In today’s issue:
- You can’t choose your family
- Kings, queens, jacks, jokers, leseteufel and philosophers
- Prepare for fires in Florida
People choose whom they work with. They choose whom they marry and live with. They choose their dentists, doctors and decorators. They choose their president and Congressional representatives. They choose their food, their clothes, their autos, their videos and house plants.
But they don’t choose their families. And when the genetic cards are shuffled and dealt, you never know what you’ll get.
And if you have a large family, you’re likely to get a full house… full of kings, queens, jacks and jokers. And adorable grandchildren. One is a reader. He plants himself down with a book, in front of the fire… and stays there until interrupted. Another is an outdoor boy, ready to hop on the tractor with Granddad. One little girl is smiles and kisses. Another is up to mischief. And one teenager is a philosopher.
We had spent the day before Thanksgiving splitting firewood. All day, we loaded the logs — oak, locust, cherry, and poplar — onto the splitter. Once split, the fire logs were stacked in the barn, where they will rest until next year.
In the evening, we joined the ‘leseteufel’ in front of the fire.
“Grandad, do you believe in God?” asked a 16-year-old grandson.
“It would be vain and foolish not to believe in God,” we replied.
That answer didn’t satisfy him.
“Does that mean you do believe in God?”
“God doesn’t need me to believe. Or not believe. I’m just a tiny minnow caught in God’s great net, waiting for Him to haul me up.
“Ask me something easier.”
“Okay… can you show me how to make a fire.”
Our grandson lives in Florida. Floridians, apparently, have yet to discover fire.
“You start by getting some firewood. We’ll go out tomorrow and cut down those two beeches in the front yard.”
“But Granddad, don’t we need more trees to absorb carbon dioxide, so the planet doesn’t overheat?”
“Nah… here in Maryland, the trees grow fast. And they grow everywhere. You leave a field for a few years and it will be covered in trees. They now have a scammy program, where developers will pay you to plant trees to make up for the trees they cut down. But trees grow on their own. They don’t need us to plant them. You cut down a tree; it just makes it easier for other trees to grow.”
“Granddad, but if you cut down all the trees, that couldn’t be good for the climate, could it?”
“Probably not. But I’m not cutting them all down. Just two of them.”
That subject temporarily on pause, we moved on to others. Experts tell us that the recent presidential election triggered thousands of divorces. Couples became embittered with one another when they couldn’t resolve their political differences. Come the election and one was triumphant, the other downcast. Neither could ever forgive the other.
We were advised not to discuss politics at our Thanksgiving gathering. But the 16-year-old didn’t get the message.
“Grandad, what do you think will happen, I mean now that Trump is back in the White House?”
We hesitated.
“The only way to Make America Great Again is to shrink the thing that has made it not-so-great. The American people are no worse than they used to be. They still work hard. They still want to make money. They are still just as dumb… or just as smart… as ever.
“What is different is that the government is much bigger, and more intrusive. Non-defense outlays were barely 5% of GDP until after WWII. Now they are around 20%. But that’s just the annual charge. Regulation and debt are cumulative. And they’ve been building up for decades. They now cause so much delay and useless expense that much of Americans’ output is squandered… or never produced at all.
“The interest payments on federal debt are now more than $1 trillion per year. That’s approaching 4% of output now consumed just to pay for long-dead programs, forgotten wars, and ‘investments’ that didn’t pay off.
“And the National Association of Manufacturers tells us that federal regulations cost the economy an additional $3 trillion per year. Between the two, that’s about 15% of America’s entire GDP. No wonder most people have made very little real economic progress in the last half a century.
“There’s the real challenge, getting the feds under control; stopping the elites from ripping everyone off. Everything else is detail… or noise.”
Our grandson had gone silent. Politics — or at least our version of it — may have bored him. It was time to chop wood.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Contributing Editor, Fortune & Freedom
PS From Nick Hubble: if you’re as worried as Bill Bonner about debt, deficits and inflation, find out how he’s taking evasive action at our Gold Summit, which launches tomorrow.
