Speaking into the Silence: Conservatives and Poverty
Josh Good, Values & Capitalism
Conservatives need to do a better job applying the American Dream to all strata of society. “My party has a vision for making our communities stronger,” Ryan said, “but we don’t always do a good job of laying out that vision.”
Too often, short term mission trips to the developing world trample on dignity or harm economic growth, says Ray Sawatsky. It’s time to stop confusing charity with generosity.
With summer over, another season of short term mission trips draws to a close. Churches, schools, and agencies (both for-profit and non-profit) have sent teams to work in the developing world. These mission trips (or “internships,” or “working holidays”) are major pieces in the lives of many North American believers—both spiritually and, as you’ll see below, economically. My primary intent is not primarily to defend short term mission trips as a concept; rather, I sketch a few criteria for measuring if planners, fundraisers, and, most of all, participants in these trips do their work in the proper frames of mind, for the right reasons, and while taking biblical precautions.
Read more on Is Your Church’s Short-Term Mission Trip Putting Someone Out of Work?…
Based on Nicholas Eberstadt’s book, A Nation of Takers, this Seussian video depicts the dangerous dependency of entitlements and the importance of liberty.
(Via: Values & Capitalism)
Is Marriage the Key to Prosperity?
Ericka Andersen, The Foundry
What’s the number one antidote to child poverty in America? Marriage.
Arthur Brooks and Steve Forbes on the Morality of Free Markets
Values & Capitalism
In The New Republic, historian Jackson Lears explores the transition from 19th-century communitarianism to 20-century capitalist boosterism in Mormon culture:
The assumption behind much of the “Mormon moment” chatter is that Mormons are especially suited for success in the brave new world of unregulated capital: tanned, rested, and ready. Their abstention from alcohol and caffeine keeps them healthy. Their self-discipline, stemming from missionary work and a strict code of personal morality, strengthens their capacity to compete in a global marketplace. Their attachment to family and community insulates them from the market’s worst abrasions. Their zeal for education in science and technology gets them first-class seats on the cyber-express. And their organizational genius makes them the ideal candidates to steer the lean, mean neo-liberal corporation through the storm-tossed business cycles ahead.
Taxed for Wearing Their Heads
Anthony Esolen, Public Discourse
The Anti-Federalists’ early fear about Congress’s taxing power—that it would result in a tax on humans’ very existence—are now realized in the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare.
In 1920, millions of American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It was the culmination of decades of work by women from varying backgrounds and just as varied goals. However, they all shared a vision that women should be part of the political process in the United States.
Read more on Ladies, let’s take our dignity to the voting booth…
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson says everyone seems to understand that the private sector creates jobs. Everyone, that is, except the New York Times. Samuelson calls the Times’ decree of government job creation “simplistic” and that it has a “flat-earth quality”.
He explains that if the government adds jobs – expands government – it comes at taxpayer expense.
But if the people whose money is taken via taxation or borrowing had kept the money, they would have spent most or all of it on something — and that spending would have boosted employment.
Job creation in the private sector is mostly a spontaneous and circular process. People buy things they need and want. Or businesses and private investors take risks by investing in new products, technologies and factories. All this spending, driven by self-interest and the profit motive, supports more jobs. In a smoothly functioning market economy, the process feeds on itself. By contrast, public-sector employment grows only when government claims some private-sector income to pay its workers. Government is not creating jobs. It’s substituting public-sector workers for private-sector workers.
With knowledge of how the developing world struggles to create jobs, Juan José Daboub, former Managing Director of the World Bank, concurs: Read more on New York Times and Flat-Earth Economics: Does Government Create Jobs?…
Reformation Day Reflections on Calvin and Calvinism
Jordan Ballor, Touchstone
While the concern might simply be with a broader kind of Augustinianism, it would do us well I think to reflect a bit on the term Calvinism and it’s theological and historical usefulness (or lack thereof).
Victory in Federal Court for Monks Threatened with Prison for Selling Caskets
Saint Joseph Abbey and Seminary
The monks of Saint Joseph Abbey have won again. On October 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a decision stating that restricting the monks’ right to sell their handmade caskets was either unconstitutional or an abuse of power unauthorized by Louisiana law.
