Dead. Kaput. Through. Finished. Washed up. Gone-zo. That, I think, is a fair description of the Obama administration’s attempt to build high-speed rail lines across America. It hasn’t failed because of a lack of willingness to pony up money. The Obama Democrats’ February 2009 stimulus package included $8 billion for high-speed rail projects. The Democratic … Read more
Politicians who are principled enough to point out the fraud of Social Security, referring to it as a lie and Ponzi scheme, are under siege. Acknowledgment of Social Security’s problems is not the same as calling for the abandonment of its recipients. Instead, it’s a call to take actions now, while there’s time to avert … Read more
We are building a new church in our parish, and to lead the effort I have been thinking and reading about church architecture. Looking around at the dismal buildings that have been presented as Catholic churches over the last 50 years, one has to ask where on earth the architects, designers, and liturgists got their … Read more
The Greek government is in a gigantic financial hole and is teetering on the brink of defaulting on its debt. It has been able to limp along since last year only with bailouts from outside of Greece. According to the latest reports, the Greek government will run out of money in October unless it receives … Read more
When governments want to encourage what they believe is beneficial behavior, they subsidize it. Sounds like good public policy. But there can be problems. Behavior that is beneficial for most people may not be so for everybody. And government subsidies can go too far. Subsidies create incentives for what economists call rent-seeking behavior. Providers of … Read more
Let us suppose we are looking at people who are not going to Yale or Harvard, or even to the local state university. First, they can’t afford it, and second, they lack the capacity to immerse themselves in absurdity for the sake of a few courses here and there that will deepen their understanding of … Read more
When Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense, he coined some phrases about knowledge that apply far beyond military matters. Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out that there are some things that we know that we know. He called those “known knowns.” We may, for example, know how many aircraft carriers some other country has. We may also … Read more
Politicians often rail against government spending, except when it goes to the military. Conservatives believe there is no such thing as too much defense spending, and liberals don’t argue, for fear of being labeled appeasers. So when there is talk of the two parties agreeing to cut the Pentagon budget, it sounds like a monumental … Read more
No one is more of a master of political talking points than President Barack Obama. Remember “shovel-ready projects”? These were construction projects where the shovels were supposed to start digging the moment the government gave them the “stimulus” money. Two years later, Obama can joke about the fact that the shovels were not as ready … Read more
Mired in excruciating negotiations over the budget and the debt ceiling, President Barack Obama might reflect that things didn’t have to turn out this way. The impasse grows mainly out of one major decision he made early on: pushing through a giant stimulus. When he took office in January 2009, this was his first priority. … Read more
Europe is a mess. The ongoing economic crisis has sparked violent riots and growing turmoil, particularly in harder-hit nations like Greece, where demonstrators have taken to throwing home-made bombs at police. And the worst may be yet to come. Analysts now say there is a real chance that the Greek government will default on its … Read more
One of my earliest memories of revulsion against war came from seeing a photograph from the First World War when I was a teenager. It was nothing gory. Just a picture of a military officer, in an impressive uniform, talking to a puzzled and forlorn-looking old peasant woman with a cloth wrapped around her head. … Read more
Recently, a number of Catholic religious leaders protested against the Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-OH), a fellow Catholic, as the commencement speaker at the Catholic University of America. Their gripe: His proposed budget cuts would reward the wealthy while cutting programs for the most vulnerable (a relative term). They signed a letter pointing … Read more
We older Americans have saddled our youth with a mind-boggling public debt — over $20 trillion already spent ($14.3 trillion of “official” national debt plus various off-budget expenditures, according to the U.S. Treasury); trillions more of projected deficit-spending over the coming decade; and tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities. By the time today’s … Read more
St. Matthew, patron saint of bankers, pray for me. This is how I open and close each day. I am a banker and in the business of buying and selling money. There is a common misconception among the faithful that having money is bad, and having a lot of money is really bad. Conversely, … Read more
When it comes to economics, there is a serious comprehension deficit among Catholics. In order to understand this subject, we must first distinguish between the actions of human beings and the way those actions are perceived by those who study them. The value of any economic theory lies in how well it captures actual human … Read more
The latest Social Security Trustees Report tells us that the program will be insolvent by the year 2037. The combined unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare has reached nearly $107 trillion in today’s dollars. That is about seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the national debt. … Read more
Those who regard government “entitlement” programs as sacrosanct, and regard those who want to cut them back as calloused or cruel, picture a world very different from the world of reality. To listen to some of the defenders of entitlement programs, which are at the heart of the present financial crisis, you might think that … Read more
William J. McGee, the consumer advocate on the Department of Transportation’s Future of Aviation Advisory Committee wrote “Forcing the F.A.A. to Fly Blind” in The New York Times (April 9, 2011), where he laments Congress’ cut in the FAA budget, saying, “A $4 billion cut will necessarily reduce the work force further. And it’s hard … Read more
The economic crisis that hit the developed world a few years ago was devastating. Millions lost their jobs, their homes, and their retirements. But the next catastrophe — which could be coming soon — will make the recent recession feel like a boom time. Imagine gasoline prices really skyrocketing and the cost of food and … Read more
