News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 04

Despite the sad state of the economy and the efforts of today’s politicians to cut each other’s throats instead of the deficit, there are a number of good things happening:

Joseph Pearce Again Disappoints

This past Tuesday (January 26, 2021), Mr.* Joseph Pearce presented the second half of a talk on G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (1925).  The talk, given under the aegis of the Institute of Catholic Culture, was sponsored by Christendom College.

Sound Money for a Sound Economy

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at the two main problems with Keynesian monetary theory.  To summarize, these are, one, the amount of money (understood by Keynes as limited exclusively to government-created currency) in the economy is determined by political needs, not economic or financial.  Two, all money should be backed by government debt instead of private sector hard assets.

A Chestertonian Challenge

In the previous posting on this subject, I expressed my disappointment at Dr. Joseph Pearce’s ignoring a question I submitted twice.  The question was germane to the topic — Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s 1925 book, The Everlasting Man — and was, in fact, related to the whole focus of Chesterton’s life and work.  As I asked,

JTW Podcast: The Great Reset v. Private Property

This week’s video podcast is the second installment of a four-part series on “Economic Personalism versus The Great Reset”.  Again, this is loosely related to the book, Economic Personalism, but is more in the nature of a somewhat informal conversation about applying the principles of economic personalism to a specific situation.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 03

Apart from what’s been going on in the U.S. capital, this has been quite a newsworthy week for the Just Third Way, especially in the area of outreach:

The Disappointing Dr. Joseph Pearce

On Tuesday evening, January 19, 2021, I was privileged to listen to an on-line lecture  by the Great Joseph Pearce, as he was introduced.  Sponsored by the Institute of Catholic Culture, the talk was the first in a two-part series on G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (1925).  As Dr. Pearce has something of a reputation as a Chesterton scholar, I expected to hear something that might deepen my understanding of this unique individual.  Not that all individuals aren’t unique, of course, but Chesterton made a career of it.

Two Different Types of Savings

In the previous posting on this subject, we closed by noting that, if new capital formation cannot take place without savings (which have never not only not denied, but freely admit), and yet we’ve demonstrated beyond the shadow of any doubt whatsoever that existing savings cannot possibly account for the vast amount of capital that exists in the modern world, where on Earth did the financing come from?

Testing the Keynesian Hypothesis

It’s common to say when something bad happens that “It could be worse.”  Of course it could be worse.  It could also be better.  Anybody can make something worse.  The real trick is to make something better.

JTW Podcast: “Economic Personalism v. The Great Reset

For the video podcast this week, we have the first installment of a four-part series on “Economic Personalism versus The Great Reset”.  This is loosely related to the book, Economic Personalism, but is more in the nature of a somewhat informal conversation about applying the principles of economic personalism to a specific situation.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 02

Some interesting developments have happened this week, some of which make the so-called “new normal” sound an awful lot like the old normal (or, from the Just Third Way point of view, the old abnormal).  Be that as it may, it remains the case that things are not as bad as they seem (nor are they worse), and people will realize this as soon as they recognize the potential of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism to bring about effective, just change:

A “Debt Tsunami”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the global debt crisis has reached epic proportions.  Naturally, this is being blamed on the pandemic, but that ignores the fact that the situation existed long before the pandemic.  This “suggests” (to put it mildly) that the pandemic simply exposed the rather large flaws in the existing system and exacerbated an already bad situation.

A New Philosophy of Public Debt

Back in 1943, as Keynesian monetary policy was completing its first decade, Dr. Harold Glenn Moulton, president of the Brookings Institution, published a pamphlet, The New Philosophy of Public Debt.  Although today Brookings is solid Keynesian in its approach, while Moulton was at the helm it presented an alternative to what many regarded as Keynes’s unwise, even dangerous monetary and fiscal policy.

More Policy Objectives of Economic Democracy

In the previous posting on this subject, we presented some of the “policy objectives” of the Economic Democracy Act.  Today we conclude our discussion by presenting another batch.  There are more than those listed in these two blog postings, of course, but this is enough to start:

JTW Podcast: Book Review of “Economic Personalism”

On today’s video podcast, we bring you a book review/interview on CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Citizen.  The book just came out litter over a month aga, but is already beginning to make a splash:

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 01

Our first news items of the New Year!  It just might be that 2021 might be “The Year” for the Just Third Way:

Policy Objectives of the Economic Democracy Act

Following up on yesterday’s blog posting, today we take a look at some of the policy objectives of what we call “the Economic Democracy Act.”  To meet Social Security and Medicare entitlements, and provide for their eventual phasing out as the mainstay of retirement income for most Americans, and to shift the Federal Government’s role from today’s income redistribution policies to the more limited and healthy role of encouraging economic justice through free enterprise growth, the Economic Democracy Act would:

An Alternative to the Servile State

In the previous posting on this subject, we criticized the so-called “Great Reset” on the grounds that it really wouldn’t do anything other than exaggerate the flaws in the current system.  In our opinion, the socialized capitalism (or capitalized socialism) of the Great Reset doesn’t do anything except accelerate the alienation of human persons from society.

The New Servile State?

 

Back in 1912, Hilaire Belloc wrote what many consider to be his best book, The Servile State.  Belloc emphasized that he was referring not to socialism or capitalism, per se, but to what we today in the Just Third Way loosely label “the wage system.”  It was Belloc’s megablast against the Fabian socialism that he saw taking over the British Empire.

JTW Podcast: RH Benson’s The Dawn of All

Yes, this is about the Just Third Way, too.  Remember the podcast on Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World?  A few years later, Benson was annoyed that people insisted on taking his satire as “prophecy” that he decided to write The Dawn of All, a “counterblast” (his word), in which everything in Lord of the World was flipped on its head.

Happy New Year!

 Just in case you needed to be reminded. . . .