JTW Podcast: The Terry and Jesse Show

This week we have an interview by Jesse Romero — the Jesse half of the Terry and Jesse Show — of the authors of The Greater Reset, the new book by Dawn K. Brohawn, Director of Communications of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ), and Michael D. Greaney, CESJ’s Director of Research.  If you’re not Catholic (or even if you are) you might find the first quarter hour a little outside your area of interest, but either hang in there or fast forward, whatever suits your mood at the moment:

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 10

Depending on who you’re talking to, President Biden and other world leaders are either doing ’way too much or nowhere near enough about Ukraine and one or two . . . million other problems.  Of course, from our perspective, world leaders don’t lack the goodwill and the resources so much as the right framework of analysis, an obvious reference to the fact that few if any world leaders seem to be aware of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism.  President Zelensky would, we believe, be enthusiastic about it if we could get it to him, while Putin would (in our opinion) view it as an even greater threat to his wealth and power than NATO, as you can see from the first of today’s news items:

Rebirth of a Nation

It will soon (we hope) become a pastime of armchair generals and amateur historians to discuss endlessly whether there has ever been a more vicious, psychotic, or incompetent military operation — special or otherwise — in the history of the world than Putin’s War.  If the current president of Russia wanted to ensure that his name would always be remembered as a byword for pure evil, he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

JTW Podcast: Zelenskyy’s Speech to Congress (Graphic)

This week we present Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s speech to the United States Congress:

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 09

In Fiddler on the Roof, someone asks the village Rabbi if there is a proper blessing for the Tzar.  He replies, “Of course . . . ‘May God bless and keep the Tzar . . . far away from us!’”  Many people, and not just Russians, are no doubt invoking a similar blessing for Putin.  An old prayer goes, “Savior of the world, save Russia!” to which we might add, “and everyone else from Russia.”

Russian Moral and Financial Default

What happens when a country cannot or will not pay its sovereign debt (government bonds and other obligations of the State) or even the interest on it?  Similarly, what happens if a government pays off its debts with its own worthless currency, despite the fact that the debt is denominated in that of another country?

The Greater Reset Published Today

 Today is the official launching of The Greater Reset which, unlike all other books on the subject that we've been able to find, offers a solution to the problems instead of just criticizing.  Get yours today:

JTW Podcast: The Chinese Bubble

Remember the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s?  If you do, you’re one of the oldest people on Earth.  You may, however, have seen the Marx Brothers film based on it, The Cocoanuts (1929), which may actually not be quite as insane as the boom itself.  Why bring this up?  It turns out that the alarming Chinese economic dragon may be as hollow as the fearsome Russian military bear — able to do a lot of damage, even on an apocalyptic scale, but something that will ultimately collapse in on itself . . . after causing massive damage on a global scale.

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 08

Obviously, Putin’s War in Ukraine is at the top of the list of what’s in the news this week, but there are one or two other items of interest:

Before and After

As we saw in “Putin’s Problems,” the previous posting on this subject, the Ukrainian “Special Military Operation” (a.k.a. “Putin’s War,” “Invasion,” “Assault,” “Genocide,” etc.), Vladimir Putin, the Autocrat of All the Russias (and anywhere else that won’t stand up to him), consists largely of what can only be called “applied knavish imbecility.”

The Truth About the “Great Reset”

The TAN Roundtable

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Thursday, March 10, 2022

2:00 pm EST (U.S.)

 

“You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy”

JTW Podcast: What's Driving Putin

 

Here is an interesting take from German television, Deutche Welle News (in English), on why Russian president Vladimir Putin decided to wage an undeclared war on Ukraine for transparently specious reasons.

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 07

Given Vladimir Putin’s unilateral declaration of war against the human race, our lead stories this week are focused on the situation in Ukraine and Russia. As one of our correspondents in Ukraine near Kyiv has expressed complete disbelief even now that it is happening, that because of one deranged lunatic, cities are being bombed and women and children murdered.  Still, there is some good news . . . after we give you the bad news.

