Edmund Conway, economics editor of The Telegraph, looks at a new analysis of government debt by Dylan Grice of Societe Generale. The charts are eye popping. It’s not just a Greek, or EU problem. It’s also something that Americans must come to grips with, and soon. You might call it a moral issue — too long living beyond our means.
Read more on Government debt: We’re all in the same (leaky) boat…
A very good piece on taxation, income inequality and fairness in today’s Wall Street Journal by Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks, a frequent guest speaker at Acton events, is also author of “The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future”, forthcoming from Basic Books in June. Watch for the review on the PowerBlog soon.
Sign up for Acton News & Commentary here. This week, I contributed a piece on Jim Wallis’ new book.
This class of the very poor – those who are just on the borders of pauperism or fairly over the borders – is rapidly growing. Wealth is increasing very fast; poverty, even pauperism, is increasing still more rapidly. – Washington Gladden, Applied Christianity (1886)
For three decades, we have experienced a social engineered inequality that is really a sin – of biblical proportions. We have indeed seen class warfare, but this war has been waged by the wealthy and their political allies against the poor and the middle class. – Jim Wallis, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street (2010)
One of Jim Wallis’ long running aims at Sojourners is to cast himself as a moderate or centrist (God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat). This is howling nonsense to anyone who pays attention to his policy prescriptions or watches the progressive/liberal company he keeps. With his new book, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street (Howard Books, 2010), Wallis drops all pretense to holding the center as he piles on with the horde of religious left activists and others now demonizing Wall Street. The book, a clip-file pastiche of easy eat-the-rich moralizing, relentlessly pushes for the sort of collectivist policies that even the Obama administration is reluctant to take on directly (to Wallis’ chagrin).
The Wallis publicity machine casts him in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets with their fiery visions and passion for the social application of faith. Alas, he can only scold: “It’s clear that Wall Street has learned nothing, wants to learn nothing, and instead just wants to go back to the same old behaviors.”
With this new book, Wallis has ventured into the nation’s economic life with his cheap outrage. There, he has exposed himself as utterly ignorant of even the most basic economic principles. Not even a disinterested undergraduate halfway through a compulsory Econ 101 would make these mistakes. Case in point:
The market’s fear of scarcity must be replaced with the abundance of the loving God. And the first commandment of the Market: “There is never enough,” must be replaced by the dictum of God’s economy: namely, there is enough, if we share it.
Well, no, wrong. You cannot wish scarcity away. It is one of the most fundamental realities of economic life, involving everything from raw materials to money to the very time we have on God’s green earth. Still less can you wish away scarcity with shallow sentiment and decree that all of humanity will have enough (what is enough?) if we follow the “dictum” of “God’s economy.” Scarcity is not a Republican or a Democrat issue, you might say.
Read more on Commentary: Prophet Jim Wallis and the Ecclesia of Economic Ignorance…
The new issue of Religion & Liberty, featuring an interview with Nina Shea, is now available online. A February preview of Shea’s interview, which was an exclusive for PowerBlog readers, can be found here.
Read more on Religion & Liberty: A Rare and Tenuous Freedom…
A good back-and-forth at in character on health care reform between Karen Davenport and Heather R. Higgins. Question: Will the implementation of the health-care bill passed by Congress improve the character of our country?
Read more on Will the health reform bill ‘improve the character’ of America?…
PopSci follows up with the question I asked awhile back, “Why Not Just Dispose of Nuclear Waste in the Sun?”
The piece raises doubts about launch reliability: “It’s a bummer when a satellite ends up underwater, but it’s an entirely different story if that rocket is packing a few hundred pounds of uranium. And if the uranium caught fire, it could stay airborne and circulate for months, dusting the globe with radioactive ash. Still seem like a good idea?”
Read more on Why Not Just Dispose of Nuclear Waste in the Sun?…
Remember when Nancy Pelosi said that the House needed to pass the health care reform legislation so we could find out what was in it? Well, it turns out that she might have done Congress a big favor by slowing things down and allowing her House members to figure out what was in the bill before passing it. I mean, I’m only saying that because it seems that in the process of passing the bill Congress may have accidentally left itself without health care coverage. No biggie, though. I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time in DC. From the New York Times:
Read more on Finding Out What’s In The Health Care Bill is Fun!…
Heads up to those in the Southern California area:
Distinguished scholar, author, and former Ambassador Michael Novak will give an April 15 lecture at Fuller Theological Seminary on “The Moral Foundation of Markets.”
Read more on On Tax Day in SoCal: Michael Novak to speak on “The Moral Foundation of Markets”…
Alex Chafuen
Congratulations to Acton board member and Senior Fellow Alejandro A. Chafuen who received the Global Leadership Award at Wellington College in the UK on April 2. The award was co-sponsored by The World Congress of Families and The Bow Group.
Read more on Alejandro Chafuen Receives Global Leadership Award…
A reader sends on this fun video. Anyone know where can I get a bottle of this Dr. Utopia’s Ism elixir? Looks tasty. Is one sip enough?
