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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.

Housing Affordability: Putting People First

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White House

Trump Administration Fights the Establishment Clause Virus, Too

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When the Trump administration’s clarifying guidelines go to court, they not only should be upheld. One hopes, and even dares to expect, that the compelling circumstances of this public benefit program will bring forth a needed clarification of Establishment Clause law, one which finally buries the impetus behind any confusion surrounding the CARES Act and religious eligibility.
Capitol

A Tale of Two Nations? Populism, Plutocrats, and the Managerial State

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Michael Lind’s The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite addresses the growing gap between the successful and those left behind in the United States and in other developed Western societies. Contemporary “demagogic populism,” he argues, is a symptom of the disease of technocratic, neoliberal elitism, the cure for which is a return to democratic pluralism.
Hospital

Can We Measure the Value of Saving Human Lives in Dollars? Somber Calculations in a Time of Plague

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In fighting Coronavirus, the precautionary principle is reasonable: we need to act so as to bring as close to zero the probability of the most extreme results. However, the precautionary principle does not point in only one direction. Closing down an entire society for a prolonged period of time is uncharted territory, with many perils. We must also bear in mind the pre-eminent importance of the common good to avoid a catastrophic social collapse.

Cooperation, Coercion, and the Coronavirus

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When times become difficult, people come to help each other as a rule. It’s not really a case of our better angels emerging; it’s our regular angels doing what they almost always do when the chips are down.
Corona

Why the Economy Needs a Theology of the Body

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The promises of virtualization and automation are often exaggerated, as are their dangers. It is possible for an increasingly virtualized and automated economy to actually be more humane, but only if such an economy does justice to the human realities of incarnation and relation.
Refinery

Venezuela’s Alleged Economic Recovery: The Truth behind the Misleading Narrative

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Venezuelans are desperate to circumvent the ill-conceived regulations that are harming their nation’s wellbeing. They eagerly await a real economic turnaround—one that will protect the economic freedoms of all Venezuelans. And they know that Venezuela cannot recover without democracy.
Politics

The Post-Liberal Right: The Good, the Bad, and the Perplexing

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While the post-liberal right often asks good questions, many of its answers are flawed, grounded on mistaken premises, and deeply misleading.
Argue

Is Economic Analysis Just a Weapon in Public Policy Wars?

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In a war, you know your goal, and then you decide on the best means to achieve that end. If you think about economic debates as a form of war, then choosing an economic model is not the first question. Instead, once you know your preferred policy outcome, you then choose an economic analysis that leads to that conclusion.
Money

Markets, the State, and the Imperative of Culture

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Free markets and a limited state require a culture of liberty that says “yes” to responsibility and “no” to soft despotism.
Security

Understanding the Right to Privacy in the Age of Big Data

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The Christian moral tradition provides a solid foundation for the right to privacy by linking it to the act of communication and sharing information, a fundamentally relational activity oriented toward both the personal and common good. The failures of Capital One, Ring, and others illustrate that it cannot be left up to individual institutions to protect their clients’ privacy. We must therefore develop stronger legal institutions that embody the principles of both privacy and transparency.
Phone

Bitcoins, Libra, and Your Google Checking Account

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Is the world of private money an inevitability? Do we all need to get used to the fact that whether we like it or not, Facebook and Apple and Microsoft and Google are going to dominate the monetary landscape of the future? Not at all.

How the Dream of the Great Society Became a Nightmare

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A new book about the Great Society should give significant pause to today’s advocates for more government intervention in the economy.

Faith and Family at Public Discourse: A Note from the Editor

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Faith and family: for many of us, these are not only the most important parts of the Christmas season. They’re also the things that make life most worth living.

A Decade of Debates

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The team at Public Discourse doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but we do think we’re asking the right questions, and getting the right thinkers to propose some of the answers. That’s one thing that we hope will always be our hallmark: thoughtful, reasoned discourse, which is rigorous yet still accessible to the educated layman.
Mindfulness

Mindful Business Leadership

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Mindful business leadership must connect mindfulness to the moral principles of the traditions in which it originated. It must also situate itself convincingly in relation to models of leadership, either assimilating into an existing model or offering a new one. And it ought to show how a mindful leader might concretely figure into a corporate governance structure in a way that is reasonably expected to advance the firm’s social responsibilities.
New Rubio

Common Good Capitalism and the Dignity of Work

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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.
compass

The Myth of Technocratic Infallibility

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We need good measures of economic activity, but we must not presume that these measurements are impervious to political pressures, as though they were no more than the product of certain methods.

Piracy, Protests, and the Problem of China

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America’s relations with China should proceed from the recognition that the Chinese government is lawless. China flouts the rule of law, not occasionally or incidentally but characteristically, because the government understands itself as the source of law and unconstrained by it. The problem of China reminds us of the deeper laws that all nations must respect and that determine whether or not our positive laws are legally just.
IV

The Problems With and Solutions to American Healthcare

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When it comes to healthcare, economics tells us that we can do better. Distributive justice demands from us that we do better. A judicious combination of market forces, regulation, and transfers can provide us with more efficient healthcare for all, at a cheaper price.
US Border

Immigration: Winners and Losers?

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Attempts to discover the effect of immigration on government budgets are highly susceptible to the decisions economists make about how to measure all those benefits and costs and how to account for the effects on the indigenous population. The quick answer to “What is the effect of immigration on government budgets?” is “It depends on how you measure it.”
Woke

How Woke Capitalism Corrupts Business

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The phenomenon of woke capitalism isn’t only about corporate America succumbing to progressive ideologies. It reflects deep confusion about the purpose of business and how commerce serves the common good.
Cash

Humane Development: Why Fundraisers Need the Liberal Arts

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A new book argues that fundraising is not an independent activity external to the purpose of a non-profit, but an integral part of the existence and mission of the organization. Rather than becoming a class of experts, fundraisers should be well-formed persons and citizens, who can learn the craft of fundraising and practice it in a manner that supports rather than undermines the free and relational nature of civil society.
Venezuela

Chasing The Roots of the Venezuelan Collapse

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In order to flourish economically, property rights must be secure and the rule of law must exist.
Economy

God or Government: What an Economy of “Nones” May Mean for Our Future

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G.K. Chesterton may have summed up our current situation best: men who stop believing in God do not believe in nothing, but believe in anything. It seems that we’ve moved from belief in God to belief in government, and are hurtling toward an ever-growing state.
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