Today, social programs account for about 50 percent of the federal budget—including Social Security and Medicare, prise the lion's share of social programs (public housing, public schools, unemployment benefits, job training programs, food stamps, etc.). Total spending on social programs in the United States exceeds $1 trillion annually. That massive social spending has done fabulous things. Americans provide some aid and assistance to people who are poor, but living above the poverty line. Social spending then kicks into full...

Tom and James are longtime friends who are in their late 20's. They went to college together and settled in the same city after graduation. They have both been working in the same part of the city for the past few years. Their wives are good friends, and they get together as couples periodically. Tom works for one of the major international accounting firms, in their consulting division, panies set up and maintain internal financial control systems. He is...

Is it possible to begin the work week saying, “Thank God, it's Monday”? A number of books with some variation of that title claim to demonstrate how we can integrate our faith into our professional lives. But even we whose lives are spent serving the church or church-related apostolates often approach the week ahead with less than enthusiasm. We face the same traffic, the same daily routine, the same brown-bag lunch as employees in the corporate world. And many...

There has been a revival in interest in the role that private charity can play in the revitalization of civil society. This renewed interest is partly driven by an overwhelming sense that most of us have, regardless of political and ideological interests, that the modern welfare state has produced less-than-impressive results. But if we are really entering the post-statist age in which the welfare state is going to continue to disintegrate bit by bit, where do we go from...

A few months ago, a friend and I drove to Indianapolis on a pilgrimage to see and hear Wendell Berry. I was struck by the difference between my own heroic construct and the reality before me. Here in Indianapolis stood an elderly man, albeit a sharp, irascible, very tall and vigorous personage. He reflected on the limitless demiurge of consumerism that e to blight our culture, on the anachronistic vigor with which he seeks to guard over his own...

Some people imagine that there is a third way between the market economy and socialism, and in a sense they are right. But the way to it does not lie with government programs. Before I explain that, let us consider the unseen effects of substituting government means for voluntary human energies. We often use the word voluntary to identify charitable actions taken in society that do not result in profit. But consider that profit in a market economy also...

Genesis 17:3 “When Abraham prostrated himself, God continued to speak to him: 'My covenant with you is this: you are to e the father of a host of nations'” (Gen. 17:3). Within decades of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the good news had spread from Jerusalem through the Hellenistic culture of the eastern Mediterranean to Rome, and to ends-of-earth places such as India and the British Isles. In the following centuries, holy men and women protected the heritage...

Optimism is obligatory, but it's cheap. In the current situation, there is a heavy price to pay. Relativism has wreaked havoc, and it continues to act as a mirror and an echo chamber for the dark mood that has fallen over the West. It has paralyzed the West, when it is already disoriented and at a standstill, rendered it defenseless when it is already acquiescent, and confused it when it is already reluctant to rise to the challenge. One...

Since at least the Middle Ages, the payment and receipt of interest has existed under a moral cloud, due mainly to a misunderstanding concerning what interest is and why it exists. Medieval theologians gradually came around to the view that now prevails in economic science. What connects all forms of interest is the insight that interest is nothing more or less than the exchange ratios between different time horizons. If I prefer to save now, I must put off...

In our feature interview in this issue of R&L, Chuck Colson makes reference to the now-famous lecture Pope Benedict XVI gave at Regensburg last September. The heart of that lecture was the relationship of faith and reason. In the course of arguing that each needs the other, Pope Benedict raised questions about Islam that garnered worldwide attention. But Pope Benedict's point was not principally about Islam. His point was that religious faith, when not purified by reason, can lose...

There has been very little work by orthodox Jewish scholars on the relationship among socialism, capitalism, and Judaism. Careful reading of the relevant literature, however, suggests that it is possible to posit five basic axioms of Jewish economic theory from which many economic policy implications can be deduced. Although not exhaustive, our five axioms represent, to the best of our knowledge, the first attempt to formulate a parsimonious list of basic principles that help systematize the foundations of what...

This article was excerpted from Samuel Gregg's The Commercial Society: Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age, a new book published by Lexington Books. Commercial society's impact upon poverty is not simply a result of the unintended consequences of market exchange. It owes much mercial society's particular moral foundations. By moral foundations, we mean particular values and habits of action indispensable for the workings mercial society. What follows is an attempt to mercial society's basic moral foundations. Taken together,...