Welcome back.
Joining us now is David Bonson. He's the owner of the Bonson Group. It manages five point seven billion and client assets, and he's the author of many books. He's had one that came out earlier this year which I'm interested in talking to him about, is called Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life. I think that's very important, that's something we all need to think about. Very interested
to talk to David. Always as familiar, as I said at the beginning of the program, with his father, Greg Bonson, who was a Christian apologist, and he was not apologizing for Christianity, he.
Was explaining it. That's what apologist means.
He was an excellent made excellent intellectual arguments in support of the existence of God of Christianity. So it's great to have you on and to meet you. Thank you for joining us.
David, Well, thanks so much for having me.
Thank you.
Let's talk a little bit first about the economy, and as somebody who manages a wealth fund, I'm sure you're watching very closely, as everybody does, what's happening with interest rates. We're seeing the stock market, of course, is soaring, but that's not too hard I guess if you in check money through that from the Federal Reserve. What is your take on what is going to be happening with interest rates?
Well, interest rates are definitely going to be going lower, and the debate is only about what the speed at
which they lower them effectively. Housing is the issue that they frozen the housing market first by creating a bubble in housing by keeping rates way too low for way too long, and then by hiking them so violently and quickly, you really created a two tier housing system where there are a significant amount of people paying something around three percent on their mortgage and they have no interest in
losing that low cost mortgage. And then there's all the people who would organically naturally be wanting to buy a home right now, either a first time home or even just moving to a new home kind of upgrading. Whatever they may be doing is their life situation allows for. But they don't want to pay seven percent for a mortgage. So the Fed's policies are driven by the fact that they know a lot of debt in our country is
going to be resetting. The United States government and all its infinite wisdom, has chosen not to lock the rates of most of its debt it's only about sixteen percent of our total debt that is in long term maturities where you recall the twenty year and thirty year yields. The interest rates a few years ago, we're two percent. They are now paying five percent on six month money,
one year money. So all that money is going to come do and that's really a big portion of why the FED needs to be lowering rates, and they will do so. The stock market, David, I don't think is about the FED putting money in per se that always helps the valuation. If the FED is injecting liquidity, it can kind of artificially help prime the pump a bit, but that gets old after a while, and they've been
doing that for fifteen years. Earnings are very high, I mean, corporate profits are very high, and the FED can't really control that, and so I think the stocks are largely about growing corporate profits combined with high valuation. And I would argue probably too high a valuation.
Yeah, especially when we look at the places where there's been this kind of a feeding frenzy about artificial intelligence. I felt for the longest time that you know, regardless of what happens with it, and you can say there's a lot of very useful things that it looks very much like a repeat of the dot com bust to me, I don't know what do you think about that?
Yeah, I write about it a lot, so I tend to agree. Trust your intuition a little because you're onto something there, my friend. The bones of the Internet were all that were making money in the nineties, the ciscos and the people that made the networks, the servers, the routers. They were making all the money. But nobody could really figure out how the Internet companies were going to make money.
And then about ninety five percent of them went out of business, and a few of them ended up making a huge amount of money, the Amazons and Googles and ebays that survived. It's very similar, toy I. No one has been able to explain who's going to actually make money from it, how they're going to use it. It's all the back end. The kitchen is making the money, but not the dining room, and that's your NVIDIAs and things like that. I believe it's very overhyped, and even
if it isn't, it's so priced in. The assumptions I think are very similar to nineteen ninety nine two thousand tech boom, and I'm quite confident it's not going to end well.
And of course there's another backroom involved in that that's kind of emerging, and that is supplying power for this massively power hungry artificial intelligence. And I guess one of the things it's just an ordinary person I'm looking at this and saying, well, they're going to make all these small nuclear reactors, and they're creating companies as Sam Altman did to cater to that need, but they're going to be consuming all that power even as they shut down
our grid. I mean, we really are seeing kind of a two tier society here, I think, and especially we can see it when it comes to energy. But I guess a lot of people are just looking at it as an investment opportunity. And I guess it is an investment opportunity. But you know, from somebody who's just now on the sidelines, I'm wondering, you know, am I going to have utility bills that are going to be four to ten times higher than they are now? Is it
going to be unreliable as well? While the artificial intelligence is, you know, powering itself as his own private nuclear reactors. What do you think about that?
Well, I think that there's a couple of different things around once, and it's complicated enough that I hesitate to bore our listeners with the details. But I will say this, the people need to learn that are like city doesn't grow on trees, but it does come from the ground oil and gas and of course coal power electricity production. The state of Virginia right now, twenty six point seven percent of its electricity is being used for data center.
