Economics During Uncertain Times

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Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Andrew Rappaport, Truthspresso, and the Economics Topic

All right. Well, I am your host, Andrew Rapoport for another Wrap Report. We're glad that you are here with us. It happens to be on the day, if you're listening to this to the day this drops, well, you should be wishing me happy birthday.

Are you doing that? Did you go to my Facebook and enter the contest? I'm just wondering. I actually can't stand my birthday, but many people like to wish me happy birthday on social media, so I have made a game of it.

There's still time to enter if you're listening because I usually wait till a week after, and anyone who gets the creative way to say happy birthday, at least then I can enjoy remembering that I'm a year older.

Whoever wins that gets a free copy of What Do We Believe?, and so always give something out for my birthday. That's kind of messed up. Most people get things on their birthday. I give away things on my birthday, but I prefer that.

So I am a year older. I just turned 26 today. No, there was no laughing there. Okay. You guys were supposed to realize that I really am about 26. Our guest didn't even laugh. He totally didn't even think, totally not buying into the fact that I'm really only 26 years old.

I can't believe it. But our guest today is Daniel Minnick. He is from the Truth Espresso podcast. He obviously needs a lot of coffee with his truth. He needs a heavy dose of that. That's how I'm understanding his podcast.

But we'll actually let him explain, and then what we plan to do today, he's been doing a series of podcasts, oh okay, except for when he did one on the resurrection for Resurrection Sunday. But other than that one, he's been talking about banking and economics, and there's been a bunch of stuff that I've been learning through it, so I asked him to come on, and so this may not be the typical type of thing.

We're not talking theology. However, I think there is stuff in here that has some theology. So welcome, Daniel Minnick.

Well, thank you, Andrew, for having me on The Wrap Report.

Yes, you get applause. I get nothing. I don't get it. What's up with that? So, well, I've enjoyed your podcast, but for folks who don't know who you are, don't know, maybe, okay, maybe there's people who haven't listened to your podcast.

I don't know why they haven't. It is one of the podcasts at the Christian Podcast Community, and they should have been listening. But in case they haven't, introduce yourself, your background, your podcast,.

Why you got into podcasting. Well, my name is Daniel Minnick, and I am the host of the Truthspresso podcast, and at the Truthspresso podcast, we talk, I seem to use the word we a lot when I mean myself, but I talk a lot about theology, and with Truthspresso, I like to focus on the deeper side of things.

So when I talk about theology, I want to get in deep really to understand who God is, the attributes of God, and who Jesus Christ is, and what He has done for us, and to identify them biblically and deeply, and also to get into economics and to understand how economics relates to the Bible, because there's so much confusion out there in the world, and we see that confusion in economics ultimately leads to really bad policy.

And so I think it would be beneficial for Christians to understand what the Bible teaches about economics and how it doesn't support a tyrannical government overseeing policy and money, and that thereby, by approaching the Bible, we can learn to be freer as we trust in God.

And I guess about myself, I am a software developer by trade. I work in the mortgage industry doing software development for mortgage document processing. Doesn't sound very exciting, but it's a job. It gets the job done, and I guess it might give me a little bit of maybe somewhat authority on the topic, even though I'm not a licensed personal financier, nor do I have a degree in economics, but studying the Bible and economics, I think I can see that the Bible has something to say about it.

So you're going to be able to give us all the great stock.

Tips that are going to make us be able to retire in a few years, right? That's how it works. No?

Even if I could, because I'm not a licensed financier, so I would have to give the caveat to take what I say with a grain of salt.

But you never want to take financial advice from someone that is barely rubbing two pennies together, right? I have a friend of mine, she is a real estate representative, I forget what it's called, but a real estate agent.

Broker? Well, an agent. She takes people around to see houses, but she does it in Beverly Hills, and so she drives around in a BMW, which is not what I expected, and I was talking to her, she's like, well, I have to.

You can't show up to a million dollar home, two million, three million dollar home with a client and have a Honda Accord. She's like, in that area, there's just a little bit of difference in what you can do.

