Not Owning Up: Why Dining Out is Dying Out

A recent New York Times story related the horrors of dining out in today’s society.  Bemoaning the high cost of food and the low level of service, the article went to great lengths to assert it’s point that it’s personal service and warmth that make the difference in whether people enjoy their dining experience.  Lack of experienced wait staff, the pandemic, and a few other factors were cited as contributing to the problem.  The high cost was virtually ignored, although the cited $200 for a simple dinner and drinks comes to more than four times this writer’s monthly food budget (food only, by the way. none of the other things you might get in a grocery store).

JTW Podcast: George Mason (Again)

Okay, today’s podcast is very poorly edited, and you really should fast forward to minute 7 or so or you will fall asleep.  Otherwise, an interesting series of presentations on George Mason of Gunston Hall, even if they don’t appreciate his full significance and his importance for the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 21

Naturally, everyone expects the current debt crisis to pass and then everything will be fine until the next time and the politicians want to keep spending money that doesn’t belong to them and creating an impossible burden for future taxpayers . . . meaning us next year.  They keep kicking the can down the road, but the can keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the road keeps getting shorter and shorter.  What’s the answer instead of the Band-Aid?  Adopt the Economic Democracy Act:

A Short Lesson in Bookkeeping

A proposal that has been making the rounds again is that the United States can somehow solve its debt problem by issuing trillion-dollar coins struck in platinum and use them to pay down the debt.  While the proposal sounds marginally plausible if said quickly enough while moving walnut shells or thimbles around on a tabletop with a pea hidden in the crook of the presenter’s little finger — where we get the term “thimblerig” for a con man or other variety of sleight-of-hand artist — it falls apart of its own dead weight once the proposal is examined in the light of common sense and a little elementary bookkeeping.

JTW Podcast: George Mason of Gunston Hall

On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Convention adopted a Declaration of Rights.  This video gives some good information on Mason but leaves out a lot that you will find in Rutland’s biography and Rager’s analysis of the influence of Cardinal Bellarmine on Mason as well as Locke and Sidney.  This is the core of the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 20

 

Not too much different to report in this week’s news items . . . but then the powers-that-be keep making the same mistakes over and over.  Everyone seems to be frantic about raising the debt ceiling, but no one is saying anything about doing something effective to eliminate the need for a ceiling in the first place, or why we need government debt.  Maybe all that’s needed is a new approach to money and credit, such as can be found in the Economic Democracy Act, but that might be getting a little crazy for the powers-that-be that don’t want a solution, but a continuation of the status quo:

What is “Inflation”?

’Way back in the Stone Age, someone once asked a politician or a judge . . . or it could have been the person ahead of them in line at the supermarket . . . to define pornography.  The answer was something along the lines of the individual couldn’t define it, but he knew it when he saw it.

JTW Podcast: Banking on Cheese

 

C.K. Chesterton once said something-or-other about people should be writing poems or singing songs about cheese (or something like that).  We’re far more mundane than the Apostle of Common Sense . . . but no less interested in cheese.  That’s why today’s podcast is a video we located about the cheese banks of Parma.

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 19

We’re a little top-heavy with financial items this week, but it was either that or go on at great length about how Zelenskyy deceived the Russians by lying about the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.  Evidently, it’s alright for Putin to declare he isn’t going to invade another sovereign country, but not fair for the leader of that country to say that they have not yet begun to fight.  Gotcha.  Of course, that has a little to do with adopting the Economic Democracy Act, but not much:

Its Name Is Legion

Whatever you call it, it is quite possibly the biggest problem in the world today.  No, that’s not to denigrate or belittle poverty, racism, war, climate change or any of the other ills that plague humanity.  It is, however, to denigrate most of the attempted solutions to poverty, racism, war, climate change, and many of the other ills that plague humanity.  These have been increasing geometrically in magnitude, largely as a direct result of the modern world’s abandonment of common sense, that is, truth and reason.

