Economics

How the Myth of the ‘Robber Barons’ Began––and Why It Persists

Capitalism Worked, But We Were Told It Didn't We study history to learn from it. If we can discover what worked and what didn’t work, we can use this knowledge wisely to create...

Economists Must Answer for More than Just Economics

Romanticizing and moralistic contempt of the economy, including contempt of the impulses which move the market economy and the institutions which support it, must be as far from our minds as economism, materialism, and utilitarianism... Editor's Note: The following excerpt comes from Wilhelm Röpke's excellent book, 

Do Americans Really Value Hard Work?

The tiresome cant about the work ethic notwithstanding, Americans do not celebrate, or even recognize, the dignity of labor. Although they profess to disdain both the idle rich and the idle poor, they do not at the same time esteem those who must work for a living,...

Why We Need “Too Many” Firefighters

Firefighters’ role in the perpetuation of the common good in American communities is significant, even in surprising and unexpected ways. At a time when America is suffering a decline in community service and volunteerism, we should be grateful for firefighters serving our communities in other ways...

The Church and the Marketplace

I fear for the time when all vestiges of the Church are scrubbed from economy. Then there will be no more familial caregivers. The family will be reduced to a mere collection of selfish individuals. The moral law will be erased by the unbridled passions of frenetic...

Capitalism and the Gospel of Love

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was absolutely right: The widespread division of labor would cause the interior life to die; an unsurprising result, for under capitalism, the human person became a commodity, a resource, a thing used to further profits…

The Pursuit of the Good Life

We went wrong when we replaced the pursuit of the Good Life with the pursuit of busy-ness, which, as “business,” is idolized as an end in itself; indeed, as the end in itself. We were not made to be busy; we were made to be good...

Seeking Freedom & Solidarity

As Christians we know that our true home awaits us, beyond our exile in this vale of tears, and our expectation of this place, our true native land where all are eternally at home, is more than enough to give us hope in a world darkened with...

Distributism vs. Free Market Globalism

The whole notion of a global problem requiring a global solution is rooted in a false logic. Effectively it is saying that because bigness causes problems we need even more bigness to solve them. Distributism as a derivative of the principle of subsidiarity offers the only real...

The Mouse That Roared & Defeated Walmart

Everyone is taught to believe that gigantic retailers are the most efficient distributors of goods to the general public. Small stores may be able to fill tiny niches. They may be quaint and picturesque. However, only the gigantic...

Photographing the Lost World of Rural America

Today America is on its third economic upswing, even as the places I visit have continued to fade away... For 23 years I have been driving country roads, photographing the ruins of rural America for a documentary I call...

President Trump and the American Piggy Bank

At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as “the piggy bank that everybody is robbing.” After he left Quebec, his director of Trade and Industrial Policy, Peter Navarro, added a few parting words for Prime Minister...

Viktor Orbán, George Soros, & the Battle for Hungary

Many Hungarians clearly perceive their way of life and their country as under threat and sense that influential individuals like George Soros would like them fundamentally transformed. This is a fight between nationalists and anti-nationalists...

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a Fable of Modern America

Literary scholars have long interpreted The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a fable of populism, but it is more than that: It is a celebration of consumer culture as the the very meaning of America, this bright and shining land where men and women are happy to...