Pope Francis issued his long-awaited encyclical today, entitled, Ladato Si or “Praise to You [O Lord].” The 183 page document is concerned with the environment and more specifically with global climate change. I am in the process of making my way through it, but have a few initial comments get things going. First, the Pope […]
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Ephesians 6 and Capitalism
02 Jun 2015
Today we heard a sermon on Ephesians 6: 5-9, the text about how Christian slaves and masters should act toward each other and the proper attitudes they should have. The sermon (and my wife) prompted me to write here on the application of that text to relations in a capitalist-market society. First, the direct and […]
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There is another new book out on the alleged problem of inequality. This one is by Anthony Atkinson, a British scholar who wrote Inequality: What Can Be Done? The book was just released so I haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but Richard Epstein, a legal and economic scholar with New York University […]
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States Limit Local Regulation: Finally
19 May 2015
An interesting development has arisen on the issue of regulation. It seems that some state legislatures have moved to limit how much local governments will be allowed to regulate businesses and people. This is quite a development. In the past usually the states were only too happy not only to regulate directly themselves but to […]
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It began when the current Pope, Francis, succeeded Benedict XVI and proceeded to issue an encyclical dealing with economics. Many at the time defended him and argued that he could be interpreted in such a way as not to be overly critical of markets and capitalism. But Francis seems to have continued down an interesting […]
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Inner Cities, Part 2: A Partial Response
29 Apr 2015
After a couple of responses to my first post on the solution to the problems of inner cities, I decided I ought to delve a little deeper. I am responding here to two similar but different types of responses. One asks what can Christians do? The other is a bit irritated at my alleged “Gospel-without-solutions” […]
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The Only Hope for Inner Cities in the Long Run
29 Apr 2015
President Obama simply can’t resist taking shots at Republicans anytime something bad happens (to foreclose any response from those who will reply that Republicans do it too, I will challenge that if you wish). In this case it was the Baltimore riots, which by now everyone knows about. In his press conference today, the president […]
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It’s Earth Day!
22 Apr 2015
Everyone, it is Earth Day. I remember painting garbage cans and lids with peace signs as a Sophomore in high school in the early 1970s to celebrate this hallowed day–at least for the radical environmentalists. Look, I support clean air and water–though not the eradication of CO2, which I breath out and trees and plants […]
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Critics of capitalism or markets are not too difficult to find. They come mainly from the ideological Left, but some also come from what appears to be a non-Leftist position of postmodernism. I actually believe most postmoderns lean Left, some violently, but for now I will let that go. Finally I have found a fairly […]
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The Minimum Wage as Maximum Trouble
07 Apr 2015
McDonald’s just announced a wage increase for its employees to ten dollars per hour. But the reaction was not gratitude but protests by union-led workers who are advocating for fifteen dollars per hour. The debate on the wage rate is tied to the equally contentious debate about inequality of income. I am not wading into […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach