Arnold E. "Red" Paulson

A small business owner in Granite Falls, Minnesota, Arnold E. "Red" Paulson, became one of Carl H. Wilken's most dedicated students. Paulson can legitimately be considered a latter day "Founding Father" of NORM. Like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, Paulson found new insight into natural economic law when he met Wilken. After that, he spent the rest of his life revealing the facts of raw material economics.

His understanding of raw material economics matched his mentor's, and his ability to explain, convince, and motivate exceeded Wilken's. He traveled the nation speaking to farm, business, and financial groups about the practical application of raw material economics. He lobbied Congress with the same purpose and dedication.

Paulson was National President of the Junior Chamber of Commerce when he was introduced to raw material economics and in that capacity immediately recognized how parity prices for the products of the good Earth could stimulate earned income and simultaneously sustain and nurture rural areas, small towns and cities, and large metropolitan areas.

Two of Paulson's most attentive students were Fred Lundgren and Jerome Friemel, Texas agriculturists who would author the definitive raw material economic text of the 1990s, "The Nature of Wealth -- Discovering the Physics Within the Economic System." The reservoir of knowledge that exists within the American populace today traces largely to Paulson's powerful seminars and insightful writings. Paulson's newsletters, now collected as several thousands of pages of raw information, stands as a monument to him more enduring than brass.

Paulson served as Executive Director of the National Organization for Raw Materials from 1971 until his death in 1980.