God Made a What?

I am a child of the late eighties (meaning I was born in the early eighties, natch). I lived in Nebraska during a critical time in my childhood development. Paul Harvey's voice meant a lot to me. It still means "radio." It was my "This American Life," when I was growing up. "And now you know . . . the rest of the story" is a phrase indelibly etched into the folds of my brain. So I thought glowing and pleasant thoughts about Paul Harvey's voice being part of a Dodge commercial. Until I heard it anyway.

You see, in the interim, between childhood and whatever the hell age I am now, which I'd rather not mention, thank you, very much, I've acquired a keen interest in economics. And in the economic world, there is not room for wistful nostalgia and Paul Harvey's 1978 speech was without question, even in 1978, indulging in the worst excesses of nostalgia. But that's not a message people want to hear. Economics has a well-earned reputation as the dismal science, and is anyway in disrepute with a number of people fond of this speech.

But then, I also happen to have read the Bible a time or two. And Genesis has some very interesting things to say on this subject (here's the whole of chapter 3 for you completionists):

¹⁷ To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.

Call me crazy, but I don't think God felt that way about farmers, pretty much at all.