I must admit right up front that I am anything but an economist. My fiscal sensibility was formed by the heritage of seven generations of Pennsylvania Mennonite farmers. We live within our means. We don’t buy what we can’t pay for. We don’t have debt and we don’t gamble with our money — either in … Read more
There is much to celebrate in the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch; not the fall of these companies in particular, but what the fall represents. It shows the impossibility of holding onto wealth and power in a free society that is always in flux. And this is as it should be. I’ll explain … Read more
Barack Obama’s tax advisers recently posted a piece in the Wall Street Journal about their candidate’s tax plans. Their article was designed to triangulate, painting their candidate as a tax cutter and the Republican opposition as a secret tax raiser. It was well-written and well-argued — not that you can really trust anything you read … Read more
Catholic social teaching has consistently held as its core principle that economic activity is to be subordinated to the common good, which the Catechism defines as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.” Debate over precisely how the … Read more
We all have strange and contradictory wishes concerning what prices should be. We are outraged at what is happening to the price of gas and food. We don’t think they should go up. In real terms, we want them to fall, and they have fallen in the last decade and a half. That’s a good … Read more
Put forth a robust defense of the free market as the most morally and materially satisfying economic system and you invite all manner of invective and accusation. What are you, some kind of dissenter? Not so fast. Although the documents of modern Catholic social teaching normally begin with Rerum Novarum (1891), students should instead start … Read more
If you examine an icon, you will notice that the figure in it will often be breaking out of the frame. Sometimes the hands, sometimes the halo, sometimes both are outside the border framing the image. That’s no accident. It’s part of what iconography is trying to get us to see: that the supernatural is … Read more
While the politicians run around the country telling us of their plans to make our lives better — what wizardry they command; merely to make speeches, pass laws, and print paper, thereby making us prosperous and secure! — free enterprise is busy actually accomplishing this, and with little or no fanfare. This is the thought … Read more
You’ve surely heard of the economic stimulus payments that the government is planning to send out this summer. Most people will receive $300. The government hopes that we will all rush out to buy things, and that this will revive a slumping economy. Trying to stimulate the economy with an infusion of cash is not … Read more
During Lent, you will hear some version of the following from the pulpit: “This is the season to volunteer in charitable causes, to give back in service to the community, in a labor of love.” One cannot argue with the instruction here, or the sentiment behind it. Lent is indeed a time for giving and … Read more
Let’s say you want your computer fixed or your software explained. You can shell out big bucks to the Geek Squad, or you can ask — but you can’t hire — a typical teenager, or even a pre-teen. Their experience with computers and the online world is vastly superior to most people over the age … Read more
See if you can spot anything wrong with the following claim, a version of which seems to appear in a book, magazine, or newspaper every few weeks for as long as I’ve been reading public commentary on economic matters: The dominant idea guiding economic policy in the United States and much of the globe has … Read more
The workers and peasants of Hollywood, formed in solidarity against evil capitalistic sitcom producers, and organizing under the form of the Writers Guild of America, are threatening to withhold their astonishing talents pending an end to exploitation at the hands of their masters. So goes the conventional story, which is inherently implausible in more ways … Read more
It is an old truism that there is Tradition and there are traditions. Catholic apologist types typically illustrate this by showing clear examples of Big-T Tradition (the Creed, or the canon of Scripture) vs. small-t traditions such as, say, birthday cakes, Thanksgiving turkeys, or Super Bowl beer. All of these are human traditions, and none … Read more
Joseph Pearce’s Small Is Still Beautiful is one part commentary on and one part updated application of E. F. Schumacher’s famous Small Is Beautiful. The constant reference to a book that many consider a minor classic is both a strength and a weakness of Pearce’s own book. Imitating Schumacher, Pearce wants to return us to … Read more
Prominent writer, thinker, and Crisis Magazine co-founder Michael Novak sat down with Italian scholar Alia K. Nardini to discuss neoconservatism, Catholicism, and the future of the West. ♦ ♦ ♦ Alia K. Nardini: Professor Novak, generally people in Italy and the rest of Europe want to know how much American neoconservatives share with the Republican … Read more