Despite the extremely tense world situation, the stock
market is booming; up nearly 150 points just today to yet another record
high. At the same time, analysts are
advising ordinary people not to buy hard assets like houses that they can
actually use, but to put their chips on the stock market.
One wonders, exactly, how people are going to make money
buying high and selling low. Of course,
the alternative is to buy at a fair price and make money by receiving
dividends, a.k.a., a share of the profits.
That’s what a Capital Homestead Act would do:
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| A piece of the action. It just needed industry and commerce. |
• Thanks to Guy “the Fulton
Sheen Guy” Stevenson for this news item.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the U.S. faces a $4 trillion retirement savings
shortfall. Given that CESJ’s Capital Homesteading
proposal is based on a very conservative $2 trillion worth of new capital
investment each year (and keep in mind that “savings = investment”), the
presumed shortfall in retirement savings could be made up in two years — less,
if new capital is formed at a faster rate.
Even better, the proposal is that everyone qualifies for a capital
credit allotment from birth to death, so “retirement” is not relevant. Thus, the sooner a Capital Homestead Act is
adopted, the sooner everyone’s income (not just “retirement”) will be secure.
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| Archbishop John Ireland |
• The CESJ Executive
Committee meeting was on Monday of this week.
Although it was the third day of a three-day weekend, the meeting was
very well attended. Although the main
purpose of the meeting (aside from ordinary business) was to plan for the
upcoming annual celebration and rally at the Federal Reserve, the dire world
situation diverted much of the discussion into other channels.
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| Cardinal Gibbons and Theodore Roosevelt |
• The manuscript of Prophet
of Modernism is nearly ready for review, and a publisher has been
tentatively selected for submission. We
are waiting on the arrival of two biographies of James Cardinal Gibbons, whose
efforts were key in staving off the effects of bad philosophy in religion in
the late nineteenth century, and who played a key role in the saga, although
not, perhaps, as great a role as Archbishop John Ireland.
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| Robert Hugh Benson |
• Reception of the
series tying the fiction of Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, particularly Lord
of the World, to the Just Third Way has been positive . . . if you
define “positive” as three times the normal visits to the blog. Readers are reminded that much of Benson’s
fiction is available with forewords that do the same thing, as does the
“appreciation,” So
Much Generosity.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 49 different countries and 48 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Indonesia, and Australia. The
most popular postings this past week were “Lord of the World, I: The Papal
Reading List,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “The Purpose of
Production,” “Lord of the World, II: Introducing Robert Hugh Benson,” and “CESJ
Core Group Meets ‘Pope’s Rabbi’.”
Sources for Benson’s novels and related material:
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those that
we know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#