Happy Deficit Day!
Tax Freedom Day was conceived in the 1940s to help people understand how much of their money all levels of American government take in taxes by asking a simple question. If the average worker sent his...
View ArticleIntegrating Catholic Social Teaching With Economics and Natural Science
At a time when the world desperately needs the Church’s social teaching, too many of our academics and public intellectuals lack discernment when it comes to applying such teaching. Rather than...
View ArticleHow the Dust Bowl Undermined the Libertarian Ideology of Plains Farmers
Eighty-five years ago today, on November 11, 1933, an especially powerful dust storm hit South Dakota, stripping topsoil from desiccated farmlands. It was one of a series of notorious dust storms that...
View ArticleJust Tariff Theory
If there is one thing that economists know, it is that tariffs are bad. You don’t have to take my word for it: Adam Smith noted this in 1776, and four decades later, David Ricardo demonstrated the...
View ArticleMan Does Not Live By Economic Growth Alone
Even amid the pro-market conservative tradition can be found a hearty strain of “two cheers for capitalism”—recognizing that the institution of the market, which promises and delivers innovation,...
View ArticlePrivate Equity: How it Serves the Common Good
Most people know what a public company is. Many come in contact with one daily as they purchase shares (ownership) on an open market using their bank’s app on their smartphone. But the term “private...
View ArticleIf the Dalai Lama Ran General Mills
Seeking to make their companies more productive and their employees happier, some business leaders are turning to the modern mindfulness movement. In Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business...
View ArticleThe Real Lesson of the Dust Bowl: Communities as Bulwarks Against Atomism and...
In a recent Public Discourse essay, Casey Chalk highlights the perils of libertarian atomism. Through an analysis of the Dust Bowl, Chalk shows that any ideology that posits man as a solitary figure,...
View ArticleWhat America’s Public Debt Crisis Says about Us and What We Can Do about It
The United States is facing a public debt crisis. The federal government currently owes more than $21 trillion, which is about $67,000 per person in the country (median individual income in the United...
View ArticleCommunity-Based Businesses Help Tame Market Economy Excesses
For many people, the sight of vacant storefronts elicits assumptions about economic distress. In New York City, currently empty urban commercial spaces often come with dirty front sidewalks, graffiti,...
View ArticlePutting Adam Smith Back Together
Every once in a while, a particular society experiences a moment of intellectual flourishing whose implications go far beyond the immediate time and place in which it occurs. One such movement of...
View ArticleVenezuela’s Agony, the Catholic Church, and a Post-Maduro Future
One of history’s less palatable lessons is that dictatorial regimes can stay in power a long time. We can talk endlessly about humanity’s insuppressible yearning for liberty, but if a government...
View ArticleThomas Aquinas on the Just Price
The question of the just price has long vexed economists and ethicists alike. It has become more relevant as Catholics and other Christians evaluate the soundness of liberal democratic capitalism and...
View ArticleThe Economics and Ethics of “Just Wages”
From a strictly economic point of view, wages are nothing more than the price of labor, which are determined by the free agreement of buyer and seller. From an ethical perspective, however, wages are...
View ArticleWhither Humane Economics? In Defense of Wonder and Admiration in Natural Science
Mary L. Hirschfeld’s volume on economics, Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy, has been long awaited. This is for good reason. While she is not the first to raise thorny questions about the...
View ArticleHow Tocqueville Identified Socialism’s Folly and Capitalism’s Challenge
Thirty years after the revolutions that toppled Eastern European regimes committed to collectivist economies, many Americans now regard socialism as a worthy political objective. In mid-2018, a Gallup...
View ArticleMontesquieu and the Monetary System
We hear so much about the daunting challenges this nation faces: entitlement commitments, climate change, terrorism, debt. Yet one major realm of our public affairs appears to be settled and not...
View ArticleStudent Loan Crisis Is a Conservative Opportunity
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are right about one thing: student college loan debt is out of hand. It’s threatening the futures of young people. The $1.6 trillion in outstanding debt increasingly...
View ArticleBretton Woods and Our Current Economic Distemper
Among the many aspects of individual and family life over which the state gained control during the first half of the twentieth century was the realm of money. During and after World War I, incredible...
View ArticleGod or Government: What an Economy of “Nones” May Mean for Our Future
What happens when a growing percentage of the population no longer identifies with any religion? What happens when the “nones” outnumber the religious? Public Discourse has explored this question in a...
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