In mentary, Matt munications associate at the Acton Institute, addressed new taxes that are being proposed bat the high obesity rates in the United States and to provide financial support for health care reform. The new taxes proposed to help fund health care reform will begin to tax what Congress deems junk food or unhealthy food. Cavedon exposes the hypocrisy fostered by taxes on such junk or unhealthy food: In “The Sin Tax: Economic and Moral Considerations,” the Rev. Robert...

Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, reflects on business ethics in his mentary. Gregg explores the presence of business ethics courses in business schools; however, with the large presence of business ethics courses we still have a lack of ethics present in business. The lack of ethics in business became a major factor in our current financial crisis. Gregg further explains that business is not just about management or the business ethics that are taught, but businessmen...

The Radio Free Acton crew is back in the studio! On today’s broadcast, Dr. Donald P. Condit and Dr. Kevin Schmiesing join our host Marc VanderMaas for a discussion of the ins and outs of the US health care system. Dr. Condit gives us some background on how the current system came into being, the problems associated with it, and the pitfalls of the current healthcare reform proposals in Washington. Next week RFA will be back for part 2, bringing...

“We talk about what caused the financial crisis, whether ‘greed is good,’ and if ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ It’s John J. Miller describing his podcast interview with Jay Richards here at NRO. They discuss Jay’s excellent new book, Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and not the Problem. ...

Spurred on by listening to and reading Samuel Gregg, I’ve been making my way through Wilhelm Ropke’s A Humane Economy which is really a special book. The following passage (on p. 69) really caught my attention with regard to our current situation: Democracy is, in the long patible with freedom only on condition that all, or at least most, voters are agreed that certain supreme norms and principles of public life and economic order must remain outside the sphere of...

The argument from federalism: One of the great benefits of federalism is that the states can act as the laboratories of democracy. If a new public policy is tried in the states and works (as happened with welfare reform in Michigan and Wisconsin), then a similar program has a good chance of succeeding at the national level. The welfare reform went national and proved to be one of the most successful public policy initiatives of the last half century. On...

I just read today that the cars traded in for the Cash for Clunkers program are rendered unusable by running liquid glass through the engines. Has anyone considered the impact of this on the poor? What has happened is that a huge number of low cost cars are being removed from the market. These are cars low e earners would ordinarily drive or teenagers would buy them who need to get to school or work. What happens when we radically...

Now that the saga of Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Officer James Crowley has moved to the back-burner, let’s look at three less obvious lessons from Skip and Jimmy’s not-so-excellent adventure. Understand that government is the use of legitimate force. Not necessarily “legitimate” in terms of morals and ethics, but legitimate in terms of what is legal. Police officers have moral and legal authority to use force in order “to serve and to protect”. At times, they may exceed...

One of the main arguments for nationalized health care is a moral argument: Health care is a right and a moral and just society should ensure that its people are taken care of–and the state has the responsibility to do this. Bracketing for the time being whether health care is actually a right or not–it is clearly a good, but all goods are not necessarily rights–whether the state should be the provider of it is another question. But there is...

In a Wall Street Journal article titled “The Great Philanthropy Takeover” Arkansas based writer David Sanders reports on a recent conference of the nationwide Council of Foundations in his home state.Sanders’ article aligns with Michael Miller’s blog of July 30 “Healthcare – Don’t Forget The Morality Of It” and deserves your attention because of the author’s conclusion that the Obama administration “is beginning to nationalize another sector of the American economy.” How could that happen? Well it would happen because...