Month: January 2014

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

Martin Luther King and The Birth of Freedom

Acton’s second documentary, The Birth of Freedom, begins with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and ends with an image from the Civil Rights movement. The documentary, which aired on PBS, explores how the speech is rooted deeply in the Western freedom project and how that centuries-old project is itself rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. 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 20, 2014

MLK, Jim Crow, and the Rule of Law

The legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., like most mortals, evokes a certain ambivalence regarding what should be celebrated and what should be rightly critiqued. There are certainly parts of his life and thinking that warrant correction, rebuke, and challenge, but this will be true of all us if we live long enough. 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...
January 17, 2014

Is Income Inequality Really About Marriage?

President Obama has called income inequality the “defining challenge of our time,” but is it strictly about paychecks? Ari Fleischer thinks there is definitely more to it; he believes it’s about the breakdown of the family and American rejection of marriage. Continue Reading...
January 17, 2014

University Study: Obamacare Cost West Michigan 1000 Jobs

A new study by Grand Valley State University professors Leslie Muller and Paul Isely suggests that the Affordable Care Act has already cost West Michigan 1000 jobs. Muller summarized the results in a Wood TV story: “Firms are actually holding off on hiring or their reducing their hiring that they were thinking they were going to be doing because of the ACA,” said Muller. Continue Reading...