Now that's a high data center state, and other states are not so high, but that's massive. People can say whatever they want, you're not going to get the electricity without natural gas. So we're going to either embrace what God has given us in the ground or we're not. But if people don't want utility bills to go higher, the solution is readily available in the beautiful per Median basin period.
Well, I've gotten a great more. Let's talk about the politics though, the interest rates. You know, this is a lot of people are saying, well, okay, the Federal Reserve is pumping this for the election to make current administration look good.
What is your take on that?
Yeah, Look, I'm a lifetime movement conservative. I've written multiple things, both academically and more targeted for Layman about monetary policy and the FED. I'm often very critical, but this is one thing where I just want to say to my conservative friends, the political conspiracy theory makes absolutely no sense. You can't help the incumbent ticket, which in this case is now Vice President Harris a month before the election.
If you wanted to help, you don't raise rates five percent in one year, which is what they did in the prior year. The economic narrative is very well baked in, and a half of a percent a few weeks before absentee ballots does and did absolutely nothing to help anybody. I have plenty of criticism I can give towards Chairman Powell, but he is not a political actor. There's no love lost between him and President Biden. I happen to know
that firsthand. I think that whether they're making good decisions or bad decisions, they're not making political ones. So it's just one area where i'd defend them. And again, if somebody wanted to say, oh, the FED has kind of hurt the election outcome a bit, it would be the other way. I mean, they you know, it's very hard for president to get re elected when they tighten monetary policy. That's really what they spent most of the Biden term doing.
Yeah.
Yeah, And of course we had a lot of people, a lot of people that I talked to, really expected them to make a political move, so they expected them to lower interest rates significantly, much much earlier in the year, so they would have had an effect. And I guess that was what people were surprised about. And I guess we could speculate about what the intentions of the Fed are if they're going to withhold that until the last
minute and not really have an effect. But let me ask you about this, and that is the current Treasury Secretary predecessor to Pwell, Janet Yellen, who was at the FED for a long time. You know, she has made as one person point out recently, so you can look at the damage and the threat to the dollars deserve
status from bricks and other things like that. But the person who's done more to damage the reserve status of the dollar than anyone else is Jenet Yellen because of these sanctions that they impose and other things like that basically use this power and wielded it in such a way as to effectively destroyed a lot of people believe that's the situation. What's your take on that, and on the status of the reserve status of the dollar, what do you think?
Yeah, the reserve status of the dollar, by the way, is the important part, not the trading status. So when people talk about bricks countries utilizing something different, something like point one percent of oil went out of petro dollar transaction and into let's say Chinese wand is the great example. But it's still then reservans. It gets held in reserves, and nobody is going to be holding any other currency
it reserves anytime soon. In terms of foreign exchange, the doll is still what people want to hold in reserves, but transacting in another currency. I would encourage every country to do what they think is best for them, and that includes the United States very candidly. The United States has been doing what's best for it with its currency. That's what makes these other countries upset because what we're doing is often not best for them. So be it. That's the way it works. I don't believe in one
world government, but I think make a great point. I don't believe that what they did with the Russia sanctions is dispositive. I don't think it is going to ruin the dollars reserve status, but it marginally does cause other countries to wonder could this happen to us? And hopefully those countries say, we don't plan to go invade a free country anytime soon. However, once you see a country using and weaponizing its currency that way, it's not how
it's supposed to be. And I do think it marginally impacted confidence abroad in dollar reserve.
Yes, yeah, and and I guess one of the things that we see now happening with the bricks as they're starting to expand. It's been around for a while, but you know, in response to this, as they're starting to expand it in terms of currency exchanges and stuff like that, they're bringing in a you know, most of the oil producers, you know, we're coming into this now. Saudi Arabia didn't
buy into it, but they got really close. And so you know what we have done with the petro dollar away, we've weaponized that.
I guess two could play at that game.
You know that that might be turned around, but it almost makes you nostalgic for you know, oil when you see what is being imposed on us with all of these green regulations that are there.
Let's talk a little bit about your.
Book, though, I would really like to get an idea of you know, work in the in the meaning of life. You know, how do we balance this thing? This has always been a real issue for us, you know what, what is important for you to do with your life? As Christians? We always wonder, you know, well, now, how how should we live now that we're a Christian? What is your take on your book? Is full time work in the Meaning of Life? Tell us a little bit about your perspective on that.
