Wealth & Poverty: A New Edition for the 21st Century Even if it wished to, the government could not capture America’s wealth from its one percent of the one percent. As Marxist despots and tribal socialists from Cuba to Greece have discovered to their huge disappointment, governments can neither create wealth nor effectively redistribute it, [...]
Mitt Romney A group of top economists, among them any number of Nobel laureates, signed a letter endorsing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s economic plan. These economists indicated that as president, Romney would do six salutary things. Romney would reduce taxes, control spending, limit and improve regulation, make social security and Medicare sustainable, [...]
As American conservatism sifts its soul regarding political economy, scrutiny of the economic thought of Dr. Russell Kirk, who more than anyone else gave post-war conservatism coherence and intellectual respectability, is appropriate and timely. Kirk’s economics, and its treatment by modern conservatives, afford an invaluable perspective on this controversy. Kirk believed that economics has been [...]
“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Mitt Romney fell on this Obama quote like an NFL lineman on an end zone fumble during the Super Bowl. And understandably so. Had Obama been channeling Isaac Newton—“If I have seen further than others it is because I am standing [...]
Introduction Mark Twain tells us in his book Tom Sawyer that when Tom was punished by having to whitewash his Aunt Polly’s fence, he tried, as was his custom, to shirk the obligation. By making the work look fun, however, he interested the other boys in painting the fence. After arousing their interest, he still [...]
N.B. This is a piece I wrote in the early 1990s. I had forgotten completely about it until I came across it by accident today (Wednesday, August 22). It was my first attempt at a dissertation proposal, and I wrote it for one of my favorite graduate school professors, Dr. Russell Hanson. He probably doesn’t remember me, [...]
If there’s one thing we can be sure of ever since this Great Recession hit four years ago, shortly after we got sated on the Beijing Olympics in late summer 2008, one verity, it is that the money supply has gone up ever since. Way up. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is known far and [...]
Comes now news from across the pond that executives at one of the world’s most respected banks, Barclays, rigged Libor. Even the venerable Bank of England is apparently being investigated. For sports fans, this is like fixing the Super Bowl or doping a horse in the Derby. But it is rather more serious. For [...]
The essence of humaneness is limits which themselves reflect the hierarchy of enduring values. Humaneness in public affairs is characterized by the recognition and application of proportion and balance to the various needs of mankind. Often, though, decisions are made on the basis of a single principle adhered to regardless of other principles. In this [...]
As George H.W. Bush turns 88 years of age, there has come a strange bout of nostalgia for days when Congress and the President worked together amicably. The notable example of the H.W. years was the atrocious “budget deal” of 1990 which made Bush break his campaign pledge of “no new taxes.” It’s probably hard [...]
In this paper I argue one cannot be a Christian and libertarian with any pretense of consistency. The argument comes in three major parts: the theological, the logical and the historical. The theological argument identifies and examines the significance of the concept of transcendence underlying three major social encyclicals that deal with economic matters, Rerum [...]
It’s staple fare in opinion pages and textbooks these days that “inequality” has been on the rise in this country over the past generation. President Obama’s economic policy, for what it’s worth, has been based on this premise. The introduction to Obama’s first budget, back in 2009, went on at length: […]
A number of Americans, fancying that the world is governed mainly by economic doctrines and practices, are inclined to think that an era of international good feeling lies before us. I intend to sprinkle some drops of cold water on such hasty hopes. I have no faith in the notion that an abstract “democratic capitalism” [...]
With the present cancer of decay infecting the body politic, a virulence so debilitating that it induces complacency in the face of not only flagrantly unconstitutional acts of the national government but even of murder, it is an understatement to say that the “common good” is threatened. To deny, in the face of angular reality [...]