I'm like, okay. So let's get into some things, because we have right now, I think folks kind of realize, we're living in some uncertain, unprecedented times. I think that right now, there's the great unknown.

You and I, as we're recording this, are still secluded in our homes, and they haven't boarded up the doors yet, but I think they would like to for all the Christians and let everyone else out, at least the medias and liberals would.

But we're having people that are sitting at home, many not able to work, many are questioning what's going to happen when things get back to a new normal, because I don't think it's ever going to get back to what we were used to before.

And there's a lot of questions people have, and a lot of it is around economics. What's my 401 going to be like? Can I retire? I mean, I know someone who he put in for retirement. He is now at a point where he can't pull that back, and now with his 401k, it's like he doesn't know when, because in his field, he's got to put in for retirement six months to a year ahead of time, and so you can never predict these things.

And so now the question is, when your 401k takes a hit of 40 percent, it could be a big deal. And so let me first, as I think about this with all the uncertain times, what is your thoughts as far as what the Bible teaches when it comes to not just money, because we'll get into that, but I'm thinking more in our times right now, the uncertainty of money.

How much trust do we put in that? How much should financial decisions.

Money, Trust, and Inflation in Uncertain Times

Affect the things we put our time and energy to? Well, I think if we understand the Bible's definition of money, then we understand what would affect purchasing power, the ability to buy goods and services, both in the present and in the future.

We would also understand when the Bible talks about false balances and unequal weights and measures, we can get an understanding of what happens when the government inflates the currency and how when we are paid our salaries, when we're on fixed incomes, especially when the government is passing two trillion dollar stimulus packages, and a lot of people are looking to the government there for help and believing that we need that.

But if we have our trust in God, and especially not in the state, then we'd what the role of the state really should not be to manage this. And as the state starts to erode our purchasing power, then we should look for ways to save our money and to buy things that will last.

There's things like diversifying a little bit into, say, a little bit of gold or silver as an inflation hedge, because gold and silver is money in the Bible. I'm not a financial advisor, but I would say avoid speculative stocks, ones that you're buying low to sell high.

Now, you can short the market a little bit if you were to, say, buy some oil stocks now as they're cheap, which buying the stocks would help recapitalize. And then looking to sell high a little later, you could do that, but realize that you don't want to short it a few months.

You might need to short it, say, a few years. But then I would say to look for stocks that have high dividend yields, that pay dividends because those stocks demonstrate successful business activity, that they actually are businesses that are functioning rather than operating on speculation.

Now, in your podcast, it was interesting because you brought up the idea of inflation. You did an episode, I think it was the one where you talked about monopoly money, which really was a great way of illustrating you.

You had said, why can't I spend monopoly money? And you really explained the system, but I think it might've been in that one. You could correct me if I'm wrong, but you explained with what we're going through right now, the government is just printing more money.

And people don't often think, people that don't have a background in this stuff may not understand why that could be a bad thing. Right now, people are thinking, oh, if there's more money, hey, great, there's more for me.

As you just mentioned, a $2 trillion stimulus, where do they get that money from, right? So you had mentioned on the podcast how the government printing money, just creating more currency, ends up affecting the economy in a negative way.

You just go into explaining that for folks.

Well, let's start off with a basic example of, let's say the economy is 10 pencils. And then let's say that there are 10 coins also to circulate in the economy. And so what happens if someone were able to create new coins?

So basically, if you have 10 pencils and 10 coins, each pencil would be worth one coin. So what happens if someone were able to introduce more coins into that simplistic economy? Let's say someone were able to double the supply of coins from 10 to 20.

Well, then how much would each pencil be worth? It would be worth, you'd have to pay two coins to get one pencil because of the laws of supply and demand and equilibrium there. But as I explained about inflation, inflation is not just that the money supply increases.

Inflation is that basically you have an authority over creating the money supply, which I believe the Bible does not provide that kind of authority to have some kind of central bank or government that can just create money out of nothing.

But what happens when an authority creates money, new money out of thin air and introduces it into the economy? Well, think of the situation with a counterfeiter. Well, a counterfeiter creates new money, but what does the counterfeiter then do with it?