JTW Podcast: Msgr. Knox on Chesterton

Today we have a rare radio program of Msgr. Ronald Knox, first broadcast by the BBC in 1941.  Interestingly, Knox was the teacher of Fulton Sheen, known as “the American Chesterton.”  He was also the author of Enthusiasm, and is cited (along with Chesterton and Sheen) in our book, The Greater Reset, which gives a broader view of “what’s wrong with the world” and also gives a viable solution — the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 18

 

Shades of 1907 all over again, but with a vengeance.  The “Bankers Panic” of 1907 was caused by a commercial bank using its assets to speculate on Wall Street and another, bigger bank shutting off clearinghouse privileges to deny access to additional reserves to avert a panic.  The bigger bank — J.P. Morgan — then used its financial power to take over the smaller bank and save the day . . . and increase demands for a central bank that would put a stop to such things and put the reserve currency on an asset-backed basis instead of being backed by government debt (which had been an aggravating factor in the Panic of 1893 and the subsequent Great Depression of 1893-1898).  Sound familiar?  Then maybe it’s time to restore a sound financial system by adopting the Economic Democracy Act:

Bridgeport Conference on the EDA

Today we have a brief report on the Bridgeport, Connecticut EDA (Economic Democracy Act) conference held this past weekend.  Despite the weather, there was a good-sized crowd, maybe seventy-five or so, and an undetermined number who watched livestream.  Some dignitaries or their representatives were unable to come, probably due to insufficient notice, but some of the scheduled dignitaries couldn’t be there, either, due to various unavoidable factors.

JTW Podcast: What We Need

This video was premiered at a conference in Bridgeport, Connecticut on the Economic Democracy Act.  Give it a view and give your feedback if the spirit moves you.

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 17

 

We know there is a depressing sameness about the weekly news items . . . but there’s also a depressing sameness about the refusal to adopt the Economic Democracy Act:

What’s Wrong with the World

Once upon a time G.K. Chesterton published a book he titled What’s Wrong with the World.  While the book was intended to oppose socialism and a bit of capitalism, it has been taken by many people as promoting the very thing it was primarily intended to counter: Fabian socialism.

JTW Podcast: Economic Independence

Today we have Dawn K. Brohawn and Michael D. Greaney on The Frontline with Joe and Joe talking about “Economic Independence.”  Of course, the best way is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act . . . so why aren’t the powers-that-be doing it?

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 16

Mostly what’s going on in the Global Justice Movement is preparing for the April 29, 2023, conference in Bridgeport, CT, on the Economic Democracy Act.  As the webpage lets you know, the event is free and will be livestreamed, so be there or be . . . not there.  Not that we’re letting up on other efforts to get the Economic Democracy Act adopted:

Let’s Talk About Consumption Taxes

Especially this time of year it’s common to hear proposals about how to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and institute a simpler, kinder way of taxing people . . . like a flat tax, or a consumption tax.  Now Representative Buddy Carter has come up with a new twist: a flat rate consumption tax.  As he says,

JTW Podcast: What is Ownership

 

Getting past the rather bizarre and kind of gross story about the severed foot, it helps illustrate the difference between the right to be an owner, and the rights of ownership.  This video is pretty good about the rights OF ownership, but really weak on the right to be an owner in the first place.  This can lead to massive confusion and causes some people to think that because the rights OF ownership are almost infinitely flexible, the right to be an owner is equally so.

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 15

Now that Easter is over and the pinch of high egg prices has somewhat ameliorated and people are fed up (literally) with chocolate bunnies, it’s time to get back to the real world of Keynesian economics . . . just kidding.  Keynesian economics is more of a fantasy than the Easter Bunny, for Easter comes with or without chocolate eggs or bunnies, but a Keynesian economy can’t even exist without the Great Defunct Economist’s fantasies, as he himself admitted.  We have to lie to ourselves until the lie becomes reality, as Keynes declared in 1931.  He gave it a century to work, and the situation is worse than before.  Time is running out, and the only hope is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act:

Helicopter Money

 

A recent book about money — and that coincidentally costs a lot of it — is John Cochrane’s The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, which came out in January of this year from Princeton University Press after being revised.  It seems that new data keep flowing in that require the basic theory to be tweaked continuously or it will drift too far from plausibility and some typos seem to have sneaked into the original version.

JTW Podcast: How to Win n Argument

Here is a podcast about how to win an argument by getting “buy-in” from others, giving the example of how Misterrogers saved PBS.  It doesn’t have much to do directly with the Economic Democracy Act . . . except maybe how to convince people how to go about getting it:

News from the Network, Vol. 16, No. 14

 

Christians celebrate this as “Holy Week,” but it also applies to everyone else if you’re talking about the economy and the world situation as “Wholly Weak.”  Of course, if people wanted to turn things around, they could start demanding the Economic Democracy Act, and it’s still not too late: