Your Teacher Said What?! Read Free

property. Like a farmer can tell his cows where they can go and what they can eat because they’re his property. But people aren’t cows. And in my opinion, we should mostly leave them alone, to make up their own minds how hard to work and what to buy and sell.
    That’s what free markets are.
    In elementary school we learned about our forefathers and the great sacrifices they made that allow us to live the way we do. George Washington and his army marched right through my own township in pursuit of freedom for Americans. The Declaration of Independence states that all Americans have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I believe I have a better understanding of what that really means after working on this book.
    Oh, and here’s another lesson I learned: I will never complain about another homework assignment again. This was definitely the longest assignment in my life, so far.

CHAPTER 1
    January 2009: The Progressive Slot Machine
    By January 2009, the Great Recession had been going on for more than a year; the U.S. government was about to take over Chrysler and General Motors, unemployment was through the roof, and the stock market had fallen by more than 40 percent. There was no shortage of reasons to be angry, but at least none of them affected my kids. Or so I thought . . .
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    â€œDad?”
    â€œYes, Blake?”
    â€œWhat’s a recession?”
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    I didn’t think that my then-nine-year-old daughter wanted the technical answer—two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Or maybe I just didn’t want to have to explain that day what GDP stands for, much less how it’s calculated.
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    â€œA recession is when the economy stops growing and starts shrinking.”
    â€œEconomy?”
    I should have known better.
    â€œThe economy is the sum of all the buying and selling that goes on in America. All the stuff we buy and sell, like food and clothes and cars and houses and such; and all the work we do, and we pay for, like your tennis camp or your guitar teacher. When we buy and sell more stuff and services in this year than we did last year, then the economy is growing; when we buy less, it’s in recession.”
    â€œMy teacher says the recession is the banks’ fault.”
    â€œThat’s way too simple, Blake. For something as big as this recession, there’s a lot of blame to go around.”
    â€œAnd my teacher says it’s ’cause we care too much about buying stuff, and it might not be so bad if we stopped.”
    â€œYour teacher said . . . what ?”
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    The Great Recession was a wake-up call for everyone, but this exchange had the same effect as a bathtub full of ice water falling on my head. I was panicked at the thought that my very smart young daughter had fallen prey to a media culture and an educational system that were not only completely ignorant of the nature of a free-market economy but, often enough, hostile to it. It was as if I had learned that she was being taught geology by a member of the Flat Earth Society.
    How long had this been going on? Probably since the day Blake began kindergarten and started being exposed to the economic philosophies of adults other than her mother and me. But I didn’t really think about how to respond until January 20, 2009.
    When Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office, I admit I understood the proud cheers of the hundreds of thousands of people lining the parade route in Washington that day. I didn’t vote for the guy, but I’m not a complete dolt, and I could see how his election said something pretty positive about America. Pundit after pundit had spent the preceding weeks reminding me that this was something that couldn’t have happened anywhere else, and if they had drunk just a little too much of the Obama Kool-Aid, they weren’t completely wrong. A black man with, shall we say, a foreign-sounding name had just been elected the