Well, you mentioned my late father, doctor Greg Bonsen, who you pointed out as a Christian apologist, a philosopher. He raised me in the nurture and admonition of the Lord with a biblical worldview. He taught me to think and live like a Christian. He was my best friend, the smartest human being I've ever been around, and this book
is essentially it was dedicated to him. He was a very hard worker, but I've devoted my life to applying Biblical worldview and principles in the domain of finance economics. I'm very, very exhausted by Christians that don't know how to think like Christians economically, and I view all of that as very similar to what my dad did. It's just he was in the field of philosophy and theology, and I'm trying to do it in the field of
finding investment, economics, entrepreneurialism. The idea of work as something we have to balance with the rest of our life is something I take exception to and have a whole chapter about it in the book. I don't ever hear people talk about marriage life balance or kid life balance. We accept that we're always spouses, we're always parents, and we're always vocationally committed to some sort of useful productive activity. And what I argue in the book is the reason
why is because that's how God made us. That's what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God. That before sin entered the world, God made us to grow the earth, to care for the earth, to subdue it, to produce new goods and services. That's all I mean by work. We have our needs met by meeting the needs of others. I think this is a beautiful principle in terms of creational norms, but it's a beautiful way to think about our own purpose in life.
Of course, it doesn't mean that we work twenty four hours a day anymore than we're looking lovingly in our wife's eyes twenty four hours a day. There's a lot of priorities, but life doesn't work that way that we're just taking hats on and off at different times, all at once. I am embodied as a being made an image of God, who is to love my wife, love my children, and love my career, and devote myself to production of goods and services, to growing the earth, to
fulfilling that created purpose. That's what the book's about.
That's great.
Yeah, we often forget that work itself is not a punishment. In the fall, it was that work would become much harder funishment, right, just like childbirth is not a punishment that many in the feminist movement think that it is, but it's not. It's just that it's as much harder now. And so that's a really good point. Years ago, I
remember listening to an audiobook by Oz Gennis. It was called The Calling, and it came at a point where I was in a change in my career, and I thought it was very interesting, you know, talking about the importance of vocation, which really means a calling. You know, God is calling you to do something, and so the real key is for all of us to try to identify what skills God has given us, I think, and then to understand that we have been made for that
particular type of thing. I mean, what is your take on that kind of approach?
Well, I absolutely loved that book by Oz and in fact I talk about it in my own book. Tim Keller used the language every good endeavor. I think that God made us to go create beauty, to go create efficiency, to extract from the raw materials of the earth. You know, you and I are using technological equipment right now to record all of it exists did at the Garden of Eden if you just simply mean the physical compounds, the rubbers and plastics and things that would be that were
derived from the created materials. What happened, and this is what the calling I think becomes about, is human ingenuity, human acuity, human creativity. Back then, they learned how to start a fire, they invented the wheel. You know, today they're in vetting iPhones and other things. It's gotten more technologically advanced, but in our own calling. The beauty is
that because God. This is what the left doesn't understand, the Marxist utopian vision that views all and it's really quite Roussoian that views mankind is all part of a collective God, doesn't. He views you differently, me differently, my wife differently, this person, that person, and in our individuality, some people are poets, some people are plumbers, some people are builders, some people are educators, some people are financiers.
That in individuality is a beautiful thing in the marketplace. But it's beautiful because God made it that way out of creation and the doctrine of well where we put this way, the concept of each of us having our own calling, there's nowhere that myself for os Guinness states that the entirety of our calling has related to our vocation. But nor can one ever say that it isn't a part of it. And that's the category error people make
is to say it's all or none. I would argue that no one's calling is divorced from their vocation, but the vocation is not the entirety of their calling.
That's right. Yeah, And he made the point.
I think he quoted Martin Luther, who said, you know, you don't have to be a member of the clergy in order to serve God. God has put you in the farmer who is doing his job and doing it to God's glory and living his life to God. He is glorifying God. That's where God has put him, and that is That was a real key insight, I think for me at the time, and I think that's really kind of the way that we need to look at it.
I don't know, and mar Martin Luther would use off an example of a cobbler with shoes, and I happened to know the shoes they were dealing with five six hundred years ago were not quite as comfortable as our shoes today. So he had a high view of a cobbler when the feet weren't even all that comfortable. It's called dualism, the sacred secular distinction, and Martin Luther tore it down, and much of Protestant theology has been focused
on this. At the end of the day, the minister has a very important vocation, the cobbler, the educator, the radio host, the financier. There is not a gnostic higher power for those who call themselves pastors versus those who are serving the Kingdom of God in these other vocational fields, and so tearing down that sacred set distinction is one of the great legacies of people like Martin Luther.
