According to a report from the Zenit News Service, Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, recently insisted that the “logic” of the market be changed. He said that the logic “was till (sic) now that of maximum gain, and therefore the most investments possible directed toward obtaining maximum benefit. And this, according to the social doctrine of the Church, is immoral.” This is because, according to the Cardinal, the market “should be able to benefit not just those who invest capital, but those who participate in the step of making it grow, that is, those who work.”

Read more on Why Not Learn Some Economics First?…

Via Drudge, Australia is joining none other than China in censoring the internet. Here’s a surprising endorsement/justification the writer uses to bottom line the article:

The Australian Christian Lobby, however, has welcomed the proposals. Managing director Jim Wallace said the measures were needed. "The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access," Mr Wallace said.

I’m not endorsing porn. But earth to Mr. Wallace: Scan up a few ‘graphs and note how Chinese Keepers of Internet Purity shield their masses against illegal "spiritual movements." Makes me wonder how long the internet will be available to Christian "industries" like outreach and evangelism. Not too long, considering some Christians are readily turning those reigns over to government.

Read more on Careful what you wish for…….

My bills are all due and the babies need shoes,
But I’m Busted
Cotton’s gone down to a quarter a pound
And I’m Busted

Read more on Busted…

There’s a lingering issue that continues to bother me about the so-called “global warming” Supreme Court case from 2007, Massachusetts v. EPA (05-1120), and that is a nagging concern about federalism and environmental standards.

Read more on Federalism and the EPA…

A Boston-area Church of Christ is using environmental stewardship to boost membership.

The United Church of Christ, to which the Newbury congregation belongs, has called upon its members to become more deeply engaged in stewardship initiatives. Gary Gardner, a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization in Washington, wrote in 2002 that the union of environmentalists and religious institutions is "a powerful combination that until recently remained virtually unexplored. . . . Each looks at the world from a moral perspective; each views nature as having value that surpasses economics; and each opposes excessive consumption." Powerful it may prove to be for the church, which is just over the Newburyport line on Newbury High Road. Haverington said this year, on average, three families a week joined, and they are citing the environmental and experiential slants as the reason.

Or is it?

Read more on “A lot of people are hungry for this…”…

In this week’s Birth of Freedom short video Sam Gregg, author of On Ordered Liberty, discusses the views that two influential ancient philosophers held regarding human equality and the practice of slavery.

Read more on Birth of Freedom Shorts Series: How did Plato and Aristotle justify slavery?…

The famous Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, despaired for the future of the free market system. The reason for this despair was that the excess wealth of the system would create educated folks who would turn on the very system that created them. Their education would make them into anti-capitalist ideologues, who would then kill the goose that laid the golden egg. He did not think that those who participated in the creation of such enormous wealth would be in any position to fight back, and this for two reasons: firstly, business people do not tend to be men of letters, so they are unable to mount arguments defending the system; secondly, the job of the business executive is the survival of the company, and thus, he will concentrate on those things required to weather the storm, not be controversial.

The man who is probably the most famous Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, despaired for the future of the free market system due to envy. Various sectors of society, academic, non-productive, uneducated, etc., would envy the wealth of the producers in society, and end up by finding means to take away that wealth and give it to the lesser productive people, despite the fact that they did not earn it, and therefore, are not entitled to it.

Our present political situation has a combination of both of these views. Both presidential candidates are in favor of redistribution of wealth, albeit one is more open about it. And very few business people are saying “no!” to any of it with a few exceptions, such as the president of BB&T Bank, who wrote an open letter to Congress asking why his totally solvent bank should be punished for the stupidity of the others.

But there is another culprit in this maelstrom. This culprit is the business person. Why? With tongue-in-cheek apologies to neo-classical (mathematical) economic theory, the purpose of a company is not to make a profit. As John Paul II said in Centesimus Annus, a profit is a sign of the health of a company, and therefore is good and necessary. But anyone who has taken a management course knows that the purpose of the company, aside from producing what the customers want, is to increase the wealth of the stockholders. This is different than making a profit, although profit is an integral part of it. Wealth is different than profit. Profit is a short run measurement of the short run health of the company. Wealth, by its very nature is long run. Profit appears on the financial statements of a company in mere money terms, and the accountants who produce those statements do not even take inflation into account. So a company could have an increase in profit, but not an increase in items sold, merely because they had to raise prices to accommodate the fall in the value of the dollar. But executives today are a slave to the profit line in the financial statements. They have a need to impress their boards and stockholders now by sacrificing the long term growth of the enterprise. Read more on Saving the Free Market…

A 2001 radio interview of Barack Obama surfaced yesterday in which he said that “one of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement,” and one of the limitations of the Warren Supreme Court, was that although they won such formal rights as the right to vote and “sit at the lunch counter and order,” they “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.”

Read more on Obama Reparations Radio Interview Begs a Question: Does Wealth Redistribution Actually Help the Poor?…

Lawrence J. McQuillan offers a less than surprising economic assessment for the Golden State in the City Journal, causing people to flee for better opportunities elsewhere. McQuillan states:

California continues to be burdened with high taxes, punitive regulations, huge wealth-transfer programs, out-of-control spending, and lawsuit abuse. And there’s no end in sight to the state’s fiscal madness.

Some entrepreneurial minded residents are finding states like Nevada more hospitable for economic opportunity. Nevada ranks second when it comes to inbound migration. The Pacific Research Institute’s 2008 U.S. Economic Freedom Index ranked Nevada sixth in the country in “economic freedom.” South Dakota secured the top spot for 2008.

Read more on Fleeing the World’s Eighth Largest Economy…

Everyone seems to be going ga-ga over nationalization in the US these days, and why not? Heck, it seems to be working pretty well for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Blast from the not-so-recent past: Maxine Waters on the domestic oil industry…

Read more on Nationalization. Catch the Fever!…