Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a senior writer for The Gospel Coalition, author of The Life and Faith Field Guide for Parents, the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible, and coauthor of How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. He also serves as an associate pastor at McLean Bible Church in Arlington, Va.

Posts by Joe Carter

January 28, 2014

Actually, We Won the War on Poverty

“Why, if we have made such great strides reducing poverty,” asks Scott Winship, “is there such widespread belief that, to quote Ronald Reagan, ‘We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won’?” Continue Reading...
January 27, 2014

Bolt’s Theology of the Market Beyond Biblicism

“Economics is complicated,” says Derek Rishmawy in his review of John Bolt’s new book, Economic Shalom. “Establishing a Christian approach to economics seems even more daunting a task, especially given the amount of ink that’s been spilled when it comes to a Christian approach to money and wealth.” Continue Reading...
January 23, 2014

Is Econ 101 Conservative Propaganda?

Is the teaching of basic microeconomics — opportunity cost, supply and demand curves, incentives, etc. — a form of conservative propaganda? Most people, including almost all economists whether liberal or conservatives, would obviously say “no.” Continue Reading...
January 22, 2014

The Ever-Persistent, Always-Destructive Myth of Overpopulation

The Nordic philosopher and priest Anders Chydenius (1729-1803) — the “Adam Smith of the North” — once asked: Would the Great Master, who adorns the valley with flowers and covers the cliff itself with grass and mosses, exhibit such a great mistake in man, his masterpiece, that man should not be able to enrich the globe with as many inhabitants as it can support? Continue Reading...
January 20, 2014

Freedom Drove a Car: How Cars Helped Fight Racial Segregation

If you want to improve the material conditions of the poor and working classes, what is the one economic metric you should consider most important? For progressives the answer is income inequality, since a wide disparity between the incomes of the rich and poor is considered by them to be an obvious sign of injustice and a justification for using the force of the government to redistribute wealth. Continue Reading...
January 20, 2014

MLK and the Natural Law

Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of saying that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” This was no thin, pragmatic account of rights-based egalitarian liberalism, says Derek Rishmawy, but rather a philosophically and theologically thick appeal to a divinely ordered and sustained cosmos. Continue Reading...
January 17, 2014

How to Prove That Everyone Knows Raising Minimum Wages Increases Unemployment

Yesterday I mentioned that translating economic principles into intuitive concepts is one of the most urgent and necessary tasks to prevent such evils as harm to the poor. Today, William Poole provides an excellent example of what is needed with his “common-sense thought experiment” on minimum wage increases: Suppose Congress were to enact a minimum wage $50 higher than the current one of $7.25 per hour. Continue Reading...