Putin’s Problems

 

No, we’re not departing from the general theme of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism on this blog.  Today, however, we’re going to look objectively as possible at the situation in Ukraine, and what has gone wrong with Putin’s grand strategy.

JTW Podcast: Robert Maynard Hutchins on Education

 

It is interesting to note that Robert Maynard Hutchins believed that federal funding would not turn American academia into a brainwashing factory . . . but at the same time he wanted federal funding of all education, including religious schools.  Federal funding is not a danger as long as there is competition, at least according to Hutchins:

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 06

Obviously the Ukraine situation is at the top of the news this week.  Instead of trying to justify what cannot be justified, however, we prefer to suggest what may be a peaceful way to resolve the situation:

Ukraine’s Opportunity

In yesterday’s posting, we looked at a few things Putin might have overlooked in his ongoing — since 2014 — invasion of Ukraine.  Of course, there are things that a number of pundits in Europe and the United States are overlooking as they (with great sorrow, of course) declare that if Putin wants to take over Ukraine, or even a little bit here, a trifle there, until he has the whole thing in his new empire, what concern is it of anyone else?

Russia’s Difficulty

There is an Irish saying that Russian president Vladimir Putin might want to heed: England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.  At last count, there are more than twenty major separatist movements in Russia alone, not to mention the significant number of dissatisfied, even outraged people in the former Soviet republics, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Boom and Bust Bologna

Virtually the whole of economics today assumes that you can only forestall the otherwise inevitable cycle of economic boom or bust by following the prescription of whatever school of economics they happen to belong to.  The fact that none of the prescriptions touted today has ever really worked doesn’t seem to matter.  As is usual, if something isn’t working these days, it’s because of a hidden conspiracy, people aren’t trying hard enough, not enough (or too much) money is being spent, the dog ate it, or anything else that comes to hand.

JTW Podcast: Fulton Sheen on Quo Vadis, America?

This week we have another lecture by Fulton Sheen, author of Freedom Under God,  this time on where America is going . . . and in color!  Again, this isn’t really a religious episode, although it does mention the G-word and religion a lot.  That’s okay; if you’re allergic, just filter it out.

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 05

If you can take time from the weekly FPF — Friday Phone Frenzy (that more and more consists of spam calls instead of people making last minute calls before the week ends) — or making a four-day weekend out of a three-day one, you might find this week’s news items of particular interest:

Can You Imagine?

Back in the Stone Age, i.e., 1971 . . . or maybe it was “the Stoned Age” . . . anyway, John Lennon released the bestselling song of his entire career, “Imagine.”  Although the song technically gives Lennon (or Yoko Ono, whom Lennon later claimed gave him most of the lyrics and content) a somewhat equivocal “out” by inserting a strategically place “if,” the point of the piece is to get people thinking how peaceful the world would be if there was no materialism, no borders, and no religion.  Ho, hum, stop us if you’ve heard this.

A New Philosophy of Money

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that the Industrial Revolution made it possible for a few people to produce far more than they could ever consume, while the discovery by politicians that they could finance government operations using newly created money backed only with their own debt made it possible to consume massive amounts of goods and services without producing anything at all.

A Few Thoughts on Money

Today we’d like to look at money.  Well, not just look at it, but offer a few random thoughts.

When the subject of money comes up, some people tend to look exclusively at how (other) people who have money use it.  Apparently explaining widespread enthusiasm for the Great Reset, inclusive capitalism, and so on, such individuals often believe the wealthy use their money properly when they provide employment for workers or give it directly to the poor.

JTW Podcast: Fireside Chat (NOT FDR!)

