T-A-N-S-T-A-A-F-L

The following article was written by Gary DeMar of American Vision Ministries. Orignally published online here.

The first rule of economics is TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.1 While something might appear to be free (e.g., education, healthcare, etc.), there is always a cost to someone. Ignore this law, and all economic hell breaks loose. Of course, politicians believe they can ignore and even break any law because they consider themselves to be gods. They believe they can create economic prosperity ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” simply by legislating it. Most Americans don’t care about these economic realities any more than the politicians who propose them because they are the first-in beneficiaries.

When Social Security was implemented, the maximum amount any one person paid into the system was $60 per year—a total of two percent from employee and employer of a maximum $3000 per year. Today, the percentage is 12.4% on $97,500 per year because TANSTAAFL is coming due. Those who are receiving these benefits are not concerned because someone else is paying for them. Economic realities and ethics be damned. Yes, ethics. For example, families who are sending their children to the “free public schools” are using the money of their neighbors to pay for their children’s education. They assume since they elected people to do this it is morally acceptable. We’ve grown accustomed to this type of logic.

Consider Social Security. The Social Security Administration estimates that those born in 1877 (and retiring in 1942) got an average of 36.5 percent real rate of return on their Social Security contributions, while those born in 1950 (me) will receive on average a 2.2 percent return. Those born in 1975 will get 1.8 percent return. It’s even worse for future workers. The government should have seen this coming when Ida Fuller received her first Social Security check. She paid $22 into the program and received more than $20,000 in retirement benefits.2

In 1935, there were 45 people paying into SS for every one person receiving benefits. Today, that ratio is about three to one.3 Is it any wonder the SS has been described as the “world biggest chain letter”?

“The World’s Biggest Chain Letter—Unless You’re the Government”: Social Security is a pay-as-you-go retirement program. Those paying in now are paying those receiving benefits now. Social Security works like a chain letter. Some people have described SS as a “Ponzi scheme,” named after Charles Ponzi, a con artist who bilked people of a lot of money. How did he do it? He would tell people that he would pay them a huge return on their investment within a few months. Then he would take their money and pay off the previous investors. It worked great for the first ones to (unknowingly) get in on the scheme. Ponzi then used his early “investors” as testimonials to attract new “investors.” After a time, the number of investors ran out, and so did Ponzi with their money. Ponzi had worked the “pyramid scheme”: the people at the top (those who get in early) receive the benefits that are being paid in from those at the bottom (those getting in late). The following appeared in Parade Magazine (March 28, 1976): “Social Security is a wonderful plan. People say it’s going bankrupt. Don’t believe them. It works. I know. My uncle reached 65 and he sent in the appropriate forms. In a week he received a wonderful letter: “Dear Mr. Gold. Welcome to the Social Security System. Attached is a list of ten names. Just send $100 to each name on the list and retype up a new list with your name at the bottom. But remember, don’t break the chain!’”4

If a private insurance company operated this way, the directors would be arrested, tried, and sent to prison for a long time. Democrat fundraiser Norman Hsu was charged with a “massive Ponzi scheme.”5 One of the biggest beneficiaries of his contributions is Hillary Clinton. It’s Clinton who is proposing that every newborn should receive $5000. Other politicians are pushing for some form of “universal heath care.” Who will pay for this? The same people who are paying into Social Security to keep the Ponzi scheme alive—the most productive members of society. You and I know them as “the rich” who are already paying the majority of taxes. Hsu couldn’t keep the scam going because he couldn’t force people to keep contributing. Politicians can by the force of law.

Just because politicians can create economic programs does not mean they will work. Putting people in power so they can take money from your neighbors and give it to someone else does not make it right, whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

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1 The phrase has been attributed to science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Two of Heinlein’s best known science fiction works are A Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and Starship Troopers (1959). Heinlein’s political philosophy was anti-socialist (“correct morals arise from knowing what man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.”) and anti-communist (“All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart.”).

