Chicago’s City Council passed a measure last week that mandates “big box” stores such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Lowe’s to pay workers — regardless of experience — a minimum wage of $13 an hour including benefits by 2010. See the opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. The justification is to help poor people have a better standard of living. Is this another example of good intentions mixed with bad economics? This time I doubt the intentions are to...

Do economic, political, and religious freedom go together? Rodney Stark, writing in his recent book The Victory of Reason, says that “It seems doubtful than an effective modern economy can be created without adopting capitalism, as was demonstrated by the failure of mand economies of the Soviet Union and China.” He also writes, There are many reasons people embrace Christianity, including its capacity to sustain a deeply emotional and existentially satisfying faith. But another significant factor is its appeal to...

Religious activists are stumping for a minimum wage increase as a way to help the disadvantaged. But do they understand the economics? Anthony Bradley observes that government-mandated pay hikes “actually hurt teens and low-skilled minorities in the long run because minimum wage jobs are usually entry-level positions filled by employees with limited work experience and few job skills.” Read the mentary here. ...

I’ve got an idea for a new . Titled, Hugo and Vladi, it details the zany adventures of two world leaders, one of whom (played by David Hyde Pierce) struggles to upkeep his image of a friendly, modern European diplomat while his goofball brother-in-law (played by George Lopez) keeps screwing it up for him by spouting off vitriolic Soviet rhetoric and threatening all of Western civilization with his agressive (but loveable) arms sales and seizures of private panies. It is...

At least, the title of this post is typical of the mantra against the practices of drug panies, according to Peter W. Huber’s “Of Pills and Profits: In Defense of Big Pharma,” in Commentary magazine (HT: Arts & Letters Daily). Huber, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, summarizes in brief the pany argument, and then goes on to examine what truth there is in such claims. He says of the difference between creating and administering drugs, “Getting drug policy...

G. K. Chesterton on Journalists: “…there exists in the modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people whose interest is not in that things should happen well or happen badly, should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of this party or the advantage of that party, but whose interest simply is that things should happen. “It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that...

In this Beliefnet interview conducted by Charlotte Allen, conservative firebrand Ann Coulter references the work of Acton senior fellow Marvin Olasky: Is it possible to be a good Christian and sincerely believe, as Jim Wallis does, that a bigger welfare state and higher taxes to fund it is the best way in plex modern society for us to fulfill our Gospel obligation to help the poor? It’s possible, but not likely. Confiscatory taxation enforced by threat of imprisonment is “stealing,”...

How many of you would like to live here? Tom Monaghan has received a lot of attention for his plans to create munity in Florida in conjunction with the founding of a new Roman Catholic university: “The panying town will provide single- and multi-family housing in a wide range of styles and prices, along mercial and office facilities to modate the businesses and organizations needed to support this major academic institution.” Here’s what Katie Couric had to say in an...

“‘Disproportionate’ in What Moral Universe?” asks Charles Krauthammer in today’s Washington Post. He continues: When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel “proportionate” attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right — legal...

You may know that a traditional way of interpreting the Ten Commandments involves articulating both the explicit negative prohibitions as well as the implicit positive duties. So, for example, the mandment prohibiting murder is understood in the Heidelberg Catechism to answer the question, “Is it enough then that we do not kill our neighbor in any such way?” by saying, “No. By condemning envy, hatred, and anger God tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to be patient, peace-loving,...