Jay W. Richards

Senior Fellow at Discovery, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation

Archives

A Short Argument Against the Materialist Account of the Mind

You can simply picture yourself eating a chocolate ice cream sundae.
Jay Richards
October 12, 2018
We have thoughts and ideas—what philosophers call “intentional” states—that are about things other than themselves. We don’t really know how this works. But whenever we speak to another person, we assume it must be true. And in our own case, we know it’s true. Even to deny it is to affirm it.

Trump Calls for a Reform of Perverse Welfare System. Media (Mostly) Ignore It

Jay W. Richards
April 13, 2018
On Tuesday, President Trump issued an executive order calling on secretaries in eight federal departments to work on reforming their bloated welfare bureaucracies. They are to spend the next month looking for ways to fix the programs under their charge, and report back. You can be forgiven if you didn’t hear about this. Insofar as the media covered it, they mostly painted Trump as a mean old rich guy who doesn’t care about the poor. Check out this “explainer” piece at Vox for one example. In truth, this move is Trump at his best. Reversing Obama But what can he do by way of executive order? Quite a lot as it turns out. President Obama spent his two terms gutting the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Obama didn’t have the votes to undo it, so he kept waiving its work …

The Scariest Federal Agency You’ve Never Heard Of

Jay W. Richards
July 20, 2012
The CFPB is the progeny of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was supposed to fix the problems that led to the 2008 financial crisis. For some reason, however, the CFPB has been given unprecedented control over financial institutions that didn't have a darn thing to do with the crisis.

Scott Powell: Debt now funds gov’s core duties

Jay W. Richards
June 20, 2012
Scott Powell points out that the defense budget, plus general government operations--including police, prisons and courts, transportation, agriculture and basic research--are already being funded by debt-financed deficit spending."

Anne Bradley on Income Inequality

Jay W. Richards
May 25, 2012
Economist Anne Bradley at the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics has just released a new research paper dealing with both the economic and biblical/theological issues involved in income inequality.

Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?

Jay W. Richards
April 30, 2012
We can make the case for protecting unborn life and conjugal marriage on the basis of limited government and individual rights, without recourse to any narrowly religious assumptions.

GOP Go Positive

Jay W. Richards
March 13, 2012
Here's hoping that the Republican primary will soon become less of a circular firing squad, and more of a unified evangelistic crusade for fiscal sanity.

Medved on Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality

Jay W. Richards
March 13, 2012
Tonight in Seattle, Discovery Institute is having the official "launch" party for the Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality. Coincidentally, David Boze's podcast interview with Michael Medved, discussing the new Center, has just gone online. Listen to it here.