Bible Economics

In the bible, after Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers he is asked by the pharaoh to interpret a dream.

Without going into the dream details the interpretation is that Egypt was going to have seven years of plenty followed by seven years of want and that they needed to store up food during the good years to use during the bad years.

Sound advice and it was taken and it made Joseph something of a hero to the pharaoh.

If Joseph had told the pharaoh, just use all the food, and borrow when the time of want comes, I wonder how the bible would have treated his advice

I assume that was the way things were normally done anyways.

Since the financial crisis ended the country's economy has been expanding, albeit at a relatively slow rate.  Some of this was because of the regulations which are now being reversed, which restricted certain financial exuberance.

Of course as we see a certain economic prosperity, for many if not all, we have decided to collect less taxes and increase our debt.

There is a certain belief that collecting less taxes will result in faster growth, and its likely that given the chance consumers will in fact spend more.  I doubt very much businesses will expand because of the simply supply and demand factors, and what the consumers buy may or may not be produced in this country.

Of course since there aren't corresponding cuts in Government spending, the actual impact is to increase the debt by the amount of the tax cut less increased revenue, if any, from the increased economic activity.

Even worse, history tells us that at some point we will go into recession.  Just when is hard to predict, but increased debt coupled with an increase in interest rates may be a factor.  At that point, we would most likely need to spend more to try to stem the impact, when we already will have a troubling deficit.

This passes the burden to our children and grandchildren who will have to deal with crippling public debt, devastating climate change, and increased international tensions.

Where is our Joseph?