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:
• The Frontline with Joe and Joe. Not to toot our own horn . . . okay, to toot our own horn, Dawn K. Brohawn recently appeared on The Frontline with Joe and Joe speaking on the subject of Economic Independence. Check it out.
• Outsider Trading. We wouldn’t want to accuse members of Congress of using inside information, so we’ll call it outside information. During the buildup to the latest banking crisis, members of Congress got rid of their banking shares. This is not a bit suspicious. Of course, all this would be moot — and there would be fewer banking crises to worry about — if everyone had equal opportunity and access to the means to become capital owners, such as proposed in the Economic Democracy Act.
• Getting Rich the Hoard Way. Every now and then there is a news story about someone in what is usually considered a low-paying, menial position amassing a fortune, thereby presumably proving that anyone, with the exercise of a little heroic financial virtue, can die wealthy . . . which sort of misses the whole point of getting rich in the first place. As Aristotle pointed out 2,500 years ago, the purpose of money is to be spent in order to obtain your economic wants and needs. All you have to do is live like a pauper, never spend a cent on anything other than the barest necessities, invest prudently, and never do anything that makes life worth living. Of course, if everyone did this, there would be no point to doing it, because the economy would implode due to lack of consumer demand. Think about it: if every person saved half of his or her income instead of spending it, half the economy would disappear after suffering a fifty percent decline. When you consider how the experts go into hysterics over a two percent decline, you can imagine the effects of twenty-five times that. Fortunately, however, there is a better way: the Economic Democracy Act would allow people to save by increasing production in the future instead of cutting consumption in the past. The economy would grow instead of shrink . . . and people could enjoy their income instead of hoarding it to fondle and kiss on their deathbeds before they leave it to someone who will spend it.
Another Housing Crash. One of the things you don’t have to worry about in modern economic thinking is common sense. As long as the stock market is doing well and the government is creating lots and lots of money so that the rich get richer and the poor get welfare, everybody is happy . . . even though inflation is eating up everything, jobs are disappearing, and people are being priced out of just about everything, including housing. The difference in this housing crash, however, is that instead of individual private “investors”, it’s the big investors . . . which makes it more likely that the government will bail them out. What people should be looking at instead is the Homeowners Equity Corporation, which is a part of the Economic Democracy Act, but so far that doesn’t seem to have occurred to them.
• The Lack of Entertainment Industry. Walt Disney built an entertainment empire by having an uncanny sense of knowing what the public wanted to see and giving it to them, even when the experts were telling him he was dead wrong. That is how we got the first feature-length animated motion picture (Snow White), Fantasia, and the Davy Crockett Craze. Lately, however, Disney has managed to get itself into trouble by listening to the experts and ignoring the public — exactly the opposite of what Walt did. The experts, of course, are blaming it on the “changing nature” of the entertainment industry, not on lousy decisions and the production of far from entertaining entertainment. Disney’s mission has changed from giving the public what it wants, to forcing on the public what someone thinks they should want. Instead of viewing the changing entertainment medium as a disaster, Walt took advantage of it. When sound films came in, the headlines read “MICKEY SPEAKS!”. When television started displacing movies, we got Disney on the tube every Sunday night. When we wanted to visit a theme park, we went to Anaheim and rode the Mad Hatter’s tea cups. Nowadays we get films and politically correct theme parks that are intimidating when they’re not boring.
• Time to Bring It Home? Given the huge amount of consumer goods sold in the U.S. that are made in China, the prediction that China’s economy could collapse in the next ten years is a little worrying. Of course, whether or not China’s economy does collapse, the United States should be bringing jobs — and economic growth — “back home” by adopting the Economic Democracy Act.
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially a minute and a half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s new book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series. The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human persons place in society.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 19 different countries and 28 states, provinces, and territories in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, India, Germany, and Sweden. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “Social Justice IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice,” “Let’s Talk About Consumption Taxes,” “JTW Podcast: What is Ownership?” “Did C.S. Lewis Approve of Socialism?” and “Helicopter Money.”
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 well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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