Jacob Imam debates Trent Horn on whether it is generally immoral to invest in 401k’s for retirement.
Affirmative: Jacob Imam
Negative: Trent Horn
Trent’s Podcast:
NEWPOLITY:
20 minute opening statements
10 minute rebuttals
10 minute cross examination periods
20 minute audience Q+A
5 minute closing statements
SPONSORS:
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Hallow:
0:00 Lofi
3:28 Intro to debate format
4:15 Jacob Imam Opening Statement
24:15 Trent Horn Opening Statement
44:32 Jacob’s Rebuttal
54:46 Trent’s Rebuttal
1:10:32 Jacobs’s Cross-Examination of Trent
1:22:01 Trent’s Cross-Examination of Jacob
1:32:20 Definition of speculation (Start of Q&A)
1:35:44 Prudence and family (communal activity)
1:39:42 Bishops actions
1:44:22 Where should a Catholic invest
1:47:43 Usury
1:50:37 Ownership (and exceptions to immoral)
1:57:06 Jacob Imam Closing Statement
2:01:02 Trent Horn Closing Statement
2:06:11 Wrap-up…(read more)
LEARN MORE ABOUT: 401k Plans
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HOW TO INVEST IN SILVER: Silver IRA Investing
Who do you think won and why?
Here's a rule of thumb: If you are trying to make enough on gambling to retire on, you're sinning… The point with the licity of games of chance is : you can put down $20 on poker night, because you're not tearing the social fabric looking for a thrill or profit. It's like Chesterton said about drinking: only do it if you don't need it. The argument Trent is making from games of chance utterly misses the point. Gambling should only ever be a minor, private, harmless pleasure, a tiny bubble of excess. It should never shape our family's and community's life. The fluctuations of passively indexed markets now determine our social intstitutions… but this is OK because the Church doesn't condemn poker night, raffles and Bingo.
I've never heard/seen anyone refute Jacob Imam by taking on any of his arguments or sources (St. Thomas, Pope Benedict, St. John Paul II, St. Augustine) directly.
I didn't know this was a controversy.
How does this guy run an economics podcast and he somehow doesn’t understand how equity markets function?
It was really disappointing to see Trent fall into the correlation-causation fallacy around the 37-38 min mark. The fact that the standard of living increased while stock market investing was ubiquitous does not imply that it happened because of stock market investing. That was really sloppy.
Hot take. Both scalping and speculation in general serve a useful economic purpose and are not wrong de facto (although circumstances must be considered). This discussion needs more nuance. Also, his gripe against diversification is quite far-fetched.
1:24:22 Pat Smith has a great hypothesis that if the Popes still ruled the Papal States, they would have proper sources of revenue and wouldn't have to lean on investments that turn out to be sketchy
I think economics is outside of Trent's scope. Levi Russell would have been a better fit. But I'm not sure if there will be a disagreement between him and Jacob
Trent horn goes to comicon, he looses any argument with that !———– look at apples logo ! A bite of the poison apple !
1:38:00 "It's the mindset that's bad; not the 401k." Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! WE HAVE A WINNER!
1:28:55 Jacob laughes at people who have to buy canned cat food so they can eat! I bet he would also laugh at people who have to choose between buying food to eat or buying heart medications. I'm trying really hard right now to be patient.
So, I take it that Jacob's bank account is always at a $0.00 balance. Every two weeks he receives his paycheck; buys groceries only for the next two weeks and places the rest of his paycheck to what….???? Possibly charities…? He said it should be for immediate/present needs. By that line of reasoning no one can save any money period. I can't 'put off' money to buy a car in the future!?! Or a house?!? I guess he still lives in the garage of mom and pop's house.
Jacob has JOY to accompy his excellent arguments.
This was a great debate. Generally, I think Trent is correct in his cautions, but I think Jacob is correct in that Catholics need to much more conscious and conscientious investors. We need to worry as much (even more) about whether our investments are being used to build the kingdom of God, and of building authentic Catholic culture. I would love to see Jacob and New Polity provide more POSITIVE guidance on how Catholics can invest their money wisely and morally.