What's the purpose of counterfeiting new money? It's to spend it and buy things. So what happens then when the counterfeiter is able to spend the new money he creates, he buys real wealth, real goods and services, the output of the labor of other people with money that is not worth anything.

And then this money circulates. And then by the time it gets to people who are not the first ones with access to that new money, they see the prices rise as money has circulated. Now, since money is cheaper, the prices have to rise.

And so those who are on fixed incomes see their livelihoods get more expensive, while those who created the new money, their livelihoods get better because they're able to buy up some of the wealth produced by the economy with their cheaper money.

And so essentially, then the fact that the government produces more actually devalues the rest of the money we currently have. Yes. So that's not sounding like a good thing then.

Yeah, well, pretty much all the professional economists in almost all the universities will teach a form of economics that will tell you that that is good for us, that is good for the economy, because inflation is supposed to stimulate economic activity because it forces people to buy things as they see prices rise.

And as they're spending more money because prices rise, then that helps pay, you know, pay the stores, pay producers, it gives people jobs. And so that's economic karma and action. So you think it's costing you more, but you're spending more of your hard-earned money to buy things, circulates money through the economy, grows the economy, and it eventually comes back to help you and your own wealth.

That's the teaching of the.

Current economics. Now, one of the things we see in Scripture very clearly is the fact that money itself is not an evil thing. However, the love of money is. Now, we think about those two, money, as you said already, right?

Money helps us, the fact that we have money, we make money, we're able to do more things for other people, we're able to, you know, help churches and missionaries pay for things for our family, do all kinds of things like this.

However,.

The Love of Money Versus Honest Gain

What's wrong with the love of money? Well, the love of money can lead people to do dishonest things because the Bible says that, you know, it condemns dishonest gain. So, honest gain is something that, you know, God actually considers a blessing when he tells Israel that he will bless them and they will be a lender to many nations.

They won't borrow, but they'll lend out being able to lend out money shows that you've acquired enough wealth so that you're not dependent on all the money that you have, that you have surplus money to be able to lend out, which means, you know, you can give to charity, you can even charge interest on it as, you know, God said the Israelites, they couldn't charge interest to each other as they're all family, but they could charge interest to foreigners.

And so, having money was a sign of God's blessing, which for Israel meant that they had to, you know, faithfully keep the law. So, if they kept God's commandments, there is nothing wrong with honest gain in wealth.

But the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil, which, you know, Paul says, while some are coveted after, I forget how the verse goes, it, you know, it causes, you know, shipwreck. So, you know, if you love money, you know, rather than, you know, wanting to be a blessing to people with it, even as someone who's wealthy, you might seek it out by dishonest gain, robbing, or in the case of, say, politicians, you know, they want secure, cushy jobs and control of money and policy and to be able to get wealth off the backs of other people through coercion and not through honest market exchanges and putting in their labor to make things happen and produce wealth.

So, what do you think, in your opinion, should be the Christian's view on money? I'd say the Christian's view on money, as we understand the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter two, that the gold of the land is good.

So, we understand that God designed money in creation. And so, God created money to be something, to be a good in the economy that has its own properties, you know, other than just as medium exchange, and then it has its limitations, too.

And so, money needs to be earned honestly. There needs to be equal scales. And money is something that, you know, and we'll get into, to like marginal utility in a bit, possibly. But the Christian's attitude toward money should, first of all, be to take care of themselves and their own family.

And then, as they get surplus, then they can be a blessing to other people and to give to charity. So, you know, money is a means to create wealth, which ultimately should be a means to help people. So, it sounds like.

You're saying that Christians should not have their sole interest in life is to make money.

No, you know, I've seen some Christians that are like that, and I see them, some Christians who are so focused on making money that they start to drift away from God, drift away from participating in the body of believers.

And, you know, basically, yeah, they lose their focus on God, sacrifice their prayer life. And, you know, money is the tool that God gave us. Money is a good on the market. Money should not be what life is all about.

As Jesus says, what profit is it to gain the whole world and lose your own soul? So, there's nothing wrong with wealth as long as you keep your perspective on God.

