Chris Oppermann

Posts by Chris Oppermann

August 29, 2010

Jeffrey Tucker: Why (Some) Catholics Don’t Understand Economics

Acton University faculty member Jeffrey Tucker has an insightful essay over at InsideCatholic.com, “Why Catholics Don’t Understand Economics.” Throughout the piece, Mr. Tucker employs a distinction between scarce, economic goods, and non-scarce, infinitely distributable, spiritual goods: I have what I think is a new theory about why this situation persists. Continue Reading...

August 26, 2010

Health Care Subsidiarity: Continued

The escalating legal battle over the recent health care legislation has spilled out of the federal judiciary into state governments. An August 14 story from the New York Times reports: Faced with the need to review insurance rates and enforce a panoply of new rights granted to consumers, states are scrambling to make sure they have the necessary legal authority to carry out the responsibilities being placed on them by President Obama’s health care law. Continue Reading...

August 05, 2010

Re: Broken Windows – University Funding Edition

As Kishore Jayabalan noted yesterday, the fallacy of “broken windows” is, unfortunately, ubiquitous in discussions of public finance and macroeconomics. Though we are told that government spending and public works have a stimulating effect on economic activity, rarely are the costs of such projects discussed. Continue Reading...

August 04, 2010

Health Care Subsidiarity in the UK and the US

A recent New York Times story reports that the new British government plans to “decentralize” the National Health Care system as part of its new austerity measures. Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. Continue Reading...

August 03, 2010

Ralph Raico on Religion, Lord Acton, and Classical Liberalism

One of the charges sometimes leveled against classical liberal thought is that it opposes all authority; that it seeks to reduce society to an amalgamation of atomized individuals, eliminating the role of religion, community, and vibrant social institutions. Continue Reading...

July 28, 2010

A ‘Reality Economics’ View of Entrepreneurship

This week I’m attending Mises University, one of the largest and most rigorous summer courses in the Austrian School of economics (or “reality economics,” as my friend Michael McKay likes to call it). Continue Reading...

July 26, 2010

Re: Gregg on Gold

In a recent post Dr. Sam Gregg outlined several arguments in the case for returning to some kind of gold or commodity-based monetary system. One of the advantages to a commodity standard, Dr. Continue Reading...

July 22, 2010

Nullification and Subsidiarity

Thomas Jefferson’s long-forgotten theory of state nullification may have found an ideal time for a resurgence, as the Tea Party and other groups advocate limited government as a solution to many of our current problems in health care, the economic crisis, our broken educational system, and the relentless expansion of government. Continue Reading...

July 21, 2010

Cardinal Pell on Global Warming, Western Civilization

His Eminence George Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, who delivered the keynote address at Acton’s 2004 annual dinner (full text here), has recently produced two notable commentaries: the first on global warming, the second on the Christian foundations of modern Western Civilization. Continue Reading...