An employee of a large regional bank is concerned because the bank’s health insurance covers payment for abortions. She has no alternative source of insurance. Millions of others are in the same predicament, since most plans routinely fund the procedure.
The main purpose of economics is to understand and to help alleviate poverty, and there is an intimate and transparent relation between investments in human capital and the alleviation of
The usual line on medical ethics goes something like this. In the old days, ethics and medicine weren’t often in conflict. The physician intervened to save lives when he could, but his main limitation was technological. Nowadays, however, we have the technology to keep life going for an indeterminate period, blurring distinctions between life and death. This reality necessitates that doctors and families make difficult decisions about when to pull the plug.
From the historical beginnings of the Christian movement, there has been an understanding that the governing authorities of the world are under the providence of God. According to Saint Paul, government serves a valuable and divinely ordained purpose until the Parousia, when the return of Christ will fully inaugurate the new creation.
One of the several magnificent intellectual achievements of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881—1973) was his development of a comprehensive science of human action, called “praxeology.” One of the main conclusions drawn from praxeology is that free markets will result in more prosperity than government-directed economic activity–a position that naturally makes Misesian economics popular with conservatives.
“You say the materialist universe is ‘ugly,’” wrote C. S. Lewis to a young skeptic in 1950. “…If you are really a product of the materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there?”