Essay Introduction

Asa V. Call, President of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, addresses a critical paradox facing the insurance industry: the very security policyholders seek is being undermined by the government's fiscal policies. Writing in 1949, Call argues that the "predatory" nature of the government—manifested through high taxes, currency debasement, and collectivist spending—threatens the value of every dollar repaid to policyholders. He calls upon the insurance industry to launch a massive informational campaign to warn its 78 million policyholders that their savings and future are being eroded by "something-for-nothing" political promises.

Insuring Your Insurance

by Asa V. Call

THE life insurance business was founded and has existed on faith in the validity of certain economic principles. One of them has been that only through investment in productive enterprise could real earning power and true prosperity be achieved, and that only through thrift and conservation of resources could it be maintained.

We have believed that prosperity could not long continue under a system whereby one man reaped what another had sown; that it could not be increased by wars, trade barriers, artificial or natural famines, high taxes, restraints of trade or production, special-privilege legislation, currency debasement—the very obstacles to progress against which our forefathers tried to protect us when they set up our Constitution and form of government.

The trust that our policyholders have in us depends on a confidence that when we repay our obligations in dollars, those dollars will have a commensurate exchange value for something else. It is our unwritten, but nevertheless moral, obligation to do all we can to repay value with value.

But we must now frankly face the fact that our own government has become predatory. As long as we had a government which performed the functions of protecting us against those who would seek to take our money or possessions without compensation, this tendency to take advantage of the belongings of others was held in check. But now that our government itself has become predatory, a good part of this protection has vanished.

If we include the foreign aid grants with the costs of preparation for future wars, then almost one-half of our 40-odd billion dollar budget is being spent presumably to fight off foreign collectivist threats to our security, our liberty, and our way of life. And yet a vast part of the rest of it is being spent right here at home to promote steps which are leading us inexorably toward exactly the same kind of collectivism—the same fallacies, the same delusions.

The life insurance companies of America have 78 million policyholders. What efforts have we made, let us ask ourselves, to convey to them any idea of the damage the something-for-nothing policies of government have done to their savings and to their future?

It seems to me that the only hope for our economic salvation must lie in a determined expansion of an informational program. This is a good time to start. We must all of us turn salesmen for this, the most important sales campaign we have ever conducted. We must be fighters in the most important war we have ever fought—a war once again for American independence.

About the Author

Asa V. Call is President of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company. "Insuring Your Insurance" is extracted from a 1949 address.

Attribution

Call, Asa V. "Insuring Your Insurance." In Essays on Liberty, Vol. 1, 173-174. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1952.