 

This week’s podcast is a little heavy on religious stuff (as you might expect from a show done by a couple of priests for their parish), but don’t let that stop you.  It started out as being addressed to the Great Reset, but covered a lot of other stuff, too.  In any event, consider it a special Valentine for St. Valentine’s Day since we’re not sending out any cards:

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 04

Maybe it’s just us, but we can’t understand how people keep complaining about debt, and at the same time insist on going with Keynesian economics that has never worked as promised but which requires massive debt that not only won’t, but in the Keynesian framework should not be repaid!  At the same time, simply by going with the Economic Democracy Act, many of the problems people are currently complaining about would become moot:

The Land That Never Was

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at what happened in the global financial markets as the result of the transformation of government debt from something people were forced into accepting, to a blue chip investment.  Not only did this give government control over money and credit, it gave it as much other power as it could get citizens to accept by freeing governments from the necessity of having to ask the citizens for taxes.

Inflation v. Employment, or, Cotton is King

Regular Readers of this blog may have gotten the idea that we’re not exactly enamored of Keynesian economics.  If so, they have the right idea: we’re not.  And there are a lot of very good reasons for it.  For today, however, we’ll confine ourselves to the alleged tradeoff between inflation and employment.

Financing the Future with Government Debt

In the previous posting on this subject, we saw that with the way the British financed the war against Napoléon, combined with the Financial and Industrial Revolutions, set up a surreal situation.  People who owned capital were able to produce far more than they could consume, while the government, which produces nothing, could consume by manipulating money.

JTW Podcast: Fulton Sheen on Building Character

This week’s podcast offers yet another lecture by Fulton Sheen, author of Freedom Under God,  this time on building character.  As you watch, you can understand how “America’s first televangelist” wasn’t really a televangelist at all, at least as that term is usually meant.  He was a guy who happened to be a Catholic prelate giving lectures on subjects of interest to a great many people, not just Christians.

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 04

Is it just us, or is the world becoming an ever-more surreal place?  Russia parks 140,000 troops on the eastern Ukraine border and claims it is being provoked.  The U.S. government creates over $30 trillion in counterfeit money and Keynesian experts confirm that this is funny money by maintaining that the government doesn’t have to make good on any of it because — in common with all counterfeit money — the issuer isn’t really on the hook for it!  We could continue, but why go on?  This week’s news notes are depressing enough (except for the Fireside Chat notice, of course):

A New Monetary Philosophy

We closed the previous posting on this subject by wondering why, when the history of backing a financial asset with government debt had proved so disastrous in the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi Scheme (which we didn’t go into), anyone would have been tempted to try it again.  After all, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results — and the one thing Ebenezer Scrooge was not was crazy, either before or after his completion.

Financing Economic Democracy

Continuing our practice of using answers to some questions as blog postings, we recently got a question about how widespread capital ownership is financed.  Specifically, is money given to people so that they can become owners by purchasing existing assets or is there a fundamentally different way.  As our questioner questioned,

Double Trouble in the Bubble

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, how the British government chose to finance the Napoleonic Wars embodied what amounts to legal counterfeiting as a primary source of financing government operations — something Ebenezer Scrooge, pre- and post-reformation would have had a hard time swallowing.  Had the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shown Scrooge where John Maynard Keynes would take the bizarre belief that government can actually create wealth out of nothing, maybe he would have been inspired to do something about preventing the spread of such an insane idea.

JTW Podcast: Fulton Sheen on Improving Your Mind

A few weeks ago, we came across another article bemoaning the fact that the number of people who read in society and have any degree of cultural literacy that stretches back more than a few years has declined greatly.  As Dr. Mark Bauerlein said in his interview, a decline in reading has led to a rise in stupidity.

