#180 We are God’s Creative Creatures

The Christian Economist | Dave Arnott

As long as the fallen nature produces unlimited wants, and the creative nature has unlimited creativity, there will be unlimited employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report last year, projecting huge losses in three occupational groups: Administrative assistants, production, and sales. Change is good. The old adage, “You will get change from everything but a vending machine,” applies to the workplace. Jobs are changing. They always have. They always will. That’s good. We call that a “dynamic economy.” You would rather live in a dynamic, not a stagnant economy. Wealth Migration My podcast #131 is titled Abraham and Wealth Migration. It points out that when Abraham moved from Ur of the Chaldeans to “the promised land,” he was moving to a better land. People have continued to move to “better land,” and that’s why we’ve seen the move from California and New York to Texas and Florida over the last few years. People vote with their feet in a dynamic economy. They will also change jobs that take them to “better land,” in an occupational sense. When I did my Ph.D. dissertation on US-Russian joint ventures, I heard the phrase from workers, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” That’s an indication of a centralized, stagnant economy. Even today, dynamic Americans make about $70,000 each, while the stagnant Russians make about $33,000. Wouldn’t you rather live in a dynamic economy, like the US? If so, you have to grow accustomed to job changes. People who prepare for and anticipate change do better than those who don’t. Before my mother died in 2001, she looked forward to changes in employment and asked, “What will my grandkids do for work?” Well, the economics answer is pretty easy: Create value for your neighbors. If you believe people are made in God’s image (the title of my podcast #32) you believe their creativity came from their creator. Get it? We are God’s creative creatures. In the little book Economics and the Christian Worldview, I wrote the following: As long as the fallen nature produces unlimited wants, and the creative nature has unlimited creativity, there will be unlimited employment. Free Trade While the Trump economy was much more dynamic than the Biden economy, their international trade policies are strikingly similar. They both want to bring back manufacturing to the US. I tell my college students, “If you’re offered a $75,000 job selling investments and a $50,000 job making cars, take the $75,0000 job.” They don’t need my advice on that one, because they do what just about every self-interested economic maximizer does in a dynamic economy: They take the $75K job. Critics of free trade make the assertion, “We can’t all be stock traders and hamburger flippers!” To which I respond, “Why not?” We should do what society rewards. If the South Koreans create more value in making cars, they should do it. If the Vietnamese create more value sewing shirts, that’s what they should do. David Ricardo called it the comparative advantage. Of course, that means that we might not make cars anymore, nor shirts. But there are lots of things we used to make that we don’t anymore. Because we’ve moved UP the economic value-added ladder to items that create more value. When it became cheaper to make steel in Turkey, folks in Pittsburg moved to other jobs that create value for their neighbors. When furniture became cheaper in Poland, workers in North Carolina moved on to other products and services. And, that’s why we’ve moved from a product to a service economy. Locals have an advantage in providing services because it’s hard to cut hair in Kansas, from Malaysia. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things”. That’s Corinthians 13:11, and it applies to more than the earth vs heaven realms.