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Pillar

Business & Economics

The fifth pillar, business and economics, is built upon concern for the common good and the ways in which the economic order contributes to—or detracts from—human flourishing. Public Discourse examines the ways in which the market is shaped by—and gives shape to—our understanding of the human person, the role of the family, the rule of law, and education and culture.

In a Fallen World, Scarcity Is a Gift

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Person holding two pennies

In a Fallen World, Scarcity Is a Gift

By
In our fallen condition in which we are detached from relationship with God, our mortality is a gift. Scarcity grants meaning to our decisions, provides a merciful conduit for us to know the love of God and one another, and pushes us toward relationships broken by the Fall.
Homelessness

“Housing First” Policy Is Not Helping the Homeless

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It takes excruciating self-loathing for a person to defecate on public sidewalks, shoot up with poisonous drugs, engage in rampant criminality. The mental illness and dissipation is sometimes so profound that many of these poor people die on the streets. Providing housing vouchers alone simply doesn’t cut it.
Unidentified young demostrator with megaphone and notebook protesting against austerity cuts

Graduate Student Unions and Catholic Social Thought

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Since the first social encyclical, Rerum novarum (1891), the Church consistently has taught that forming unions is a natural human right, an expression of the right of association and a right that governments may not deny.
An aerial view from the drone of a neighborhood with its swimming pools inside a forest in the outskirts of Madrid city seeing the urban planning of the area with its home and streets aligned

Housing Affordability: Putting People First

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The deterioration of housing affordability suggests that we must reorient current policies on land use  and focus on more fundamental objectives: people’s need for housing
Delivery and installation of a modular frame house. Frame construction of small houses. Modular housing construction. Your house. An inexpensive house.

Better Housing Would Make Families Happier

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Modern life in the United States is atomizing, lonely, and hard on family bonds. Improving the housing stock would help alleviate these challenges.
Three girls riding down the street on scooters and a bike

Yes in My Backyard—and in My Frontyard

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Being pro-family must also mean being pro-housing reform. If we want more neighborhood children playing in our front yards, we should be pushing their elected officials to make it easier for developers to build, baby, build.
Illustration, a dirty supermarket aisle, with empty and abandoned shelves. Ai generated.

Scarcity Is about More Than the Market

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Before modern economists claimed a monopoly on the topic of scarcity, philosophers, artists, and theologians spent centuries arguing over the nature and limits of our desires.

Why We Don’t Trust the Rich

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If we are worried about wealth inequality because we don’t think the wealthy are using their wealth to help others, then it seems worth asking, who are the wealthy people? Can I, the writer of this essay, and you, the reader of this essay, afford to give $20 more than we are giving to something which will genuinely benefit those less fortunate?

The Semiconductor Industry and the Future of the World Economy (II)

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My reading of the current economic and geopolitical situation is that at least in the short term, the United States will control enough pressure points to make life seriously difficult for the Chinese semiconductor industry.
paying dollar cash to the waiter in cafe

Do Goods Have an Inherently Just Price?

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As economies developed, the idea that a commodity has an inherent just price faded away. We now think of the value of a thing as being a price on which a buyer and seller agree. But the legacy of this idea of a just price lingers in the popular imagination. It is an odd lingering notion, however. If asked, few people would be able to explain when a price is just.
Reflection of architecture on modern office building

America’s Commercial Republic, and Its Detractors: An Interview with Samuel Gregg

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Key Founders believed that America’s future was to be a polity in which free and dynamic commerce would play a powerful role in defining society, as opposed to, say, the priorities of aristocratic or feudal societies. The “republic” side of this political economy equation is that this commercial society would operate within the context of institutions and sets of virtues that draw upon classical, religious, and moderate Enlightenment sources.
Dollar bills in glass jar on wooden background. Saving money concept.

Should Wealth Be Distributed Equally?

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Aristophanes suggests that, like so many political matters, there are tradeoffs involved in the absolute versus relative wealth debate. There is no obvious, universally desirable solution: different societies will tolerate different levels of inequality and might be willing to sacrifice different levels of absolute wealth. Nonetheless, the warning from Aristophanes’ Poverty is clear: absolute equality means absolute destitution.
Computer support engineer installing processor. Microprocessor with clearly visible silicon core and cache chip. Installation of computer processor in the socket.