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 03

It’s astonishing how many problems can potentially be solved by implementing the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism — which can be done very easily with what amounts to some very minor changes in laws . . . and some very major changes in people’s thinking and assumptions.  Be that as it may, here’s what’s been happening on the Home Front of Economic and Social Justice:

Binary Economics and Distributive Justice

As we may have mentioned once or twice, we like to get questions . . . if we can use our answers as blog postings, anyway.  The other day we were handed a question that came in over the transom — and believe it or not, we lived for four years at college in rooms that had transoms, so we not only know what a transom is, we know how to submit something over one.  Anyway —

More Mad Money Myths Meliorated

You wouldn’t have been able to trip up Ebenezer Scrooge on the subject of today’s posting.  He was a banker and worked in the City of London, that is to say, the financial district, sort of the British Wall Street (very sort of).  He knew the difference between a mortgage (a past savings financial instrument) and a bill of exchange (a future savings instrument), and it’s doubtful whether you could have persuaded Scrooge to speculate in government debt, especially foreign government debt.  He would probably have said “Bah, humbug” to it even after the visits of the three spirits and his completion and reformation.

Myths of Modern Money Amended

Even the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge probably understood money, credit, banking, and finance better than most people today, and certainly better than the monetary mavens of his day.  Proving that two wrongs don’t make a right, the experts of Scrooge’s day were responsible for undermining the exclusionary and elitist, but theoretically sound, financial system that existed prior to the British Bank Charter Act 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c. 32).

JTW Podcast: Fulton Sheen on Education

We never expected Fulton Sheen, author of Freedom Under God, to mention Robert Maynard Hutchins on his television show, but he did — in this video, today’s podcast, which is about the philosophy of education.  It’s not for job training, especially for jobs that don’t exist, or to mortgage your future for eternity by assuming a mountain of debt.  No, it’s to seek truth and become more fully human.  That’s the whole idea behind “Justice University.”

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 02

While the Russian threat to Ukraine should be more on people’s minds — along with all the other threats at the present time — viable and long-term solutions don’t seem to have a place at the table.  Perhaps, however, it’s time to rethink how we approach solving problems, as well as which problems to solve:

The Fatal Omission

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, there was a movement in the early nineteenth century to broaden the base of capital ownership throughout society.   This was justified based on individual human dignity (Cobbett), economic stability (Morrison), and as a counter to the spread of the “New Things” of modernism and socialism (the Catholic Church).

The Road to Limited Liability

In the previous posting on this subject, we saw that even if ordinary people had sufficient savings during the Industrial Revolution, or even if they had gained access to the commercial and central banking system in England, broad-based ownership of the new industries would have been much too risky under the law of the time to allow it.

The Problem of Liability

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, there were significant institutional barriers preventing Ebenezer Scrooge from doing the completely right thing by Bob Cratchit and making him a partner instead of a mere employee.  For example, anyone who “participated” in any way in a business was considered a part owner, even if he didn’t have legal title to anything.  That made him jointly and severally liable for all debts of the business.  If the enterprise went belly-up, he could go to debtor’s prison.

JTW Podcast: Fulton Sheen on How to Think

A few years ago a friend of ours who teaches philosophy at a relatively small college mentioned that for a good part of every first semester class he had to spend most of the time teaching the students something they had never learned in grade or high school: how to think.  After a bit of searching, we found a program the late Fulton Sheen, author of Freedom Under God, gave on “How to Think” . . . which no doubt astounded a large part of his audience that thought it already knew everything. . . .

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 02

Another “Snowmageddon” or “Snow Event” is prophesied for the U.S. east coast, so the store shelves should be stripped bare of milk, bread, toilet paper and orange juice, not to mention cheap liquor.  Be that as it may, here are the news items from this week:

Scrooge’s Social Problem

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted how Dickens took Scrooge about as far as he could go with his reformation and completion as a human person — but no further.  Scrooge’s character was expanded individually, and his sense of strict justice was completed and fulfilled by charity, but no more.

