Inflation and Job Creation

Under the hegemony of Keynesian economics, the global economy must be inflationary.  Why?  Because . . . well, because, that’s why.  Which, of course, is not an answer — but it makes more sense than the actual Keynesian answer.  It all lies in how you define inflation.  You see, the different schools define inflation differently, and not entirely consistently.

Not Owning Up: Why Dining Out is Dying Out

A recent New York Times story related the horrors of dining out in today’s society.  Bemoaning the high cost of food and the low level of service, the article went to great lengths to assert it’s point that it’s personal service and warmth that make the difference in whether people enjoy their dining experience.  Lack of experienced wait staff, the pandemic, and a few other factors were cited as contributing to the problem.  The high cost was virtually ignored, although the cited $200 for a simple dinner and drinks comes to more than four times this writer’s monthly food budget (food only, by the way. none of the other things you might get in a grocery store).

Its Name Is Legion

Whatever you call it, it is quite possibly the biggest problem in the world today.  No, that’s not to denigrate or belittle poverty, racism, war, climate change or any of the other ills that plague humanity.  It is, however, to denigrate most of the attempted solutions to poverty, racism, war, climate change, and many of the other ills that plague humanity.  These have been increasing geometrically in magnitude, largely as a direct result of the modern world’s abandonment of common sense, that is, truth and reason.

Neo-Colonialist Keynes

It is common to hear about neo-colonialism these days, but not too many people are aware that it’s not just a problem in former colonies, but throughout the entire world.  This is the fault of the architect of the modern global economy, John Maynard Keynes, whose version of socialized capitalism (really an application of Fabian socialism) was intended to keep the British power elite in place at the end of the nineteenth century.

Culture Wars

From the 1930s on, Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago and Mortimer J. Adler, the “Great Books” philosopher, expressed great concern about the state of American education.  As they saw it, what passed for education had degenerated into vocational training for jobs that either didn’t exist or were completely different than those for which people had been trained.

Vladimir Putin’s Weird Worldview

 

This past Sunday, May 15, 2022, an article appeared in the Washington Post that cast some light on the beliefs and antics of Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin, “The Far-Right Mystical Writer Who Helped Shape Putin’s View of Russia” (p. B-4).  It was written by Tara Isabella Burton, author of Strange Rites (2020), a book which examines the odd turns that religion has taken in the United States, especially under the influence of what Pope Gregory XVI in 1834 called rerum novarum, “New Things,” today better known as socialism, modernism, and the New Age.

Focusing on Ukraine

 

Just as individual sovereignty requires that someone have control over what he or she and his or her dependents needs to live in a manner befitting the demands of human dignity, each country needs to secure the means to secure national sovereignty.  In crude terms, as Henry C. Adams pointed out in 1898, that means not getting into debt to other countries, just as at the individual level indebtedness destroys personal sovereignty.

4. Five Roadblocks to Social Justice: Technology

We now come to the fourth of the roadblocks to social justice: the effect of advancing technology.

Not to belabor the point, but as we stated in the previous posting on this subject, there are five situations that need to be addressed if we are to carry out a restructuring the social order.  Again, there may be more, but these are the ones we think are key to carry out a just, effective, and sustainable restructuring of the social order:

Interpreting the Goals of the Great Reset

Whether or not anyone realizes it, everyone has a philosophy of some sort.  To understand the Great Reset, it is essential to know the philosophy behind it.

“All Products Will Have Become Services”

Analyzing the Great Reset is made more difficult by the fact that, like Pope Saint Pius X’s comment about modernism, it is presented “without order and systematic arrangement” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, § 4) in a loose, even chaotic manner.  Rhetoric plays to the emotions, and goals are stated in vague terms that leave far too much to personal interpretation and imagination on the part of both adherents and opponents.

Goals of the Great Reset

Individuals and groups promoting the Great Reset appear to be motivated by a genuine concern for the future of humanity and of the planet.  In our experience, however, that simply adds to the seriousness of the problem.  It shifts the basis of argument away from knowledge and reason based on the intellect, to opinion and faith based on the will.