The Meaning Behind A Christmas Carol with Jerry Bowyer

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If they would rather die, perhaps they had better do so and decrease the surplus population. Surely you don't mean that, sir. With all my heart. Merry Christmas. I'm Rob West. That was Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There's a message hidden in that exchange and Jerry Boyer will let us in on the secret today.

Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, Jerry Boyer is our resident economist here at Faith Buy and the president of Boyer Research. He's also the author of The Maker and the Takers, what Jesus really said about social justice and economics. Jerry, great to have you back.

Always a pleasure. Was that George C. Scott? Was that the George C. Scott version that you just played? It sure was. Absolutely. That's a good one.

It sure was. Well, I'm looking forward to this. A little different, Jerry. We're doing a movie review and most of us have heard or read that exchange between Scrooge and the alms collectors many times.

So, I'm looking forward to hearing your insights. Jerry, what have we been missing? Well, what we've been missing is the extreme importance of that phrase surplus population because we don't happen to be in the mindset of the early mid-1800s. So, when we have conversations in our time, if we hear someone say zero population growth, we know what that means. If we hear people talking about reproductive rights, we know what that means. But if we hear someone talk about surplus population, we don't know what that means. But they did.

And it's not really very subtle at all. There was a very active debate that had started, I don't know, about 40 years before Dickens wrote the book, A Christmas Carol, by the Reverend economist Thomas Malthus. So, I guess he's a Christian economist, but I don't think he was a very good one because Malthus believed that because of the biblical commentary about the ground being cursed, that that meant that there were too many people in the world. That as we reproduced and created and brought into being, God creates us, but as we conceive and bring into the world more people, that the population grows faster than the food supply and the supply of goods and services. So, that's called Malthusianism, big word for this Malthus. He wrote a book called An Essay on Population that was very influential. And basically, the idea was we need to stop the poor, especially from having so many babies. They're, you know, they're having too many children because they're producing what? Surplus population.

There is a population surplus, too many people, not enough food. So, when Dickens put that language in the mouth of Ebenezer Scrooge, he's making a very important point. Scrooge is now a stand-in for a certain philosophy, the philosophy of Thomas Malthus, the philosophy that now we would call zero population growth. Yeah, and not everyone agreed with Malthus, of course. So, who opposed his theories?

Jean-Baptiste Say, who's one of the founders of classical and supply side economics, but I think a lot of GK Chesterton was another, the Christian journalist, but I think his most important opponent was Charles Dickens. Because once you understand that Dickens is writing about this, we now understand that The Christmas Carol was in fact a story written against Malthus. Because by the end, Scrooge changes his mind. Scrooge is wrong, okay?

So, if you put a philosophy in the mouth of your villain, you're basically saying you disagree with that philosophy. And the story really is the unfolding of why, first of all, why Scrooge got wrong in the first place. It has to do with his own childhood trauma of hunger and cold. When he goes back in time with the ghost of Christmas past, these aren't ghosts, these are angels, right?

That's I think obvious to most Christian readers when he goes back in time. Dickens says that the school where he lived felt or smelt of not enough to eat and too much cold and too much darkness. So, he was poor when he was young. By the way, an interesting kind of economic history side note here, if you treat Scrooge like a real historical character, he grew up before, he was a child before the free market revolution when things really were dire.

And then when he's an adult, you have a free market revolution and things really are abundant. Fascinating. Jerry Boyer here today, much more on A Christmas Carol just around the corner.

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That's right. It's the Christmas season and we're talking about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, perhaps from a vantage point you haven't considered previously. Jerry, just before the break you were talking about Thomas Malthus and how he was really represented in the character of Scrooge, who was obviously the villain character in this tale that comes full circle at the end.

But what else can we take away from this character that gives us some insight into Malthus and what he was advocating at the time? Well, I think one of the things that's really interesting is the ghost of Christmas present when Scrooge first sees him. The Christmas present says, have you never met my like behind or any of my brothers before or any of my brothers? And Scrooge says, how many brothers have you had? Well, more than 1800. In other words, there have been more than 1800 Christmases. Sure.