More Than an Individual Problem

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, life in the early nineteenth century had thrown a lot of curves at most people in the form of massive social, economic and political change, and the institutions of the social order were not keeping up.  Instead, radicals were calling for the abolition of all old institutions, such as private property, organized religion, and marriage and family, and their replacement with what was called by many names, but with one substance: socialism.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Charles Dickens’s character Ebenezer Scrooge turns out not to have been so much a bad man, but an incomplete person.  Once he accepted grace and “converted” to personalism, as Dickens put it, “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

JTW Podcast: The Bob’s Red Mill ESOP Story

Two years ago (almost to the day) we went hunting for potato starch to make “karaage,” that is, fried chicken the Japanese way, which requires dredging in potato starch for the very best results.  (Trust us.  Use potato starch.  It’s like a potato chip coating on the chicken.)

News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 01

What with a couple of paralyzing blizzards in the DC metro area, the year is off to a slow start, which is not made any more interesting, news-wise, by our attempts to avoid partisan politics — we don’t care who does the right thing, as long as somebody does.  Be that as it may, here’s what we have for this week:

Scrooge v. the Socialists

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted how, in contrast to today’s super-rich, and traditional capitalists and socialists, when Ebenezer Scrooge saw the light (and the three spirits), and became charitable, he didn’t call it “justice” and he used his own money.  He also didn’t consciously control Bob Cratchit, despite the fact that the system of the time pretty much forced employees into a condition of dependency, which a master could make burdensome or easy.  Naturally, many masters really rubbed their employees’ noses in it, as they knew their employees were inferior beings or they would have been in charge . . . right?

The Honesty of Ebenezer

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that Ebenezer Scrooge, the, er, hero (or maybe “victim”?) of Charles Dickens’s 1843 story “A Christmas Carol” was portrayed as a strictly honest man, despite later dramatic characterizations that made him seem like a minor Robber Baron or major sneak thief.  Scrooge’s iron rectitude is, in fact, essential to the plot, as otherwise Dickens’s story could have been dismissed (at least within the context of the fictional world) as a lie or a delusion.

An Unexpected Christmas Message

No, really, it’s still Christmas.  Despite the common belief that “the Christmas Season” starts the day after Thanksgiving (or, for some, after Independence Day) and runs until 9:00 am on December 25, Christmas actually begins at sundown on December 24 and runs for the next dozen days . . . although we’re off the hook regarding gifts, unless you include or hold off until January 6.

JTW Podcast: Guy Stevenson Hungry for More

Okay, this week’s podcast is more than a trifle religiously oriented, but that’s not the reason we’re posting it.  If you like you can fast forward to around Minute 10 when Guy Stevenson starts bringing in the Just Third Way and binary economics . . . which is the reason we’re using this podcast.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 52

Today we present the second half of our annual Just Third Way news roundup, with, however, a slightly more cheery current item than we had last week:

What Sun Tzu Didn’t Tell You

One thing about working in the field of theoretical and practical economics is that you get to hear all the really dumb things people say about money and credit.  Almost as bad on occasion, and often worse (if you know anything about military science), are the things you hear about war.  That’s why one of the worst movies of all time — at least from a moral point of view — has got to be Wall Street (1987).

China’s Contradictory Messages

In a piece in this past Monday’s Washington Post, “China’s Contradictory Messages on Democracy and Hong Kong” (12/27/21, A-15), Keith B. Richburg of the University of Hong Kong noted how the People’s Republic of China is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to democracy.  We agree, although not perhaps in the same way as Mr. Richburg.

The Very Model of a Modern Chestertonian

Our previous posting on this subject was an expansion of a comment we made on an article, “Catholics and Race in American History,” on the website of the Catholic World Report, a Catholic webzine.  We thought we were agreeing with the author, Kevin Schmiesing, but adding a few interesting tidbits we’ve uncovered in our research as well as a little analysis of our own.

