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

August 29, 2017

The balance of industries and creative destruction

Note: This is post #46 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Why are price signals and market competition so important to a market economy? When prices accurately signal costs and benefits and markets are competitive, the Invisible Hand ensures that costs are minimized and production is maximized, explains Alex Tabarrok. Continue Reading...
August 24, 2017

Explainer: What you should know about the debt ceiling

What just happened? In two tweets posted earlier today, President Trump attacked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan for not tying an increase in the debt limit to a recent Veterans Affairs bill that passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. Continue Reading...
August 23, 2017

How free trade promotes global peace

Thomas L. Friedman said in The Lexus and the Olive Tree that no two countries with McDonald’s within their borders have ever been in a war since having a McDonald’s. Since it was proposed in 1999 this explanation of how globalization affects foreign policy and conflict has become known as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention. Continue Reading...
August 23, 2017

Our economic age of anxiety

“Developed nations are increasingly haunted by doubts about the legitimacy of their economic structures,” says Victor V. Claar and Greg Forster in this week’s Acton Commentary. “This paralyzing anxiety crosses all lines of ethnicity, religion, class, party and ideology.” Continue Reading...
August 21, 2017

The anti-capitalist roots of American anti-Semitism

Over the past week Americans have been debating the removal of Confederate statues from our public spaces. The discussion was prompted by the white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia that was supposedly in response to the plan to take down the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Continue Reading...
August 16, 2017

On modern economics and the reading of old books

I was living with thousands of Marines on a base in Japan when I discovered a novel about a handful of Classics students living at a small, elite Vermont college. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History instantly became on of my favorite books, partially because at the time (1993) I was dreaming of leaving the Corps and attending St. Continue Reading...