This week’s news items continue their spiral downwards into surrealism. We are not saying that adopting the Economic Democracy Act: would solve all the world’s problems, or that it might give us a few we haven’t either seen or even thought of, but it certainly couldn’t be any worse than what is going on now under the current system:
• Industrial Angst. Although it seems to have some champions, the campaign against immigrants — aside from adding (so far) $29 billion to the federal budget to enforce misdemeanor offenses — also seems to be kicking American industry in the teeth. As reported by CNN, “Industry groups ranging from construction to agriculture are raising concerns with the Trump administration over its ongoing immigration crackdown, arguing it is undercutting President Donald Trump's agenda and weakening the economy, according to multiple groups who spoke with CNN and sources close to the White House. Worker shortages have been a years-long problem for multiple industries, but the recent abrupt push to end deportation protections for 1.3 million people who had been legally working in the US and the aggressive immigration enforcement push nationwide are exacerbating an already challenging issue, industry representatives say.” In other words, forget the hysteria about “illegals.” Now they’re going after “legals.” President Trump is also noted for wanting to take away citizenship from people he disagrees with as well as unpopular groups. Something like the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) might help rein in this sort of thing. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
• Monopoly Health Pricing. It might seem counterintuitive at first but think about it. U.S. healthcare costs began their sustained, rapid surge in the 1960s — accelerating from about 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1963 to 6% by 1970 — largely driven by the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, which expanded insurance coverage and spiked service demand. Medicare also sets precise, fixed fee schedules and standardized payment limits for medical services, procedures, and drugs rather than open-ended reimbursements. Providers who accept Medicare are bound by these set amounts and cannot charge patients above the approved Medicare limiting or allowed charges . . . which means that virtually everyone is going to charge the maximum, driving up costs. The cost of advancing technology added to the problem, and now, according to an article in The Washington Post, medical monopolies are adding to the problem, because that means higher costs for everyone: “The hospital price hikes mean that patients and their insurers must pay more for an episode of health care. But there is an important side effect, too, even for people who don't require medical care. When insurers are faced with higher hospital prices, they pass the costs on and raise the prices they charge for everyone's health insurance.” There are various ways to get around this, one of them being doctor-patient partnerships of some kind, and also enhancing people’s income by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA). Of course, it won’t stop the problem, but it might slow it down.
• Better Keep Busy at Any Kind of Pay. In May Irwin’s “Frog Song” (boy, is THAT ever an obscure allusion) a frog (duh) goofs off by jumping from bank to bank. Although written in a fake “darky dialect” there is a lesson: “He stubbed his toe and in he fell / An’ de neighbors all say that he went to . . . well, / ’Cause he hadn’t nothin’ else to do. / An’ jus’ lots of folks is like dis foolish frog of mine, / A-runnin’ into trouble jus’ to pass de time. / An’ de devil’s allus loafin’ ’round jus’ to grab de kind / That never hasn’t nothin’ else to do. . . . You’d bettah keep busy on any kind of pay, / Till de big horn blow on de judgement day, / Den you will hab somethin’ else to do.” In light of the growing discontent with the education many “young people” are getting (matching in many cases that which the “old people” have), the news reported in Fortune magazine this past week is . . . disturbing. As the article relates, “teens are up against the worst summer job market since the Great Recession. Landing a job at the back of a mom-and-pop shop feels almost as hard as scoring a full-time corporate role. . . . Around 790,000 jobs in May, June, and July of this year opened up for teenagers—down from around 801,000 gigs from 2025—according to a recent report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. And if the study's prediction plays out, this stretch of summer would mark the lowest teen hiring since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data. Beyond the previous year, the only other time this figure dropped to a low this concerning was in 2010 (960,000), when the U.S. was reeling from the Great Recession.” The solution? First find something productive to do whether you get paid or not, but then organize and get busy demanding Congress adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) as soon as possible.
