As this previous post points out, we recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of this blog, which means that as Thanksgiving approaches for 2012 we already have five previous Thanksgiving posts to look back on from prior years. You can re-visit them yourself by following these links:
All of those previous posts featured the image of a "cornucopia," a traditional Thanksgiving motif. The cornucopia (or "Horn of Plenty") symbolizes abundance of blessings, in fact a miraculous super-abundance -- one which cannot be depleted and in fact never runs out. It is a fitting symbol for a holiday that commemorates that feast celebrated in 1621 to give thanks for their first successful
harvest by the pilgrims of Plymouth Bay Colony, joined by the Wampanoag
Indians led by Massasoit (who actually provided much of the food).
Those settlers, who had experienced hunger and even seen loved ones and friends die of starvation, did not take food for granted, and Thanksgiving was established to remind successive generations that we should not take the blessings that we enjoy for granted either (noting that sufficient food is one of the most fundamental of those).
In our previous Thanksgiving posts, we have also pointed to the importance of economic production -- and a focus on the production side of the economic equation -- because increased production makes the "pie" bigger for everyone. Many economists focus excessively on the consumption side or "demand side" of the equation, and by doing so fall into the error of viewing the world as a "fixed pie" or "zero-sum" situation, in which scarce resources must be divided up between competing populations and an increase in population necessarily means that someone will have to get less or even go without. We have long rejected that view.
Fortunately, in this country, economic liberty has created an environment in which people are largely free to innovate, create, and produce, and that environment has attracted an influx of people from all over the world who have done just that -- with the result that production has been so abundant it really does at times resemble a cornucopia.
This Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for our freedom and belief in the value of every human being as well as each of our ability to be the real solutions to basic economic problems.
We wish all of our readers a very happy Thanksgiving 2012.
Those settlers, who had experienced hunger and even seen loved ones and friends die of starvation, did not take food for granted, and Thanksgiving was established to remind successive generations that we should not take the blessings that we enjoy for granted either (noting that sufficient food is one of the most fundamental of those).
In our previous Thanksgiving posts, we have also pointed to the importance of economic production -- and a focus on the production side of the economic equation -- because increased production makes the "pie" bigger for everyone. Many economists focus excessively on the consumption side or "demand side" of the equation, and by doing so fall into the error of viewing the world as a "fixed pie" or "zero-sum" situation, in which scarce resources must be divided up between competing populations and an increase in population necessarily means that someone will have to get less or even go without. We have long rejected that view.
Fortunately, in this country, economic liberty has created an environment in which people are largely free to innovate, create, and produce, and that environment has attracted an influx of people from all over the world who have done just that -- with the result that production has been so abundant it really does at times resemble a cornucopia.
This Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for our freedom and belief in the value of every human being as well as each of our ability to be the real solutions to basic economic problems.
We wish all of our readers a very happy Thanksgiving 2012.