"Rich Man, Poor Man -- Who's the Beggar Man or Thief?" (Part 1)

By David Brandt Berg, November 11, 1974

Webmaster's Note: This is indeed a classic article by David Berg! And the artwork is great! It's written as for children but I think you adults will enjoy it. :-)

A poor man begging and the rich man is digging in the poor man's pocket for money to give him a donation!

The STORY of the RICH and the POOR--A Child's Course in Economics! -- Or, What's the Matter with the Oil and Money?

Dear Children:

Once upon a time in a very big city in a very big country there lived very many poor people and very few rich.

NOW IN THE BEGINNING, GOD, THEIR HEAVENLY FATHER, BEFORE ANYBODY WAS RICH OR POOR, HAD GIVEN EVERYBODY ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT of land and food and things with which to build their houses and make their clothes and beasts to carry their burdens and help plow the land so they could grow their food and carry their things they made to market to trade for other things that other people made that they liked and needed and who liked and needed to trade their things for their things. See?

AND EVERYBODY WAS HAPPY AND HAD EVERYTHING THEY REALLY NEEDED AND HAD NO WARS. Everybody worked hard to grow their own food and make their own clothes and build their own houses so each had plenty of what he needed.

BUT SOME WORKED EVEN HARDER THAN OTHERS AND GREW AND MADE ENOUGH EXTRA THINGS TO TRADE for the extra things and food that other hard workers grew and made too. That way different people grew and made different things they could trade for other different things that other people grew and made.

SO PEOPLE GOT TO DOING WHAT THEY CALLED "TRADING," and this business of taking all these different things to market to trade for all these other different things made by other people was called "marketing" and "trade." Some people grew lots of food but not much cotton or wool to make their clothes with, so they would take their extra food to their market and trade it for the cotton and wool that other people had lots of but needed more food. Others had lots of trees and grew lots of timber for building houses, much more than they themselves really needed, but they too needed more food or clothing, so they'd take their wood to market to trade for the food and clothing they needed. See?

EVERYTHING MOVED RATHER SLOWLY because they only had horses and oxen and elephants and camels and animals like that to carry all these things. So life went rather slow and easy and nobody was in much of a hurry and they had lots of time to relax, ate good natural healthful food the way God made it, and had lots of good normal healthy exercise, working and walking and riding and trading and playing together.

THEY BREATHED NICE CLEAN FRESH AIR AND DRANK NICE CLEAN PURE WATER, and got lots of nice quiet restful sleep at night and lived in comfy warm little tents, cabins, huts or houses with little fires and the few things they needed and the few clothes they wore.

AND EVERYBODY WAS PRETTY HAPPY AND THERE WEREN'T MANY FUSSES OR FIGHTS OR WARS because everybody was healthy and happy and had what they needed and shared and helped each other. Because God taught them to love one another and to help each other and be happy with their happy healthy little lives and the very few things that they really needed.

NOBODY REALLY NEEDED VERY MUCH--just enough to eat and clothes to keep warm and tiny tents, caves or houses to live in for shelter, and a few animals to help them with their work.

SO EVERYBODY WAS HAPPY AND CONTENTED WITH THE LITTLE HE HAD because it was enough to satisfy all his needs and the needs of others.

BUT THE DEVIL, GOD'S AND MAN'S ENEMY, WAS NOT HAPPY ABOUT ALL THIS because he likes to make people unhappy and sad and mad, and he's very unhappy when everybody's glad because that makes him very mad!

SO HE DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT TO TRY TO RUIN ALL THIS NICE PEACEFUL WORLD THAT GOD HAD CREATED and destroy as many of these happy people as he could and try to wreck the whole thing so he could be happy!--So he began causing all kinds of trouble!

HE BEGAN TEMPTING SOME OF THESE HAPPY CONTENTED PEOPLE WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF EVIL called "higher education" 'or how to be unhappy by thinking you can be happier by knowing more than you really need to know and getting more things than you really need to have.

AND SOME PEOPLE BELIEVED HIM, SO THEY BEGAN LEARNING A LOT OF EVIL THINGS called man's wisdom and higher education, and they began stealing from each other the things that belonged to others or tricking them out of some of these things so they themselves could have more!