2 Gary North, Government By Emergency (Ft. Worth, TX: American Bureau of Economic Research, 1983), 8.

3 James M. Pethokoukis, “Boomer Burden,” U.S. News & World Report (January 17, 2005), 46.

4 Quoted in North, Government by Emergency, 4–5.

5 “Fundraiser Hsu charged with pyramid scheme” (September 20, 2007)

"Oil - What I would do if I were President"

by Gary DeMar
8/06/2007

On Saturday, August 4, 2007, the House of Representatives passed a $16 billion increase in taxes on oil companies. Actually, this is a lie. Oil companies, like every company in America, see taxes as the cost of doing business. Any tax increase will be passed onto consumers. If the voting public supports this increase, then they have only voted for a tax increase on themselves.

The profits oil companies make goes to pay millions of share holders. Additionally, the money brought in from the sale of gasoline and other petroleum products is used to locate, transport, refine, and distribute. The oil industry employs tens of thousands of people, creates related support businesses, takes all the risks in drilling and transportation, pays billions of dollars in taxes, and gets blamed for gouging the consumer for unfair “profits” for delivering a volatile product safely to outlets of distribution a few miles from our homes and next to highways that criss-cross America. Government agencies, on the other hand, simply cash the checks for the taxes the gas stations collect from their customers.

The combined state and federal taxes for California is over 50 cents per gallon. The United States average is somewhere around 45 cents per gallon. With the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, you’re going to hear about taxing the oil companies even more. Here’s a question: Where have all the taxes gone that we’ve been paying every time we put gasoline in our cars? Our politicians have been spending these billions of dollars on their own pet projects to keep them in office and grow the government.

Politicians don’t want to talk about high gasoline taxes. In fact, revelations of high taxes on gasoline might anger the American public and produce sympathy for “big oil.” It would expose the fraud of “price gouging” by the oil companies. I’m hopeful if prices remain high that more people will start talking about how state and federal governments are the real problem. Maybe even some in the mainstream media will start asking lawmakers why oil profits of about ten cents per gallon are “obscene” but nearly 50 cents per gallon of taxes is . . . patriotic?

As a national security issue, as president I would declare a state of emergency and state and immediately enact the following:

Oil is the lifeblood of this economy. As a nation, we are too dependent on foreign sources for oil. As you know, the oil we need—11 million barrels a day—is located in the most hostile region in the world. While we consider a nuclear attack to be a possibility, our enemies could do far more damage by destroying the majority of oil fields in Saudi Arabia. Any disruption in the flow of oil could bring our nation to a standstill, not just economically but militarily. We would find it almost impossible to defend ourselves against domestic and foreign aggressors if gasoline supplies were jeopardized. As a result, I am issuing an Executive Order that will open up all lands and sea rights in the possession of the United States to oil exploration. In addition, I am temporarily suspending stringent environmental laws that make it nearly impossible to build and bring online new refineries. I am proposing that ten new refineries be built and running within eight years. Five of these refineries will be designed in such as way to be impervious to a military attack. The goal is to have at least a three-year supply of crude oil stored in the United States to take care of domestic and military needs as if the real possibility exists of being completely cut off from our present foreign sources. We need a Manhattan project for oil independency.

If there is a presidential candidate you are supporting, I would suggest proposing that he adopt such a policy.

Gary DeMar is President of American Vision.
P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460, www.americanvision.org

Preterist Perspective

How "literal" do you take Matthew 24?

The two articles below deal with Dispensationalist claims that Preterists are not interpreting this passage literally.

Trimming & Cooking the Prophetic Parts of the Bible

Dispensationalism’s Interpretive Inconsistencies

John MacArthur, Israel, Calvinism, and Postmillennialism: Part II and III

More evidence that Postmillennialists have not kicked the Jewish people to the curb in regards to Bible prophecy -and unlike Dispensationalists, Postmillennialists do not teach that two-thirds of the Jews will have to be slaughtered before the promises are fulfilled!!

Part Two

Part Three

Who's the REAL Hate Group??

A few weekends ago, I was doing some searching on the net. Somehow I came across the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, in order to work for "civil rights" during the 70's. In addition to tracking hate groups, these days the SPLC is into promoting "tolerance" -and apparently, destroying anything that's good and moral in the world also....

As I was looking around their website, I saw something that disturbed me: on their "hate map" and on a page listing hate groups active in 2006, they have a ministry known as American Vision listed as a "general hate group"!!