I agree, and it's so embedded in the foundation of Christianity, the idea that we have different gifts, that we have
different functions and everything. You know, Paul talks about that in terms of the body, you know, how the body has different members that have different functions, or talk about it in terms of building, you know, living a church out of stones, and how there's all these different things that are out there and some people are you know, given one thing or Jesus talks about the parable of the talents. You know, that's now become part of our vernacular,
just like a vocation has. But you know, he was talking about a quantity of money, silver that was given to these people, So you know, different we have different quantities, different qualities of things that are given to all of us. But as you point out, the essence of all of this is that God deals with us, not has some kind of a collective I say this all the time
about public health or public education. It's like that's one of the problem, is that collective Marxist mentality to cards that some kind of a public thing ignoring the individual, public health that ignores the health of the individual, public education that really doesn't care about the education of the individual. And so this collectivism that is there is really kind of anesthetical to Christianity and towards the Christian understanding of what God has given us in the Bible, but his
interaction with each of us as individuals. As you just pointed out, Yeah.
There's really two grotesque mistakes that people can make. And it's why I believe economics. They talked about the need for a distinctly Christian understanding of economics, and you're getting to the heart of it. God made us as individuals and as members of a community, and a radical individualism that does not care about the individual responsibility to their
neighbor or their family or their community is Unchristian. And a radical collectivism that views the dignity of the person only when attached to the state or by the way to the church. Someone has such a high view of church that they say the human is only important in the way that they're serving the church. That's not right either.
But what Christianity does and a biblical anthropology. A biblical understanding of the human person sees just like Jesus was incarnate fully god fully man, the human person is both individual and social. Their dignity comes from their status of being an image bearer of God, and they also function in a society, They function in families, and so that one in the many dynamic of Christianity is unique in human history. And candidly it's beautiful.
Oh yeah, that absolutely is. I remember interviewing G. Edward Griffin and he said, we get so focused on individual liberty that we atomize ourselves. And course this is before they try to atomize us with the twenty twenty lockdown and all the isolate each and every one of us, real hardcore, but have to work collectively for individual liberty. And that's exactly what you're talking about, is that you
cannot lose that sense of community. That's something that we were created for, that's something that really fulfills us, and we can't live that out individually. So when you talk about how Christians think of economics, I guess that is really what you're looking at. Are there other aspects of that that you would talk about?
Well, well, certainly I believe that understanding economics being humans acting around scarcity, how we allocate scarce resources. And there's four or five words in there that seem really simple. But if we have a different understanding of what or who the human person is, how they are to act, what scarcity means, and what our aim is to be defining the goal of economics. So I think that the last one hundred years the central planner, the collectivists what
they refer to as the Kinesian school of economics. I believe mankind fundamentally exists to consume, and we need central planners that can kind of steward the affairs. In a way, view economics as a math and science that if you get the formula just right, everyone can consume to their
hearts content. But I start with a very different viewpoint from the Bible that mankind was not made to consume, but to produce, and in fact, we cannot consume until we first produce, and in fact, we generally can't consume until someone else produces, because the vast majority of our consumption comes because of other people's productive activity in this
interconnected economy. In fact, it happens so quickly we just take it for granted all the time that we're sitting here using microphones and equipment, and that other people built from their own technical expertise, not our own. The distinctly Christian understanding of economics does not only view the efficiency of allocation of resources as important, but the morality the
shaloam that we're after for human beings to flourish. And I think a lot of Christians over spiritualize it to say all that matters is the spiritual domain, and other materialists make it only about the physical domain. But God makes it about both God's son incarnate and economics has to address all of this, and so allocation of scarcity is an important topic. I think public policy matters, but
it isn't the definition of economics. The proper view of economics does not have this tax rate over that tax rate, but tax rates matter, but it gets first principles right. And those first principles have to view mankind as a being made in the image of God, who has an eternal destiny, has been tainted by sin because of the doctrine of the fall, and now we have to look at there are imperfectible systems on this side of glory and where freedom comes in, and freedom of exchange, working
with one another optimizes the conditions for human flourishing. That's my aim in Christian economics.
Oh that's very interesting, well said. You've talked about Kanesianism. Of course, now we've got something which is really a fitting for our society right now, a very very dumbed down version of Kansianism called modern monetary theory. You must have something to say about MMT. I call it the
magic money trick. As you know, definits don't matter, and there's nothing at all in terms of they don't even try to come up with a some kind of a mathematical justification for that, just kind of throw it out there.
