Ten Pillars Of Economic Wisdom
A
blueprint for understanding the roots of our prosperity
1. Nothing in our material
world can come from nowhere or go nowhere, nor can it be free: everything in
our economic life has a source, a destination and a cost that must be paid.
2. Government is never a source
of goods. Everything produced is produced by the people, and everything that
government gives to the people, it must first take from the people.
3. The only valuable money that
government has to spend is that money taxed or borrowed out of people's
earnings. When government decides to spend more than it has thus received, that
extra unearned money is created out of nothing, through the banks, and when
spent, takes on value only by reducing the value of all money, savings and
insurance.
4. In our modern exchange
economy, all payroll and employment come from customers, and the only
worthwhile job security is customer security: if there are no customers, there
can be no payroll and no jobs.
5. Customer security can be
achieved by the employee only by cooperating with management in doing things
that win and hold customers. Job security, therefore, is a partnership problem
that can be solved only in a spirit of understanding and cooperation.
6. Because wages are the
principle cost of everything, widespread wage increases, without corresponding
increases in production, simply increase the cost of everybody's living.
7. The greatest good for the
greatest number means, in it's material sense, the greatest goods for the
greatest number which, in turn, means the greatest productivity per worker.
8. All productivity is based on
three factors: 1) natural resources, whose form, place and condition are
changed by the expenditure of 2) human energy (both muscular and mental), with
the aid of 3) tools.
9. Tools are the only one of
these three factors that humans can increase without limit, and tools come into
being in a free society only when there is a reward for the temporary
self-denial that people must practice, in order to channel part of their
earnings away from purchases that produce immediate comfort and pleasure, and
into new tools of production. Proper payment for the use of tools is essential
to their creation.
10. The productivity of the
tools - that is, the efficiency of the human energy applied in connection with
their use - has always been highest in a competitive society in which the
economic decisions are made by millions of progress seeking individuals, rather
than in a state-planned society in which those decisions are made by a handful
of all-powerful people, regardless of how well-meaning, unselfish, sincere and
intelligent those people may be.