Tag: Abundance
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Why Catholics Don’t Understand Economics
Inside Catholic: Why Catholics Don't Understand Economics This article by Jeffrey Tucker is a month old, but I just found it. The article is addressed to a Roman Catholic context, but I think it applies to Protestant contexts as well … certainly the Mainline denominations. For years I've puzzled over the question of why Catholics…
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Basic Economics at the Jesus Creed: Michael Kruse
Today I'm beginning a once-a-week series (continuing for the next nine weeks on Wednesdays) at Jesus Creed on basic economics. Hope you'll join me there for what should be some good discussion. Basic Economics at the Jesus Creed: Michael Kruse
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Theologians and Economists: Scarcity and Abundance
[Series Index] What am I going to do today? Whether you're a meticulous planner or fly by the seat of your pants, we all face the same reality: Every decision to do something today is a decision not to do everything else. We are constrained by the limited number of hours in any given day.…
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My Response to Brueggemann’s Biblical Economics.
Scot McKnight recently linked a piece by Walter Brueggemann's called A Biblical Approach to the Economic Crisis. I've read and generally liked several things Brueggemann has written, which is part of why I find articles like this so irksome. Here is what I wrote on the Jesus Creed blog. ********** Thanks for the link to…
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Self-Interest and Benevolence: Partners, not Antonyms (Part 12: Conclusion)
(Link to Part 11) Concluding Thoughts As we wrap up this series of reflections, what can we say about the relationship between self-interest and benevolence? The Goal of Abundance The biblical image of a just society is one of widespread abundance where humanity participates with God in co-creative stewardship over creation. Individual and Communal Stewardship…
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Self-Interest and Benevolence: Partners, not Antonyms (Part 6)
[Link to Part 5] Co-creators and Partners in Our Own Provision Over the last five posts, I've made the case that economic freedom has generated unprecedented abundance. People acting on what they believe to be in their best interests bid for goods and services, and people acting on their perceived best interest freely choose to…
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Self-Interest and Benevolence: Partners, not Antonyms (Part 3)
[Link to Part 2] The Miracle of the Market For the first time, societies emerge with widespread material abundance. Innovations in economic production have far outpaced the Malthusian scarcity trap. There are many reasons for this. Advances in technology, radically improved infrastructure for communication and transportation, improvement in food production and storage, investments in human…
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Self-Interest and Benevolence: Partners, not Antonyms (Part 2)
[Link to Part 1] Scarcity and Abundance I ended the previous post by noting that the free and virtuous pursuit of self-interest is essential to just economic production and human flourishing, but I also noted self-interest alone is insufficient. We will deal with the latter qualification in time, but first, we must look at economic…
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Economic Fallacies: “No Scarcity”
Look at almost any economics textbook, and you will find a definition of economics similar to this one in Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics: “Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources.” (Mankiw, 4) This seems straightforward enough to most economists, but many theologians take exception to this characterization. For instance, Douglas…