Religion & Liberty Online Archives

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July 23, 2015

Minimum Wage OR Minimum Unemployment?

Various forms of government intervention negatively affects economic vitality in many ways, however few policies impact the market as directly as wage laws. The $15 minimum wage law in Seattle dramatically influences determinants of business owners’ hiring practices. Continue Reading...
July 15, 2015

Bill McKibben, Climate-Change Opportunists, and the Pope’s Encyclical

I recently enjoyed a brief back-and-forth with 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben in which he claimed that I accused him of lacking religious faith. That most assuredly was not the case. I told him so, but also stood by my initial assertion that he and other environmental activists are cherry-picking Pope Francis’ Laudato Si for religious and moral firepower on climate-change while ignoring those elements that are core Roman Catholic teachings with which they disagree. Continue Reading...
July 15, 2015

An Economics Ode to Joy

In the weeks since the June 18 release of Laudato Si, the discussion has bifurcated into the realms of prosaic, progressive pantheistic pronouncements that Earth requires tender ministrations post haste on one hand. Continue Reading...
July 14, 2015

Katie Steinle and the Morality of Sanctuary Cities

The moral obligation of society regarding illegal immigrants remains at the center of the political debate on immigration. Numerous questions surround the proper “status” for illegal immigrants, how the state should respond, and the responsibility of American citizens over various humanitarian concerns. Continue Reading...
July 14, 2015

Pope Economically Confused in Bolivia

Today at the Library of Law & Liberty, I examine Pope Francis’s recent speech in Bolivia, in which he calls for “an economy where human beings, in harmony with nature, structure the entire system of production and distribution in such a way that the abilities and needs of each individual find suitable expression in social life.” Continue Reading...
July 09, 2015

Does ‘Laudato Si’ Lead Inevitably to Fossil Fuel Divestment?

The unfortunate fallout of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si continues apace. One wishes the pontiff would’ve released it in four separate installments to avoid misinterpretation and seeming – to this reader, at least – contradictions throughout a somewhat unwieldy 180-some pages in which he alternately praises and disparages human technological improvements over the past two centuries. Continue Reading...