Comments on: What Caused the Economic Downturn? How Do We Rebound?

By: Paul Williams

Paul Williams — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:15:07 +0000

Thanks so much, Matt! I’m excited to have won. Thank you for holding the contest.

By: TFPEditor

TFPEditor — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:15:01 +0000

Paul –

Thanks for participating in the contest. I am very pleased to extend our congratualtions to you for winning first prize! Great entry.

I’ll be in touch,
Matt
WhatWouldJohnTempletonSay.com
TempletonPress.org

By: Paul Williams

Paul Williams — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:48:49 +0000

Haha, no problem, Kevin. I knew where you were going.

By: Kevin@OutOfYourRut

Kevin@OutOfYourRut — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:20:25 +0000

Wow, I got so far into one point that I didn’t bring it home to the one I was thinking of–that’s the burden of being long winded, I can take myself off track all by myself.

ALL of this, I think, owes to a rejection of God. Moral relativism and everything I wrote. Culture wide, we no longer “trouble” ourselves whether or not God is pleased with what we do, and it all becomes a matter of “what can we get away with?” Well, when you take God out, the doors aren’t just open, they’ve been taken off the hinges. But that was the objective.

As a culture, we no longer have any anchors, we didn’t want any. Now we’re scrambling to fix symptoms while the real issue is never cured.

It might take more than a generation to fix that.
.-= Kevin@OutOfYourRut´s last blog ..Should You Use Retirement Savings to Pay Off Debt? =-.

By: Paul Williams

Paul Williams — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:08:26 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Kevin! You’re completely right in saying it didn’t happen overnight and it won’t be fixed overnight. Looking at it in the context of moral relativism, it took quite a while to get to the point where the majority no longer believes in an absolute right. And that focus on quantity over quality can, in many ways, come from moral relativism through a lack of values that are good for everyone.

By: Kevin@OutOfYourRut

Kevin@OutOfYourRut — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:51:03 +0000

I think you’re completely right in all that you’re writing Paul. The only problem with returning to integrity as a means of fixing the economy is that it will take at least a generation to accomplish, and the leadership doesn’t have that kind of time.

It has to be fixed by 2012–and I’m in no way laying the blame for this at the feet of the Obama admin–a few admins before this one had a hand in it.

Patience is one of the casualties of lost integrity I’m afraid.

Mechanically, I think our fascination with numbers has also been a driver, the more-is-better concept.

As a nation, we’ve been addicted to higher numbers as a metric for success–higher GDP, higher employment, higher stock markets, higher house prices, longer lifespans, etc. There’s no QUALITY in any of that!

So the economy “grows”–in dollar terms only–while living wage jobs and real production go overseas giving us mountainous trade deficits. House prices rise to the sky, masking the fact that people are deeper in debt than ever. The stock markets rise ever higher, masking higher consumer debt and the deterioration of living wage jobs.

Then one day, higher goes poof, and we get double digit unemployment, millions of foreclosures, and trillions in unserviceable debt. None if it happened over night! And fixing it won’t happen over night.

The first thing that has to happen is for our perceptions and expectations to catch up with the reality of our circumstances, and that by itself could be a long time coming.
.-= Kevin@OutOfYourRut´s last blog ..Should You Use Retirement Savings to Pay Off Debt? =-.