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

May 02, 2017

The big ideas of trade

Note: This is post #31 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Trade makes people better off, but how? In this video economist Tyler Cowen discuss the importance of specialization and division of knowledge, and how specialization leads to improvements in knowledge, which then lead to improvements in productivity. Continue Reading...
April 28, 2017

Why it matters how ex-presidents make their money

The President of the United States makes an annual salary of $400,000 a year for doing one of the toughest jobs in the world. While the pay may seem relatively low compared to CEOs of major corporations, the real payoff for presidents comes once they exit the White House. Continue Reading...
April 27, 2017

Explainer: What you should know about President Trump’s tax reform plan

Yesterday the Trump administration released its tax-reform plan, which the White House is calling the “biggest individual and business tax cut in American history.” Here is what you should know about the plan: What are the goals of the tax reform plan: The stated goals are to: • Grow the economy and create millions of jobs • Simplify our burdensome tax code • Provide tax relief to American families—especially middle-income families • Lower the business tax rate from one of the highest in the world to one of the lowest What are the objective for individual taxpayer reform? Continue Reading...
April 26, 2017

More than compassion needed for Europe’s refugees

“Irrespective of the political forces at play,” says Trey Dimsdale in this week’s Acton Commentary, “there is no arguing with the fact that such a large number of displaced immigrants presents a monumental humanitarian crisis in which survival becomes the initial, but not final, concern.” Continue Reading...
April 25, 2017

Taxes on unhealthy food do nothing but hurt the poor

Throughout history, societies have found peculiar ways to reinforce social hierarchies and class-based discrimination. A common way is to prohibit certain social classes from being able to purchase a good. These types of laws that regulate permitted consumption of particular goods and services are known as sumptuary laws. Continue Reading...
April 25, 2017

Price Controls and Communism

Note: This is post #30 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. What happens when price controls are used in communist countries? As Alex Tabarrok explains, all of the effects of price controls become amplified: there are even more shortages or surpluses of goods, lower product quality, longer lines and more search costs, more losses in gains from trade, and more misallocation of resources. Continue Reading...
April 24, 2017

Humans care about economic fairness, not economic inequality

A new study published in the science journal Nature Human Behaviour finds that in most situation people are unconcerned about economic inequality as long as distributions of wealth are fair: There is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. Continue Reading...
April 21, 2017

Explainer: What you should know about Earth Day?

What is Earth Day? Earth Day is an annual event, celebrated on April 22, on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first celebrated in 1970, the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement. Continue Reading...