 3: the Constitution. But if anyone believes that we're talking about
Speaker 3: tariffs instead of an income tax, instead of tariffs plus
Speaker 3: an income tax, I got a bridge to sell them, right.
Speaker 4: So it's always been that case when I talk about
Speaker 4: flat tax or fair tax or whatever, it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: but let's see, let's see you stop the other one
Speaker 4: first before you replace that, or as you point out,
Speaker 4: it's going to be both of them, it's going to
Speaker 4: be an addition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: And you could not because it's the size of government
Speaker 3: now because of the annual expense the amount of imports
Speaker 3: that we generate. You would have to have something like
Speaker 3: three hundred percent tariffs on everything to generate that, and
Speaker 3: of course you would and then generate it because nobody
Speaker 3: would be importing, and so you have no revenue to
Speaker 3: government at all. So you know, President Trump, his credit
Speaker 3: does not really talk about tariffs. Sometimes he'll say, oh,
Speaker 3: they're going to generate this revenue, but then other times
Speaker 3: he says it's a negotiating tactic, I'm not really going
Speaker 3: to do it, and it can't be both at once,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, it's probably the biggest area where I
Speaker 3: have disagreement with the President in terms of economics. But
Speaker 3: I also understand that he likes to negotiate, and so
Speaker 3: if that's part of the deal, that's a little different
Speaker 3: than actually implementing it. But fundamentally, I believe in buyers
Speaker 3: and sellers setting their own terms of exchange, and I
Speaker 3: do not believe a disinterested third party like the government
Speaker 3: has to do it. And if people understood the retaliatory
Speaker 3: nature of tariffs and the history of smooth holly and
Speaker 3: the depression is not good. And so we will see
Speaker 3: where this goes from here.
Speaker 2: And every time they try to protect a particular industry
Speaker 2: or something with tariffs, what happens is whoever was using
Speaker 2: that raw material that's now only going to be sourced
Speaker 2: because of terroriffs by some domestic supplier. Now those people
Speaker 2: are going to wait a minute, we can't get enough
Speaker 2: of this and we can't afford it at that price.
Speaker 2: So it always has these unintended consequences, these secondary tertiary
Speaker 2: issues like that it's a really complicated thing. But I think,
Speaker 2: tell me what you think our fundamental problem is. I
Speaker 2: think we are so focused. My fundamental perspective is that
Speaker 2: we're so focused on government as a solution. It's inevitable
Speaker 2: that it's going to continue to grow, and it's inevitable
Speaker 2: that people are going to continue to be more divided
Speaker 2: and more partisan and more paranoid. That this is the
Speaker 2: most important election in our life, and it's the most
Speaker 2: important thing in my life, and this is worth fighting for.
Speaker 2: I see it as a path to civil war as
Speaker 2: well as to financial bankruptcy, because what do we do
Speaker 2: as Christians to try to get people away from this
Speaker 2: mindset that everything needs to be done by the government,
Speaker 2: especially the federal government.
Speaker 3: Well, I believe that there's no chance that we get
Speaker 3: out of this mindset that everything must be done by
Speaker 3: the government, letteral in the federal government, until we increase
Speaker 3: our own personal responsibility so strong. I do not support
Speaker 3: the growth of Leviathan. I do not support the expansion
Speaker 3: of the federal government where there is going to be
Speaker 3: governmental jurisdiction. I'm a real tenth Amendment guy that generally
Speaker 3: believes in federalism coming out of a sort of doctrine
Speaker 3: of subsidiarity. Things are done best at a local level,
Speaker 3: where there's most accountability and proximity and things like that.
Speaker 3: Not exactly rocket science, by the way, But I believe
Speaker 3: that we have larger government because we have declining families,
Speaker 3: because we have a declining church, because we have declining
Speaker 3: mediating institutions, stronger local communities, and all of those types
Speaker 3: of things. They are basically the corollary to the size
Speaker 3: of government. So if we want the Woodrow Wilson, an FDR,
Speaker 3: an LBJ expansion in the twentieth century of government did
Speaker 3: not come by forcing it down our throat. It came
Speaker 3: from us willingly seeding greater responsibility for social safety net,
Speaker 3: for all these different programs to the government. One who
Speaker 3: disagrees Vamily and my conservative friends that the problem we
Speaker 3: have is a bunch of politicians that want to make
Speaker 3: government bigger. I believe our problem is a bunch of
Speaker 3: people that want the politicians to make government bigger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I agree as very much.
Speaker 2: I think really, as I look at this election, it
Speaker 2: really struck home as we get close to the election,
Speaker 2: everybody who is kind of sitting on the sidelines and
Speaker 2: maybe well, I don't like either candidate or this or that.
Speaker 2: Now they're coalescing into these two different camps, and after
Speaker 2: they make that decision, they start really becoming cheerleaders for that.