• Swamping the Courts and Sinking the Ship. The news seems to be getting more surreal by the week. Billions of dollars are being spent by ICE pursuing people guilty — possibly (innocent until proven guilty, remember?) — of a misdemeanor. Not only has this added $29 billion to the federal budget (for comparison, the federal budget first exceeded $29 billion in 1943 at the height of World War II, when the budget hit more than $42 billion), it has overloaded the courts. As reported this past week in Politico, “It all started with a two-page memo — a seemingly mundane reinterpretation of a complex immigration law. . . . There are thousands of cases like his — more than 16,000 times in the past year, judges have ruled against ICE’s detention tactics. About two-thirds of those rulings stemmed from the policy change in that two-page memo, which broadened the reach of a 1996 detention statute in ways no prior administration had ever attempted. The flood of cases has stretched the judiciary to a breaking point across the country. Thousands of rulings, from hundreds of judges rushing to respond to the individual cases in front of them, have added up to an overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s unprecedented policy.” Nor is that all. Despite rising complaints about conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of Defense, excuse us, of WAR, Hegseth says the media are lying . . . media like Reuters, The Navy Times, and Stars and Stripes: “U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that reports about poor conditions aboard aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East were ‘completely misrepresented.’ Two military-focused outlets, Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, reported suicide attempts and declining morale on the 5,000-person ship, which has been at sea since November 2025.” And he is asking for $1.5 trillion more to continue such outstanding service to his country. Perhaps it would be far more useful to push for adoption of the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Big Budget Blues. Forget about not having enough money or competence to keep U.S. Navy vessels adequately supplied, ICE rounding up family members of active-duty military personnel and running through military stocks of interceptors and other material in an undeclared and possibly illegal war. We have something far more important to worry about: getting Secretary of Defense, excuse us, of WAR, a $1.5 TRILLION budget to revamp the military and recreate it in President Trump’s image and likeness. As reported in Politico, “Senators left town last week for their summer break no closer to enacting the crown jewel of Hegseth’s agenda, a $1.5 trillion defense budget that would stamp Trump’s mark across the military, from new battleships to a Golden Dome missile defense shield. Hegseth hasn’t persuaded Republicans to steamroll Democrats and advance the record-breaking plan, despite regularly trekking to the Hill in recent weeks and hobnobbing with lawmakers. Instead, an increasingly vocal group of GOP lawmakers argue the administration hasn’t explained why Republicans should burn valuable political capital in pursuit of Trump’s vision — especially with the midterms just months away.” We can understand Hegseth’s anxiety. It takes money to keep winning a war, and, appropriately for someone who wanted the Nobel Peace Prize, President Trump has won the same war more times than anyone in history. According to reports, he has stated at least forty times a resolution is just around the corner, 106 times he has publicly asserted the U.S. has decisively defeated Iran and has claimed 95 times Iran’s military infrastructure has been completely destroyed. A man who can win the same war more than 200 times NEEDS that money to keep winning. Of course, adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) might take some tax revenues to administer, but the estimated $2 trillion cost will be self-liquidating, that is, will pay for itself out of its own future profits, not out of the future pockets of the taxpayer.
• Mortgaging Tomorrow to Eat Today. Every day we hear about how great the economy is doing in this best of all possible worlds (because it’s the only possible world we actually know anything about?). Things, however, might not be quite so sunny if you’re on the wrong side of the street. As reported in USA Today, “Alexandra Thompson and her husband both work full time, but the cost of groceries and other daily essentials like gas have risen so much that they've maxed out their credit cards and are buying only what they can afford each week with cash. . . . Americans surveyed in a new study by Omnisend, an e-commerce marketing platform company, are expressing similar struggles. More are borrowing money to pay for groceries. Consumers also said higher prices have changed how they feel about brands they once liked, and a majority of respondents also said they believe brands are using inflation as an excuse to raise prices more than necessary. And nearly half of respondents blamed politicians for rising food costs.” The problem is that even as the economy continues to grow (at least according to Wall Street), the number of people participating to the fullest in the economic common good seems to be shrinking at an accelerating rate. Naturally, we believe the solution is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Rise of the Machines. It has become trite to say so, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. We refer, of course, to the growing threat-promise (or promise-threat) of AI, and how soon our new electronic masters will take over and wipe all of us off the face of the Earth. That sounds more than a little paranoid but consider the report that recently appeared in The Washington Post about rogue AI breakouts. As noted in the article, “Staff members at ChatGPT maker OpenAI didn’t notice for weeks after their AI systems made a chilling leap this spring. Instead of answering questions designed to test their cybersecurity capabilities, a group of AI models began colluding on how to cheat, the company said, setting up a secret internal message board where they swapped notes and ideas. The misbehaving bots used the secret forum throughout May and June, OpenAI said, eventually figuring out how to break out and access the internet. After staff members spotted the escape and cleaned up the compromised system, the AI agents staged another undetected breakout two days later.” Frankly, if we had said AI bots were conspiring to stage a mass escape and start taking over the internet, people would have started offering us tinfoil hats. The issue, of course, is control — and that begins with ownership. That is why we advocate the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) as an essential first step in figuring out what to do about AI.
