There isn’t anything I wrote to suggest doing what we have been doing. As Prairiehawk inferred — we can’t.

PS You really think all I read is Genesis, dear?

On the other hand, Jo DeVet’s arguments make perfect sense. Read and learn. Your suggestion in your last paragraph, Mary, that we continue extracting our natural resources as we have been doing, is probably the reason we are up the creek to begin with. I suggest, Mary, that with the two books I recommended you read a couple of days ago, you should continue your “economic” education with “SEA SICK,” to find out what condition our oceans are in due to reckless “extraction,” and Jeff Rubin’s recent book, “WHY YOUR WORLD IS ABOUT TO GET A WHOLE LOT SMALLER.” Smaller, because soon you will no longer be able to depend on others to provide you with the basic necessities of life. Water tables over the world are being depleted; petroleum sources and volume have reached a peak or soon will; fertilizer manufacture requires this same product.
Yes, let’s continue extracting all of our resources. You need to enrich your reading besides the book of Genesis.

I hope your wrong about the shoe analogy– I’m in the shoe biz! Actually, I heard an interesting statistic about shoes. Americans have over four years worth of shoes in their closets. Fortunately, we are in the medical end of the footwear business which has stayed strong.

Great article.

Mary, in that sense you are an economist as you contribute and manage so much discussion in the realm of our Salvation.

All of us are quite capable of managing our own micro-economic systems.
Unfortunately on the macro scale we have become a nation of consumers. It’s going to take more than this jolt to get us thinking sacrifice, production and capital formation.

Yes, debt is dumb, but our economy is built on it. Hmmm!

Not so with this current recession. And, when the coming inflationary cycle hits we’ll all be encouraged to spend more than we have and become debtors so we can pay back with cheaper dollars.

Just recall what has happened after every run-up in gasoline prices. Consumers suddenly “get religion” and buy Smart Cars, Priuses, etc–until about 2 seconds after the current bubble bursts and world crude oil prices start to fall. Then it’s back to big trucks, SUV’s, etc, guzzling gas till kingdom come. People quickly forget that each price rise is another “saw tooth” in a long-term trend of rising energy costs.

It will happen again with the current recession–in energy costs as well as any other economic index. Where I live, for example, housing prices have already bottomed out and are on the rise again. Demand expands as quickly as people’s appetites, and while Dave Ramsey makes sense, he doesn’t have much of a following when it comes to real behavior.

Unfortunately, for our Catholic leaders the title of this piece is their mantra when it comes to economics. Any level of ignorance of economics does just fine, thank you. Then they turn around and lecture those who are actually in the economic system and thereby know better, how the system should work. Much of it is offering platitudes on platitudes, which in the actual world of things “grown, taken from the dust of the earth and manufactured” are often self-contradictory.

A case in point is health care. It’s treated as a “right” for all, while overlooking that whether or not it is a “right” in some sense, it is for sure an economic entity. A story from my town may illustrate the point. Just 3 or 4 years ago the Church sold the downtown Catholic hospital because it was not able to sustain the annual losses. Now, having abandoned providing any health care thru that hospital, the Church feels free to turn around and lecture the present hospital owners and workers on how they should conduct their business.

I’m not talking about outright cheating, fraud, life issues or any other points on which the Church can and must speak out. I’m talking about questions of economic systems, where Church leaders with profound ignorance of economic science feel free to “correct” the notions of those who have the competence.

I’m also not saying that the Church shouldn’t offer her suggestions in any area of social justice. I am saying that when she does, she should be better-prepared to make sense and take into account all of our hard-won human knowledge. Otherwise, she loses credibility and people feel free to ignore her when she speaks in areas of faith or morals where she has real competence and authority.

How can a nation prosper by trading in magnetism? Yes, the Web is useful, even ingenious; but we can only go so far with it unless our farmers are growing crops, our factories are producing automobiles; and, by the way, where is all the computer equipment that harnesses the marvel of magnetism made? I suspect that most of it comes from China. We are trading in nothing, and the real things that allow us to trade in nothing are made by our enemies. This is a sorry state indeed.

My advice? Buy a couple of goats and plant a garden. If you like eggs, get a chicken. Learn canning, food preservation, and biointensive gardening methods. Your computer will be useless if (when?) there’s a general collapse. We’re going to have a lot bigger things to worry about than weather.com’s predictions for Bangor, Maine.

And since the world’s largest debtor is the U. S. Government…..