2:03:35 This captures the essence of what went wrong this debate. I respect Trent, but this is simply an ad hominem.
Speculation actually can be a good and virtuous thing to do. It is not always virtuous, but it certainly can be.
Imam so far is conflating regular distribution with a rent seeking market manipulation scheme.
I think any proper market function is moral and any rent seeking behavior immoral.
I think most enterprise has some rent seeking aspect to it, this stabilizes the business and ultimately allows for greater work to happen. But I do tend to think mutual funds in particular as they are marketed are deceptive and a net negative.
Actively managed assets like mutual funds overwhelmingly are slower at growth but see less decline in a bear market. But they are sold not as a risk mitigation instrument but rather a wealth generating machine.
This is akin to selling someone a life insurance scheme as a retirement vehicle.
Deception and alienation of what something is suggests it doesn't generate proper value in the marketplace.
Mutual funds may therefore operate more like a pyramid scheme than we yet realize.
Have only listened to half so far, but it seems to me that we must take caution not to be Pharisaical by creating rules, around rules, around more rules to 'keep people from sinning.' This crushes the human soul just as it did in 1st century Judaism. However, I do think Jacob's vision for more intentional investing is beautiful and I hope more people take it seriously.
Hey Zoomers, don't worry. Your company won't be offering you one anyway.
I also feel like Trent is specifically ignoring many of Jacob's points.
Around 56:00 Trent says that Jacob's definition of speculation is "buying low and selling high".
Jacob already clarified that isn't the definition he's using, and is actually using an economic authoritative definition of speculation in which there is no value added to involve price increases.
Shortly after, Trent says that investing in 401(k) is justifiable because it helps companies to build capital. We already know from Jacob's opening statement that that is not true, as this form of investing is generally through mutual funds, not the purchasing of stock put on the market by the companies themselves. Little to none of the moneys invested in 401(k) actually go to the companies themselves. All of Trent's points have already been answered by Jacob, unfortunately I don't think Trent even realizes it.
Essentially Trent's point is that something isn't arguably immoral unless explicitly stated in the catechism.
I find that incredibly hard to agree with.
The catechism is bound by physical restraints, it can't hold all of the conceivably immoral actions humans can contrive, hence why the catechism is an ever growing document.
The fact that we have debates like this is proof that we're willing to contemplate the morality of actions on a deeper level than that prescribed by the catechism (of course without denying church teaching).
Trent basically just continues to contemplate on the morality of actions any farther than that discussed in the catechism, which he knows full well is a growing document.
I feel like neither side really clarified the idea of “solely for the sake of profit”. Other than a Scrooge McDuck type who gets some kind of greedy kick out of having more and more money for its own sake, no one works or invests only for the sake of profit. People seek money and profit as a means to something else weather it be necessities, charity, or pleasantries all of which can contribute to the common good. Jacob seems to miss this point and seemingly equates profit seeking whole cloth with unjustifiable greed. While I absolutely respect what Jacob is trying to do, Trent’s point about this discussion having a scrupulous or pharsaiacal character hits home for me. For transparency I am someone who both has a 401k and struggles with scrupulous tendencies.
Jacob changes his rules and definitions as he sees fit.
Does he make money off his past videos from years ago? This is no longer work. And he is getting illicit gains?
“Only 401Ks” and no Roth 401Ks”. Okay so my IRA, Roth IRA, Roth 401k or in a taxable account is fine?? Debate over? Jacob wins? Then this entire debate is pointless and serves no use to judge the morality of any sort of investing vehicle and what a waste of time
Buying a stock is not speculative. Speculation means there’s no underlying value in the stock. If I calculate the value through FMV, or discounted free cash flow. And a stock is lower than that value, because some one else uses a different discount rate than me and I purchase it I am not merely speculating it will increase. I’ve calculated what the price should be. Also inflation increases the stock price, rather than just putting cash in my mattress, so it’s not just for profit, but to just keep my dollar value the same, which he suggests is fine for gold for some reason, but not a stock. Interesting.
