A Nation in Crisis: The Meltdown of Money, Government, and Religion (2010) is about economics, politics, and religion, or primarily about economics. Dr. Larry Bates and his son Chuck Bates are both economists with long experience in business, political office, and Christian leadership.
Their book is a clarion call for common sense values, certainly ones borrowed from the Christian faith yet ones that used to be embraced by anyone who watched how the world operated. Bates and Bates are concerned, to say the least, about the debt-oriented, live-beyond-our-means culture that’s driven politics at the state and federal level the past few decades. Now we find ourselves with record national debt, huge budgetary deficits, a struggling economy, and mountains of personal debt.
The book’s title uses the word “crisis” because the authors rightly believe our culture and country are standing on the edge of a cliff. It isn’t too late, from the Bateses’ point of view, but we need to act wisely and quickly. Unfortunately, most politicians, it seems, don’t have the wisdom or will or both to make necessary changes.
The authors’ prescriptions for a better way include: don’t go into debt, buy homes that cost less than banks say you can afford, take affordable vacations, invest in gold, build your family. At the government level: cut taxes, deregulate health care, reform entitlements, reinforce the family unit.
One doesn’t have to look far to discover other countries whose profligate financial practices have led them to the brink. Greece comes to mind, presently waiting for Germany and the rest of the European Union to bail them out. Meanwhile, several other countries in Europe, like Spain, for example, are also struggling with finances not simply because the economy has taken a dip but because of their own choices in the past few decades. Sounds like the United States.
Debt is a killer of initiative and vigor. It weakens a family or a nation against the inevitable day when storms come. Debtors owe lenders, which is to say, in time, debtors can be controlled by lenders. It is not wise for the United States to owe so much to nations like China.
We need more common sense economics like you find in this book and more writers and pols like Bates and Bates. Here’s to praying more leaders on both sides of the aisle in Washington, D.C. and our state capitals find their way back to responsibility and accountability, which ironically, frees us all.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
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