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Since our founding, Public Discourse has sought to promote an approach to economics that focused on the common good. From early essays from our Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Ryan T. Anderson, on a natural law vision of social justice (the subject of his dissertation), to more recent essays from Senator Marco Rubio on the dignity of work and from our Editor, Serena Sigilito, on economic policy and childcare, Public Discourse has been a venue for conservative thinkers to explore how to best understand the relationship of the market and human flourishing. Here is a small sample of some of those early essays and more recent ones from the past year.
Conservatives and Social Justice
Conservatives shouldn’t ignore or attack social justice, but must articulate sound principles of social justice.
Natural Law, Social Justice, and the Crisis of Liberty in the West
A reflection on our nature as “dependent, rational animals.”
Common Good Capitalism and the Dignity of Work
Common good capitalism is about a vibrant and growing free market. But it is also about harnessing and channeling that growth to the benefit of our country, our people, and our society. Because after all, our nation does not exist to serve the interests of the market. The market exists to serve our nation and our people. Adapted from remarks delivered at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America.
Dear Senator Warren: Don’t Penalize Moms Who Choose to Stay Home with Their Kids
Senator Warren, please don’t compromise what you know to be true for the sake of political expediency. Don’t hurt American families by pushing them farther and farther into the two-income trap. Most of all, please don’t create a system that penalizes moms who choose to stay home with their children.
The Wealth of Nations Depends on the Health of Families
Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results—including economic and political ones—when they cooperate.
Integrating Catholic Social Teaching With Economics and Natural Science
Thoughtful Catholics should integrate the discoveries and insights of economics and science with the principles of Catholic social teaching, and ultimately, with the natural moral law and revealed theology.
Man Does Not Live By Economic Growth Alone
“Economic piety” has led to an overemphasis on consumption, writes Oren Cass in The Once and Future Worker. If we value family and community life, we need a labor policy that is explicitly intended to sustain them.
Thomas Aquinas on the Just Price
St. Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of the question of the just price is often misunderstood by both Catholic integralists and classical liberals. These misunderstandings deprive us of lessons that could otherwise help us combine the goods of freedom and virtue as individuals and in society.
The Economics and Ethics of “Just Wages”
As with the concept of the just price, the idea of the just wage combines the subjectivity of the diverse needs and preferences of individuals with the objective demands of justice. The teaching of the Catholic Church on the just wage avoids both the Scylla of economism and the Charybdis of moralism.