Yeah, and this is the thing that I've seen countless times. You know, when I do fund counseling, I've come to, especially within marriage, there's two areas that seem to be the biggest issues. It's either communication issues or money issues.

I mean, I don't know how many times that seems to be an issue. And people have different views of money, and a lot of it's going to be based on how they grew up, what may be overspending for one person may not be for another.

And so, when we look at that, I think that we always have to be careful as Christians when we judge others, because we are going to judge, we're commanded to judge by Christ, John 7, 24. But the question is, how do we judge?

And when I think about, when it comes to money, it's hard to figure out. Like, we don't really know a person's heart to know, oh, they have a love for money. It's not just what money's doing for them.

They have a love for it. We can't really see that. And yet, I think that I often hear people that will look at someone and say, oh, well, he's just, he's spending too much on something. And it may be that that person has an overabundance, and yes, he might spend a lot on some areas, but he's also giving to charity, giving to ministries, and it's not affecting, like you were saying, there are those that it affects their walk.

It affects whether they're going to work on a Sunday or go to church on a Sunday. And I've seen the guys who, you can almost see the guys that are sitting at church, and they're really still at work. They're sitting at church, and they're taking notes, you know, in a daily planner.

I actually used to have a guy that we went to church with, and he opened up a daily planner. And I'd always want to tell him is when I first started going to church, and I always wanted to be like, you know, are you here to worship God, or is it just a kind of a time away from work where you can think about other things with work, you know?

So I think it's a really good point is the fact that we have to be mindful as Christians of this balance, because we have to make money. There are people who feed off the church. What I mean by that is there's people who believe they come to church because they want to or they expect Christians to help them out.

It's one of the reasons I encourage churches. At our church, we've always had a policy. We don't give money. We will give, if someone comes to church, we'll have people off to come off the streets, and they're coming looking for handouts, and we never gave anyone cash.

What we do is you need food, okay, we'll go to ShopRite, we'll give you some gift cards, we'll pay, you know, we'll give you that. But you had to attend church. Not only did you have to attend church, but you had to sit down with one of the leaders, one of the pastors or the deacons, and we would sit down and share the gospel with you.

And now if there's someone in the church, we had a deacons fund, which is set aside for helping Christians. But even there, you know, I had a policy that if you came and needed money, again, we don't give cash, you know, but we'll take care of the needs.

We'll pay an electric bill, things like that. But if you came a second time in need, now it's time we start working on a budget, right? So many Christians, I find, don't understand the concept of, they're just too free on their spending.

They don't understand the concept of budgeting. Do you think that there is importance for Christians to understand, and if you could think of what the Bible might say to the issue of budgeting and being wise in.

Our spending? Well, let's see. Well, you know, we have the concept of preparing for a rainy day. There's definitely a need for savings. And, you know, we'll probably get into, when we get into biblical economic theory versus the modern theory, you know, the modern economists actually act like savings is an evil thing, and that savings destroys the economy.

But the Bible begs to differ. If we look at Proverbs 27 .1, it says, Boast not yourself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. And Proverbs 21 .20 says, There is treasure to be desired, and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man spendeth it up.

And so, against modern economics, that basically acts like spending is king, and that the more you spend, the more you help the economy, and it doesn't distinguish between good spending and bad spending.

And as you said before about the, you know, one person's spending might be different from another person's spending. You know, 1 Corinthians 4 .7 says, you know, who makes you to differ from one another so that there are differences in needs and differences in function for people.

But the Bible definitely encourages savings, and you should budget, as you said, to determine how much money is good for you to spend to help the economy and to help yourself with any goods or services with which you might need to avail yourself.

But you don't spend all of it because that's foolish. According to the Bible, you want to save and spending should only come from savings. We don't look to a debt engine to get the capital or the money that we need and be encouraged to spend it all for the false notion that it helps the economy and therefore helps.

Ourselves. All right, after this break, what I'd really like is if you could provide, you mentioned this biblical view of economics versus the world's view, I'd like to break, I'd like to have you break that down a bit so that we better understand that right after this break.