That's where we are, this idiocracy. I guess.
Yeah. Canes would have been appalled by m MT, and frankly the most famous Kinesians today Larry Summers, who I respect a great deal even though I disagree with them a lot, and Paul Krugman, who I don't respect great deal, but he's certainly a leading voice there vehemently against MT as well. MMT is essentially just a delusion that we can allow unlimited amounts of liabilities to be printed without impact, and that the government can reverse inflationary effects via taxation.
It's not really taken seriously by credible economists, But fundamentally, I would suggest that it doesn't come from a flawed economic theory. It comes from a flawed moral idea of the relationship between the citizen and the state. Why do we need unlimited MMT. We only need unlimited MMT because we apparently have such limited self government as human beings that we need a king. We need to pay for
a larger and larger messianic state. So, going back to first Samuel and all the way through human history, MMT is just a way to pay for and statism is itself a sin that is caused by human beings not taking enough responsibility in their own lives.
Yes, absolutely, yeah.
I think of the personification of MMT as the two that I call first La La Harris and Alexandria occasional cortex.
I look at the two of them.
As the personification of that kind of argument, because it's simply about, you know, I'm in charge here and I'm going to give you a handout. And of course, as I look at some of the things on the horizon, some of the things that the technocrats have pushed very hard.
It seems to.
Kind of fall in line with a lot of globalist talking about a universal basic income. To me, that is a universal global kind of Marxism. But we've got the technocrats like Elon Musk jumped in on that very hard. When Andrew Yang was made that the centerpiece of his campaign,
he gave millions of dollars for that. We had Bloomberg when he was running for president, said well, you know, we've had the agrarian society, the industrial society, and now the smart ones of us are trying to figure out how we're going to take everybody's jobs, and we've got to just figure out how we're going to pacify them so they don't come after us with guillotines.
That's what he said.
And so that's really what the UBI really is is it's kind of a pacification. What do you think about this trend? And I thought we got a taste of it, and I thought we got kind of some conditioning to move the overturned window with the lockdowns and the stimulus checks and stuff like that. You know, what are your concerns about that? It is the antithesis I think of what Christians want to see in a society in economics.
Well, UBI is definitely the antithesis of what Christians want to see in the society. But I just think it's very important that we're clear as to why we're against it. And I fear that many of my conservative friends and Christian friends are going to oppose UBI on the basis that, oh, we can't afford it, and that's very well true, but that's not the fundamental reason I'm opposed to it. I'm opposed to it because it robs human beings of their
God given dignity. I don't necessarily see it as a globalist plot, because this could be UBI unfortunately, can be done very domestically, country by country, can attempt to implement it, and in must case. His fallacy is the sort of dystopian fears that various digital progress AI and so forth is just simply going to make it impossible for a large segment of population to work. And he's wrong about that.
The digital revolution has been going on for fifty years, not for fifty weeks, and the industrial revolution for one hundred and thirty years. And out of the digital revolution we've created fifty one net fifty one million net new jobs. Obviously, a lot of people get displaced when their skills are no longer needed in a certain task. And on a level, I vehemently support retraining, labor dynamism, mobility, having to move
around into new fields. People that used to sell typewriters for a living do not sell typewriters for a living anymore. And I don't say it lightly. I think it is difficult, but UBI trying to be a stop gap for that basically ignores that God made us all to be producers, to have dignity, to overcome challenges, to be creative. New lines of work, new positions get created out of constantly new and evolving technologies. This is by God's design. Virtue
cannot be disintermediated away. There is a market for people of virtue capability competence industry. I think that UBI is fundamentally not an economic error, though it's that too. It's fundamentally an anthropological error. It doesn't understand the human person.
Yes, and I think it seems to come from these people who seek to consolidate everything and to monopolize everything. There's that kind of backing behind it that concerns me. Understanding we always have these different technologies that come in and impact things, and people use that to then work in a different way.
It's just that at the core of.
This what I'm seeing from this class of billionaires is, as Bloomberg said, you know, we're working very hard to make sure you don't have anything to do.
And that really is a.
It is something that's just going to destroy human nature and it's against our nature as we were just talking about it, you know, work and the meaning of life. It absolutely destroys that if we allow them to impose us on us. And that's the thing. It may not be organically there from the technologies, but it can be something that if they combine that technology with politics, that
might be something they try to impose on us. But you're absolutely right, we've got to attack it from the standpoint of this is really what being a human is about, you know, giving us some meaningful work to do and the liberty to choose that and whatever our vocation is.