And what's Scrooge's reaction? What a large family to provide for. See, there's that scarcity mindset. Yes. I mean, a lot of people think having a lot of brothers and sisters is a good thing. I do. Like my kids. My kids do.

Sure. They like having brothers and sisters, but we believe God is abundant and generous, but Scrooge didn't if he believed in him at all. And when Scrooge says that, what a large family to provide for, Christmas present rises in anger. He disapproves of Scrooge's Malthusian ideas. Later on, when they go to see Tiny Tim, Scrooge talks about Tiny Tim and how he cares for them.

And the ghost kind of throws it back in his face. Well, you called him the surplus population, you know, forgo that can't man. And then he makes an analogy that Scrooge is like a bug on a leaf looking down at the bugs in the dirt, saying that there are too many. To him, we're all kind of bugs, but, you know, Scrooge is a little richer than Tim. So he thinks there's too many people. And then the ghost kind of raises the question, maybe you're the surplus population.

Maybe you're the one that doesn't deserve to live. So he's pretty tough on Scrooge, but in the end it works well. And then later the ghost Christmas present takes him to the marketplace and there's all this food.

And he emphasizes the food from different parts of the world, oranges and things like that, which you can't grow in Britain. So the international trade and the economic takeoff that you and I have talked about in that presentation that I do on 2000 years of economic history, where you see the bubbles rising and falling. When you see the United Kingdom bubble rising, it's back down low in Malthusian equilibrium when Scrooge is a baby. And it's kind of popping out during Scrooge's lifetime. The great takeoff is actually occurring.

Obviously, he's a fictional character, but you can kind of treat him where he was. And that great takeoff is just taking place during his lifetime. Malthus was wrong at exactly the worst time. He makes his predictions before the greatest increase in human flourishing ever known to mankind.

Wow. Now, of course, these Malthusian ideas haven't gone away, Jerry. So who's advocating them in modern times? Planned Parenthood is the Malthusian philosophy in industrial, profitized form, even though technically it's a nonprofit. The abortion revolution is largely a result of a belief that there's surplus population.

We go back to Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, too many of the wrong people, the swarthy people, the people of color, the poor people. So it's interesting that these people who believe that there are too many people, it's never their kind of people that there are too many of. Ivy League professors who think there are too many people don't think, well, there's too many of my folks. You know, they think there's too many of other kind of folks, usually immigrants, usually people who are working class, usually people. I mean, this is why the Scopes trial takes place in the south. Southerners are thought of as too many people because they're thought of as backwards.

Black people, Italian people, Jewish people, you know, outsiders. They're the surplus population. And whether it's the contraceptive revolution or whether especially I'm going to focus on to the degree that it's grounded in a zero population growth ideology, that it's bad to have babies. And that shows up in the abortion industry. That shows up in a lot of like the Davos world and the United Nations sustainability. It shows up in a lot of corporate engagement that in order to be sustainable, we have to have fewer people. History shows in order to be sustainable, we have to have more people. The most sustainable thing that we can do economically is to fulfill God's commandment to fill the earth and subdue it.

There are no surplus people. And I think it's interesting. I think this story is called A Christmas Carol because Jesus, Yeshua of Nazareth, would very easily have been classified as surplus population in a Malthusian worldview. Now, the poor and workhouses in England weren't fictional, of course.

So how did the economic system there and elsewhere get so confused? Well, I, by the way, note that they're government entities. So Scrooge is in some ways a welfare state person. In other words, men are going door to door saying we want to do private charity. He doesn't want to do private charity.

He wants to do it through taxes where it's impersonal. The workhouses and the prisons, they were, they in essence, they would keep people alive, but it would be a terrible existence. So the idea is to punish them for being poor.

And that obviously is not the solution. So if you want to be the opposite of Scrooge, you're going to be pro baby and you're going to be pro private charity. You're going to be pro generosity. And by the end, that's exactly what Scrooge is. He's pro generosity.

By the way, another little side story. When he visits his nephew, Fred, you know, when Fred visits him, Fred implies that Scrooge was upset because Fred married. Why did you marry? Scrooge didn't want his nephew to marry because of surplus population.

