Welcome to another edition of the Mueller Report!
This week includes thoughts on the $1.9 trillion dollar stimulus plan just signed by President Biden, the Lord of the Rings, biblical theology, catechesis and habitus, and poems by Longfellow.
Stimulus, Redistribution, Inflation
Here are a few things to know about the massive stimulus bill of $1,900,000,000,000 that Congress passed and the President just signed:
This is a massive bailout of irresponsible state and city governments on the order of $350,000,000,000. Those that were most irresponsible are generally getting the biggest checks.
Public sector union pension funds made out like bandits - almost literally. We have just transferred about $86,000,000,000 from everyone in the country to retired teachers, policemen, and firefighters. This is the equivalent of every man, woman, and child in the country contributing $260 each (that’s about $3500 for a family of seven).
About $126,000,000,000 is going to K-12 schools, mostly for future spending. Aren’t we already paying a lot for schools? I know I am; in multiple states!
And then a big chunk is going to individuals and families, both through stimulus checks and through expanded child tax credits.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of this money is not going to be spent this year. The Democrats have shored up funding for ailing government budgets and pension funds and schools, especially in heavily Democratic states, for the next decade. This encourages state governments to continue spending recklessly while other people pay for it. Instead of feeling the cost of dramatic fiscal mismanagement, places like NY, CA, and WA will receive massive subsidies from the rest of the country.
Democrats are basically experimenting with the idea that national debt doesn’t matter (James Buchanan must be rolling in his grave). Somehow, no matter how much we borrow, or how quickly we borrow, there won’t be any significant costs or consequences. Modern Monetary Theory has been mentioned a lot recently but even the father of it, Abba Lerner, would pause over the needless and reckless spending that has just been authorized. The consequences of this bill (along with the almost $4,000,000,000,000 in stimulus spending in 2020) will be felt swiftly as restrictions and fears about normal economic activity recede.
If we don’t see a significant increase in inflation and/or significant stagnation in the economy in the next year or two, I will need to seriously rethink how the economy works.
One other interesting point to note is the huge popularity of this vote. Giving money to the people has become ingrained in public policy now. And it softens the blow for sure. It’s hard to object to being given ~$20,000 (roughly how much a family of seven might get). I oppose the bill and I don’t think it should have been passed, but I’m less outraged than I would have been. Now apply that to people with less principled/theoretical opposition to stimulus and deficit spending and, voila, you have massive public support.
But of course, we should look at the average cost of the bill per person ($1.9 trillion divided by 330 million) of about $5750. That means the bill spent an average of $5750 per person. Some will get more, some will get less. For a family of seven getting ~$20,000 looks good until you look at how much was spent for those seven people ~$40,000 and then it doesn’t look as good.
David Friedman, Milton Friedman’s son, explains how this works beautifully:
“Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. The process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds, everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy.”
He couldn’t have described this stimulus debacle any better.
Reading
I have not been getting through my new stack of books for March very quickly. Besides being busy, Kathryn and I have been reading the Lord of the Rings out loud. Now that we are halfway through The Two Towers, things are really picking up! I am amazed anew at Tolkien’s creativity in building an extensive fictional world of geography, language, history, etc.
I’ve read the series many times - but this is the first time I’ve read it out loud. It slows the process considerably, but it also allows for more reflection and meditation as I take it in smaller chunks (there is an analogy to eating here that I won’t go into). I aspire to be like Tim Keller, though, in this regard:
I’ve also been reading Michael Lawrence’s Biblical Theology, which is also wonderful but in a different way. He is extremely clear and the tools of exegesis he employs are incredibly powerful. I’m leading a Bible study through the book of Ruth at church and have been amazed at how helpful and applicable many of these tools have been.
Catechesis and Habitus
There is a great talk (Friday morning) from a few years ago by Alan Jacobs, Professor of Humanities at Baylor and wonderful Christian public intellectual. He argues that churches in America have given up on catechizing their members (when was the last time you were asked to memorize and repeat something for church?) and so the culture, especially the media, has been catechizing Christians instead.
Consider, how often do you quote a TV show or movie versus quoting Scripture? 5 to 1? 10 to 1? 20 to 1? More? What about songs? Books? Phrases? Jacobs estimates that the media catechizes most Christians 20 times as much as the church does, simply based on how we spend our time.
His point, basically, is that churches and church leaders in the United States over the past 50 years or so have failed. This is particularly clear among younger Christians who follow our culture in droves on issues like accepting and approving of LGBTQ sexuality and gender politics, social justice, sexual promiscuity, and Christian nationalism.
Their parents did the same thing in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s just that the culture was not as obviously hostile to traditional Christian orthodoxy then. Unless we change our lifestyles, our habits, and our churches towards less cultural catechesis and more Biblical catechesis, we will “go softly” into the night of secular godless pantheism.
Poetry
I am really persuaded by Dana Gioia’s explanation of what poetry is for and how it should be a part of our lives.
This long essay by Gioia is an uphill slog (budget some time if you want to read it), but is really important for understanding why modern American society is one of the least poetic societies in history.
I picked up a small collection of Longfellow’s poems this past week. I do not know much about Longfellow but the editor of this collection writes:
“As poet of the hearth and home, of the mysteries and enigmas of human experience, of natural beauty, of the sea, of death, and of the soul, he endeared himself to lovers of poetry around the world. As defender of such American ideals and aspirations as optimism, perfectibility, passion for truth, devotion to God, and love of country, he became distinguished as ‘the national bard.’”
My favorite poem from the past week, partially for its keen relevance to my life at the moment, is called “The Children’s Hour.” An excerpt:
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
Talk to you next week!