Wednesday, February 28, 2024

The Just Third Way


Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

The fortieth anniversary of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice is coming up.  We’ll tell a little bit more about that as the anniversary itself, April 7, approaches, but today we’re looking at a major program developed by CESJ: the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism.

Monday, February 26, 2024

JTW Podcast: March on Washington, August 28, 1963


The National Archives film on the March . . . they left out private property in capital, though:

Friday, February 23, 2024

News from the Network, Vol. 17, No. 08


This week’s news items are again a brief chronicle of dumb government tricks seemingly validated by failed Keynesian economics.  Again, as usual, we believe most if not all of these issues could be solved by adopting the Economic Democracy Act.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Five Levers of Change: Technology


Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

For centuries workers have understood that when technology advances it usually means they will lose their jobs to machines that can do the work better and cheaper. Sometimes advancing technology creates more new jobs than it displaces, although this is not always a benefit. The cotton gin created an enormous demand for labor that was filled by expanding the number of human beings owned as slaves. The Industrial Revolution largely eliminated most production by small and family-owned enterprises and turned millions of people into “employees” dependent on private employers and the State.

Monday, February 19, 2024

JTW Podcast: Walter Reuther on Civil Rights, August 28, 1963

Just in case you were wondering who else spoke during the March on Washington . . . and note the irony that the bill to which Reuther referred died with Kennedy a little over two months later:

Friday, February 16, 2024

News from the Network, Vol. 17, No. 07

As has become usual, this week’s news items focus primarily on the growing debt crisis, both personal and public.  Again, as usual, we believe most if not all of these issues could be solved by adopting the Economic Democracy Act.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Five Levers of Change: Tax Policy


Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

 

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII declared that “Many excellent results will follow” from expanding ownership to as many people as possible (Rerum Novarum, § 47). As he said,

Monday, February 12, 2024

JTW Podcast: Walter Reuther on Profit Sharing, Part 2 of 2


As we noted in last week’s posting on this subject, January 1958 saw the publication of The Capitalist Manifesto by Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler . . . and this Mike Wallace interview of labor leader Walter Reuther about profit sharing, of which we present Part 2 of 2 today:

Friday, February 9, 2024

News from the Network, Vol. 17, No. 06


This week we have a plethora of news items that sound remarkably like the previous week and the week before that and the week before that and the week before that . . . but you get the idea.  Not to get repetitive, but most if not all of these issues could be solved by adopting the Economic Democracy Act.

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Labor, Economic, and Civil Rights


What with the state of the economy and the so-called “woke” culture to which so many people today look for salvation when the solution is already within reach with a little effort, few realize that it was only a few decades ago that matters took a dramatically wrong turn.  The Keynesian New Deal, which many believed was supposed to be temporary, became permanent public policy following World War II, even though its disutility was painfully obvious by 1936 and the surreal “Depression within the Depression” that directly resulted from Keynes’s prescriptions.

Monday, February 5, 2024

JTW Podcast: Walter Reuther on Profit Sharing, Part 1 of 2


January 1958 saw the publication of The Capitalist Manifesto by Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler . . . and this Mike Wallace interview of labor leader Walter Reuther about profit sharing:

Friday, February 2, 2024

News from the Network, Vol. 17, No. 05


Ready for this week’s short list of economic insanity and gloom and doom?  Neither are we, but here it is, anyway.  Of course, we could adopt the Economic Democracy Act . . . so if people want to see something new in this report, get Congress to act . . .