The Eric Metaxas Show - Dave Arnott

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Dave Arnott, The Christian Economist, is a professor of Management who teaches Economics at Dallas Baptist University.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. I shouldn't tell you this, but Eric hired someone who sounds just like him to host today's show. But since I'm the announcer, they told me, so I'm telling you, don't be fooled. The real Eric's in jail. folks welcome to hour two final segment with our friend john smirak who you can follow on my twitter feed john um you you you said a lot of things this is the article that you wrote at the stream what's the title of the article it's at stream dot org the title is Israel must act alone and we must step out of the way okay so let me play devil's advocate sure um but before

I'll do that, I'll do something along those lines, not quite devil's advocate, but you were praising the Abrahamic accords that Donald Trump managed to pull off during his administration, which was a diplomatic masterpiece. Foreign policy coup. Now, you have to give Jared Kushner a lot of credit for that, even though you're not a fan of his, in terms of his domestic policy influence. Right, right. Yeah, I'm not a fan of Jared. I have said that if Donald Trump wants a second term in office, he should be forced.

He should force Ivanka to divorce Jared and marry Steve Ben. I've not heard of that. I stand by that. Brilliant. Absolutely. I don't. I'm still single. He's in a 60.

He is. He is single. He is not. He is not directly on board with this proposal. I have not asked Steve what he thinks about it. Frankly, I don't care. It would be like one of those diplomatic marriages that the Habsburgs had. You know, you have to marry the Princess of Asturias.

I know she's a hunchback dwarf and she's your first cousin twice over, but this is a necessity of state. So I want to hold the empire together. I want the Ivanka Steve Bannon wedding. And I would happily attend it. I'd like to be the ring bearer dressed as a. a court dwarf. But that's a, but I digress slightly. It was a brilliant foreign policy coup by a very prudent and responsible Trump administration. I wrote a few days ago on Facebook. A lot of my friends support Trump because of all the peace, prosperity, and patriotism. I'm fine with all that,

but really I was just in it for the mean tweets. It's our favorite part about Donald Trump, the mean tweets. What I'm saying is I'm using that to highlight the fact that people like David French and Rod Dreher and Russell Moore all said, we cannot support Donald Trump. Look at the mean tweets. And, oh, the slaughter in Israel, the war in Ukraine, chaos on our borders. These are the results of sniffy, prissy, weak Christians saying, oh, I find these tweets on winsome, I simply, I cannot exist in the same political party as someone who says things like that. The result is slaughter in Israel.

The result is slaughter in Ukraine. Your priciness, your delicate refined sensibilities that led you to have contempt for the Jericho March, have contempt for the January 6 demonstrators, it has real world consequences. You never Trump Republicans, who. undermine our efforts to challenge the 2020 election fraud. You have the blood on your hands of the war in Ukraine that wouldn't have happened if Trump were in office. Of the Afghan translators who were slaughtered by the Taliban, which wouldn't have happened if Trump were in office, and of the slaughter in Israel, which wouldn't have happened if Trump were in office. The blood is on your prissy little

manicured hands. There's plenty more, if you want to talk blood on your hands. The open border with, I mean, again, even talking about this, I'm going to weep or scream or cry. When I think about the fact that young people, ladies and gentlemen, think about this, think about this, that the Biden administration, this is true. We're not making this up. They changed the policy so that we have men bringing young women and boys across the border. automatically under Trump, they would have had a DNA test. Now, under Biden, think of this satanic evil. They are allowed to say, oh, this is my nephew or this is my niece or this is whatever it is. And they take them into the country. These children, children are being raped and our government turns a blind eye. I can't think of anything more wicked and sick.

And so when people say, oh, I can't vote for Donald Trump, you better understand, And God will judge you because that is happening because of your action, because of your inaction. That's a reality. And people sometimes act. It's like people saying, I cannot in conscience support Samson. So I cannot support Samson. I have to allow the Philistines to overrun Israel and destroy the temple and institute child sacrifice because Samson's manners are not winsome. he's not a good representative of the gospel.

