Your Teacher Said What?! (2 page)

We had fun. One of our favorites was following the complicated process by which even the simplest manufactured item gets made, all without anyone directing it from above. Free markets can be pretty elegant to watch in action. And we had a bit of torture: For a month, Blake and I compared the editorial pages from the
New York Times
with those of the
Wall Street Journal
, stopping just this side of child endangerment.

Blake didn't always agree with Penelope and me. One thing I learned is that the most powerful way in which nine- or ten-year-olds resemble grown-up Progressives is in their love of regulating things. There's just no way Blake can see something that's not good for you—like smoking cigarettes, or eating too much fast food—without wanting a law to ban it. I can only hope that she outgrows this before too long . . . but I also notice that the mayor of New York City (a man I otherwise admire) has this notion so firmly planted in his head that he is proposing a ban on cigarette smoking in the “crossroads of the world”—that part of Times Square where tourists sit at tables in the middle of one street while a hundred thousand vehicles are belching exhaust a few yards away. Progressivism is a durable bit of craziness.

So is parenting. Trying to plant the seeds of what we hope will be a lifelong philosophy in a ten-year-old brain is an alternately satisfying and frustrating assignment, and the time that Blake and I have been embarked on this father-and-daughter exercise has taught me that educating a child in the way free markets are supposed to work (and, most of the time, the way they actually
do
work) has never been harder . . . or more rewarding.

If you already have kids, you already know this. And if you don't . . . well, don't say I didn't warn you.

 

 

 

Hi. I'm Blake Kernen and I want to thank you so much for reading this book. Writing this book was an incredible learning experience. I discussed many topics with my dad that most fifth graders don't even know about but probably should. Here are some things I learned while working on this book.

Also, I learned two things about free markets. The first thing is that even if you took the hundred smartest people in the world and gave them the hundred most powerful computers, they still wouldn't be able to figure out what people want to buy and sell. When I go to the store to buy a net for my aquarium (I have puffer fish), I can find a lot of nets on the shelf, but no one told the store which ones to put on the shelf, and no one told the companies that make the nets how many to make, and no one told the companies that deliver the nets when to bring them to the store. Or rather,
everyone
told them. Which is why millions of ordinary people deciding what to buy and sell are smarter than even the hundred smartest people in the world.

The second thing I learned is that when something isn't free, it's like property, and you can do whatever you want (mostly) with your property. Like a farmer can tell his cows where they can go and what they can eat because they're his property. But people aren't cows. And in my opinion, we should mostly leave them alone, to make up their own minds how hard to work and what to buy and sell.

That's what free markets are.

In elementary school we learned about our forefathers and the great sacrifices they made that allow us to live the way we do. George Washington and his army marched right through my own township in pursuit of freedom for Americans. The Declaration of Independence states that all Americans have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe I have a better understanding of what that really means after working on this book.

Oh, and here's another lesson I learned: I will never complain about another homework assignment again. This was definitely the longest assignment in my life, so far.

 

“Dad?”

“Yes, Blake?”

“What's a recession?”

 

I didn't think that my then-nine-year-old daughter wanted the technical answer—two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Or maybe I just didn't want to have to explain that day what GDP stands for, much less how it's calculated.

 

“A recession is when the economy stops growing and starts shrinking.”

“Economy?”

I should have known better.

“The economy is the sum of all the buying and selling that goes on in America. All the stuff we buy and sell, like food and clothes and cars and houses and such; and all the work we do, and we pay for, like your tennis camp or your guitar teacher. When we buy and sell more stuff and services in this year than we did last year, then the economy is growing; when we buy less, it's in recession.”

“My teacher says the recession is the banks' fault.”

“That's way too simple, Blake. For something as big as this recession, there's a lot of blame to go around.”

“And my teacher says it's 'cause we care too much about buying stuff, and it might not be so bad if we stopped.”

“Your teacher said . . .
what
?”

 

The Great Recession was a wake-up call for everyone, but this exchange had the same effect as a bathtub full of ice water falling on my head. I was panicked at the thought that my very smart young daughter had fallen prey to a media culture and an educational system that were not only completely ignorant of the nature of a free-market economy but, often enough, hostile to it. It was as if I had learned that she was being taught geology by a member of the Flat Earth Society.

