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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.

The Best Protection for Workers is the Market

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factory workers

The Best Protection for Workers is the Market

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The lesson here is as simple as it is profound. The market, meaning the right to quit and get another job on better terms, is the best protection for the worker.
stressed out office worker

The Unravelling of The American Employment Compact 

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An economy that continually makes demands of its workers while offering little security in return cannot escape the consequences of social disintegration.
Adam Smith

Adam Smith and the Value of Connectivity 

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Adam Smith’s timeless perspectives on connectivity still help make sense of the world 250 years after he first published The Wealth of Nations.
child using social media apps

The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech’s “Tobacco Moment”  

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It is up to American courts and legislators to create solutions that balance constitutional liberties with the need to protect children from preventable tragedies.
China

Morality as Strategy in the West’s Approach to China   

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To help China find its true calling in the world, the West cannot rely solely on material power; it must also recommit itself to its traditional moral principles. 
poverty in America

Can We Break Generational Poverty Cycles?  

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PBS, like many other elite institutions, does poor single parents, their children, and the rest of us no favors by refusing to talk about how much the actions of these parents contribute to their fates and those of their children.
entrepreneurship and innovation

Entrepreneurship, Prosperity, and Living Contra Mundum: A Q&A with Robert L. Luddy

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You need people to have the tenacity, the wonder, and the willingness to say, “I can do some things better than what is currently being done in the marketplace.” And that’s the nature of entrepreneurship.
US port

Rethinking the Tariffs Regime  

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Economic freedom is inseparable from the ability to engage in economic transactions without government interference, even if that interference is predicated on a desire to eliminate external trade barriers. 
DEI

DEI in Retreat? 

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If the DEI label is losing traction and institutions are substantively evolving, what, if anything, will replace DEI?

From Anchor to Anvil: America’s Drift Away from the System It Built

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The U.S. does face real challenges: a large structural fiscal deficit and unacceptably high poverty in rural areas and disadvantaged urban communities. But trade restrictions won’t solve these problems—they’ll make them worse. Barriers reduce efficiency and shrink the economic pie.

On Medical Killing and “Capitalism”

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It is misguided to rest one’s opposition to medical killing on a vague allergy to greed and to profit in general, when cost-pressures are a reality whether “profit” is relevant or not, and—in some cases at least—the profiteers are a countervailing force.
English farm

Farmers’ Protests: Solidarity, Romanticism, and Populism

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Those who want to break the grip of a deadening globalist managerialism will need more than anger and romance. What is vitally needed now is creativity—new ways of living and revived traditions that can offer an alternative to a political economy that is failing everyone.
Soviet flag

Does America Need a Sharansky?

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Unfortunately, Morson looks only at a handful of symptoms that are vaguely comparable to the pathologies of late Soviet society and concludes that the same disease is at work. He does not address the deep causes of Soviet and Russian dysfunction, all of which are absent in the United States—authoritarianism, a command economy, censorship, oppression, terror, the Gulag. 
shopping

A Family-Focused Approach to Consumption

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Our consumption decisions should be focused on the needs of our family members. This requires attention to unglamorous factors such as budgets and nutritional requirements, instead of being up-to-date with the brands and campaigns that purport to solve the world’s problems by selling us products. 
social security

The Social Injustice of Social Security

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Unraveling a program that is deeply embedded in our politics and culture won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attempted. The goal of relieving old-age financial hardship was a worthy one, but the policy measure enacted was a defective means to achieve it. The insolvency of Social Security may provide the emergency necessary to bring about change, if only we do not let the crisis go to waste.
beautiful homemaking

Valuing the Craft of Beautiful Homemaking

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Understanding homemaking as a craft that produces beautiful (if intangible) results should hopefully encourage young men and women who are thinking about caring for a home and/or children. For the young mother or father overwhelmed by all there is to do and feeling incompetent in the face of the multiple—often conflicting—demands of house and children, it may help to know that homemaking is a skill to be developed over time.
housing

It Takes a Swarm to Raise a Village

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For American families, housing has become too expensive. We can make it more affordable if we build enough housing. But in order to do that, we cannot stop at making it legal; we need to make it easy.
capitalism

The Right and Future of Capitalism: Part 2

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I don’t underestimate the difficulties in trying to shape the culture in which our markets operate. They are indeed formidable. But undertaking that type of work helps define, I suggest, what it means to be a conservative in the modern world.
capitalism

The Right and the Future of Capitalism: Part 1

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Conservative economics, unlike the fundamentalism that supplanted it, embraces reason. As conservatives, we begin with a confident assertion of what the market is for and then consider the public policies necessary for shaping markets toward that end.
homemaker

If We Value Homemaking, We Should Rethink Welfare Reform

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If you are willing to acknowledge that full-time caregiving may be a suitable, even preferable, use of one’s capacities, there can be little justification for policies that guard against it—in fact, you may want to construct policies that enable it.
remote work

The Conservative Case for Remote Work

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If conservative organizations want to promote an economy that centers around the family, one that rebuilds the small town and restores a healthy culture, they need to do more than promote the right family policies and tax credits.
Networking

The World, the Flesh, and the Young Professional: Reforming How We Approach Networking

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To the extent that networking preoccupies us with appearances, it distracts us from real professional excellence. This excellence is the basis for truly enriching professional relationships, and it can serve as an alternative to the spirit of unbridled acquisitiveness that usually drives how we network.
Classical school

The Place of Economics in a Classical Education

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Whatever approach is best for your students at your school, know that you are serving not just the mind but the whole person. To educate the whole person, we must not leave gaps where others may rush in to fill the void. Economics began with the late scholastics and ought to continue today as part of a full classical curriculum. 
Arthur Laffer and Brian Domitrovic

Taxes Have Consequences: An Interview with Arthur B. Laffer and Brian Domitrovic

By , , and
Whenever you redistribute income, you never actually redistribute income. You destroy total income completely. Every revolution on planet Earth has been fought in order to change the distribution of income. Not one of those revolutions has ever succeeded in redistributing income, but all of them have succeeded in destroying the entire quality and quantity of total income.

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