Economics

Center on Wealth & Poverty

Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem

Jay Richards presents a new approach to capitalism, revealing how it’s fully consistent with Jesus’s teachings and the Christian tradition—and our best bet for renewed economic vigor. Money, Greed, and God exposes eight myths about capitalism—including the notion that capitalism is based on greed—and demonstrates that a good Christian can be a good capitalist.

Unnecessary telecom regulations hurting Illinois

The National Broadband Plan presented to Congress on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission aims to connect every U.S. household to the fastest broadband as soon as possible, a goal which the agency’s staff estimates could cost $350 billion. Much of that investment will have to come from private industry, agency officials have conceded. This month, the Discovery Institute conducted Read More ›

Lively Truth-Teller

The 5 Big Lies About American Business: Combating Smears Against the Free-Market Economy—by Michael Medved (Crown Forum, $26.99). Must reading for the White House and every anticapitalist politician, pundit and economist. Employing a mother lode of facts, Medved, with verve and wit, thoroughly demolishes five myths about business: capitalism is dying because of the economic crisis; when the rich get Read More ›

The Cut That Heals

For the last ten years or so, I have been urging drastic reductions in the U.S. payroll tax, which funds Social Security. If we want to reduce tax rates without falling into the rhetorical trap of “tax cuts for the rich,” then the payroll tax is our best target — and the one that will affect the most employment decisions. Read More ›

Economic Conservatism and Social Conservatism are “Indivisible”

Jay Richards, I am glad to report, is now back at Discovery Institute full-time, having left a few years ago to work at Acton Institute on issues of entrepreneurship and free markets (among other things, he helped produce the films The Call of the Entrepreneur and The Birth of Freedom, and the book, Money, Greed and God), to start a blog for AEI’s The American and Read More ›

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Trade and invest wallpaper

Future Imperfect

In this intriguingly contrarian rework of the Thomas Friedman “hot and flat” motif, Gregg Easterbrook asserts that venture capitalists are no better than lottery players when it comes to choosing new technology companies. He reports that leading stock analysts outperform broad market-index funds only one-third of the time. He adds that the preeminent financial pundits break into two groups — Read More ›

Why Antagonize China?

While attempting to appease a long list of utterly unappeasable foes—Iran, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah, and even Hugo Chávez—today the U.S. treats China, perhaps our most crucial economic partner, as an adversary because it defies us on global warming, dollar devaluation, and Internet policy. It started last June in Beijing when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner lectured Chinese Premier Wen Read More ›