I feel that my Christian witness is impugned by being associated with Samson. Because let's face it, Donald Trump is Samson. And Delilah is the establishment Republicans. Mickey Haley is Delilah. And she keeps... Have you written an article using this... That's tomorrow's article. You're serious, because I thought that's really interesting.

The way I say it is, the next election is Barabbas, versus Samson. Joe Biden is the Barabbas that the mob chooses over Jesus. And Samson is the shambling guy who shoots himself in the foot and lets people lie to him and makes mistakes because he's flawed. He's not Jesus. He's Samson, though. And I'll take Samson over Barabbas any day. But when Donald Trump ate honey out of the carcass of the lion by the road... That was very cool. That just ended it for me. I said, I cannot vote for a man. who would do that. That's why I didn't vote.

I wrote David French in because I thought that that was the moral thing to do. I like to think of myself as the jawbone of an ass that Donald Trump used to kill a lot of Philistines. That's good. That's good right there. I like, I'm going to lay. The jawbone of an ass, the Johns Merak story. Okay, look, we've just got a few minutes left.

We're going to be talking about economics, I think, for the rest of the show with another guest. But in the two minutes we have left. All right. So my point about all the stuff with Israel is I am trying to minimize the bloodshed, hatred, and slaughter in the long term. I'm trying to get to the least terrible solution. It's the Middle East. All solutions will be terrible. Let's get to the least terrible solution.

What would Harry Truman do or Winston Churchill do? in these circumstances. Well, actually, we know because they approved of shipping all the Germans out of Czechoslovakia and out of Poland in order to preserve long-term peace in the region. So I think Winston Churchill and Harry Truman would approve of some effort to get the Palestinians out of Gaza and send them into one of the many places in the Arab world where Sharia law is in place and there are no Jews. But you have to broker a deal where one of these Arab countries will take the Palestinians. My thought was Israel should just grab a piece of Syria and put them there and build a wall.

Okay. I mean, that's ruthless, but it's not as ruthless as what's going to happen. Right. If these people overwhelm Israel, we're going to see a second Holocaust on our hands. The blood will be on our hands. A few days ago, I guess it was Tuesday, November 7th. two days ago this week, a Jewish man was killed by a pro-Palestinian in the United States. There was some kind of, you know, the thing is that this is happening.

This is happening. We're seeing it's not just, oh, I'm against the policy of a Jewish state. I'm against Zionism. No, people are against Jews. Well, if you're against Zionism, you're against Jews. Let me put it this way. Let's say, I have nothing against Greeks. I just don't want there to be a state of Greece.

I don't think there should be any country on the face of the earth where the Greece can, Greeks can have a flag and have their language. And there's nothing against Greeks, but Greeks have to be refugees and strangers everywhere on the face of the earth. You might say that guy's kind of anti-Greek. If I said the same thing about Turks or Armenians or Irish, this one group of people are killing Jews. The point is people are targeting Jews. We're out of time.

John, always great to speak with you. Folks, I want to remind you again, if you want to know, I am, what's going on, who's on the program. Go to Ericmetaxis.com. Ericmataxis.com. Sign up for the newsletter, and we will send you this video, other videos, and you can share them, and I hope you will. We need your help.

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You used to run marathons. So we can talk about anything. But with you, I'm even willing to talk about economics. We can talk about something really depressing. How about the state of the economy in America? Should we start there? That would be a good question. Hello, Eric.

It's good to be with you again. I really enjoyed our visit last time in the times I've seen you in person. and it's always a pleasure to visit with you. You know more economics than you think you do, and I tell my students at Dallas Baptist University do the same thing. If we want to know the current state of the economy, we would look at three things. And sorry that a Baptist just crossed himself.

I may have even done it backwards. I don't know. Why do I do that? It reminds me that there's three majors in economics to tell us where we are today. When I write a forecast for what's something called the Christian Economic Forum, I call it the Trinity.

three big majors that we look at. First is GDP. Just this week, they announced GDP growth was 4.9% and I was astounded. Our goal is three. Year after year after year, decade after decade, the goal is three. We had 4.9 and it astounded me and almost every other economist in the world. But we need to know where that comes from, okay? Let me guess.