JTW Podcast: How to Misunderstand William Cobbett

 

William Cobbett (1763-1835) Was an English “Radical” politician, journalist and social commentator revered by many “Chestertonians” as “the Apostle of Distributism,” what G.K. Chesterton defined as a policy of widely distributed small property, with a preference for family-owned farms and businesses.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 51

Ordinarily we don’t post anything substantive on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, but (as it does every couple of years or so) both fall on the day we annually reserve for our news roundup for the year.  Before we begin with the items from the first half of the year, however, we have some sad news for friends of the Just Third Way:

Slavery and Moral Relativism

Recently an article appeared on Catholic World Report, “Catholics and Race in American History,” the point of which seemed to be to excuse a presumed lack of action by the Catholic Church in failing to condemn slavery while it was legal, and present a sterling record of condemning racism ever since.  The problem with the article was that it missed certain things that would have made the institutional Catholic Church look a lot better than it did, while making individual Catholics look a lot worse.

Ryan, Coughlin, and the New Deal

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, we saw that the New Deal really had nothing to do with any natural law-based approach to social thought, or even “supernatural law” approach, either, if we accept Dorothy Day’s strictures about the dangers of giving “Holy Mother, the State” such overwhelming power.

The Right Reverend New Dealer

 

To this day there are people who insist that the “New Deal” of Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only saved the United States from the Great Depression (ahem, Part III, there having been two previous phases, the first from 1873 to 1878, the second from 1893 to 1898), it was also THE perfect social program and should be duplicated today as in (for example) the so-called “Green New Deal.”

JTW Podcast: 2010 Rally at the Fed

In this week’s podcast we bring you the 2010 Keynote Address given by Norman Kurland, president of the Center for Economic and Social Justice, giving the reasons why we need what we were then calling the Capital Homestead Act, but are now calling the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 50

As we plan on starting our annual two-part news roundup next week, this is the final “real time” News from the Network for this year.  As you can see, not too much is going on that is any different from prior weeks, making it increasingly obvious that we need the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act:

The Role of the State

Recently we saw a tweet or twit or whatever-you-call-’em stating that the terms “student debt” and “medical debt” should be eliminated, as no one should have to go into debt in order to get an education or be healthy.  We couldn’t figure out, however, whether the poster meant that people should pay only what they can for schooling and healthcare, or it should all be free, i.e., paid for by somebody else, usually the State meaning everybody else.

The War on Private Property

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the dominance of Msgr. John A. Ryan over the interpretation of social teaching — achieved by shifting from reason to faith (meaning personal opinion heavily influenced by socialism) — meant that any who opposed socialism were ipso facto heretics instead of simply mistaken or even right when Ryan was wrong.  Ryan’s influence even extended to having his students hint that Fulton Sheen was a “traitor to Christ” for saying things that Ryan didn’t want to hear.

Ryan v. Sheen

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, through some very skillful salesmanship and philosophical sleight-of-hand, the whole understanding of “natural law” in the western tradition was overthrown in many circles through the efforts of the Fabian socialists and Msgr. John A. Ryan of the Catholic University of America in the first half of the twentieth century.  Nor did matters stop at mere theorizing.

JTW Podcast: Louis Kelso: Economic Theorist

This week’s podcast is an old video from 1983 of an interview with Louis O. Kelso, the lawyer-economist who invented the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and whose ideas were essential to the development of the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 49

It is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone except those in politics and academia that the Same Old Thing isn’t working.  To cut to the chase, until and unless governments adopt the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act, matters are only going to get worse:

It’s Not Socialism Except When It Is

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that, while the most popular interpretation of “Catholic social teaching” (really the natural law social teaching that applies to everyone, including atheists and anybody else who is a human being, regardless of faith or philosophy or lack thereof and how’s that for a run-on parenthetical?), and even considered “authoritative” — even though it contradicts the very authorities on which it bases its claims.

A New Age Economic Program

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, one of the biggest shifts in thinking that has caused massive amounts of trouble over the past couple of centuries is the shift from reason, to faith in matters pertaining to the natural order.  This sounds bad to atheists and agnostics, and good to (some) theists, but the simple fact is that it’s bad for everyone.

What Happened to Distributive Justice?