WHILE THE POOR PEOPLE THEY WERE OUTSMARTING and robbing and cheating and killing to get more than their share became known as the poor, dumb, uneducated, overworked labourers, the weak and the meek ones.

THE PEOPLE WHO BEGAN GETTING ALL THIS EVIL KNOWLEDGE of how to trick and rob others and lie and steal and cheat and even kill to get it began to be known as the rich and the powerful and the great ones, the smart ones!

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL RICH by their evil wisdom of the Devil were even so smart with their evil knowledge and lies called higher education, propaganda and advertising, that they even convinced lots of poor people that they were right and persuaded them to voluntarily give up some of the few things they had to make them even poorer and the rich even richer, so the rich could have more and more and the poor less and less. These are called "taxes" and "profits" and "interest."

THE RICH EVEN PERSUADED AND FORCED THE POOR TO MAKE THEM SOMETHING NEW CALLED "WAR" AND "WEAPONS," like swords and spears and guns and tanks and planes and bombs so the rich could fight these wars with other rich people to try to grab what they had too!

THEY EVEN MADE THE POOR PEOPLE FIGHT THESE WARS FOR THEM, when all the poor really wanted was peace and enough to eat and wear and a place to sleep!

BUT SOME OF THE POOR WERE NOT VERY HAPPY ABOUT THIS AND BEGAN TO COMPLAIN AND REFUSE to pay these taxes and fight these wars and rebelled against letting the rich rob and kill them this way and make them so unhappy. This is called "revolution."

SO THE RICH USED THEIR WEAPONS TO FORCE THE POOR TO FIGHT THEIR WARS AND PAY these taxes, profits and interests and continued to rob and kill them by force if they refused!

BUT THE RICH NEEDED A LOT OF SMART PEOPLE CALLED "TECHNICIANS" AND "ENGINEERS" AND "SCIENTISTS" TO MAKE THESE weapons and war machines for them and teach the poor how to build them and also how to make other fancy things they wanted but didn't really need, like machines to travel very fast in because the rich were always in a big hurry to make more riches and fight more wars and have more power to try to be happier than anybody else.

THE WEAPONS AND MACHINES OF WAR ARE CALLED "MUNITIONS" and the smart people whom the rich trained to teach the poor how to use them and lead them in these wars are called the "military," and these fast ways of getting around are called "modern transportation." The rich also needed smart people to build ways of getting messages to these war leaders faster so they could fight the wars better, and to their market places quicker so they could make more riches in a hurry.

SO THEY PAID THESE SMARTER POOR PEOPLE MORE THINGS TO INVENT THESE quicker ways of getting messages, ideas and information back and forth, called "communications," like the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, etc.

THE RICH ALSO HAD TO HAVE QUICKER WAYS OF EXCHANGING THE EXTRA THINGS they didn't need for other things other rich had that they wanted to trade them for, as it was pretty hard to keep carrying them back and forth to each other even on these big new machines they made.

SO THE RICH INVENTED A NEW WAY OF TRADING these goods back and forth without even moving a lot of them so they could just keep them in their bigger and bigger barns and storage places called warehouses without even moving them around too much except when absolutely necessary.

THIS NEW WAY OF EXCHANGING GOODS WITHOUT ACTUALLY MOVING THEM VERY OFTEN WAS CALLED "MONEY." At first this money was something really valuable, like gold and silver and diamonds and jewels and pretty things like that that the rich always like to decorate themselves and their houses with and which they valued very much to show that they were very rich. But the rich also wanted other things like finer food and clothing and grander houses and fancier machines and bigger lands.

SO THEY WOULD AGREE AMONGST THEMSELVES TO TRADE SOME OF THESE VALUABLES LIKE GOLD AND SILVER AND JEWELS THAT THEY LIKED SO MUCH FOR THESE OTHER THINGS they needed and wanted, like houses and lands where they grew things and factories where they made things and the machines to make them and travel in and talk back and forth with. The rich man who paid this kind of valuable money for the valuable things he wanted was called the "buyer" and the man who traded him the things for the money was called the "seller."

THIS BECAME KNOWN AS BUYING AND SELLING FOR MONEY, A WHOLE NEW WAY OF TRADING things back and forth. It worked pretty good for a while, but pretty soon the rich became so rich and paid such big "prices" (the amount of money you pay for a thing you want) for such big things they wanted that it was even hard to carry the gold and silver and jewels back and forth as they became so heavy and hard to hide from robbers and other rich who might rob them while carrying them!

