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Our minimum wage circus
With the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the effects of the latest proposal to raise the federal minimum wage, we see confirmation that mandated minimum wages are, at best, a clumsy way of trying to help those in need.Information, creativity, and surprise
We are trained and educated to comprehend the operations of the universe in a materialistic way, where physical and chemical processes are assumed to be the deepest level of knowledge that can be acquired. George Gilder, disputes that in his new book Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World. The universe, he writes, is actually a vast information system of unfathomable limits.Finally, a conservative leader
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is unique insofar as he combines an ability to communicate with ordinary people and a genuine interested in ideas.It’s not only the poor who need moral leadership
Oral histories often paint a rosy picture of the moral fiber of previous generations, when divorce was unheard of, out of wedlock births rare, and Christian civilization kept societal immorality in check especially among a more virtuous elite. But close attention to history reveals the truth about human condition: that regardless of our social status, everyone is in need of moral formation – and thus it has always been.Discounting the unseen
In spiritual as well as in temporal matters, we take for granted our everyday graces.Maria Shriver’s big, big government rescue plan for women
We are told that we are guilty of blaming the poor and judging their lifestyle choices. But what good can we do if we refuse to look at systemic issues that indeed cause poverty?Oregon Medicaid study doesn’t love Big Brother
If a large Oregon study is any indication, the Affordable Care Act may drive up frivolous emergency room visits and do little to improve people’s physical or economic health.Pope Francis, without the politics
While renouncing the notion that the market alone is sufficient to meet all human needs, Pope Francis is also prepared to denounce a “welfare mentality” that creates a dependency on the part of the poor and reduces the Church to the role of being just another bureaucratic NGO.The minimum wage, family values, and the noted Christian academic
This academic failed to take account of the fact that arguments about the minimum wage are not like arguments about something like gravity. There are respectable and even compassionate arguments on both sides.Gratification and civilization
A world that elevates instant gratification to the highest good would very much resemble a Hobbesian state of nature, in which life is nasty, brutish, and short.The great exchange of the Magi
The Magi set forth an example of the heart that all of us need to have when it comes to stewardship of our material blessings. They knew their own poverty of spirit, and gladly gave the riches of this life for the blessing of eternity: worship. Their almsgiving, then, had a particular attitude attached to it. They did not see the holy family as mere victims of an unjust world, but as persons worthy of their investment, the Child whom they worshiped most of all.Mandela’s example
Mandela worked off a starting point of human dignity, rising above ideology, while upholding the highest non-negotiable principles of non-racialism and the universal, inherent equality of every person.