You marry and you have children. See, it comes up again and again and again. Scrooge's whole existence was there's too many people. God, if he exists at all, is stingy.

By the end though, what is he? He's generous and he's especially generous to children. By the way, I don't know if people know this, but Dickens wrote a novel version of the gospels. He read the gospels and then wrote a novel.

I think it's called The Life of Our Lord and it has similar themes. So Dickens was thinking a lot about Jesus, wrote a novel about him, and also about he was one of those people who might have been considered the forgotten class, but he treated everyone with love and dignity, which made Jesus unusual. That's something Dickens really focuses on on the novel. Wow.

Yeah. Well said. Jerry, we're getting short on time. So when folks watch A Christmas Carol this season and perhaps look at it through this new lens, this filter that you've just shared, what would you hope, above all else, they take away from the story? That God is generous, not stingy. That Scrooge is damaged because he grew up in poverty.

It's real. There's trauma. And so we should be patient with him and help move him away, but that we should help move our entire Scrooge, ruling class philosophy away from Scrooge at the beginning towards Scrooge at the end, where everybody's welcome. We aren't bugs in the dust. It's interesting, the founder of the zero population growth movement, Paul Ehrlich, was a bug biologist. We're not bugs. Bugs just eat. Now, that's God.

God gave him that job. They don't produce. But human beings aren't bugs. We produce and we produce more than we consume. And over time, that has given us miraculous prosperity and flourishing, which Dickens was just seeing the beginning of. So I think we should watch it with gratitude and also understanding that there's real philosophy going on here and theology going on here.

It's not just a fun story. And then we should bring Dickens' philosophy into our own lives. The child in the womb who's unwanted is the Tiny Tim of our generation. Hmm. Wow. Well said.

What an opportunity to share this with our kids, too, as we watch this and help them interpret what they're seeing. Jerry, always thankful for you, my friend. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. God bless us, everyone. That's exactly right. And a great place to end today. That's Jerry Boyer, our resident economist.

We've been talking about Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. All right. Your calls are next. The number 800-525-7000.

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What is that about? Well, it's this idea that our true riches are in God and the things of this world pale in comparison, and yet we were created and hardwired for abundance and a longing for significance and security. And when we look to find the answer to that in the things of this world, we will be sorely disappointed. But when we make God the object of our affection and our devotion, surrender our lives to him, accepting the free gift of eternal life due to the shed blood of Jesus and nothing that we've done, and place our trust in him and then steward his resources with him as our ultimate treasure, living rich toward God, but with money becoming a tool to accomplish God's purposes.

Well, that's the good life. And a big part of that is giving and generosity. And we celebrate that in particular this season as we celebrate the ultimate gift, the gift of Jesus taking on flesh and coming down and being 100 percent man and 100 percent God and ultimately paying the ultimate sacrifice on the cross on our behalf. But as an overflow of gratitude for that, we want to be generous and instill that into our kids.

What does that look like? Well, in terms of teaching your kids to grow in generosity, here's just a couple of ideas before we head back to the phones today. Number one, model gratefulness. Express thankfulness for the resources God has given you. Teach your kids that God is the owner and the giver of all things and that the impact generosity has on your own family. Talk to them about generosity.

Tell them why you think living with an open hand is important. Connect your heart for generosity to God's generosity and then model it. You know, kids are amazing at detecting hypocrisy, so it's not enough to just tell them about generosity. You have to actually be generous. Show them how you're giving.

You're not bragging when you do this. You're teaching and then help them to see and understand the needs of others. Talk about those who have needs that you may be able to meet. Ask them to recall a time when they were in need and someone helped them. Let them earn money.

Here's the reality. Whether it's through an allowance or chores around the house, when we let them earn money that they can give from, they feel the sacrifice but also the joy. It becomes a little bit more real when it's theirs and not yours. I would say also introduce them to pastors and missionaries. You know, giving to the local church should be a priority, so let them meet those who help multiply their money's kingdom impact. Hopefully they'll see that they're giving to something much larger than themselves. Show them how to give a church.