 

In the previous posting on this subject, we related that Msgr. John A. Ryan changed the basis and understanding of the natural law from reason to faith.  The problem there, of course, is that if the natural law is based on reason, it applies to every human being.  If it is based on faith, it only applies to those who adhere to the faith that determines the natural law.

JTW Podcast: The Great Game of Business

Today we have a video introducing “the Great Game of Business” and “Open Book Management.”  Rather than try to explain here what these are, watch the short video, then correlate it with the Economic Democracy Act:

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 48

As of this writing, the Dow down more than 250 points on continuing worries about the effects of the new Omicron COVID-19 strain.  Once again it demonstrates the fact that we need to get away from obsessing about what is essentially a fantasy world on Wall Street and focus on the real world of Main Street.  To do that we need the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act:

John A. Ryan v. Aquinas

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at the different roles of faith and reason.  To oversimplify somewhat, reason takes first place in matters pertaining to the natural world, while faith takes first place in matters pertaining to the supernatural world.  At the same time, neither faith nor reason can contradict one another.

Faith AND Reason

As we saw in our last exciting episode, you can’t really understand or critique a system unless you understand the principles of the system.   Despite that, many people today declare that they can change the fundamental principles of natural law within an Aristotelian system from reason-based, to faith-based.

A Slight Problem with Moral Relativism

Okay, a really big problem with moral relativism, which is the philosophical aspect of both capitalism and socialism.  Moral relativism and socialist-capitalism (or capitalist-socialism, not really too much difference atwixt the two) both shift the understanding of the world from what can be proved by logical argument or observed by empirical evidence and go with a “faith”-based personal opinion that ends up being whatever those in power want it to be.

JTW Podcast: The Springfield Remanufacturing Story

In our upcoming book, The Greater Reset from TAN Books, based on our earlier book, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person (2020), we talk about the benefits of worker ownership.  One of the more successful (to put it mildly) worker-owned companies is Springfield Remanufacturing, which refurbishes engines, the sort of job that’s been moving out of the U.S. for decades.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 47

As of this writing, the Dow has plunged more 1,000 points on news of a new COVID-19 strain in South America.  In real terms, of course, it doesn’t mean anything, as a gain or loss in the stock market is only “real” when you sell the shares and lock in a loss or a gain.  It does, however, illustrate the fact that we need to get away from obsessing about what is essentially a fantasy world on Wall Street and fovus on the real world of Main Street.  To do that we need the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act:

Happy Thanksgiving

 

You Ain’t Heard NOTHIN’ Yet!

If you’ve seen Monday’s podcast and yesterday’s blog posting, you may be starting to wonder if this is serious or if we made it all up.  We can assure you that we’re completely serious and absolutely none of this stuff is made up.  As the great biologist J.B.S. Haldane almost sort of said after the editors and science fiction writers got through with it, “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine.”

We’re NOT Making This Up, You Know!

Whenever the late, great Anna Russell related something so incredibly illogical or totally bizarre in the plot line of some opera or other, she would utter her tag line, which almost always brought down the house: “I’m not making this up, you know!”  Well, neither are we . . . and what we’re saying would absolutely floor anyone who accepts opera plots without batting an eye.

JTW Podcast: America's "Prince of Cranks"

Our upcoming book, The Greater Reset from TAN Books, and  based on our earlier book, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person (2020), mentions the rather fantastic Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, who was a primary source for Madame Blavatsky's version of theosophy and a major influence on Msgr. John A. Ryan, whose ideas of distributive justice and private property undermined a natural law understanding of those ancient institutions and substituted socialism and fascism for personalist liberal democracy.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 46

If there’s one thing evident from this week’s news items, it’s that most — if not all — of the experts don’t seem to understand money, credit, banking, or finance.  Or basic human nature, for that matter.  Clearly, if we want to restore sanity, we need the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act:

Icarian Communism

Yes, communism.  Although later followers and modern commentators would refer to the system invented by Étienne Cabet as socialism, he insisted that it was communism.  To this day there is confusion regarding any meaningful distinction between the terms. 

