On summer break children and grandchildren will travel across the countryside to go visit grandma and grandpa. As we gather together, or travel on vacation together; there will be a lot of down time as well. Often the challenges of keeping the family happy and entertained eventually leads to some kind of arcade, Chuck-E-Cheese, or video game family entertainment. As we watch our kids move from crawling through tunnels to driving cars, they seem to grow up right before our eyes. They seem oblivious to how fast the future is coming and roll their eyes when mom or dad say, “You are growing up so fast.”

Our children are racing into a future that is becoming increasingly uncertain. We want to pass the dreams we received from our parents on to our children and grandchildren. Will they have the same opportunities to thrive? Will they be given the same environment of liberty to pursue their own hopes as we had? Will they understand the importance of religious, political, and economic freedom? There are actually alot of economics to be learned at Chuck-E-Cheese.

The Bible teaches that God loves sound money. One of the roles of a just government is to protect its citizens from fraud. The most important financial protection a government can offer is to keep the currency strong. Consider how important God sees this issue:

Leviticus 19:35-36 You shall do no injustice in judgment in measurement of length, weight, or volume. You shall have honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 25:13 -16 13 You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light. 14 You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small,

You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who behave unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord your God.

Proverbs 16:11 Honest weights and scales are the Lord’s. All the weights in the bag are His work.

Proverbs 20:23 Diverse weights are an abomination to the Lord, and dishonest scales are not good.

What does it mean to have honest scales? What are dishonest scales? Let’s look at the Chuck-E-Cheese store first. We arrive at the arcade and give our children $20 worth of tokens to play games. As they win certain games, they collect tickets. They are so thrilled and excited to have earned over 1700 tickets in one hour. The come up with a bucket of their children’s currency with high hopes of being able to buy some great treasures and exciting toys. They’ve seen the wall covered with giant stuffed

animals and ipods. They’ve played hard in hopes of bringing one home.

Then they count up their currency and discover something. Their tickets don’t have the buying power they hoped. Their tickets are so “worthless” that it takes 500 of them just to get a blowpop. It takes 1000 to earn a Chinese handcuff. The ipods and giant stuffed bears cost over 20,000 tickets. They are disappointed. You realize something is messed up since you you gave them $20.00; and now if they spend all their winnings, they can only “afford” cheap toys that cost less then $1.50 at any dollar store. What’s happened here? The people in charge of the currency (Chuck-E-Cheese) have tinkered with the number of tickets you win and the prices of the cheap toys in such a way that your children’s money has lost it’s value.

The US government’s central planning has done the same thing to the US dollar. It’s lost over 80% (Some Estimates have it up to 97%) of its value over the past 100 years. The government even provides us a website to measure how much they’ve destroyed our currency here. The result: An ice cream cone that cost 0.26 cents when my grandfather took me to McDonalds when I was a child, now costs over one dollar for my children. Is the ice cream that much more valuable now? Does it have alot more intrinsic worth? No. It’s not that the prices are rising as much as the dollars and cents are worth less. You now need almost four times as many “tickets” from the US treasury to buy the same dessert. Something is wrong. Very wrong. Gas prices have doubled. Food costs more. Insurance costs more. Healthcare keeps rising. Though there are many factors to consider, the biggest is the tax on regular folks called inflation: the increase in the money supply. God hates unjust weights because it hurts the entire society. Inflation is the most insidious tax that no one can even see, but they can feel.
For more information, check out www.godonomics.com