10. The Inevitable Pendulum Effect and The Restoration

So, I've been thinking a lot about this new Health Bill that was passed earlier this week. I'm going to leave my opinions as to the correctness of the bill, but I do want to comment on the interesting thing the Bill represents to me and what it teaches me about both human nature and The Restoration of the Gospel. To do so, let me give you a brief history of economic thought in America:

You can really boil down government interaction with economy into two very simple categories: heavy government involvement or light involvement. This involvement comes in many many ways; some of the most basic being taxation, printing more money, lowering interest rates and creating programs in hopes of creating jobs and economic stimulus, just to name a few. As we went into the 20th century, we had a small deficit and a view of small government as the way to go. Then came the Great Depression. Our reaction? We changed our ideals and went with big government involvement which resulted in a stimulated economy and a greatly enlarged deficit. This of course led to unexplainable recessions, high taxes and a stifled economy in the 70's. Where did we go from here? We opted for Regonomics with it's small government which resulted in a more efficient and booming economy.

Now, here we are at the beginning of the century in an unexplainable recession and where are we going from here? With the new Health Bill we are clearly going toward big government which will inevitably result in a larger deficit (everything has it's cost).

To me this pendulum swing is so true to life and human nature. We rarely pick the middle row, but always go from one extreme to the next. We tend to over-correct as we see injustice or inefficiency. Think of the reformation--too much pomp and work in the catholic church so instead we get the bare-bones Lutheran church with a "no works allowed" policy and a focus on faith.

To me one of the evidences that The LDS Church really is the restored church is that it is a perfect blend of the two--in no way a pendulum reaction to current religion. It is devoid of human nature's desire to over-correct. God knows how to correct and not over-correct.