The Initiative on Economic Personalism may be gaining a bit of traction. There were a number of important meetings this week (with more to come!) and Norman Kurland’s legacy is getting some of the recognition he deserves. Obviously, this is centered on getting the Economic Democracy Act adopted, but there is much, much more:
Norman G. Kurland
• Norman Kurland in the News. An excellent obituary of CESJ co-founder and
justice champion Norman G. Kurland has been published in both the print and
online editions of the Washington Times.
The
online version (identical to the print version) can be viewed by clicking on
the link. Obviously, a short
obituary cannot cover everything about his amazing life, so after viewing it,
you might want to visit the CESJ website, http://www.cesj.org,
especially the section on the
Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
Father George Schultze, S.J.
• The Jerusalem Connection. This past Tuesday, members of the CESJ core
group had a very good online meeting with Father George Schultze, S.J., a
Jesuit priest, spiritual director, and faculty member at the Latin Patriarchate
Seminary in Beit Jala, Palestine, and a retreat director at the Pontifical
Biblical Institute in Jerusalem. Fr.
Schultze ministers to Filipino and Indian migrant workers in the Holy Land and
assists the Gaza Project at Holy Family Parish.
He studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, earned
an MBA from UC Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. in social ethics from the
University of Southern California (USC).
Previously, he worked as an NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) Board
Agent and as a compensation analyst for Hewlett-Packard before entering the
Society of Jesus. He has taught
theology, philosophy, and Catholic social teaching, and authored publications
focused on work life, marriage, family, and Catholic social thought. The meeting went very well, and Fr. Schultze
said he will be looking through his contacts to see who might be interested in
joining in the Initiative on Economic Personalism, which is directed to getting
an encyclical on Economic Personalism, but also in preparing people for the
Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
Dr. Christopher Shannon
• Making History. Yesterday members of the CESJ core group had a
meeting with Dr. Christopher Shannon. Dr.
Shannon is a member of the History Department at Christendom College,
where he interprets the narrative of Christian history from its foundations in
the Old Testament, through its beginnings, and down through the ages to the
challenges of the post-modern world. His
books include Conspicuous
Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in Modern American Social
Thought (Johns Hopkins, 1996), Bowery
to Broadway: The American Irish in Classic Hollywood Cinema (University
of Scranton Press, 2010), and with Christopher O. Blum, The
Past as Pilgrimage: Narrative, Tradition and the Renewal of Catholic History (Christendom
Press, 2014). His book American
Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey through Catholic Life in a New World was
published in June 2022 by Ignatius Press.
The meeting went well and future exchanges are planned. Dr. Shannon’s historical perspective could be
helpful in assisting people to understand the context of Catholic social
teaching and its application far beyond Catholic circles — such as the proposed
the
Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
Sr. D. Jesús
Avezuela Cárcel
• International Outreach. Last week we noted an incident in Spain where
an 87-year-old woman was evicted from the apartment in which she had lived for
over 70 years because the landlord raised the rent beyond what she could
pay. We recommended adoption of the
Homeowners Equity Corporation and — of course — the
Economic Democracy Act (EDA). At the
suggestion of a friend of ours in Spain, we also sent an email to Sr. D. Jesús
Avezuela Cárcel, Director General, Fundación Pablo VI, an important NGO in
Spain very concerned with the plight of the poor in the increasingly inhuman
global economy. This morning we received
an encouraging response from Dr. Avezuela’s secretary: “Thank you very much for
your message and for sharing this information with us. I will pass it on to Mr. Avezuela. His schedule is particularly busy over the
coming weeks, so it may take some time for him to review the material
carefully. We will get back to you as
soon as we have a response.” In the
email we included links to the 2013 article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review,
“Pope
Francis and the Just Third Way” as well as the short book, Economic
Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, recently
translated
into Spanish. In response, we sent a
link to Norm’s obituary in the Washington Times and noted we are preparing
a piece emphasizing his contributions to advancing understanding of feasible
and just applications of the Catholic Church’s social teachings.
• Other People’s Money. We might have mentioned variations on this scam a few times before. As reported in Yahoo! Finance, “The valuation on Nvidia (NVDA) is too appetizing for CEO Jensen Huang to ignore any longer. The king of AI chips revealed a stunning new $150 billion stock buyback plan on Monday — the largest share repurchase authorization increase in history. It brings the company’s total buyback authorization to $235 billion.” Golly, whiz, that sounds great . . . until you realize that the $235 billion which will be used to buy shares from existing shareholders is money that belongs to the shareholders in the first place! It’s like borrowing $100 from someone to start a lemonade stand and agreeing that the lender owns half the lemonade stand which is worth $200 and is entitled to half the profits. You make $150 and use it to buy back ownership of the lender’s share, ending up with 100% ownership. Sounds good, no? Sounds good, no. The total assets of the business are worth $350, so the lender’s share is worth $175 ($100 ownership share plus half the profits, $150/2 = $175), not $150. You cheated him out of $25 — but that’s how a share buyback works. It uses money belonging to the shareholders to buy back ownership from the shareholders, stealing from them by paying them with money that is theirs in the first place! It’s like borrowing $100 from someone to buy that person’s watch, then claiming you don’t owe him either the watch or $100. All you did was steal his watch. A better arrangement, of course, would be the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Let ’Em Not Eat Cake. Yes, we are well aware Marie Antoinette never said “Let ’em eat cake” when told the people have no bread (and what was really said by someone else was deliberately distorted to seem heartless), but what is going on today is, in a way, even worse. It seems some people who were most adamant about getting rid of illegal immigrants and even legals who don’t fit into acceptable categories are now complaining they can’t find people willing to do the work the illegals and those insufficiently lacking in melanin were doing. It’s like demanding the government take away the bread and then whining you don’t have cake . . . and refusing the cake when it’s offered. That’s what happened to a dairy farmer in Westfield, Wisconsin recently, as reported in The Mary Sue. She couldn’t find anyone willing to do the work necessary to keep the farm going at the price she was willing to pay after getting rid of those who were willing, and