How long had this been going on? Probably since the day Blake began kindergarten and started being exposed to the economic philosophies of adults other than her mother and me. But I didn't really think about how to respond until January 20, 2009.

When Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office, I admit I understood the proud cheers of the hundreds of thousands of people lining the parade route in Washington that day. I didn't vote for the guy, but I'm not a complete dolt, and I could see how his election said something pretty positive about America. Pundit after pundit had spent the preceding weeks reminding me that this was something that couldn't have happened anywhere else, and if they had drunk just a little too much of the Obama Kool-Aid, they weren't completely wrong. A black man with, shall we say, a foreign-sounding name had just been elected the leader of the free world. You can get pretty drunk on that sort of stuff.

The hangover didn't take long coming. And it's gotten so bad since that I can't even see an Obama bumper sticker without getting the headache, dry mouth, and general depression all over again.

My hangover isn't the result of concerns about the president's birth certificate. Or worries that he is some kind of Manchurian candidate in the pay of a foreign power. I don't think he is Muslim, or racist, or anticolonialist, or un-American. I don't blame him for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was passed by the previous administration (and which, given the circumstances, I actually thought was needed). And while I don't agree with all his foreignpolicy decisions—okay, with any of them—I know he inherited a pretty poor set of options, and also that I don't really know enough about Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran to second-guess everything that is happening there.

No, my problems with the president are on an entirely different plane: I hate what he's doing to my children's future, and I don't have to think that Barack Obama is the devil to know that he has a very different idea than I do about what America should look like when Blake and Scott are adults.

It's a belief thing. Penelope and I believe in free markets—that the best economic decisions are made by the largest number of individuals acting in what they believe to be their own interests. President Obama and most of his administration believe in an economy that depends on the cleverest people acting in what they believe to be the interests of everyone else. We believe in voluntary associations. They prefer compulsory ones, at least when it comes to health insurance or union organizing.

One thing they don't care much for is business. Like a lot of people, I test out a lot of my thinking by talking things over with my friends. One of them is also one of
Squawk Box
's favorite guests, and not just because he was the CEO of CNBC's parent company from the time the network was founded until he retired—as the most admired businessman in America—in 2001.

Jack Welch isn't sure
why
the current administration is antibusiness but doesn't doubt that it is.
Really
antibusiness. And really intimidating. Here's what Jack had to say on
Squawk Box
back in September 2010:

I asked him, “Why doesn't the administration see the disconnect between what you call antibusiness sentiment and what I'm sure is their real desire to add jobs?”

“Maybe they're bipolar. Or maybe it's sleight of hand.”

It doesn't stop there. The president, and those sympathetic to him, follow the liberal philosopher John Rawls, who used to argue that the best society was the one you'd pick from behind a “veil of ignorance,” the one you'd design if you didn't know whether you'd be born rich or poor and were determined to make sure that being born poor wouldn't be so bad. Penelope and I, on the other hand, believe in a “window of optimism”: that the best society is the one that gives people the best chance to achieve. They think property rights are in conflict with human rights; we think property rights
are
human rights. They believe in the tax system as a way of promoting desirable social goals, like reduced inequality; we think taxes are just a method for funding necessary—
necessary
—government activity.

What do you call these people? Once upon a time, I would have called them liberals, and most everyone would have understood what that meant. However, one of the consequences of spending some time in the company of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises is being reminded that that the word “liberal” used to mean something very different: an affection for liberty, free markets, and property rights, along with a hostility to economic cronyism.

Pretty confusing, no?

I'm a little happier calling them “Progressives.” Partly this is because that's what they've taken to calling themselves, but mostly it's because the history of progressivism—excuse me, Progressivism—really explains the two sides in this battle a whole lot better.

People have been calling themselves “progressives” in America since the end of the nineteenth century and mostly started out with a laudable interest in improving the lot of the poor. Progressives built schools and settlement houses, ran charities, fought corruption in government, and recruited the Bull Moose himself, Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for president in 1912 as—you guessed it—the candidate of the Progressive Party. But the soul of Progressivism was a journalist named Herbert Croly, who published a book called
The Promise of American Life
in 1909.