Millions of American “evangelical” Christians have been indoctrinated in the idea that they must be worshipful of Israeli politicians and bureaucrats. This is so because they are taught by preachers like John Hagee that the Bible says that God will bless those who bless the nation of Abraham. The absurdity of it all is that pop religionists like Hagee falsely conflate the Israel of the Bible with today’s politicians and bureaucrats of the seventy-six-year-old government of the country of Israel. The two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

The debate over publicly funded welfare can be solved very quickly. There is constant demand for more welfare: more money for longer periods of time for those out of work, more money for the handicapped and a more liberal definition of what is considered to be handicapped, more money for the disabled (which assumes that the recipients once were not disabled) and more categories for what is considered to be a disability, and larger increases in Social Security payments in order to keep up with the deterioration in the purchasing power of the dollar.

Why does the dollar bill in our pocket have value? The value of money is established, according to some experts, because the government in power says so. For other commentators, the value of money is on account of social convention.

Popular thinking says that lending is banking activity. Banks are believed to be responsible for the expansion of credit. However, is this the case?

The Meaning of Credit

For instance, take a farmer, Joe, who produced two kilograms of potatoes. For his own consumption, he requires one kilogram, and the rest he decides to lend for one year to a farmer named Bob. The unconsumed one kilogram of potatoes that he agrees to lend is his real savings.

Bad ideas are sometimes the hardest to dethrone. It’s probably accurate to say most people think of money as the paper currency printed by governments. And it is money in the sense that it functions as a medium of exchange, but is it sound? Is it vulnerable to inflation? Its very existence is evidence that it is, so why are so many people reluctant to switch to a money that isn’t?

Frédéric Bastiat in his book The Law distinguishes between profit and plunder. Profit is financial gain earned through industrious behavior. Business owners make a profit by selling products at a greater amount than what it costs to produce that product. Plunder, by contrast, is the theft of property through nonvoluntary means, such as theft, coercion, or fraud. Bastiat noted that while most plunder is illegal, there remains one major exception: the state.