Let's challenge our view of the world as we take apart conventional politics with a fine-toothed comb. See all that Truthspresso has to offer by going to www .truthspresso .com. And by the way, Truthspresso is now a member podcast of the growing family of the Christian Podcast Community.

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So, we are greatly encouraged by the folks that are interested in joining with us, and Daniel is one of those folks. And so, Daniel, before we took the break, I was asking if you would be able to just explain the difference between a biblical view of economics.

Biblical Economics Versus Modern Economics

And compared to what we see in the world today. Yes, Andrew. Well, to get to a biblical view of economics, compared to the view currently in the world today and the universities today, we want to get really to the simple according to the Bible, and then we can expand out from there.

And so, I know this is not a verse in the Bible, but I'd say that economics is like an onion. We need to peel back the layers to get to the simple core. And so, the basic things about economics will seem obvious, but as we start adding some of these layers back on, as we grow in our understanding of economics, we see where the economics profession starts diverging from the Bible and common sense.

So, economics starts with individuals making exchanges. Didn't know that, right? So, we make exchanges because of our differences. And as I mentioned, 1 Corinthians 4, 7, the apostle Paul says, who makes you to differ from one another?

So, we recognize that God is the one who makes each of us unique. Modern economics tries to squish everyone down into a cookie cutter human, vanilla human being doesn't recognize that we are all created equal as human beings, equal in worth before God, but different in our functions, our abilities, and because of our differences, the way God made us, that facilitates exchanges.

So, Andrew, let me ask you a question. When people make exchanges for things, say you have a barter situation, are the exchanges made for things of equal value or unequal value? What do.

You think? Well, you'd want to say that it's going to be equal in the sense that it's an equal system, but in another sense, it's not really. I mean, if you're going to have a system that's based on, say, the gold standard, well, that's going to be equal because it's based off a standard.

But if you're in a barter system, you may have someone who they can cut your hair, and in exchange, you are a carpenter, you fix something around their house. Now, you might be able to charge $300 for your thing when he charges $20, but it was an exchange you had, but those might not be equal.

So, I would say that it's going to depend on what the standard is, like if it's a barter system versus a gold standard or something like that.

Okay. So, when two people make an exchange mutually, do they view those things as equal.

Or unequal? Well, in that case, then they're going to, in that individual exchange, so the case I gave, right, the guy cutting the hair, to them, it's an equal exchange because they're making that exchange for whatever is being exchanged, haircut versus carpentry work.

So, yeah, in a sense, like we'd say it's a fair exchange, but in a sense, when people make an exchange of two things, whether it's money for a good or a good for a good or good for a service, whatever, technically, we would say that the exchange is unequal.

Now, I mean fair, but unequal, but unequal in a good way because if the things were not valued by the participants as unequal, then they would have no reason to make the exchange. Like, say, if I want to buy a lunch for $10, then I value that lunch more than I value the $10 that I have.

Otherwise, there would be no reason to give up the $10 in exchange for the lunch. So, we actually make exchanges based on perceiving that we're gaining from the exchange. So, we're getting something in return that's worth more to us more than the thing that we're giving up.

And so, when two people agree and make an exchange, you know, there could be fraud and so on, but perceptually, they're both benefiting. It's a win-win situation. And so, the unequal exchange, let's say in Genesis 34 .10, the family of Jacob understood this in that, quote, the land shall be before you dwell and trade ye therein and get you possessions therein, unquote.

So, the idea of trade is actually.

To help people gain wealth. Okay, now, but here's the problem. We live in a postmodern time where there is no absolutes. So, why is it that money never seems to work with a postmodern thinking? I mean, you don't have someone saying that here, in your example, you go to get something to eat and it's $10.

And I would not be able to get away with handing someone $2 and say, well, in my worldview, that's a $20 bill. That's worth $20 and just walk out of the restaurant. They would arrest me, wouldn't they?

So, in postmodern thinking, why doesn't this economics work?

Yeah, you definitely raise the point because when people make exchanges, according to the Austrian school of economics, which I believe follows biblical economics, there's what's called subjective value.

