“Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.” Deuteronomy 27:19a Today is International Widows’ Day (IWD), a day to recognize the situation that widows (of all ages) face internationally and at home. From the United Nations: Absent in statistics, unnoticed by researchers, neglected by national and local authorities and mostly overlooked by civil society organizations – the situation of widows is, in effect, invisible. Yet abuse of widows and their children constitutes...

When es to basic definitions of work, I’ve found fort in Lester DeKoster’s prescient view of work as“service to others and thus to God” — otherwise construed as “creative service” in For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles. Our primary focus should be service to our fellow man in obedience to God, whether we’re doing manual labor in the field or factory, designing new technology in an office or laboratory, or delivering a range of “intangible” services...

During her evening plenary presentation, Magatte Wade asked the audience to raise their hand if they cared about poverty alleviation; hands went up all over the room. She followed up by asking how many in the room had checked the doing business index recently; far fewer hands went up. It’s easy to forget that the most powerful poverty alleviation tool is a job, and that jobs are more plentiful in those parts of the world where it is easier to...

We live, work, and consume within an increasingly grand, globalized economy. Yet standing amidst its many fruits and blessings, we move about our lives giving little thought to why we’re working, who we’re serving, and how exactly our needs are being met. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” feels more invisible than ever. In response to our newfound economic order, big and blurry as it is, many have aimed to pave paths toward more munitarian” ends, epitomized by recentwaves of “localist consumerism,”...

There are numerous forms of crony capitalism, but one of the most subtle and damaging to the economically vulnerable are occupational licensing laws. For millions of Americans, occupational licensing continues to serve as a barrier to work and self-sufficiency. Take, for example,Melony Armstrong. When Armstrong began her hair braiding business, she was required tohave a cosmetology license, which required 1,500 hours of training and $10,000 in tuition. What makes this state occupational licensing requirement so unreasonable? None of the training...

Over the past decade media coverage of the problems surrounding indigent defense has been increasing. For example, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently suing the state of Utah for failing to uphold that 6th Amendment which now provides opportunities for government provided criminal defense. The ACLU is claiming that Utah fell short of its obligation to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who cannot afford to hire one. While the merits of the case have yet to be properly...

In a ment about neo-reaction (forget about that for now, this isn’t about neo-reaction), economist Arnold Kling says “a major role of political ideology is to attempt to adjust the relative status of various groups.” One e of this is that, … every adherent to an ideology seeks to elevate the status of those who share that ideology and to downgrade the status of those with different ideologies. That is why it matters that journalists and academics are overwhelmingly on...

Today at the FEE (Foundation for Economic Education), Zachary Slayback has an excellent overview of the decline in entrepreneurship among those under 30 since the late 1980s. He writes, Between local, state, and federal regulations placed on everything from who isallowedto braid hairtowho can tell you what color to paint a wall and where to place a doorand a schooling culture and system that encourages young people to waste away the first 22-30 years of their lives away from the...

To be a champion of free markets is to be misunderstood. This is doubly true for free market advocates who are Christian. It’s an unfortunate reality that many of us have e to accept as inevitable. That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t attempt to clear up misunderstandings when we can. So let me attempt to clear up one of the most notorious misunderstandings: Few advocates of free markets (and none who are Christian) believe that free markets are a...

“When the value-bearing institutions of religion and culture are excluded, the value-laden concerns of human life flows back into the square under the politics of politics,” wrote Richard John Neuhaus, “It is much like trying to sweep a puddle of water on an even basement floor; the water immediately flows back into the space you had cleaned.”Although he made ment thirty-twoyears ago, the late Fr. Neuhaus could be describing the current election season. While there is much that could be...