Overheard Conversations Dept.

Locale: Post Office

They need to give more back. I mean charities and taxes. They are keeping us poor.

I only agree that some rich ought to think more about charitable giving. It seems that some rich only think about that when they know it will be revealed as part of running for office or getting appointed to a public office.

I am a charitable giver because God expects it of me. It's all God's money in the first place.

Where I disgree but I don't take offense is that the person I overhead (perhaps not -- she was quite loud and proclaiming it to the public) is that a rich person making another dollar is taking a dollar out of a poor person's pocket.

The size of the economic pie is not fixed, and it grows with something called capital.

What is capital?

Capital is money (you knew that already...) being used to make more money. The other uses of money are consumption (i.e. what you put in your mouth -- goods and services for which you are the end user), taxes, and gifts.

Over and over again on talk radio, I hear (a) examples of basic economic illiteracy and (b) knowledgeable people complaining as I am now that without many more Americans understanding the difference between consumption and capital, we capitalists are doomed.