When I saw AV listed, I really got concerned! I mean really, American Vision (AV), a hate group? What are these people smoking!!?? I've read books by AV's president, Gary DeMar; I've read AV's monthly magazine from cover to cover for 6 months; I read their daily emails; and I even have a 12 part DVD series featuring Gary DeMar speaking on eschatology, but I have NEVER seen one sentence that would lead me to think that the folks at American Vision hate anybody!

I suspect what draws AV fire from the SPLC is their firm stance against abortion, homosexuality and the godless worldview embraced by Liberals in America. AV is no hate group. All I can see from coming from them indicates to me that they are a Christian ministry dedicated to the truth of Scripture, therefore, I suspect that's why the SPLC fears their ideas so much.

You see, though the SPLC may do some good by tracking real hate groups such as the KKK and Neo-Nazis, I think time will show that the SPLC is going to increasingly focus it's attention upon Christian groups -and individual Christians- who take a firm stand upon the teaching of Scripture, morality, or a propose politically incorrect view of American History.

If you ask me, it appears as if the the SPLC has appointed itself to be America's thought police. So, watch out, if you or your organization doesn't subscribe to their popular liberal, Socialist agenda, you are fair game for a spot on their "hate map" and an "intelligence report" being sent to law enforcement with your organization's name on it.

The SPLC's libel of American Vision has been addressed in an article by Gary DeMar. In that article he writes:

"American Vision must be doing something right. We have been targeted by a number of anti-Christian groups because of our stance on homosexuality. We find ourselves in the company of Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Alliance Defense Fund, Coral Ridge Ministries, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Family Research Institute, and other pro-family groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), run by its co-founder Morris Dees, has listed us as a “hate group” under the “other” category on their website. In fact, if you add up all the people in America who support any of the above ministries, the number would be in the millions."

American Vision is not the only benevolent group being labeled/libeled a "hate group." The SPLC even seems to be be setting it's sights the Sons of Confederate Veterans -an organization to which I personally belong-which is no hate group, but rather an honorable organization dedicated to "the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, the perpetuation of those principles which he loved."

Granted, I cannot personally vouch that all 30,000+ members of the SCV are free from racist attitudes (nor could I vouch for that with all the members of the Southern Baptist Convention, the NAACP, or the Boy Scouts!) but I do know that as an organization, the commitments of the SCV have nothing to do with hate or race, but everything to do with heritage and preservation of history (for the record, the SCV has "non-white" members!).

Pastors, don't dismiss the SPLC threat too quickly... I can almost assure you that the SPLC is lobbying Congress to ensure your sermons about homosexuality will soon be labeled "hate speech." If that happens, you can spend time behind bars for simply teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality or other sins that are in vogue these days. You see, the SPLC doesn't want to lynch people. No, no, there's not enough money to be gained from that! The SPLC only wants to raise lots of money, file civil lawsuits, and eventually have everyone put in jail who violates the "tolerant" worldview that they want everyone to be subjected to...

The bottom line is this: The SPLC is fueled by an anti-Christian Liberal agenda and will stop at nothing to silence anyone who believes the Bible too much, waives a Confederate Flag too high, or believes that a family consists of one husband, one wife, and "2.3 children." I believe in time to come -unless the Lord grants a great revival and turns the tide of things in the U.S.- Christians in our nation may increasingly find themselves the targets of harassment from secular thought police such as the SPLC.

"If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." (John 15:18-19 KJV)

(I originally posted this article on my Confederate Chaplain blog. I checked the hit counter a day or two later and I found that my blog had been visited by an SPLC computer in Montgomery, AL.!! I'm sure this article got their attention, so don't be surprised if you see Rhett's Rants and The Conferate Chaplain listed on an SPLC "Intelligence Report" in the near future! The way I see it, if the SPLC has enough time on it's hands to be tracking somebody like me, then I reckon there's not much real hate left in the world afterall!)

John MacArthur, Israel, and Postmillennialism

An interesting article by Gary DeMar concerning the Postmillennialist view of Israel's future in Prophecy.

(Being a recent convert to Postmillennial eschatology -and a guy who also has a desire to see Jews convert to Christ- I found this article very interesting indeed!)

Free CD!!!

I would like to recommend that all my Rant readers visit American Vision and order a free copy of an audio message called "The Worldview War" by Gary DeMar.

Free CD, free shipping, and a good message!

If you're not satisfied, I'll give you a refund myself! ;-)