Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Let’s thank American city dwellers for their workaday commute
Let’s thank American city dwellers for their workaday commute
Mar 17, 2026 2:46 PM

It’s time we “salute” the large group of American workers whose mute to their jobs in the city takes as long as 60 minutes or more. For those living in New York City, San Francisco, or Washington D.C., mute to and from work is often burdensome. The many city dwellers who help to drive America’s economic output deserve thanks.

James Bruce, associate professor of philosophy at John Brown University and Acton University faculty memberrecently wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal, praising those whose daily journey to work is less than glamorous.

Bruce describes mute for many as a “grind,” encouraging readers that their efforts are not without selfless motivation. After all, many mutes are made to support their families, to chase a “chance for a better life,” and for you, as many people’s mute to work “helps support the productivity that delivers prosperity to the country, indeed the world.”

You can read the full article here.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Government pay and performance
Travis Sinquefield at Disorganizational Behavior examines this Washington Post article on new parts of an annual survey given to government workers. Among the new statements the employees were asked to evaluate was this: “Pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs.” Only 22 percent of the respondents agreed with this statement, while 45 percent disagreed (25 percent were neutral). John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that a performance-based system of rewards would not...
Managing manure
One of the stories told in the Acton’s ing documentary, “The Call of the Entrepreneur,” (trailer available here) is that of Brad Morgan, a Michigan dairy farmer, who bucked the odds and the naysayers and turned the problem posed by the disposal of his herd’s manure into a profitable business venture. His innovative solution to manure disposal, turning it into high post for a variety of purposes, led to the formation of Morgan Composting in 1996, and more than ten...
Emerging German Economist to receive 2007 Novak Award
Dr. Andrea Schneider, recently appointed as an advisor to the office of Germany’s Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the winner of the 2007 Novak Award and its associated $10,000 prize. Dr. Schneider studied economics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, where she taught and worked for the Chair for Economic Policy in Nuremberg, Germany. Her dissertation received both the Hermann-Gutmann-Foundation Award and the Wolfgang-Ritter-Award. She went on to work as director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation’s economic policy group. At the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation,...
The role of limited government
Our religious and political rights are uniquely bound up together. Most young Americans, and far too many older native born American citizens, have little or no idea how important this truth really is. The central idea behind this unique relationship in American political understanding is limited government. This is really what classical liberalism understood and fervently practiced. Modern liberalism has little or nothing to do with this understanding, preferring to stress ideologies that are neither truly liberal nor limited. The...
A lottery sell-off is a sell-out
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I examine the most recent buzz-worthy trend in the lottery industry: privatization. While most critics of these moves have pointed to the foolhardiness of selling off a long-term e stream for a lump sum jackpot, I argue that privatization by itself does nothing to address the underlying problems afflicting the lottery business. I conclude, “A government-run monopoly would merely be replaced by a government-enforced monopoly.” And as I’ve claimed previously, government reliance on lotteries as...
The business and politics of spiritual journeys
Over the weekend the Grand Rapids Press published an article by Mary Radigan that examines one booming trend in the travel industry, “Spiritual journeys take off in travel industry.” “The market for religious travel has grown into an $18 billion industry worldwide,” writes Radigan. “In the past decade, it has expanded into cruise lines, bus trips, escorted tours, and conventions and meetings.” This growing interest in religiously-based travel underscores the tensions behind the recent controversy over an archaeological dig near...
Book review: Our Father’s Word – Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation
I’VE BEEN BLESSED over the past 18 months to review three very different books on Christian ecology by three guys I would mend without hesitation as examples for our generation. – Dr. J. Matthew Sleeth’s “Serve God, Save the Planet” starts with Matt’s trading in his family’s king-size house for the King’s priorities. As he puts it, their new house was “about the same size as their former garage.” It’s a great read on how individual Christians and their families...
Friends in low places
PARADE Magazine has published its annual list of “The World’s Worst Dictators.” Topping the list is the man overseeing the genocide in Darfur, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. At least three of the top twenty are important friends and allies of the United States in the war on terror: #5 King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia; #9 Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya; #15 Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan. “See, Lois? I told you we had allies. Slobodan, you made it!” David Wallechinsky, PARADE contributing editor and author of...
Faith in higher ed
Most of our talk at Acton about educational choice addresses K-12 programs, i.e., the public schools. There already exists a great deal of choice at the levels of higher ed, and so they are not of the most immediate concern. But the issues I raised earlier this month about the integration of faith and learning are just as relevant in the realm of higher ed as they are in secondary education. Here’s what David Claerbaut, author of Faith and Learning...
I’m so ashamed
Well, it’s happened. Ellen Goodman, writing last week in the Boston Globe, effectively ended the debate over climate change by invoking the most parison of all: I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future. All-righty, then. One reasonable question: do those of us who...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved