“Fundamentals" are a force to be reckoned with at the base of all economics—and they affect homeschooling families along with everyone else.
More and more, the policymakers at the head of the Federal Reserve Board have looked like deer in the headlights because they vainly supposed that printing money would solve the nation's financial issues. What they hadn't calculated on (via drinking too long at the well of idolizing Keynesian economic idolatry, "as long as you can pay the interest on the debt, you're fine") were the fundamentals of economics.
Fundamentals are the roaring tide of trade that is dictated by a world of independent individuals. No single top-down entity can ever control it or rig it, because there are a host of these fundamentals at work. One of these is people's buying patterns / individuals' buying choices. No one can force anyone to buy things.
People buy based on their perceptions of the soundness of the economy (and, based on their decisions as to what they really must have, or really want to have). Printing money does nothing to increase that confidence. There's the rub. What the politicians apparently are short on understanding is that there is an emotional component to all money management that a top-down edict or mandate by a totalitarian state can never bank on. There is also a spiritual component to all money management, by the way. If you abort babies, it isn't going to go well with your finances. The emotions of money and the spiritual verities of money are not to be tangled with. They exist, and it can be like stepping on barbed wire with bare feet if you don't factor them in.
The fundamentals (what 7 billion individuals do, in spite of laws) that shape economies are active on the working end, as well as on the buying end of the economic arena. Nobody can ever force people to become entrepreneurial or productive—which is, of course, the engine that powers the Gross Domestic Product. That happens somewhere in a person's gizzard, in response to incentives. You can't light the entrepreneurial fire without incentives. Printing money (with no hard asset backing) is no incentive. Moreover, even when there are incentives you don't know who or what kind of numbers of individuals will jump or not jump at the motivation (whether it be lower taxes, less red tape for small businesses, or fiscal rewards for so much productivity).
Economic systems have a will of their own, a powerful will that anything but a free market dares not touch, without horrific fiscal consequences. God's design for economics was two-fold:
***one: to never be in debt for anything. People used to even buy their houses totally without mortgages. That was to be the norm. It would keep an economy true and prices down, commensurate with current and actual work output, or else no house would sell. Houses "found" their sale price on their own.
***and two: to not tamper with a free market, but rather to let it balance itself through supply and demand. Don't touch it. Economies are made up of billions of intricate personal buying and working decisions that are far too complex for any one entity to think that they could ever direct them.
Nonetheless, the leaders of the central economic systems have spurned both principles. We will now, probably quite soon, witness a conversion to a one world currency, another attempt to politically "help" things. The conversion will be nasty, head-spinning, and global, and everyone in the middle will lose personal wealth in the conversion. "Give me your ten bucks and I'll give ten digits." The conversion will be seamless and painless for the powers that be. Only at the store will you scratch your head when you find that it buys far less. Enter the book of Revelation.
So, what should home schoolers do?
- Get out of all debt—including mortgage debt, if at all possible.
- Develop multiple income streams, and include in them family entrepreneurial enterprises.
- Consider whose philosophy you are funding when you make a purchase. For instance, if you don't agree with the values of what is broadcast, don't subscribe to cable tv. If someone you care about is producing a good or service you can use, pay them for it and support their business.
- Resolve ahead of time to not accept the mark on the hand or on the forehead that the angel warns us not to take (Rev. 14:9-10 and 16:2), even when it removes you from the world of normal commerce. Instead, barter and trade—and pray.
- Study the Greater Exodus (foretold for us in Jeremiah 16:14-15 and Ezekiel 20:33-38) and prepare for it, spiritually and practically.
For more on this topic:
+ Jay W. Richards, Money, Greed, and God (paperback book, 2009; ISBN 978-0-06-190057-0).
+ our eBook on How to Wrench Your Family out of Financial Catastrophe
+ Our booklet or eBook of Sure Financial Steps for Beginners
+ our title, 10 Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary People Who Got Free of House Debt
+ and our ideas on Survival Planning for Simpletons
