Yesterday I had a conversation with a gentleman who argued that large corporations and “Wall Street,” whatever he meant by that phrase, worked to the detriment of small business. He complained that large corporations and “Wall Street” put small businesses out of existence.
While this conversation was too short because we both had to leave, I tried to point out that the facts do not bear out this theory. Small business employs two-thirds of all employees in the ?xml:namespace...
Many Catholics, including Popes, have contrasted economic development with personal development. They are at pains to point out that mere economic development does not necessarily lead to the development of persons or culture per se. They seem to harp on this as if everyone would be ignorant of this obvious truth, or as if the free market economic system automatically deflects one from development of their personhood. I think that some Catholics make their careers stating and restating...
The Congressional Budget Office has given us an estimate of how much it will cost to insure one-third of all the uninsured medical patients in the United States by something like 2012, and it will cost a certain bazillions of dollars, which Obama is now saying will not expand the deficit, while also having promised in his campaign that he will not raise taxes of anyone who makes below $250,000. There is nothing in the media but talk about how he can possibly do this without taxing, and the...
Almost all the talk in the news today is about health care reform in the ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /
Firstly, the proper term for what is being discussed is “medical care,” not health care. Health care is the responsibility of each and every person according to his ability to influence events that affect his or her health. This would...
Glenn Beck: The Letter
?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /GLENN: I got a letter from a woman in ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /
There has been a lot of discussion about President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /
I am sure that readers of this blog are familiar with the recent episode relating to the supposed Catholic university of Notre Dame inviting President Obama, the most pro-abortion president in history, to be the commencement speaker and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
There are a number of things to be said about all of this. For example, the argument was made that we have to hear the other side of the story. Can anybody really say that any Notre Dame students have not heard the...
I have never listened to the Glenn Beck radio show, but I have enjoyed watching his television show, first on CNN Headline News, and, more recently, on Fox News Channel. I also agree with almost everything he says on that show, and I am impressed with his guests, especially, but not exclusively, the economists. However, today he blew it! Glenn has been recommending the book Animal Spirits by two economists, Robert J. Shiller and George Akerlof. Now, Glenn has been complaining for...
This week, President Obama submitted his budget to Congress. The budget called for 3.6 trillion dollars in government spending; that’s $3,600,000,000,000. He was proud of his work because, he said, he cut $17 billion dollars in government programs, which he said is “real money.” Now, to you and me, $17 billion is a lot of money; but to the Federal budget, it is a real drop in the bucket. Obama’s cuts in programs are ½ of 1% of this budget, or, .005 of the budget. Put another way,...
This line from an old pizza commercial brings up an exercise in one of my management courses while studying for my MBA. What you had to do is think for a while about what you would like your epitaph to say about you. I never thought about it this way. Another way to put this exercise is to ask, "What kind of a person are you? How do you want people to remember you?"
The Catholic Church focuses a lot on sin, and rightly so. Catholics examine their consciences, or should examine their...
