When all the institutions of public policy remain committed to Keynesian economic fallacy, what hope have we that we will have real recovery?  I’ve written before about my despair that public discussion of inflation/deflation is almost completely backwards, with inflation now a good thing and deflation something that will be very harmful.  The reality is […]

Donald Trump decisively won (33%) the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Saturday, seizing the standard as the G.O.P.’s front-runner. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, as I write, are battling for second and third (with 22% each), while Jeb Bush (8%), John Kasich (8%) and Ben Carson (7%) rounded out the field. Given the results, […]

I have continued to read the comments on Jeff Haymond’s blog about progressive taxation, and my own complementary blog, and have decided I should make another foray into this subject to address in more depth the ethical theory of policies such as taxes (but, indirectly, others as well).  The question to begin is:  Is progressive […]

I have been reading with great interest not only my colleague Jeff Haymond’s posts over the past couple of weeks on progressive income taxation (1/29), income inequality (2/3), and a potential proportional income tax (2/9), but also the spirited discussion over the content of the posts. I have been thinking about biblical integration in economics […]

At the Democratic candidate debate last week, Bernie Sanders was asked how big government should be.  His response was illuminating, as was Hillary Clinton’s response to Sanders’ answer.  Here is part of what he said: WOODRUFF: “And, welcome back to this PBS Newshour debate, Democratic debate, here in Milwaukee. Let’s get right to the questions.  Senator […]

Many will write better and more personal things about Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court Justice who died today. I did not have him as a professor. I did not clerk for him. I encountered Scalia as a graduate student getting a first taste of constitutional law. Dr. John Maltese, my professor at the University of […]

OK, my moral outrage over the Obama administration has come to a new plateau.  Is it not enough that his administration has embraced social chaos in the gender/identity wars, continues to support killing millions of unborn children (all of this both home and abroad), and seemingly tries to strangle any possible economic growth ?  Now […]

OK, today I am going to get into a “wonky” mode and address an issue that always has bothered me when my mind is jogged.  Today the issue is strict scrutiny.  What, you may ask, is that?  Strict Scrutiny (SS) is a principle applied by Federal courts that first distinguishes between the importance attached to […]

It’s time for another book review.  I am reading several books but just finished one by Larry Siedentop, entitled Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Penguin, 2014, 434 pages).  The author has a fascinating and somewhat counterintuitive thesis that what we call “Liberalism” ( I will capitalize the word) was really “created” by […]

In my previous post, I suggested progressive taxation was not Biblical, and challenged readers to convince me I was wrong.  In the voluminous follow up comments, I didn’t see any Biblical arguments for progressive taxation.  However several posters suggested that there was not Biblical support for any method of taxation (regressive, proportional or progressive).  In […]