The pit of hell? Is it a lie? Sounds like a lie. Tell me where do we get that number? Yeah. And so there's never been a one-armed economist because he'll always say, on the other hand, and there is another hand here. Okay.

So where does GDP come from? So should we smoke cigarettes or not? We don't have to, but we can if they would make the conversation easier. That's how I tell my students to remember it for the quiz. We should nix SIGs. GDP is Y equals CIGS plus NX. We should NX. You're going to get it right on the quiz this Thursday, Eric.

Nick's SIGs, so we shouldn't smoke cigarettes. Okay. That's how you remember it for the quiz, but here's what happened this week. GDP is Y. It is made up of four elements. Consumption, investment, government spending, net exports. Let's leave this one out for today. Consumer spending is up.

Investment is down. Government spending, you're going to guess that's up, right, Eric? I'm just guessing up, yeah. There you go, good guess. And you get it right on the quiz on Thursday. Consumption is up, but people are spending money they don't have. When we went into the pandemic, savings rate was somewhere in the sevens is now 3.5. Investment is down.

Consumption is up, but people are spending money they don't have. Last month, total credit card debt hit a trillion dollars for the first time in history. Government spending, of course, is up. I mean, you know that's up, right? You don't have to turn on Eric Mattaxas show to know that. So these two are up, consumption and government spending. Investment is down. This is something like burning your furniture to stay warm this quarter.

You will be warm, but there's a cold quarter coming. So while 4.9 is really. good growth. Where did it come from? Consumption that people don't have, money that people don't have because they're spending on their credit cards and government spending, which of course, we know the government has no money. It has to come from someplace. Okay, so the 4.9 figure is bad news. That is bad news. Yeah. Well, I said there's never been a one-armed economist. We expect three. We get 4.9. What do we do complain? But really, it is short term. We have been eating some sugar and things feel good this quarter. Next quarter, the sugar is going to go away and we're going to be 15 pounds

overweight. That's the prediction. Where do you see the economy next year? Yeah, next year, that's my point is I think it's going to be worse because you can't continue to spend money you don't have. You can't continue to do government spending with other people's money. That has to wear out eventually. So it has to slow down. Government, I'm sorry, investment is really what makes the economy grow. And we had negative investment in the last quarter. So that's GDP. If I can get my three points in here. The second one is inflation. We hope inflation is two. Two percent. It's now three point seven. Now that's much better than the near nine or ten that we had recently. But the Biden administration is bragging that they brought it down to three point seven.

Okay, if I had a student at Dallas Baptist University who's hoping to make a 90 like you did in school, they're hoping to make a 90 and they made a 55, they'd be disappointed, wouldn't they? Well, that's what's going on with inflation. It's 3.7. They're bragging about that, but we hope it's two. Everybody knows the goal is two. So they're missing it by about 40 to 50%. And if my students missed it by 40 to 50%, they'd be really sad about it and their parents would. So 3.7, while it's better than the 9 or 10 that we were bumping up against a couple quarters ago,

it's still terrible and it harms the poor more than the rich. That's why Christian economists care about this. The rich can delay their purchases of yachts and their trips to Europe. They can go next year. Poor people cannot delay purchase of diapers and milk. They have to buy them on the daily market. So inflation is 3.7. It's better than 9 or 10. It's still a long ways from the goal of 2. Is that even realistic? In this day and age, when I hear, oh, the unemployment numbers or whatever, I really believe that they're fudging it. In other words, that I can't get real answers, real clarity.

Because I think anecdotally, most people would say, you know, the economy is terrible, but they're telling me, you know, you have the White House spokespeople saying things. And look, they've been printing money. They've been doing every horrible thing. you know, they're cooking the books, right? At the end of the day, we're going to have to deal with it, but they're trying to make it sound better than it is.

So I guess is this a real number? I mean, it's not a great number, but is this, do we even know that this is a real number when we're talking about inflation? Yeah, no, that's a great question. There's a couple of responses to that. First, you're talking about politicians making economic decisions. I've said so many times in the classroom.

They're good politicians, they're terrible economists. I was in a speech the other day by former Senator Phil Graham, and he wrote a book called The Myth of American Inequality, specifically to answer what you're exactly saying. He said the government figures aren't accurate. And the third one about that inflation thing, tell people who are buying diapers and milk that it's only 3.7. No, no, it's not. In those core items of food, it is much, much higher. And you don't have to tell poor people this.

They know it when they go to the grocery store. So you're asking a great question. Well, I mean, I have to say, again, I notice it. I live in New York City, so this is not normal. But like, I am astonished. The taxi rides, taxi rides were always a little bit expensive, but it is literally like double in a few years. I've never seen anything like it.

It's just anything thinking, what is going on around here? Now, again, that's part of like socialist, you know, New York mayor, basically adding taxes and surcharges and stuff. it's corruption, it's awful. But I think it goes way beyond what I'm seeing in my little universe that your average American says things are horrible. So when they give out these numbers, I just don't know who's getting comforted from that. Yeah, and I think the 3.7 compared to the goal of two, the best comparison is my student

who hopes to make a 90% and is making a 55. That's failing. 3.7 is a terrible inflation number. If I can get to the third one, I think I had three here, or is that how Adolfo Garcia is going to celebrate when he hits the game-winning home run in the World Series? Are we, do we want, we're eventually going to talk about the World Series. The World Series now, it is the Diamondbacks versus the. My Texas Rangers. Ranger.

Sorry, sorry. The Rangers, right. So we got Dallas versus, what, Phoenix? Yeah. Okay. So I guess we will talk about that. And you're obviously a Rangers guy. So, but before we get into that, the fun stuff, let's keep going on the monetary policy

and the fiscal policy. Yeah, and unemployment was a third figure that I wanted to give to you. It's 3.8. And that's a very good number also. Our goal is five. So it's actually better than we expect. But do I believe that? I no longer believe these numbers, the unemployment numbers, I cease to believe them when Biden got in.

I have to say that I just, they change the way they compute unemployment. Yeah, no, you're making exactly a very good point. And the second number you look at is a labor participation rate, which is low. So 3.8 means those who are seeking jobs are getting them. Right. But there's a lot of people not seeking jobs. And what does that say about the overall state of the nation and the economy? Not good.

Very bad. I'm called the Christian economist. and there you get into the Christian part. What is our view of work? I was in line of Walmart the other day, and the woman in front of me seemed to know the checkout guy, and she said to him, I don't work because I don't have to.

Okay, Eric, that's what's going on in our nation. That's what you're referring to. People don't want to work. I say, if you love your neighbor, you'll provide her with products and services she demands. If you love yourself, you'll make a profit while doing so. But it's become a common practice. to not work because you don't have to.

See? Well, again, we're going to go to a break here, but that's the question is, why don't you have to? You're getting government handouts? What is happening? We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to David Arnott. This is the Erkman Taxis Show. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain.

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That's Mypillow.com promo code Eric. Mypillow.com promo code Eric or call 800-978-3057. I use these towels. They work. I promise you. Welcome back talking to David Arnott, who teaches economics at Dallas Baptist University in Dallas. So that means he is a he's a. he's a fan of the Texas Rangers who are in the World Series.

We're going to get back to that in a minute. Okay, so I just want to get back to this idea that when we talk about, oh, unemployment is, you know, it's not so bad, but you're telling me that there are tons of people that are not even looking for jobs. Are they getting government handouts? I mean, I feel like I'm living in a socialist world where Joe Biden has taken money that isn't his and given it to people to get votes so that they don't have to work. That's a lot of what happened in the COVID economy.

It's utterly despicable. It's just like holding a bullet, you know, to the future in the heads of the kids that are going to have to deal with this nightmare. Right, because for an administration who talks so much about sustainability, they don't know much about economic sustainability. You cannot continually take from the rich and give to the poor. I mean, it just doesn't work, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, at some point you run out of other people's money. So my view is that the reason of the reason. A lot of these people, when I talked about consumption, they're consuming things they don't have. My view, and this is just for my Christian worldview, is that it's some kind of a moral hazard,

meaning they were given money for doing nothing over the years of the pandemic, and they think that's going to continue. It will not continue. As I said last month, total credit card debt went over a trillion for the first time. You can't sustainably do this. People are spending money they don't have. We have known the government is spending money they don't have. I mean, that's obviously true, and that demands another visit with you, but we all know that the government has no money. So any money it spends has to be redistributed from other people.