the one person who asked for a job wanted too much pay and benefits, so she told him to, er, “get bent.” We can sympathize to some extent the farmer and others not wanting to pay high fixed costs to workers, but there is a solution to the problem . . . and it doesn’t involve getting rid of people who will work for less and then complaining you can’t find anyone who will work for less. No, it’s to do as Walter Reuther said many years ago: make the workers part owners of the enterprise, which entitles them to a share of the profits, if any. Keep fixed costs low and shift as much as possible to variable costs. This is one of the economic reforms recommended in the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• The Widening Wealth Gap. Sometimes it’s possible even to get the Wall Street Journal to wonder a trifle about the wisdom of a very few people having mega-amounts of wealth while others are increasingly worried if they will be able to meet ordinary domestic needs adequately, and still others are starving. Yes, people have been told for centuries that concentrated wealth is essential for economic growth (and have been disproved for millennia), and that we absolutely need the rich to take the place of God and “create jobs” to sustain life to replace what the Deity did when He created the Earth for that purpose. Yes, we need the rich, just as we need every other human being, but not because they are rich, and certainly not because the amount of wealth some have accumulated actually works against others participating in economic life at all or even being able to live. That is why the widening gap between the merely rich and the “super rich” as reported in the Wall Street Journal of 09/30/26 (“Gap Between Rich and Super Rich Widens,” pp. A1, A2) is worrisome. As the article stated, “The top 0.1% wealthiest Americans have seen their total wealth more than double since the end of 2019, according to new data from the Federal Reserve.” Part of the problem is that the vast bulk of these gains — mostly on paper — is due directly to the fact the U.S. government (and others) have been creating money backed only be its own debt at an incredible rate, and this has a double whammy, so to speak: 1) Simply creating money back only by government debt is purely inflationary, which raises the nominal value of any asset measured in terms of current dollars. 2) Much of the new money does not go to new investment, which would counter the inflationary effect (albeit in a rather backwards way, and often only by chance), but is poured into the stock market, inflating share values astronomically. Since most of the corporate equity is owned by very few people, this inflates the value of their holdings in terms of current dollars. Admittedly, this shifts much of the inflationary effect of printing money willy nilly to the stock market, insulating consumers to some extent, but it also accelerates the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. The only solution, of course, is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Plunging Consumer Confidence. It’s astonishing how the news from the economic front keeps astonishing the experts on the economic front. This time, as reported in Yahoo! Finance, it’s the fact that “consumer confidence” is plunging at a time when “the economy” is (allegedly) booming . . . for the richest of the rich, anyway (see above). As the article reported, “Consumer confidence plunged in September to its lowest reading since 2014 as investors face a wave of headwinds. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index dropped to 81.9 from the previous month's reading of 88.6, which was revised down from 89.4, per Conference Board data published Tuesday. Economists had been looking for a sharply higher reading of 89.” Again, the solution is to get away from an economy oriented toward making the rich richer, and one that puts the human person at the center, which can be done by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• The High Cost of Loving. It’s tempting to take Cosmopolitan magazine with a grain or two of salt, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its finger on the pulse of the trendy upper lifestyle to which so many aspire . . . and which seems increasingly out of reach even as the trendy uppers and wannabes strive to meet its demands. La Dolce Vita may still be dolce if one can get there, but the vita part raises serious problems . . . like the cost of it, such as dating. As a recent article declared, “But in a time where doing things like going out to dinner, hiring a matchmaker, buying a date night outfit, or even just getting some better options on a dating app means shelling out hundreds of dollars, has dating actually become a luxury product? . . . Online discourse and social media have a lot to do with the commodification of dating. If you scroll down your TikTok FYP or Instagram timeline, you'll find that many people subscribe to a version of ‘romance’ that comes with a hefty price tag.” Of course, ordinary domestic life, family, and marriage may be the ideal for some, but it is getting increasingly difficult and expensive just to cover the preliminaries. Of course, you know what we’re going to say, that adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) could help solve this problem, although in this case it’s more of an add-on to solving the underlying problem of the growing expense of just trying to socialize when normal outlets are either disappearing or rising in cost — even MacDonald’s is now a pricey option, and we recall seeing an article which reported people are going into debt to finance dating.
• Yes, But Who is Growing? Worried about the slow jobs market or the growing gap between the merely rich and the super-rich? Don’t be. The powers-that-be assure us the economy is in good shape and is growing at a “solid rate.” As reported in an article in the Associated Press, “The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.2% pace from April through June as consumer spending and business investment came in strong. Growth in gross domestic product — the nation's output of a goods and services — decelerated from a 2.5% pace from January through March, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The second-quarter growth was an improvement on the department's previous estimate of 1.5% — a surprise to economists who had expected little or no change in the GDP number.” Whatever you say. In the meantime, we should get busy and work to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• The Jobs Market. Again. We have made countless comments about the whole concept of a “jobs market,” but it cannot be denied that as long as the economy accepts the outdated and disproved Keynesian paradigm which demands people have jobs as the only legitimate source of income, it is going to be a major concern. Of course, there is also the paradox of having a booming economy (allegedly) and a “slow jobs market.” That is what we see in an article from Reuters, which reported that the jobs market was expected to “slow” at a time when the super-rich are gaining trillions in wealth (see above). Clearly there needs to be an orientation away from jobs per se and paper gains that do not result from the production of marketable goods and services, and to an economy in which Say’s Law of Markets can again function. This, of course, can be achieved 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.
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