SO THEY HAD TO INVENT A WHOLE NEW KIND OF MONEY THAT WOULDN'T BE SO HARD TO HIDE AND CARRY AND TRADE, CALLED "PAPER MONEY" OR "CURRENCY." Each rich country run by its rich people would hide their gold and silver and jewels in strong thick-walled buildings called "treasuries," "vaults," "banks," etc. Then they'd print these little pieces of paper in a special way, each little piece showing that the rich of that country had that much gold or silver, etc., in the treasury or the bank, as much as was written on the piece of paper. Then they could take it to the bank or the treasury and trade the piece of paper for the real thing, the gold or the silver.

THEY COULD JUST TRADE THESE LITTLE PIECES OF PAPER FOR THE THINGS they needed or wanted so they wouldn't have to move the actual valuable gold and silver money around so much. The little pieces of paper money were supposed to show that they had that much real gold and silver money in the bank that they could trade it in for if they wanted to.

THIS MONEY ("MONKEY"?) BUSINESS WAS ALL CALLED THE "MONETARY SYSTEM," or a very easy way of trading things quickly without actually having to move anything but these little bits of paper money. But pretty soon the rich got so rich even with paper money that it would have taken a lot of trucks to carry it around while trading it from one rich man to another.

THEY GOT SO RICH THAT EVEN THE PAPER MONEY GOT TOO HEAVY TO CARRY! SO THE RICH INVENTED ANOTHER WHOLE NEW WAY OF TRADING CALLED "CHEQUES," a way of not only trading goods or gold but even trading paper money, so they wouldn't even have to move the paper money so much back and forth from bank to bank! They could leave the paper money in the bank and write these little notes to the bank called cheques telling the bank to pay so-and-so so much money out of their money at the bank called a "bank account."

THEN THEY COULD JUST WRITE CHEQUES FOR THEIR MONEY in their bank accounts to pay for the things they wanted to buy. This made the big business of big buying and selling of big things by the big rich much easier and faster in a new kind of market called the "stock market" where they could trade things back and forth without ever even seeing them or the money either!

THEY COULD EVEN TRADE WHOLE FACTORIES AND BUSINESSES and gold and silver and sugar and cotton and wheat and all kinds of things at the stock market with these little pieces of paper called "cheques." And the things or parts of things they wanted to trade were shown by papers called "stocks."

THE STOCK MARKETS EVEN TRADE PAPER MONEY THAT'S NOT EVEN PAID OR THERE YET, CALLED "BONDS." These are "loans" or amounts of money which people, businesses or governments have promised to pay later when they have it, because they don't have it right now but hope to have it later by selling goods or doing business or taxing the people some more so they can pay it later on.

THESE PROMISES TO PAY LATER ARE CALLED "BONDS" because that word is supposed to mean they're bound to pay it sooner or later because these bonds are also pieces of paper which say they promise to pay it back sometime together with even a little bit more called "interest" on these loans.

THE STOCKS ARE ALSO PIECES OF PAPER CALLED "SHARES," which means that if you own one of them, one of these little pieces of paper called a "share," you own a share in some kind of business, factory, gold mine or stocks of goods like gold, silver and other precious and useful metals, or foods like sugar and cocoa and coffee, or textiles like cotton or wool, etc.

THESE ACTUAL REAL GOODS OR THINGS ARE CALLED "COMMODITIES" and they are also bought and sold on the stock market for various amounts of money called "stock prices," paper money which is actually exchanged by these little pieces of paper called cheques. But the rich are always in such a hurry to get richer quicker, even these ways of trading money and things called goods, etc., have become too slow.

EVEN THE CHEQUES ARE SO MANY NOW THEY'RE BECOMING TOO HEAVY FOR THE BANKS TO HANDLE SO FAST because things are being bought and sold at such a rate and money exchanged so fast the banks are having a hard time keeping up with it all!

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...and much more--all in terms that are relatable and easy to follow. Personal accounts from active Christians around the world confirm that God is still alive and working just as wonderfully as ever on behalf of those who love Him.

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