Now, that doesn't mean what you're talking about with postmodernism. Subjective value just refers to the differences that each individual has and that their value scale for different things can be different for each of them versus the other person.

And that's why they make exchanges. But obviously, as you're saying, postmodern, I, as one party to an exchange, can't get to define for the other person what that person's value is. You have to agree on it, which introduces an absolute.

Even if the value is subjective for the participants, there's still the absolute that one person can't impose a standard on another. The exchange has to be mutual, and they both put some kind of objective value to their end of the exchange.

Yeah, and this is the thing that I've.

Always used as an example. I had a person who goes and evangelizes on college campuses, and they said, what do I do with these postmodernists that think like there is no absolutes and your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth?

And I've said, ask them for their wallet and when they give it to you, just walk away and tell them that I identify this as my wallet and see how far they let you go. Right? Now, granted, if you're evangelizing and you got an audio recorder going, that becomes helpful when the police come and say, they gave me the wallet.

I didn't take it. But what do they do? They stop people, right? We can't have a fair system of trade if people are going to redefine the terms, if people are going to redefine the value of things. There has to be a standard by which we can judge things.

Now, I think like you were saying, there's either the standard of how valuable it is to me. So if something's more valuable to me more than someone else, I might be willing to pay more. But if you have the other way of having a set standard that this is the value and it's compared to something else.

Now, there's lots of debate. I think we're seeing some of this going on right now with this whole crisis, the coronavirus. We're seeing people complaining because people are selling to the highest bidder.

You know, you have China that is making ventilators and things and different countries and states are trying to buy them and they're saying, okay, we'll get into a contract with you for this much, but then someone else goes, well, I'll pay you more because I want them first.

And so it becomes a thing of, okay, if you're going to pay more, I'll go pay it to you. There are those who would say that's wrong, that you shouldn't allow the supply or the demand to affect it. They believe that everything should have an equal value and the government should control that and everyone just gets paid an equal amount regardless of what they do and that it should just be fair to everyone.

What are your views on those kind of extremes and which do you think would be more of a biblical model that we should try to set up? Well, of course, I'd say the.

Biblical model is always to recognize people's needs as 1 John says that if you have this world's good and see your brother have need and shut up your compassion from him, how does the love of the father dwell in you?

So Christians, we do have our moral standard, but there's also the issues of supply and demand and it can actually introduce moral hazard when you try to interfere with the market signals that supply and demand introduce because it can be a tough sell to try to explain to people, especially from an Austrian school understanding, which I believe is the biblical understanding that so-called price gouging, trying to regulate price gouging actually ends up harming people and how does that work?

Well, let's say that, well, if we think of the wage and price controls in the 1970s, we think of the stagflation that was going on at that time. Well, when the government was trying to prevent, let's say, the wages were going down, they were trying to keep wage rates up.

Well, in the process of forcing wages to stay at a certain level, it ends up making some people unemployable and so some people would be better off making less money rather than being out of a job and so also when you have price controls, you end up rationing goods and causing supply shocks, which can make some people not be able to get what they need at all because the supply is suppressed to keep the price from going up from increased demand.

Now, some people with their savings, they might be willing to think of the toilet paper situation with the coronavirus. What toilet paper? I can't find any. Yeah. I mean, think of, okay, let's bring the scenario of that.

Now, some people hoarded toilet paper earlier on. Now, the question of why they did that might be a moral issue on their behalf that they might have to answer to God for the reasons they did it, but let's just say the government tried to force that not to happen.

Well, let's see. What do we have when someone hoards toilet paper? Yeah, there are some people who might go without, but what happens when someone hoards it? Well, they have a surplus of toilet paper that they really can't use immediately and so either they've hoarded it now and they're going to have supply for themselves later on, which means that they won't have a need to buy in the future and therefore, because they were hoarding, production will ramp up because of the increased demand and eventually replenish supply for those who were actually being conservative and waiting, then they'll be able to get the supply that they need later on and more of it because the ones who hoarded it will have no reason to buy more for a while.