It's not sustainable. You're right. Well, we were going to talk about Israel, which is unfortunately in the news. Let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. So I just did a little looking the other day. I'm just fascinated by city-states.

And so if you look at Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Singapore, San Marino, these are all city states, their average income is somewhere between 140,000 per person and 80,000 per person. To give you some context in the United States, it's 70. All four of these city states are in about 80,000 to 140,000 per person. Let me tell you another city state, Gaza, they make 7,000 per person. All right. Economics is a social science. When we see one thing this way and one thing this way, when we see one city-state making 140 to 80 and one making seven, we want to know what's going on here. Why are the people in Gaza so poor? Their answer will be that there's oppressors and the oppressed. But any time you say that in front of an economist, we start to think of Marxism. And that's what they're thinking. I've done my podcast number 191 comes out this week. Number 189 two weeks ago was called Karl Marx and Hamas. And it told the story clearly that the people in Gaza have a taking culture and the people in Israel have a making culture. What's the name of your podcast because I want to tell people where they can find you and they need to find you? Just look on YouTube for The Christian Economist.

Very nice of you to say that. Thank you. The Christian economist, number 189, is called Karl Marx and Hamas. The Christian economist. Okay. So, right, go ahead. Yeah, so they're taking and making cultures, and there always have been. And so the Israel has a making culture.

They make $55,000 a year, which is really good. The people in the city, state right next to them, called Gaza, make $7,000 a year. What's going on here? here. Okay, Eric, I've read, I think, four books by you, and when your next one comes out, I'm going to read it. I've read a lot. I'm an academic. It's what I do for a living, right? But perhaps the one thing I've cited the most is from your friend Dennis Prager, and I know your friends, because I had a visit with him in his fireside chat, and he mentioned you. You're both on Salem, right? You bet. You bet. Yeah. So Dennis Prager has a five-minute video called The Key to Unhappiness.

Of all the books I've read and written and all the articles I've seen, I wonder if that's the thing I've cited the most. Because in the first 30 seconds, Dennis Prager makes the point. The key to unhappiness, some people live their life in a worldview of gratitude. Some people live their life entitled. That clearly explains Israel and Gaza. Israel generally has a view that they have gratitude, that there's a God who gave them things. people in Gaza, particularly Hamas, are entitled they believe to the land they don't have, and they'll never be happy. Now, we can move that from Dennis Prager's very good personality-type thinking into a Christian worldview and into economics.

What's your view of the world? Are you grateful or you're entitled? And that's what we're seeing in Israel today. Well, look, this is fascinating. I just got to say that let's, you know, cut to the chase. the Palestinians typically blame their difficulties on the Jews. The Nazis blamed all of their difficulties on the Jews. You scapegoat somebody.

You say they're the problem. And it makes it very simple. But it leads to the antithesis of an attitude of gratitude. It leads to more misery. It always does. But I wasn't aware of these numbers with regard to Israel making 55,000 a year on average, and the Palestinians making 7,000. Right, right.

It's because of their view of their world view, and it's because their view of the economy. Yeah, I was guest lecturing on a cruise ship one time, and a Jewish guy came up to me and said, have you seen the book called Startup Nation? And I hadn't, so I read it, it's fascinating, and he explains the entrepreneurial culture of Israel, and what goes on in their culture,

and why they are so inventive and so creative, and why there's such great entrepreneurs. Startup Nation, it's about Israel. Great book. And it's still accurate. It tells why they're so rich. We'll be right back. We're talking to Dave Arnaut, and you can find him at the Christian Economist on YouTube. It's the podcast. The Christian Economist will be right back. Technology is moving so fast. It's hard for many churches and nonprofits to keep up with the trends, especially when it comes to giving. Stay ahead of the curve with Secure Give 7 and 1 giving system with all new features like AutoCard Updator, Cryptocurrency Giving,

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blue states, blue cities, that they're just melting down because they have bad policy, a bad attitude. And, you know, you want to help them. But if they have this narrative in their head that it's somebody who's oppressing me, that's why I'm down. They're never going to get out of that. You're right. And any time you say that in front of an economist, he thinks of Karl Marx. I'm reading a book now called Carl Marx and the devil. And it is so depressing, it's so hard to read.

