{"id":2864,"date":"2008-06-13T06:12:22","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T10:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2008-06-13T12:15:15","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T16:15:15","slug":"encouraging-thrift-just-makes-cents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/encouraging-thrift-just-makes-cents\/","title":{"rendered":"Encouraging Thrift Just Makes Cents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Townhall.com<\/a> | Rebecca Hagelin | Jun. 12, 2008<\/p>\n

Ask 10 people to define capitalism. Chances are, eight or nine will stress the importance of buying things.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re making a common mistake — equating capitalism with consumerism. As our friends over at the Acton Institute understand, capitalism, properly understood, involves more than just spending. It\u2019s an economic system that (to the horror of liberals) puts decision-making power over financial matters where it belongs — with free individuals, not with government. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the antithesis of the central planning that characterizes communism and socialism. Small wonder that the economist Friedrich Hayek wrote: \u201cI regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

As our economy continues to react to the fallout of the mortgage madness, it\u2019s important to understand the difference between capitalism and consumerism — as a recent post on Acton\u2019s PowerBlog makes clear. The seeds for the crisis were sown, according to Fortune magazine editor Geoff Colvin, when \u201cpeople began to believe that the more they borrowed, the better off they would be. Their thinking went like this: With the cost of capital so low and asset prices rising steadily, risk was evaporating.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the party couldn\u2019t go on forever. Eventually, Colvin says, consumers \u201cbegan to live within their means, shutting down the profit-growth machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the key point — \u201cwithin their means.\u201d To act as wise stewards of our money we must decide not only when to spend, but when not to spend. We must make informed decisions about where to invest our money. For those of us who are Christian, it means putting biblical principles to work. As Crown Financial Ministries teaches thousands of people every year through their in-depth course on financial management, the Bible addresses economic issues with surprising frequency.<\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Townhall.com | Rebecca Hagelin | Jun. 12, 2008 Ask 10 people to define capitalism. Chances are, eight or nine will stress the importance of buying things. They\u2019re making a common mistake — equating capitalism with consumerism. As our friends over at the Acton Institute understand, capitalism, properly understood, involves more than just spending. It\u2019s an … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[68,87,79],"tags":[166,162,165,164],"class_list":["post-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-economics","category-freedom","tag-capitalism","tag-christianity","tag-economics","tag-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}