That Old Black Magic

If you want to be shunned at the club, tell the truth about a historical falsehood that virtually everyone accepts as unquestionably true.  Take, for instance, the origins of socialism and its link to esoteric thought and the Occult, as demonstrated in the voluminous writings of Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg University (the one in Baden-Württemberg, not Ohio).  Nowhere is this more evident than in the career of Alphonse-Louis Constant.

The Church of Saint-Simon

In the previous posting on this subject — the “Democratic Religion” of Socialism — we saw that the ultimate goal of socialism was the complete overturn of traditional society and the implementation of what was usually called “the Kingdom of God on Earth,” a materialist terrestrial paradise.  This was usually put in economic terms, frequently confusing people as to what the goal really was.

JTW Podcast: Five Levers of Change

Today we have the final show in the ten-part series on the book, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person (2020).  This episode covers what we call “the Five Levers of Change”: Education, Politics, Money and Credit, Taxation, and Technology.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 45

This week’s news items focus on the value and role of human labor, particularly its replacement by advanced technology or cheaper foreign labor.  The solution is not to raise wages articifically or redistribute, but to institute the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act:

What is “Environmental Justice”?

We’ll be the first to admit that the term “environmental justice” causes something of a kneejerk reaction in us.  That’s because, as some of its more vocal adherents insist, it means that “Nature” or “the Environment,” or “Gaia” or something else is a person and therefore has inherent rights that should not be violated.

The Democratic Religion

It seems that His Excellency, the Most Reverend Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, and current president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is creating a bit of a stir.  Last week, on Thursday, November 4, 2021, he made comments (or “railed” or “ranted,” depending on who’s doing the reporting) branding “new social justice movements” as “pseudo religions” and “dangerous substitutes for true religion.”

What is “Social Justice”?

If you google the term “social justice,” you will get a flood of results . . . few (if any) of which have an accurate definition or even description of the virtue.  As a result, people generally go away with the same understanding they started with.  If they thought social justice is another term for socialism, nothing changed their mind.  If they thought that social justice means replacing individual justice with coercive, large-scale “charity” (actually redistribution), little was done to modify their position.

JTW Podcast: (Not So) Secrets of the Fed

       This week’s podcast is an hour-long video on what the Federal Reserve has been doing that’s not exactly within the scope of its intended purposes . . . which hasn’t been the case since the New Deal, and was kind of sporadic before then.

News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 44

Most of what is happening in the world today is the best advertisement possible for the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism and the Economic Democracy Act.  The problem is that those who think that they are world leaders (or even just ordinary leaders) aren’t really doing leading or much else that is constructive.  What the world needs now is not just love, but a way of realistically implementing justice fulfilled and completed by love:

The Economic Democracy Act

      In the previous posting on this subject, we presented the theory of binary economics, which is the economics of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism.  Today we’ll present what we think is the best application of the theory, the proposed Economic Democracy Act.

The Un-Capitalist Manifesto

       In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that the Keynesian prescription for financing economic growth was based on a fallacy: the idea that savings must be accumulated before new capital can be financed.  Examining the period from 1830 to 1930, however, Dr. Harold G. Moulton of the Brookings Institution found that in each and every case, periods of rapid economic growth had been preceded not by reductions in consumption to accumulate savings, but by increases in consumption that depleted savings!

The Formation of Capital

       In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at how financing new capital formation works with past savings and with future savings.  To recap, the past savings technique of finance means you accumulate savings by decreasing consumption in the past, while the future savings technique involves increasing production in the future.

JTW Podcast: Canons of Taxation

In view of the rather confused thinking in the U.S. Congress these days over how best to tax and for what reason, we found this video on the “Canons (or Principles) of Taxation.”  The first four are those Adam Smith gave in The Wealth of Nations (1776), while the others were added later by other economists.