And that's the thing is, you can't change human nature. And so when they go about trying to do something that is intended to alter human nature or even it may be many of the advocates of UBI, I do not think are being sinister. Some are but some are just very naive. They think they're helping people and they're not helping them because you can't alter the human nature
that God made us to be productive. So if you take away someone's need to be productive and they become a ward of the state, you dole their senses and they become an opioid at it, they become an alcoholic, they become a melancholy, they become removed from society, they become antisocial. So you create a worse result by taking people away from what God may them to do. If they could just alter human nature, they can say we're taking away productive activity from you, and we're reprogramming your
soul so that you don't need it. Well, that would be great, but unfortunately only God can do that, and these people ain't God.
That's right.
Yeah, And those are the types of things that we see always as a part of rehabilitation, you know, giving somebody a meaningful line of work and that type of thing. So, yeah, that is what we have to push back against. And I think that is really what we have to offer as Christians, one of the many things that we have to offer. With that, let's talk what we're talking a little bit about politics and some of these other issues.
I guess it came up yesterday the Republicans are doing high fives after Trump's performance at the Chicago Economics Club. It was entertaining to watch him slap down this guy. But I don't know that there was really anything much of any substance. And I guess in the bigger scope of things, what do you think in terms of the there hasn't been much in terms of policy at all that has been put forth. We haven't had debates by
the major candidates. They haven't debated each other. When they do, it typically devolves into kind of a personal back and forth, which I thought a lot of the economic issues were in that discussion yesterday. But where do you see things happening in terms of both Trump as well as a Democrat of course, mimicking his policies, saying we need to have more tariffs at the border, that type of thing. We've had a free trade structure to our economy since
the early nineteen hundreds. Prior to that, it really was very protectionist. That seemed to be what industrial societies were all doing, and we had kind of a free trade zone and taxes were collected at the border. Then we started doing internal taxes with the internal revenue, and the
central banks are created about that time. What is your view of the bigger picture there, regardless of you know, whether or not any president could come in and unilaterally and immediately impose a sixty percent terra for example, that number has been thrown out there. How do you see that?
You know how the government should be organized in terms of its impact on the citizenry, you know, tariffs at the border, free trade inside or should we continue to go down the same system that we have basically free trade but internal taxes.
Well there's other options that could be on the table too, but they aren't. But the first thing I'll say about what you brought up at the very beginning, it has been the most substanceless campaign for president and human history. And that's true that both candidates have deemed it in their political best interest to be very shallow on depth and policy and details. Both have a different agenda running
with a different strategy. But no, for those of us that are really kind of issue oriented, policy oriented, this has not been the campaign for you, and so that is what it is. My own view on the tariff side is that I'm veheamily against the government needing to tell buyers and sellers the terms of such exchange, and that countries do not trade with countries, companies trade with companies.
And if in fact a American importer is being hurt by the terms of trade with a foreign exporter, the American importer doesn't need Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or anyone else to set a tariff to come level the playing field. They can simply say, I don't want to trade with you. That's what we've done forever, and that's what those of us who defend a market economy and freedom of exchange believe in as what all of us do domestically. Every day, I go to a store, I
don't like what they're charging. I don't have to shop at that store. I can go somewhere else. There is national security issues that can come up, but that's not what we're talking about when we talk about protectionism. And one of the greatest evidences of the weakness of some of these arguments is that people change the argument in the middle of a sentence. That it can go from human rights to national security to protecting jobs in Ohio, all in the same sentence and it's got to be
one or the other. What are we really talking about here? Ultimately, I believe that people have to understand when we talk about a nineteenth century economy. Tariffs are certainly allowed in the Constitution. But if anyone believes that we're talking about tariffs instead of an income tax, instead of tariffs plus an income tax, I got a bridge to sell them, right.
So it's always been that case when I talk about flat tax or fair tax or whatever, it's like, okay, but let's see, let's see you stop the other one first before you replace that, or as you point out, it's going to be both of them, it's going to be an addition.
Yeah, that's right.