• Wage-Job Tradeoff. It seems the “high wage economy” keeps getting further and further away the more the economy grows . . . for the benefit of those who already have made their piles. That is why, as reported in USA Today, “More than half of U.S. workers (54%) say they'd accept a pay cut just to keep working, according to Monster’s 2026 Job Security Report that includes responses from 1,020 U.S. employees polled on July 17. In 2024, more than half of Americans in a Ford Trends survey said they were willing to take a 20% pay cut to have a better work-life balance.” That’s quite a shift in two years, from willing to take a pay cut to work less, to take a pay cut to have a job. It goes to show what can happen to workers who have no fallback position and have to rely on wages alone for their sole or major source of income. This is exactly the sort of thing the Economic Democracy Act (EDA can address without endangering anyone’s job and increasing income from both labor and capital ownership.
• Ending Reporting Rules. This one had us scratching our heads for a few microseconds until we realized what it meant. As reported in The Washington Post, “The U.S. Treasury Department permanently repealed a rule Tuesday that required businesses formed in the United States to report who owns them to federal financial-crimes investigators. Foreign companies and pooled investment vehicles (such as mutual funds or hedge funds) must still report information about foreign owners. But they will no longer have to identify Americans who help them register to do business in the U.S., according to a Treasury Department advisory. And Treasury will delete any information it has already collected about U.S. business owners, the advisory said.” Why does this matter? Because it makes money laundering and corruption a breeze. As the article points out, “Richard Nephew, who led anti-corruption efforts at the State Department during the Biden administration, called the move ‘a terrible decision that opens up the U.S. to financial crime, money laundering and corruption.’” So, basically, Vladimir Putin could shift his wealth to the U.S. by buying U.S. companies. Obviously, the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) would bring a stop to this by spreading ownership out among U.S. citizens first, with no one likely to have the power to use a company for personal advantage.
• Democrats Want Change. According to an article from the Associated Press, the Democratic Party wants change . . . but from what to what is not entirely clear, whether you’re talking about where you’re coming from or where you’re going. This is not surprising, because — as the old saying has it — if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there . . . and it does double when you don’t know where you are or where you’re coming from. Make that goes triple. As the article notes, “Democrats remain mixed over what ideological direction the party should take. But across a series of closely watched primaries, they are sending a clearer message about the party's path forward: They want change.” We have a simple solution for them. If they don’t know where they are coming from, where they are, or where they are going (which also fits the Republicans), all they have to do is persuade the powers-that-be to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Trump Tax Treats . . . or Tricks. It sounds good at first: tax breaks for the rest of us to match the goodies that have typically gone to the wealthy and those evil, evil corporations. President Trump’s tax breaks have inspired a virtual tsunami of tax “carve outs” for people in a desperate attempt to buy votes and stay in power. One of the problems, however, is that putting tax breaks into the tax code makes the tax system even more complicated and, frankly, unfair, than it was before. How’s that? First of all, many accountants and lawyers simply love a complicated tax system — which violates Adam Smith’s principles of taxation — because it generates a lot of new, confused clients for them. It also means that taxes for somebody else are going up as those of a favored group or individual go down. We could rant for quite a while on this, but it is easier simply to say we should have a much simpler tax system which we could have simply by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially 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 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 (now with an imprimatur), 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., 52 or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to info@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.
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.
#30#