The Semiconductor Industry and the Future of the World Economy (Part I)

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Without a leading semiconductor industry of its own, China will not have the military capability to challenge the United States for world military leadership and, for example, be able to “reconquer” Taiwan. Similarly, without the best in-house processors, it is difficult to exploit all the advantages promised by artificial intelligence, including its military applications such as programming advanced drones.
Stock Market Graph next to a 1 dollar bill (showing former president Washington). Red trend line indicates the stock market recession period

The Morality of Money

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Finance facilitates the collaboration necessary for the functioning of a free market economy, but does it do so in accordance with concepts of justice and fairness?
offices, towers, city

ESG, Woke Capitalism, and the Virtue of Humility

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ESG, the investment ideology that considers environmental, social, and governance issues, is an important part of the story of the rise of woke capitalism. Resisting ESG will require business leaders not just to communicate the good that they do, but also to cultivate the virtue of humility, which clarifies the importance of restraint and the meaning of community.
welding worker with sparks arcing

The Economy Will Always Be Partial

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In The Next American Economy, Samuel Gregg argues that the free market is the answer to what ails our economy. But much of what’s understood as the blessings of free markets and free trade is no less the result of politics and partiality. There are always competing interests involved; a policy that works for families or for workers might not work for entrepreneurs, and vice versa.
Black and white photo of large family gathered

Toward a New Vision of Wealth

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In modern societies, wealth is not tied to land or long-lasting material things, nor is it transmitted across generations; it is fluid, shapeshifting, and usually doesn’t extend beyond the horizon of our own lives and personal needs. This series attempts to offer fresh ways of imagining wealth so that it becomes more conducive to cultural vibrancy and helps us flourish.

Are Marriage and Parenthood Only for the Wealthy?

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In a post-industrial society where marriage and fertility are expressions of values, rather than buttresses for economic security, policies that strive to make it as easy as possible for people to get married and have children should be at the forefront of the agenda. Broader state investment alone cannot take the place of a pro-family culture, from media outlets to religious institutions to schools.
Assembly line

The Burden of Being a Family

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As some of the financial benefits to marriage have eroded, it can be tempting to use policy to make family formation more attractive. The rising median age at first marriage and first birth, however, largely arise from a mix of technological progress and preference for career, which aren’t things policies can reverse. Better solutions come from civil society, where entrepreneurs work to find solutions to the everyday problems modern parents face and religious communities help young adults order their priorities.

The Cash Economy’s Liquidation of Social Stability

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In some ways, the central problem of America has become liquidity: wealth, energy, and the self all have lost their solidity. The flow of money has had a profoundly corrosive effect on our financial institutions and also our social ones. But there’s no going back to a golden age. Only by reinvigorating our modes of association can we successfully address the pathologies brought on by the quest for financial (not economic) independence.

Intergenerational Wealth: A Vision of Property and Stewardship

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An ethic of stewardship induces a person to acquire and care for property, and the ownership of property helps to stimulate an ethic of stewardship. When both are present and healthy, the formation of intergenerational wealth—in the form of intergenerational property—will naturally emerge.
Nighthawks painting

Third Places: Restoring Civic Life and Resisting Consumerism

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The drive for maximal efficiency and convenience has impoverished the fabric of our daily lives. As we forget the value of place, we occupy increasingly thin, homogenized, placeless environments. The role we can play in these sterile settings is only one of consumption, not citizenship. That is why we must turn to third places: they help us form close friendships and increase our civic involvement, and they compose the social infrastructure of a community.
Photo of a dad holding infant sitting at laptop

The Best Policy for Supporting Families Is “Do No Harm”

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Conservatives have recently set aside their natural wariness of government intervention to propose new “pro-family” welfare programs, such as Senator Romney’s Family Security Act. In post-Roe America, the search for ways to support families is more pressing than ever. The problem is that there is very little evidence that these types of policies work.
Photo of the Federal Reserve

How the Fed’s Hubris Has Contributed to Inflation

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The Fed has overestimated its power to manage the economy, and hubris is a dangerous thing in monetary policy. Starting in March 2020, the Fed increased the money supply significantly and the inevitable result was inflation. Unfortunately, the Fed continues to believe in its ability to fine-tune the economy.
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