And you could not because it's the size of government now because of the annual expense the amount of imports that we generate. You would have to have something like three hundred percent tariffs on everything to generate that, and of course you would and then generate it because nobody would be importing, and so you have no revenue to government at all. So you know, President Trump, his credit
does not really talk about tariffs. Sometimes he'll say, oh, they're going to generate this revenue, but then other times he says it's a negotiating tactic, I'm not really going to do it, and it can't be both at once, and so yeah, it's probably the biggest area where I have disagreement with the President in terms of economics. But I also understand that he likes to negotiate, and so if that's part of the deal, that's a little different
than actually implementing it. But fundamentally, I believe in buyers and sellers setting their own terms of exchange, and I do not believe a disinterested third party like the government has to do it. And if people understood the retaliatory nature of tariffs and the history of smooth holly and the depression is not good. And so we will see where this goes from here.
And every time they try to protect a particular industry or something with tariffs, what happens is whoever was using that raw material that's now only going to be sourced because of terroriffs by some domestic supplier. Now those people are going to wait a minute, we can't get enough of this and we can't afford it at that price. So it always has these unintended consequences, these secondary tertiary issues like that it's a really complicated thing. But I think,
tell me what you think our fundamental problem is. I think we are so focused. My fundamental perspective is that we're so focused on government as a solution. It's inevitable that it's going to continue to grow, and it's inevitable that people are going to continue to be more divided and more partisan and more paranoid. That this is the most important election in our life, and it's the most important thing in my life, and this is worth fighting for.
I see it as a path to civil war as well as to financial bankruptcy, because what do we do as Christians to try to get people away from this mindset that everything needs to be done by the government, especially the federal government.
Well, I believe that there's no chance that we get out of this mindset that everything must be done by the government, letteral in the federal government, until we increase our own personal responsibility so strong. I do not support the growth of Leviathan. I do not support the expansion of the federal government where there is going to be governmental jurisdiction. I'm a real tenth Amendment guy that generally believes in federalism coming out of a sort of doctrine
of subsidiarity. Things are done best at a local level, where there's most accountability and proximity and things like that. Not exactly rocket science, by the way, But I believe that we have larger government because we have declining families, because we have a declining church, because we have declining mediating institutions, stronger local communities, and all of those types of things. They are basically the corollary to the size
of government. So if we want the Woodrow Wilson, an FDR, an LBJ expansion in the twentieth century of government did not come by forcing it down our throat. It came from us willingly seeding greater responsibility for social safety net, for all these different programs to the government. One who disagrees Vamily and my conservative friends that the problem we have is a bunch of politicians that want to make
government bigger. I believe our problem is a bunch of people that want the politicians to make government bigger.
Yeah, oh, I agree as very much.
I think really, as I look at this election, it really struck home as we get close to the election, everybody who is kind of sitting on the sidelines and maybe well, I don't like either candidate or this or that. Now they're coalescing into these two different camps, and after they make that decision, they start really becoming cheerleaders for that.
And I would like to see these people become cheerleaders for as you point out, the family, or for voluntary organizations, or for taking direct action as we saw in North Carolina with the destruction there from Hurricane Helene. We saw the people starting to come together and realize the power of the community, helping their neighbors and coming together. That's the sort of thing we've seen little bits and pieces
of that, I think homeschooling. And yet you will still see people say, well, yeah, but I want to have this subsidy. I want them to pay for my books or my pencils or whatever. You do that, and you do that at your peril, because now you're starting to buy into a kind of dependency. We have to desire to have our own independence, and we have to desire to get the job done, and we have to also
understand and look towards God. That's why I think it's really Christians that have the answer here that they're not going to find anywhere else, because we see the power of God in these things, and they see politicians as God in a sense I've said over and over again. I said it again today that I think that they want to give Trump credit for rov Wade. I think it kind of he didn't expect that to happen, and
he ran away when it happened. I think we give the credit to God, and we give the credit to prayer, and we look at things like that as Christians, and
I think that's really where our strength is. And I think that's what we have to offer people, is to say that with us and with our work, as you point out, our meaning, our purpose in life, and with God there and our families our focus, that should be where we're directed, not misdirected to something that is thousands of miles away in a different worldview, I don't know. I think that we have a great deal to offer as Christians in that regard.
Well, I completely agree. There's a lot of different applications of the same thing that you're saying in a lot of different areas. You know. One of the great examples is even just in this political season, when people say, well, how many jobs did Biden create, how many jobs did Jump cate, who's going to manage the economy better? Paris are trying. Why are you asking these people to manage the economy? Who creates jobs? Or buyers and sellers, producers
and consumers, free exchange people out of their own economic incentives. Now, Now, presidents and policy and Congress can impact those things for sure, tax rates, regulation, energy, But I'm not saying it's a completely separate but we give a sort of imperial view of the presidency when we talk that way, and I'm very uncomfortable with it.