Speaker 2: And I would like to see these people become cheerleaders
Speaker 2: for as you point out, the family, or for voluntary organizations,
Speaker 2: or for taking direct action as we saw in North
Speaker 2: Carolina with the destruction there from Hurricane Helene. We saw
Speaker 2: the people starting to come together and realize the power
Speaker 2: of the community, helping their neighbors and coming together. That's
Speaker 2: the sort of thing we've seen little bits and pieces
Speaker 2: of that, I think homeschooling. And yet you will still
Speaker 2: see people say, well, yeah, but I want to have
Speaker 2: this subsidy. I want them to pay for my books
Speaker 2: or my pencils or whatever. You do that, and you
Speaker 2: do that at your peril, because now you're starting to
Speaker 2: buy into a kind of dependency. We have to desire
Speaker 2: to have our own independence, and we have to desire
Speaker 2: to get the job done, and we have to also
Speaker 2: understand and look towards God. That's why I think it's
Speaker 2: really Christians that have the answer here that they're not
Speaker 2: going to find anywhere else, because we see the power
Speaker 2: of God in these things, and they see politicians as
Speaker 2: God in a sense I've said over and over again.
Speaker 2: I said it again today that I think that they
Speaker 2: want to give Trump credit for rov Wade. I think
Speaker 2: it kind of he didn't expect that to happen, and
Speaker 2: he ran away when it happened. I think we give
Speaker 2: the credit to God, and we give the credit to prayer,
Speaker 2: and we look at things like that as Christians, and
Speaker 2: I think that's really where our strength is. And I
Speaker 2: think that's what we have to offer people, is to
Speaker 2: say that with us and with our work, as you
Speaker 2: point out, our meaning, our purpose in life, and with
Speaker 2: God there and our families our focus, that should be
Speaker 2: where we're directed, not misdirected to something that is thousands
Speaker 2: of miles away in a different worldview, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think that we have a great deal to offer
Speaker 2: as Christians in that regard.
Speaker 3: Well, I completely agree. There's a lot of different applications
Speaker 3: of the same thing that you're saying in a lot
Speaker 3: of different areas. You know. One of the great examples
Speaker 3: is even just in this political season, when people say, well,
Speaker 3: how many jobs did Biden create, how many jobs did
Speaker 3: Jump cate, who's going to manage the economy better? Paris
Speaker 3: are trying. Why are you asking these people to manage
Speaker 3: the economy? Who creates jobs? Or buyers and sellers, producers
Speaker 3: and consumers, free exchange people out of their own economic incentives. Now, Now,
Speaker 3: presidents and policy and Congress can impact those things for sure,
Speaker 3: tax rates, regulation, energy, But I'm not saying it's a
Speaker 3: completely separate but we give a sort of imperial view
Speaker 3: of the presidency when we talk that way, and I'm
Speaker 3: very uncomfortable with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't really create jobs, but they can inhibit jobs.
Speaker 3: Yeah they can.
Speaker 1: And the other part of.
Speaker 2: It is we saw with its latest jobs report. First
Speaker 2: they told us that inflated it over eight hundred thousand jobs.
Speaker 2: They'd lie to us about that. Then they come back
Speaker 2: with this when it turns out you look closely, there's
Speaker 2: a record increase in government jobs. So they can't create
Speaker 2: those kind of jobs, and they can fill up the
Speaker 2: labor statistics with those types of jobs. But yeah, you're right,
Speaker 2: it really is. I roll my eyes every time I
Speaker 2: hear a Republican say that, because they ought to understand
Speaker 2: at least that much about the market.
Speaker 1: If they're Republican.
Speaker 3: The problem is that everybody does it now, and so
Speaker 3: then the next person's going to do it to counter
Speaker 3: what was done before. And if the economy is good
Speaker 3: during the publican president, they're going to take credit. And
Speaker 3: if it's bad during someone else, they're going to want
Speaker 3: to go after it. So it's just become low hanging
Speaker 3: fruit for political expediency. But it's all economically incoherent.
Speaker 1: That's right. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: You got another book that you have written, Our cultural
Speaker 2: Addiction to Blame and how you can cure it. Boy,
Speaker 2: do we not have a finger pointing everywhere about everything?
Speaker 2: As we just saw this last week? You know Christopher Columbus.
Speaker 2: And I don't think it's really about criticizing Christopher Columbus's life.
Speaker 2: I think that's really about resetting the culture. But how
Speaker 2: do you see this addiction to blame and the cure
Speaker 2: for it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was the subtitle the book. The title
Speaker 3: was Crisis of Responsibility, Our cultural Addiction to Blame and
Speaker 3: How you can Cure It. That was my first book,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking right now about updated kind of follow up.