Hopefully this example ends the "debate". In a 401K, mutual funds with stocks is not the only way to "invest" There are bond funds and money market funds/cash and REITS. So if an employee decides to utilize the 401K for just the 3, 5, 7% match to overcome inflation with just the match and uses just the money market option, similar to putting your money in the bank or saving, what is the more prudent decision? With a bank for most people, if you are lucky, you can get 1% currently as I think the highest rate now is 1.25%. Thus, just with the match most employees are getting 3% which is much more than double what you can get in a bank and since you have your money in the 401K money market fund the analogy is consistent since you are not investing in any immoral companies, but putting your money in a "savings" bank LIKE manner, but because of the MATCH earning more than twice as much as you would in a bank which doesn't even come close [1%], since the average cost of inflation over history prior to the Biden disaster is less than the typical employer 401K match.
Won? This is not about winning. Did Jesus "win" on the cross. This is about prudent and virtuous actions that enable one through logic, evidence, data and math to be able to have the best opportunity to do God's work until death after retirement if you hopefully are not counting on someone else (family) to support you. In a sense, I would say both lost, but what was lost is that employees are not buying and selling within their 401Ks and 401Ks have nothing to do with speculation, as Trent was saying but the word was used the most with buy low and sell high, none of which are reality in the 401K approach. As a follow on, I hope Trent can return and discuss how to make the 401K approach more beneficial to the employee instead of having an employee buy and hope losing 35%-50 in value during the bust cycle every 7-11 years, why not have services and guidelines available to the employee to maneuver, they exist but not within the current construct of the 401K system especially since managers prohibit the frequency of maneuvering which is not optimal for the employee. Would be great to have Trent address this in a follow-on discussion, while Jacob pretends there is an alternative for the average employee today, when never mentioning once that alternative except for the notion that everyone and all relatives should be together in one tight community all supporting each other, noting in the past half -century several have tried, but none of them seemed to have worked to date for numerous reasons. If a person has saved $100K and the portfolio value retracts to $50K during a recession, what percentage does the portfolio now have to gain just to get back to $100K? Answer? That is why you can not buy and hope within the 401K; yet, 99% of employees are doing just that.
I was very surprised and disappointed that it took questions from Seth Francis to directly address the issue of inflation and for Sam Markum on his first question on how using the self-directed IRA later on to have total control of the investment; yet, mostly, that throughout the entire discussion the notion that an employee is buying low and selling high with a 401K is a total misnomer and not reality, why? Ask yourself or anyone who has a 401K, how did they/you choose which mutual funds to invest? Most won't remember and if they do it was a recommendation. Then ask the question, how many times have they maneuvered or sold one of the mutual funds. For 99% of the employees, the answer will be they haven't. A 401K has NOTHING to do with speculation. The 401K is an employee BENEFIT that has all to do with the MATCHING, matching money that is an incentive to attract the best employees. Jacob kept mentioning that the 401K was a relatively new phenomenon, but never gave an alternative except the family support; yet, I was hoping that Trent would have mentioned the reason the 401K and IRA came to be. Historically, an employee would work for the same company for 30+ years and receive the gold watch, remember? But more importantly, the employee received a pension. With longer life expectancies, neither the pension nor social security could be sustained into the future. That is why the 401K and IRA came to be to incentivize people to put aside money to grow via a matching program, since pensions and social security were not viable in the future. Then later on came the concept of Life-Cycled Funds or targeted funds, which do have good intentions, but here is the problem. Life-cycle funds and Targeted funds use other funds in their mix, so they are diversifying on other diversification which creates a mathematical dampening effect, which you can prove by comparing a targeted fund performance with the largest holding of the targeted fund at any point in time across the life-cycle. The reason why Jacob's saving now on your own is not an alternative is for one reason, INFLATION. Currently putting your money aside and saving in a bank at maybe 1-2% , if you are lucky, does not keep up with inflation, which means