JTW Podcast: Beginner’s Guide to the Classics

Yes, it’s a Good Thing to read “the Great Books” . . . but where do you start — and in a way that doesn’t turn you off immediately if not sooner?  Well, for one thing, don’t try to read something that really leaves or left a bad taste in your mouth.  Plus, keep in mind that a book that really turned you off at age 18 might suddenly turn out to be absolutely fascinating, even (if you’ll pardon the expression) great.  In this podcast, Andrew Moore, a “Great Books” professor who bills himself as The Great Books Prof, gives you a leg up on the process:

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 13

From the news items it is more than a little obvious that the financial markets are in utter chaos, and the general economy reflects this unfortunate condition.  From the perspective of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, it is even more obvious why the decisions of a very few rich and powerful individuals of questionable ethical orientations and possibly a bit more have such incredible influence: reliance on what Louis O. Kelso called the slavery of [past] savings.  Whoever controls the means of becoming productive will control who can be productive and for whose benefit.  The only solution is to ensure that every person has access to the means to become productive, and that means access to “future” savings, and that means adopting the Economic Democracy Act:

How to Get Out of (National) Debt

The U.S. National Debt is now climbing upwards of $39 trillion . . . although it’s not impossible to find some experts who claim the figure is more like $100 trillion due to unbooked estimates for Social Security and Medicare.  Of course, whether we’re talking $39 trillion or $100 trillion — yes, that’s trillion — it’s in the realm of the surreal, not the real.  That’s a lot of money.

JTW Podcast: Oligarchy Explained Simply

This week we return to the podcasts created by Andrew Moore, a “Great Books” professor who bills himself as The Great Books Prof.  We don’t know if he warrants that the instead of an a, but we think you might find his podcasts interesting, possibly even useful.  Today we feature his podcast on Oligarchy . . . which should possibly interest us more than it does and might prove useful if we wonder why we should be interested in the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 12

Yes, once again we have a collection of news items which seem the same only more so.  Admittedly, it’s a little discouraging to continue reporting incidents and occurrences which would not even be blips on the radar if any country in the world adopted the Economic Democracy Act, but here goes:

That Krazy Keynesian Math II, the Quantity Theory of Money

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at the shaky moral foundation of Keynesian theory.  This consists of Keynes’s own assertion that his system would only work if we lie to ourselves for at least a century.  We also looked at the somewhat distorted and distorting concept of productivity as understood in economics and public policy.  In contrast, we posed Louis Kelso’s concept of productiveness, the free market-determined value each factor contributes to the overall production process.

JTW Podcast: Fifteen Difficult Books

Last week we posted a podcast about the importance of reading.  This week we have a podcast about books you might want to read.  Note, however, we do NOT recommend these books because we agree with them — in most cases we anticipate we will strongly disagree as soon as we get around to reading them — but 1) because we do anticipate disagreeing with them and 2) figuring out why we disagree will force us to think.  This is similar to the way reading John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) forced us to understand the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism much better and to understand Keynesian economics — and its very serious weaknesses and flaws — better than many Keynesians.

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 11

For once we had to cut down on the number of news items we selected for inclusion in the news notes.  There were just too many of them, and they were getting quite repetitive; all saying the same thing in not so different ways.  Frankly, the only way to stop this is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act:

That Krazy Keynesian Math I, Prevarication and Productiveness

 To some people, economics is not merely the dismal science (thanks to the Reverend Thomas Malthus), but also the incomprehensible science . . . with increasing numbers of potential and former votaries insisting it is no longer a science, if it ever was.  Of course, followers of Keynes who always knew the Master’s economics were a religion and not a science remain solidly entrenched in their faith . . . despite the lack of a solid moral or even rational foundation.

JTW Podcast: Why Should You Read?

Ever read a book titled, Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestle?  Maybe make that a little easier: ever read a book?  Know anything about history?  Know anything other than what you read on the internet or what the powers-that-be want you to read and think?  Maybe it’s time you did, if only because (as “the Great Books Prof” — Dr. Andrew Moore, an Associate Professor of Great Books at St. Thomas University — claims) “People Who Read are Harder to Control”.  Maybe this is what Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins were talking about and why they were so concerned about the degeneration of education:

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 10

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that we seem to be living in a state of permanent paradox.  In our opinion, it began in earnest when Keynesian economics began its campaign of world conquest in the 1930s and took over the world by the 1950s.  Given that Keynes publicly admitted we would have to lie to ourselves for a century or so just to make his system work — and the century is almost up — people should probably be a trifle more suspicious than they are, and consider pushing for the Economic Democracy Act:

Economic Personalism and Distributism, Part II: Analysis

    In last week’s posting on this subject, we briefly answered four questions posed by a professor about distributism and the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism: 1) What lead you to become a proponent of this economic system in the first place? 2) What are a few of the most important principles of this economic system? 3) What do you see as the major advantages of this system? 4) What are the major challenges?

JTW Podcast: The Dangerous Rise of Anti-Intellectualism

“Professor Dave” misstates the genuine religious position.  It is, for example, an “infallible teaching” of the Catholic Church that (and we quote), “absolutely speaking, human reason by its own natural force and light can arrive at a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, Who by His providence watches over and governs the world, and also of the natural law, which the Creator has written in our hearts” (Humani Generis, § 2).