Economics

Socialism and Reality

10/25/2010 – Steve McCann –
The images on the television screen emanating from Europe are a sobering reminder that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried and will always do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers. The riots in the streets of France and Greece, the announced layoffs of nearly 500,000 government employees in the United Kingdom, and the potential national bankruptcy of Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are the current face of this failure.

Yet within the halls of power in Washington, D.C. there is a socialist/progressive cabal, and its titular leader Barack Obama, oblivious to this reality. These ideologues continue to cling to the belief that they have a unique ability to succeed where so many others have failed. The egocentric American Left know no bounds, and their determination to impose their will upon the United States has not and will not abate despite the results of any election. [Read more…]

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Social Darwinism and the Left

10/15/2010 – Jay Richards –
The charge that if you defend free markets and limited government, then you’re a Social Darwinist is a hackneyed and dishonest claim of the Left. I’m not sure who first tried to identify conservative economic policies with Social Darwinism, though Walter Mondale famously attacked (and misrepresented) Ronald Reagan in the 1980s for defending “Social Darwinism” rather than “social decency.”

In a recent column, Robert Reich indulges this nonsense once again (“Republican Economics as Social Darwinism”). The charge, of course, is that conservatives or Republicans oppose say, nationalized medicine, or a massive welfare state, or unsustainable entitlement spending, because they think society should allow the weak to be weeded out and the strong to survive. [Read more…]

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Poor in America Grow Under Obama

Povery Rates Increase from 13.2% to 15%
Povery Rates Increase from 13.2% to 15%

9/12/2010 – Catholic Online –

Since President Barack Obama has taken office, the numbers of America’s poor has steadily climbed. Working-age poor people are reaching the levels of the 1960s, before the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 are to be released this week, and demographers expect troubling statistics.

The findings come at a most unfortunate time – seven weeks before Congressional elections, with many Democrats and Obama supporters expected to be voted out. The expected increase, from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent people living below the poverty line, would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

If these estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country — more than one in seven, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis. [Read more…]

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Humility in a Time of Recession

9/1/2010 – Samuel Gregg –
Since 2008, there has been much discussion about the contribution of unethical behavior to our present economic circumstances. Whether it was borrowers’ lying on mortgage-applications or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s politically-driven lending policies, there seems to be some consciousness that non-economic factors played a role in facilitating what we already call the Great Recession.

Unfortunately evidence is emerging that some people have learned nothing. A recent report, for example, commissioned by the Wall Street Journal illustrates that “losses from mortgage fraud—ranging from falsified credit reports to identity theft—rose 17% last year after declining 57% in the two years after its 2006 peak.” [Read more…]

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Oh No You Didn’t!

7/14/2010 – Conn Carroll –

Last week the Obama administration began rolling out new campaign titled, we kid you not, “Yes, we did.” Did what exactly? Waste nearly a trillion dollars on an economic stimulus that by every objective measure has completely failed to perform as advertised? Then yes you did. A new CBS poll out today shows that 74 percent of Americans believe the Obama stimulus either damaged the economy or had no effect. Clearly the White House is on a different planet than the rest of the country.

In another dispatch from Planet Obama, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report today purporting to prove that President Obama’s stimulus has saved or created 3 million jobs and is on track to meet its goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. Where do they come up this slop? [Read more…]

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Crime and Recession, It’s Not What They Think

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

5/27/2010 – Chuck Colson –
The evidence shows over and over that crime is not caused by deprivation, but by depravity. And the answer is conversion.

The statistics are startling. Across the United States, crime rates are dropping—for the third year in a row. According to the FBI, violent crimes like murder and rape were down 5.5% in 2009. Property crimes were down 4.9%. Amazingly enough, crime rates dropped more in big cities than in smaller cities.

The media is having a hard time explaining why crime rates are dropping. As one major paper put it, the drop in crime is “challenging the widely held belief that recessions drive up crime rates.” But “challenging” puts it too mildly: Since the economic collapse, the rate of decline in crime rates has actually accelerated!

So where does the “widely held” belief that recessions fuel crime come from? [Read more…]

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The Liberal Assault on the Poor

Jacob Hornberger
Jacob Hornberger

5/7/2010 – Jacob Hornberger –
Liberals say that they love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Unfortunately, however, the economic philosophy that liberals favor constitutes a direct assault on the economic well-being of the poor, along with nearly everyone else in society.

Liberals claim to combat poverty in two principal ways.

First, they use the force of government (e.g., income taxes) to take money from those who have earned it in order to give it to the poor.

Second, they restrict people’s use of their property to enable the poor to have access to such property.[Read more…]

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Prophet Jim Wallis and the Ecclesia of Economic Ignorance

Jim Wallis
Jim Wallis

Acton Institute | by John Couretas | 4/14/2010

This class of the very poor – those who are just on the borders of pauperism or fairly over the borders – is rapidly growing. Wealth is increasing very fast; poverty, even pauperism, is increasing still more rapidly. – Washington Gladden, Applied Christianity (1886)

For three decades, we have experienced a social engineered inequality that is really a sin – of biblical proportions. We have indeed seen class warfare, but this war has been waged by the wealthy and their political allies against the poor and the middle class. – Jim Wallis, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street (2010)

One of Jim Wallis’ long running aims at Sojourners is to cast himself as a moderate or centrist (God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat). This is howling nonsense to anyone who pays attention to his policy prescriptions or watches the progressive/liberal company he keeps. With his new book, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street (Howard Books, 2010), Wallis drops all pretense to holding the center as he piles on with the horde of religious left activists and others now demonizing Wall Street. [Read more…]

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Should We Abandon Capitalism?

NewsReal Blog | by F. Swemson | 3/4/2010

As a system, absolutely not, as for the term itself though, perhaps we should.

In an article in the Telegraph on Thursday 3.04.10, the Chairman of Marks & Spencer, the leading department store in London, made some interesting remarks about capitalism. He spoke mostly about the perception of capitalism and the free market system, in the eyes of people around the world, and the fact that the term itself has begun to become so negative, that they forget the fact that capitalism is the only system which has ever worked, and that every time it was tried, communism led to misery, oppression, and the murder of millions. He even suggested that we find another name for it. Why not ? The progressives found another name for communism, didn’t they? [Read more…]

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Where Did Our Real Wealth Go?

Pajamas Media | by Victor Davis Hanson | Feb. 17, 2010

Imagine a politician announcing: we are going to raise the Social Security age to 66. We are going to freeze and cut spending until we balance the budget within three years, and then with surpluses pay down the debt within 6 years. We are going to build 100 new nuclear power plants and open up the country and its shores to oil and gas production. We are going to cut back all federal entitlements and subsidies by 20% immediately. We are going to ensure enough water for agriculture. We are … [Read more…]

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