you are LOSING purchasing power of those savings, not gaining. Moreover, employees working for a particular company only have access to the mutual funds provided by that employer; an employee does not have an option to receive a match based on investing in a local coffee shop or the community, because that is not an option within the 401K construct. I think having Trent on again to talk about the restrictions of 401K managers that prohibit more than one roundtrip maneuver within a 30-day cycle would be beneficial why? The shortfall of the 401K paradigm is not that it is immoral, but it is setup for the buy and hold case, i.e. no one is guiding the employee on when to sell and buy. This discussion kept insinuating that these employees are buying low and selling high, but the reality is they are not because no one is guiding them on when to do that since the system is deliberately trying to discourage that with the roundtrip restrictions. So once again, ask yourself if you have a 401K or ask around, how many times has an employee, after their initial match setup, ever changed their mutual funds or changed their asset allocation based on what is going on in economy? The answer will be they have NOT. Tools and guidelines to help employees are available but they are not well known and are not within the company's 401K process and system. As history has taught over and over and over with recessions, depressions, COVID, and all-around fiat currencies, is that an employee or investor can not keep taking a 35% to 50% hit on capital every 7-12 years and expect the lack of decision and maneuvering to be prudent. The 401K process and system needs to get rid of the 30 day round trip restriction and provide tools and guidelines for the employee to be able to maneuver in order to be prudent and protect capital in their 401K. I was also surprised Trent did not reference the parable of the talents. Because, per Jacob's suggestion, those that are "saving" in a bank for retirement are not even maintaining the value of the talents and basically, now with inflation, congruent or equivalent to just burying the money or putting under a pillow via Seth Francis great question. In summary, the reality is for the average employee, there is NO alternative especially with the matching concept, because your family or relatives or community while you are working as an employee are not matching your contribution which is why 401Ks are listed under benefits within a corporation. So unless you work for the government, there is no pension and we all know, that once all the baby boomers retirement social security will no longer be viable, so the REALITY is that there is no alternative especially if, per Trent's great point, you don't want to become a burden to other family members. Pray, pay, and play seems to be a good paradigm but only if you took advantage of maximizing the match within the 401K. Prudent not speculative, providing you have found the way to maneuver within the 401K during prudent times to take action not just sit back and buy and hope.
Trent's final comments I believe go to far and are more an ad homonym attack on his opponent by laying on him the burden to ensure those with scrupulosity are not scrupulous. I am sure there are those in the church that pushed some of the protestant reformers to schism by doing exactly what Trent does in this debate by alluding to Jacob being against the Church magisterium. This is not a good faith debate from Trent unless he is in fact naive and believes everything an individual bishop or even a bishops conference does is morally good. One could say it is a shame the scandal Trent has caused by indirectly endorsing McCarrick or the German Bishops conference, but that would be just as much as bad faith argument as what Trent says as his closing remarks.
I do not know Jacob's points enough to say I agree with him, but it is really sad that Trent's performance was so poor as to render much of the debate pointless. This debate is a loss for everyone with there being more questions than answers all around.
After speaking with people before watching this, I expected to be upset with Jacob's arguments, but I did not expect to be so very disappointed in Trent.
Time Stamp 1:40:00, I was really hoping Trent would better explain his poor use of appeal to authority, but rather than answer the question he dodges to saying to follow the authority of the magisterium. Trent did not reference magisterial teachings but rather the actual practices of specific bishops and then acts as if there are not many bishops supporting evils through their actions and/or words. Really disappointing. The media gas-lights us enough, we don't also need it from Catholic lay leaders.
I am disappointed in Trent's poor use of appeal to authority fallacy in the debate. He appeals to specific bishop's opinions (not magisterial teachings) and says they are more authoritative than the saint's or whoever Jacob references. Then he goes further and appeals to specifics bishops practices and says if they do it, surely it is good.