Yeah, they don't really create jobs, but they can inhibit jobs.
Yeah they can.
And the other part of.
It is we saw with its latest jobs report. First they told us that inflated it over eight hundred thousand jobs. They'd lie to us about that. Then they come back with this when it turns out you look closely, there's a record increase in government jobs. So they can't create those kind of jobs, and they can fill up the labor statistics with those types of jobs. But yeah, you're right,
it really is. I roll my eyes every time I hear a Republican say that, because they ought to understand at least that much about the market.
If they're Republican.
The problem is that everybody does it now, and so then the next person's going to do it to counter what was done before. And if the economy is good during the publican president, they're going to take credit. And if it's bad during someone else, they're going to want to go after it. So it's just become low hanging fruit for political expediency. But it's all economically incoherent.
That's right. Absolutely.
You got another book that you have written, Our cultural Addiction to Blame and how you can cure it. Boy, do we not have a finger pointing everywhere about everything? As we just saw this last week? You know Christopher Columbus. And I don't think it's really about criticizing Christopher Columbus's life. I think that's really about resetting the culture. But how do you see this addiction to blame and the cure for it?
Yeah, So that was the subtitle the book. The title was Crisis of Responsibility, Our cultural Addiction to Blame and How you can Cure It. That was my first book, and I'm thinking right now about updated kind of follow up. I'm talking with my publisher about my next book being a sort of extension of that It's probably the most nonpartisan passion that I have wherein I think most on the right today are finding a way that the government or the man, or some foreign actor, somebody is doing
something to make their life miserable. And most people on the left believe that Wall Street or business or or you know, polluters in the environy. You know that they have a different boogeyman for who's trying to ruin the world. And I just think we've gotten really disconnected from an
ethos of individual agency, individual responsibility. Do I believe there's a lot of bad people out there, but I don't believe there are any bad people out there that take away my agency, take away my responsibility and my ability to create a fulfilling life for myself, to impact my loved ones, my family, my friends. It's a mentality. There must be a mentality that even through affliction, even through difficult circumstances, we have it in our ability to overcome.
It's a very Christian understanding of the human experience, and our responsibilities are do not get left at the door when there's a bad trade deal, or a bad immigration policy, or bad tax policy or bad regulation. We're to continue fighting through it seek to change the things that are wrong, but never nder any circumstances, throw in the towel given to defeatism and fatalistically say well, what was I supposed to do? Life is too hard? It's never too hard.
Yes, Oh, I agree. Something that used to always be a hallmark of the left. Right, don't blame that mass murder. He got spanked as a child, you know, that type of thing. But now that's been internalized I think a lot by the right. I'm reminded as you're talking about that of GK. Chesterton who famously said, what's wrong with the world? I am and he took the responsibility for it, and he said, and that's a Christian thing, you know, to recognize your flaws and to work on them.
Yeah. So it's one of my favorite lines. I have a number of lines like that throughout the book. But that's the ethoughts that I'm going for. That looking in the mirror and sometimes avoiding a victimhood mentality even when you were a victim, even when there was injustice done to you, just saying I'm not going to let that injustice define me, and overcoming those difficult times, I think is really where we derive a lot of the human flourishing that we're all after.
I agree, and I said so many times just people are looking for reparations and all that that's the ultimate, you know type of blame thing. Well, you know, sometimes done centuries ago, and you know, because your skin color whatever, you need to make this right with me, I said, no. The Christian perspective in terms of reconciling things is to understand that the things that we have done wrong we leave at the cross, and the things that were done wrong to us we all so late with the cross.
And so I think we have so much that we can contribute to this to heal. That's why I wanted to get you on and talk about this, because you've got some excellent books. The Case for Dividend Growth, Investing in a post crisis world now that would be economics, but and another one There's No Free Lunch, two hundred and fifty Economic Truth. But this newest book is especially I think your first one in this newest one full Time Work, I'm sorry, Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life.
That was released earlier this year.
I'm interested to hear that book now after we've had our discussion and thank you for doing that. And again, I've always always enjoyed listening to your father and the debates that he had with people over the existence of God. It truly was amazing and great loss, I know, to you especially, but to everyone. I think that he died at an early age. Again, our guest is David Bonson. He has the Bonson Group Wealth Management and he's got a lot of wealth. That is there five point seven
billion dollars in client assets. But I think that the real wealth that we've got are the Christian values that you're putting out there to help people along to understand their purpose in life and how they can move forward.
Thank you so much for what you do.
Thank you so much for having me appreciate it.
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