His personal life was a mess. I mean, he personally was a very cruel, mean, demented almost person. And the economic system that he produced is cruel and demented and caused the death of 100 million people in the last generation. And so Carl Marx is at the heart of what you're talking about and what I mentioned in terms of takers and makers. See, if you have a making culture, you'll get richer. If you have a taking culture, you will get poorer. And not only does that play itself out in economics, it plays itself out in politics as well. Now, when I was with you last time, we said, hey, we need to come back for another visit because we had just gotten into the idea of

God and government. And so if we can talk about that a few minutes, that's the reason you invited me back to graciously. Yeah. Yeah. And so we have moved from God to government in our generation, just you and I. And so we remember hospitals with names like St. Catharines and St. bishops and St. Luke's. Here, I'm in the Dallas area. We have three major systems. Baylor is Baptist. Methodist is, guess what, Methodist. And the other is Presbyterian. You notice where those came from? In just our generation, health care has moved from God to government. Many other things have. I know you just finished writing a book and you're out of interest in writing another one,

but this would make a good book. How we've moved from God to government. And just that little example of health care is a good start. The four biggest expenditures of the federal government are health care, Social Security, defense, and interest on the debt. I would argue that three of those are not biblical. The Bible tells us to take care of our widows and orphans and immigrants, and we did in our generation, Eric, you and I did. And in the last 50 or 60 years, we've stopped doing it and allowed the government to do it.

Second is Social Security. There's no biblical basis for Social Security. There is probably a biblical basis for defense because we have a fallen world. There's no biblical basis for paying $400 billion in interest. Look, three of the four major expenditures of the federal government are probably not biblical. And that's my point about we have moved from God to government. In economics terms, we always use supply and demand. God supply.

Look, this is obvious. I mean, I think people know this generally. And I do talk about this and write about this maybe more obliquely. But when you cease worshiping God as God, you make the government God. And that's basically what authoritarian governments around the world and now in America are trying to do. They're trying to say, like, you're worshiping God. That's a threat to our power is government power. Now, anybody who has a healthy, deeply American view of these things says that's what we want.

We want we the people to be free and to look to God to guide them, not to government. We want as little government as possible. We need minimal government. We need government for some things, but we don't need to make government everything. We don't need government to have the kind of power that we have given it and that in some cases it's taken. And I think we need to be clear that it is in direct competition with God, folks. That's really ultimately at the heart of this. And it's why, you know, I'm a fiscal conservative because I really do believe that the government, when the government

gets involved in the economy. It harms everyone. It doesn't just harm the numbers. It actually takes away increasing amounts of freedom. And that's basically what we're seeing. Yeah, and that's what Keynesian economics is. You've just given a good explanation of it. Keynesian economics is about demand.

It's about increasing aggregate demand. We have proven that it doesn't work. As a matter of fact, Keynes admitted it didn't work. When someone pointed out to him it didn't work, he said, well, in the long run, we're all dead. do you realize how selfish that is? Well, it's cynical to the bottom. It's unbelievable. Yeah.

And that's really, that's what Keynesianism is. And so I'll quote one of my favorite Christian economists. There aren't many of us, by the way, but there's a guy named Art Lindley who says something about what you just said, Eric. He said, government should punish evil but not do good. The church should do good, but not punish evil. Generally, I think he's correct. And in our lifetime, we've moved from government doing so much trying to do good, but they're not structured to do good.

And this goes back to the work of Abraham Kuiper that you and I talked about last time we were together and the spheres that he talked about. But there's different spheres in society and God had different ideas for them. So he had something in mind for the family, something for the church, something for government, something for business. We've moved it all to government in our lifetimes, and that's a mistake. How do we get out? Now, that's a bigger question. Well, I mean, it's a mistake and it's fundamentally at odds with the American founder's vision. In other words, the idea of governing ourselves is antithetical to what we're talking about.