Jacob's reply to this illogical argument is to ask if the current bishops are known for being exceptionally holy and being amazing role models that we should follow. Trent then quotes Yoda saying that this is a dangerous thought to have.
This is complete trash as an argument in light of the terrible scandals plaguing our bishops specifically in the USA which Trent uses as a guide (USCCB).
According to this Argument of Trent's along with his "lack of a magisterial teaching specifically condemning a practice making said practice permissible", it makes any new sin not a sin until the magisterium gets around to defining it as such. (commented at 1:04:21 time stamp)
Weird how Trent appeals to authority naming bishops or bishop conferences and saying what they think and asking if their opinion is better than a lay person's opinion. For both groups neither have authority to bind the church on their own. This goes against his first argument saying there are no magisterial teachings on the matter, so the saint's individual opinions or simply individual's opinions and not binding. I did not expect him to do this (time 30:48) and it is sad. At least he does go back to the Catechism, but even that is not an infallible binding document. Also, just because bishops/dioceses do something, it does not make it morally good.
It is especially an interesting tactic when many bishops and bishop conferences around the world have been involved directly or indirectly, through words of support or complacency, many scandalous practices, activities, and laws (one prime example is many things done/allowed in the "spirit of Vatican II").
I lost all interest in Trent as a debater after watching his debate against socialism and his debate for Feminism back to back. Seeing his lack of intellectual honesty and consistency really put me off his work in general
1. Is buying low and selling high intrinsically evil? No, since both parties agree that you can do such thing with gold or land.
So buying low and selling high could be good or evil depending on the morality of the intention and circumstances.
2. Is the desire of profit an evil intention? No, all lucrative activities involve the desire of profit. Desire of profit is not intrinsically evil. It's morality depends on the morality of the intention and circumstances of the desire of profit.
3. Since what makes good or evil the desire of profit is the intention and circumstances of such desire, the activity of buying low and selling high, with the intention of gaining profit, with the intention of a good retirement, is morally good, provided the circumstances are adequate.
I honestly don’t know who won. I’m only half way through. I just want to make money so my family and I are as comfortable as we can be while being good Catholics
I think Jacob keeps dodging the question about other investment options. I'm tired of hearing about investing in family – as a not-so-young, lone person without perspectives for family (and not because of own choice) living in a community of a different worldview (and still not wanting to be a burden on them). Please, give some real alternatives for people that don't have families, no matter if you know or understand the reasons behind that.
Buying stocks (or putting money into a 401k) does NOT equate to speculation. It means buying a percentage of a company in exchange for the right to a percentage of that company's profits.
It is not necessarily even about buying low and selling high. For example, even if you knew that a particular stock would stay flat in value for many years to come, you might still invest in that company for the sake of receiving dividends from its profits.
Buying a stock is mutually beneficial for both the buyer and seller. The buyer gets the benefit of a percentage of the company and the seller gets the benefit of cash which might be needed for other good pursuits.
Also, while it is true that when you buy a stock you theoretically raise its value (due to increasing scarcity) it's also true that when you sell it one day, you will also decrease its price for the next buyer to benefit from company ownership. So buying stocks is not simply a matter of artificially pumping up fake wealth.
Please do not empty your 401k. None of the Church fathers said anything about 401ks. This is nothing more than a theological opinion.
I’m very grateful for Trent and explaining how Jacob’s arguments have many holes. After Jacob’s opening arguments, I found myself growing in anxiety. Trent thank you for shedding light on Jacob’s terrible thinking and proposals.
Jacob condemns but offers no real, practical, reasonable alternatives, other than put your money under the mattress and plan on your kids taking care of you. I think I could have found his arguments more convincing if he offered more as a solution than “ I know many families”.
Thank you Trent for offering some sanity.
Imam falsely conflates investment with speculation. Speculation takes rewards without contributing to the common good. Investment contributes to the common good.