Month: January 2013

January 09, 2013

The Fiscal Cliff and the Fifth Commandment

America’s recent fiscal crisis has been delayed, not averted. Even if action is taken within the next few months to cut spending and/or raise taxes, the day of reckoning will only be slightly delayed since no one is willing to touch the three programs that constitute almost half the federal budget: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Continue Reading...
January 09, 2013

New E-Zone Unemployment Rates Should Raise American Alarm

Record unemployment rates in Europe have been published and they should alarm Americans. Why? Because we are headed in the same direction. Nile Gardiner, of The Telegraph, is quite sure of this: The United States isn’t just gliding towards a continental European-style future of vast welfare systems, economic decline, and massive debts – it is accelerating towards it at full speed. Continue Reading...
January 08, 2013

The Fiscal Cliff Deal and Intergenerational Justice

So … what happened? With regular coverage of the US “Fiscal Cliff” running up to the new year, PowerBlog readers may be wondering where the discussion has gone. While I am by no means the most qualified to comment on the matter, I thought a basic summary and critique would be in order: With six minutes to read this 157 page bill, the US House of Representatives passed it. Continue Reading...
January 08, 2013

Is the Government Making Us Fat?

It’s that time of year: we’re making resolutions to get on the treadmill, join the gym, eat an apple every day. And yet, Americans are getting fatter and fatter. Is it the government’s fault? Continue Reading...
January 08, 2013

Beyond an Earthbound Economics

We humans have a pesky tendency toward earthbound thinking. The natural world comes more easily to us, for obvious reasons, and thus, even when we aim to overcome our disposition and contemplate ways to improve things beyond the immediate, it’s hard for us to break out of the box. Continue Reading...
January 08, 2013

Three Ways to Defend the Free Market

Nicholas Freiling offers three helpful suggestions for how advocates of liberty can defend the free market: 1. Raising questions is always better than giving answers. Capitalism defends itself. It is logical, coherent and well-supported. Continue Reading...
January 07, 2013

Review: Alan Wallace on ‘Becoming Europe’

Alan Wallace, editorial writer at the Pittsburgh Tribune, reviewed Sam Gregg’s new book Becoming Europe. In his article, “Where America is, where it’s going,” Wallace notes that: Americans increasingly say their nation‘s becoming more like Europe; the Acton Institute‘s research director, [Sam Gregg] tackles that trend and its dangers, which he thinks are greater than many of them realize. Continue Reading...
January 07, 2013

Free Speech Still Not Free on College Campuses

Even though the crowds stop paying attention, most fads never completely disappear. Just like Beanie Babies, Furbies, grunge music never really went away, some other 1990s fads—like campus speech codes and absurd political correctness—still haunt us: From free speech codes and zones that quarantine unpopular speech to freshman orientation programs that force a left-wing world view on impressionable students to outright censorship and threats by Administrators to expel students and fire professors, Lukianoff’s new book, Unlearning Liberty, details dozens of blatant violations of the First Amendment and due process. Continue Reading...