It's probably best not to start with online giving. If there's a moment when they can give during a kid's worship service time, tell them about that. If they sit with you in the main service, bring some cash with you and let them drop it in the offering plate better yet. Let them bring their own money. Let them do it. Don't guilt them into giving.

Try not to push them too hard. God wants generosity to be an outflow of our hearts, and so we want the same thing for our children. But here's the reality. God's designed us not to be hoarders but conduits through which His generosity flows.

So be intentional and strategic about how you can teach your kids to be a conduit of God's generosity. I hope that's helpful today as you think practically about this really important topic. All right, let's dive into the phone calls here today. We're gonna head out to Idaho. Johnny, go ahead. Hi, Rob. Thanks for taking my call.

Really appreciate your guys' ministry. My 84-year-old mother wants to gift each of us four kids a CD each. Right now, each one is $100,000, and she just says she doesn't want to be responsible for all that money. So none of us really need it now. What's the way she can gift that to us without us having to, you know, incur all the taxes that go with it?

Well, here's the reality. I mean, if it is truly a gift, so this is her money that she's already paid tax on, however she earned it, and it's just sitting in a savings account or it's already in the CD, she can gift it to you. She would have to file a gift tax form 709. That's just going to chip away at her lifetime gift exclusion of $13 million. But you don't pay any tax on a gift. So as long as she reports it, and again, it goes against her lifetime exclusion of more than $13 million, so there's no tax for her, then, you know, you take that money as a gift and you're free to do what you want with it.

So there's not any tax that's going to be incurred on this at all. The only reason why you don't want to gift assets prior to death, if possible, is if they're appreciating assets that are ultimately, you know, that have a low capital gain or a low cost basis that would result in a high capital gain. But because when you inherit an asset, the cost basis steps up to the value of the date of death.

But that's not the reality here. This is just cash essentially in a CD. She's paying tax on the interest, you'll pay tax on the interest once it becomes yours, but the gift itself would not be taxable.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I was at the impression she could only do $18,000 a year. She can only do $18,000 a year without letting the IRS know, but she can go well beyond that.

She would just have to tell them about it. And again, anything beyond $18,000 in any one year chips away at the lifetime exclusion of $13 million. So you don't start eating away at that lifetime gift exclusion of $13 million until you get over $18,000 per person in any one calendar year. Okay, well that helps immensely. I appreciate very much. All right, thanks Johnny. Appreciate your call today. To Chicago, Patricia, you'll be our final caller.

We have just a minute and a half. Go ahead. I have two children that are in their late 30s now and they owe a lot of money on college debt and I'm thinking about paying them off and I'm wondering if I can use my money and well I can use my money but it's in like 401ks, IRA, Roth IRA. Is there any way that I can not have to pay taxes like pretending I bought a 529 many years ago but I didn't but not I couldn't afford to do it then but now I can but it's all in different accounts or can I get student aid so one of the debts is on student aid that government can I get them to lower some of the student debt that one of my kids has but one of my kids is on forbearance so she doesn't pay any she hardly pays any money on this but they're constantly adding interest and I'd love to see them not to have college debt and I don't know really what else to do and this would all come from my retirement money. Yeah, well just keep in mind here I appreciate your desire to help and want to help set them up for the future and that's admirable. I just want you to be aware that you know they have a long time to save for retirement and you don't and so you know by you pulling this money out of retirement to pay it off you know they've got a whole working life ahead of them to get these paid off whereas if you're pulling needed funds from your retirement you won't have that. There's not a way to get around that from a tax standpoint because you essentially have to take a withdrawal which if it's a traditional IRA is taxable if it's a Roth it would not be taxable if you're over 59 and a half but then again that money's not there for the future so you know if anything maybe just make a gift to them out of current cash flow if you have that ability but I'd be real hesitant for you to pull that out of your your retirement accounts pay tax on it and not have it available. I'm out of time today Patricia thanks for your call thanks to Amy Tahira, Jim and Peter. Thanks for you as well we'll see you next time. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith By and listeners like you.