Speaker 3: I'm talking with my publisher about my next book being
Speaker 3: a sort of extension of that It's probably the most
Speaker 3: nonpartisan passion that I have wherein I think most on
Speaker 3: the right today are finding a way that the government
Speaker 3: or the man, or some foreign actor, somebody is doing
Speaker 3: something to make their life miserable. And most people on
Speaker 3: the left believe that Wall Street or business or or
Speaker 3: you know, polluters in the environy. You know that they
Speaker 3: have a different boogeyman for who's trying to ruin the world.
Speaker 3: And I just think we've gotten really disconnected from an
Speaker 3: ethos of individual agency, individual responsibility. Do I believe there's
Speaker 3: a lot of bad people out there, but I don't
Speaker 3: believe there are any bad people out there that take
Speaker 3: away my agency, take away my responsibility and my ability
Speaker 3: to create a fulfilling life for myself, to impact my
Speaker 3: loved ones, my family, my friends. It's a mentality. There
Speaker 3: must be a mentality that even through affliction, even through
Speaker 3: difficult circumstances, we have it in our ability to overcome.
Speaker 3: It's a very Christian understanding of the human experience, and
Speaker 3: our responsibilities are do not get left at the door
Speaker 3: when there's a bad trade deal, or a bad immigration policy,
Speaker 3: or bad tax policy or bad regulation. We're to continue
Speaker 3: fighting through it seek to change the things that are wrong,
Speaker 3: but never nder any circumstances, throw in the towel given
Speaker 3: to defeatism and fatalistically say well, what was I supposed
Speaker 3: to do? Life is too hard? It's never too hard.
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh, I agree. Something that used to always be
Speaker 2: a hallmark of the left. Right, don't blame that mass murder.
Speaker 2: He got spanked as a child, you know, that type
Speaker 2: of thing. But now that's been internalized I think a
Speaker 2: lot by the right. I'm reminded as you're talking about
Speaker 2: that of GK. Chesterton who famously said, what's wrong with
Speaker 2: the world? I am and he took the responsibility for it,
Speaker 2: and he said, and that's a Christian thing, you know,
Speaker 2: to recognize your flaws and to work on them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's one of my favorite lines. I have
Speaker 3: a number of lines like that throughout the book. But
Speaker 3: that's the ethoughts that I'm going for. That looking in
Speaker 3: the mirror and sometimes avoiding a victimhood mentality even when
Speaker 3: you were a victim, even when there was injustice done
Speaker 3: to you, just saying I'm not going to let that
Speaker 3: injustice define me, and overcoming those difficult times, I think
Speaker 3: is really where we derive a lot of the human
Speaker 3: flourishing that we're all after.
Speaker 2: I agree, and I said so many times just people
Speaker 2: are looking for reparations and all that that's the ultimate,
Speaker 2: you know type of blame thing. Well, you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: done centuries ago, and you know, because your skin color whatever,
Speaker 2: you need to make this right with me, I said, no.
Speaker 2: The Christian perspective in terms of reconciling things is to
Speaker 2: understand that the things that we have done wrong we
Speaker 2: leave at the cross, and the things that were done
Speaker 2: wrong to us we all so late with the cross.
Speaker 2: And so I think we have so much that we
Speaker 2: can contribute to this to heal. That's why I wanted
Speaker 2: to get you on and talk about this, because you've
Speaker 2: got some excellent books. The Case for Dividend Growth, Investing
Speaker 2: in a post crisis world now that would be economics,
Speaker 2: but and another one There's No Free Lunch, two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty Economic Truth. But this newest book is especially
Speaker 2: I think your first one in this newest one full
Speaker 2: Time Work, I'm sorry, Full Time Work and the Meaning
Speaker 2: of Life.
Speaker 1: That was released earlier this year.
Speaker 2: I'm interested to hear that book now after we've had
Speaker 2: our discussion and thank you for doing that. And again,
Speaker 2: I've always always enjoyed listening to your father and the
Speaker 2: debates that he had with people over the existence of God.
Speaker 2: It truly was amazing and great loss, I know, to
Speaker 2: you especially, but to everyone. I think that he died
Speaker 2: at an early age. Again, our guest is David Bonson.
Speaker 2: He has the Bonson Group Wealth Management and he's got
Speaker 2: a lot of wealth. That is there five point seven
Speaker 2: billion dollars in client assets. But I think that the
Speaker 2: real wealth that we've got are the Christian values that
Speaker 2: you're putting out there to help people along to understand
Speaker 2: their purpose in life and how they can move forward.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for what you do.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Let me so you the David Night Show. You can
Speaker 5: listen to with your ears. You can even watch it
Speaker 5: by using your eyes. In fact, if you can hear me,
Speaker 5: that means you're listening to the David Night Show right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good job.
Speaker 5: And you want to know something else.
Speaker 6: You can find all links to everywhere to watch or
Speaker 6: listen to the show at Ndavidnightshow dot com.
Speaker 3: That's a website