{"id":4242,"date":"2017-05-15T10:51:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T16:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=4242"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:40:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:40:58","slug":"the-politics-of-will-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/the-politics-of-will-rogers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Will Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m halfway through the run of Pioneer Theatre Company\u2019s production of \u201cThe Will Rogers Follies.\u201d I play Wiley Post, the aviator who was piloting the plane that went down\u00a0 in Alaska in 1935, claiming the lives of both Rogers and Post as a result. I spend the entire show sitting in the audience, yelling \u201cLet\u2019s go flying, Will\u201d every once in awhile. It\u2019s kind of a running joke until the end of the show, when it finally dawns on everyone as to what happens when Will finally takes me up on my offer.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4244\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4244\" style=\"width: 590px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/15\/the-politics-of-will-rogers\/will-rogers-follies-invad-199\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4244\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4244\" src=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Will-Rogers-Follies-INVAD-199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4244\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Let&#8217;s go flying, Will!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The subtitle of the plays is \u201cA Life in Revue,\u201d meaning that the events of Will Rogers\u2019s life are recounted in the context of an old-style Ziegfeld Follies extravaganza, complete with massive old-school singing and dancing from a bevy of beautiful showgirls. It\u2019s mostly lighthearted fun, but you get a clear sense of Will Rogers\u2019s political point of view throughout, most notably his serious\u00a0third-party credentials.<\/p>\n<p>At one point, he is asked which political party he belongs to. \u201cOh, I don\u2019t belong to any organized party,\u201d he replies. \u201cI\u2019m a Democrat.\u201d He also claims that Democratic conventions are much more fun than Republican ones, because the Democrats know they aren\u2019t going anywhere afterwards. In real life, he\u00a0stepped away from the Democrats in 1928 to run for president as the head of the Debunk Party, which actually carried the District of Columbia in the general election.\u00a0 Rogers said he took that as a personal compliment, seeing as how the people in DC are the ones who have to live with whoever gets elected for the next four years.<\/p>\n<p>The show turns serious right near the end, as Will Rogers goes on the radio to address the country in the wake of the Great Depression.\u00a0 The dialogue in the show is a condensed version of a speech that\u2019s come to be known as \u201c\u201cBacons, Beans, and Limousines.\u201d You can watch it for yourself here:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Will Rogers - Bacon, Beans, and Limousines\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kyfvamwM4Yo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Watching the speech every night has been a delight, as David Lutken\u2019s performance in the role of Will Rogers has been a joy from beginning to end. Having seen it multiple times, I have had ample opportunity to consider not just the performance but Will Rogers\u2019s message, which has sparked an economic epiphany for me.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, I\u2019ve decided that a major source of the world&#8217;s economic and political missteps come\u00a0from the mistaken assumption that money and wealth are the same thing. That was an assumption that Will Rogers embraced, and the speech in the show contains a couple of moments that demonstrate that he didn\u2019t make any distinction between the two.<\/p>\n<p>The first comes when Rogers, talking about how to relieve the suffering of the unemployed, insists that this shouldn\u2019t be too difficult to do. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the money,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s as much money in the country as there ever was, only fewer people have it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a strict sense, that\u2019s true, but it\u2019s also irrelevant. There probably were just as many pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them after the 1929 stock market crash as there were before it. But that same amount of money represented a smaller amount of wealth. When old people go on and on about how, in their day, it only cost a nickel to ride the bus, they\u2019re ignoring the fact that a nickel back then reflected essentially the same amount of wealth as the two bucks it takes to ride the bus today. Probably more, in fact, given the technological improvements that have cut the real costs of public transportation. Money is a reflection of wealth, not the other way around.<\/p>\n<p>When the stock market crashed, the money didn\u2019t go anywhere, but a huge amount of wealth disappeared. (Actually, in strictly economic terms, that\u2019s not entirely true, as the stock market was trading on an assumption that the country had more wealth than it actually had, and the crash was the free market making a ruthless correction to bring fantasy in line with reality. But that\u2019s getting a little too far into the weeds on this.)\u00a0 So while Will Rogers could stand up and say there was just as much money as there ever was, he couldn\u2019t accurately go on the air and say there was just as much wealth in this country as there ever was, because there wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>If money and wealth were identical, the way out of the Depression would be for the government to write everyone a check for a million dollars. In fact, why doesn\u2019t the government just write us all billion dollar checks and be done with it? We could all be rich! I get first dibs on the private jet with the cool flames on the sides.<\/p>\n<p>But that doesn\u2019t work, because giving everyone a bunch of money for no reason just makes everything cost more. When you increase the money supply without a commensurate increase in wealth, a billion dollars can\u2019t buy you a private jet any more than today\u2019s nickel can get you a bus ticket. You end up having to take wheelbarrows full of dollar bills to the grocery stores to buy one loaf of bread. That\u2019s why governments that try to dig their way out of debt by printing up more money end up collapsing into crushing poverty that takes generations to overcome. If you doubt me, take a vacation in Venezuela and see how well printing money has solved all their problems.<\/p>\n<p>The second part of Rogers\u2019s speech that raised some economic red flags was when he started talking about how we get money. \u201cA man can make a million dollars overnight and he&#8217;s on every front page in the morning,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it never tells you who gave up that million that he got. You can\u2019t get money without taking it from somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is the kind of zero-sum thinking that fuels President Trump\u2019s rants against China. He\u2019s always complaining about how much money we \u201close\u201d in trade with other countries, when neither country loses anything. When people pay money for something, they\u2019re doing it to get something in return. When we give China a billion dollars, they give us a whole bunch of stuff, much of which we can resell at a higher profit than what we paid for it. In international trade, it&#8217;s usually the case that after money changes hands, both sides walk away wealthier.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, a great deal of money spent on perishable goods that don\u2019t appreciate in value, but even in those exchanges, both parties walk away satisfied, because nobody feels wealthier if they go to bed hungry when they refuse to buy food for dinner. Money, therefore, is usually offered as a reward for creating wealth, and those who \u201cgive up that million that he got\u201d always get something of value in return for their cash.<\/p>\n<p>Those misunderstandings aside, Rogers is on to something when he talks about wealth disparity and the social responsibility we have to care for our neighbors. While the free market is very good at creating wealth, it\u2019s entirely indifferent to the needs of those who, for whatever reason, are not able to create enough wealth to meet their needs. Good government is able to balance the need for a vibrant free market with concern for the poor. Such balances require active compromise and consensus, and they require input from all sides.<\/p>\n<p>This is probably why Will Rogers\u2019s maxim that he never met a man he didn\u2019t like is so valuable in today\u2019s political world. He\u2019s not saying that he endorses everyone&#8217;s point of view; he\u2019s saying that even people who do the wrong things are often doing it for the right reasons. Accepting the good faith of an ideological opponent is a great way to build a country, and a great way to live a life.<\/p>\n<p>To sum up: Will Rogers had some economic misunderstandings, but overall, he was on to something. You\u2019ll get a better sense of it if you come see my show. Get a ticket on the third row, and you can even sit next to me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019mhalfway through the run of Pioneer Theatre Company\u2019s production of \u201cThe Will Rogers Follies.\u201d I play Wiley Post, the aviator who was piloting the plane that went down\u00a0 in Alaska in 1935, claiming the lives of both Rogers and Post as a result. I spend the entire show sitting in the audience, yelling \u201cLet\u2019s go  ... <a title=\"The Politics of Will Rogers\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/the-politics-of-will-rogers\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about The Politics of Will Rogers\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4242"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5186,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions\/5186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}