The bigger the government gets, the bigger the government bureaucracy gets, the less free we are. And if anybody ever wanted to do America a favor, they would drain that swamp. They would absolutely get rid of the Department of Education, get rid of levels of bureaucracy, because the bigger our government has gotten, the less free we have become. And, of course, the economy tells the story. And it's not like they're doing a good job and we don't like it. They're doing a very, very, very bad job because we've been talking about the economy. 30 seconds left.

Dave Arnott, what else can we say? Yeah, I think we make a good point. Why did the founders have three parts of government? Because they believed in the fallen nature. They wanted checks and balances. And why is it one party now wants a uniparty government? Because they don't believe in the fallen nature. Eric, that's it.

And so if we believe there's a God who created the world, but fallen humans have messed it up. Our job is to help to figure out how through our economic behavior do we redeem this? Do we bring it back to what God's creational intent was? That's what we try to do as Christian economists. Beautifully put. Dr. Dave Arnott can be found at the Christian economist, the Christian economist. Dr. Dave Arnott, thank you so much.

much. Pleasure to be with you, Eric. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Robert Netsley right now, who is with Inspire Investing. Robert, I can't help but get excited about what you've created an opportunity for people to find out if their money is funding wicked things, if they have money in a 401k or retirement fund, whatever it is, that is invested in companies that are doing evil things, that is promoting pornography, promoting abortion.

promoting any number of things or ideologies with your money, folks. So Robert Nestle has created something where you can get a free report that tells you where your money is and they will help you get your money into companies that are doing good things. So you have to go to InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. You get a free report. But this is something I, you know, Robert, I guess.

It just gives me hope that it's possible to turn things around in America. Because when I think of how much money people have invested out there, if they would understand what's going on and shift that money to good stuff, it's just huge. It's just absolutely monstrous. It's enormous. It's enormous. And we are seeing fruit from that labor.

It's remarkable. It doesn't have to even be trillions of dollars to change things. I've been on the phone, you know, in recent weeks, you know, with investor relations and CFOs and whatnot. We regularly engage with companies that we invest in or are like to invest in or kind of just speaking biblical truth, the corporate power. And, you know, one of the things we hear is often that, number one, these people have never heard, they tell us they've never heard from a faith-based investor before.

They've been doing their job for 20, 30 years. You know, executive major organizations never heard from a faith-based investor. So number one, they need to hear our voice. Number two, they're thankful to hear it, even in some of these sort of, you know, woke businesses you think that this don't care, there are people in those businesses of influence that actually do care about what we have to say and oftentimes have enough influence to change things. So, for instance, Costco stopped giving money to gay pride parades. Chevron stopped giving money to Planned Parenthood. There's a laundry list of other organizations that

have changed things. That is unbelievable. Robert Nelson, that is unbelievable. It is so wonderful. I want to tell people, folks, what you do and don't do, you can change the world if you take an interest in this. When I hear that a company like Costco would stop giving money to something like that or Chevron, these are huge, huge companies. And you shop there, your money may be invested there. When we get involved in these things, we can change the world. So I want to say the action point is go to invest.

I'm sorry, inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. inspire advisers.com slash Eric. You'll get a free report that will help you figure this out. And I know, Robert, that you guys will help people if they want to transition to invest in companies that believe in their values. But this is a gigantic thing that we have, I mean, it's to me scandalous when we have power and we don't use that power. It's like when I say, I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that.

When you don't do those things, people who don't share your values, who share opposite, who have opposite values, they're going to prevail. So I just want to say to you, Robert, thank you for taking this on because it is game-changing. Like you said, it's a movement. The more people that do this, it's an amazing thing when we think of the money that is out there, that many people of faith with traditional values have invested in woke companies. Ladies and gentlemen, you've got to do something about it. You've just got to do something about it.

This is like a mandate that we've got to live our faith out in every sphere and where your money is. That's a big deal. So please go to InspireAdvisors.com slash Eric. This is a free report. inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Robert Natsley, thank you. Pleasure. Thank you, Eric.