The United States consistently ranks among the most “generous” countries in the world – we citizens routinely rank very high in the categories of helping someone we don’t know, donating money to charity, or volunteering our time to an organization. A Marketwatch article from December 2019 cites results from the World Giving Index, an instrument […]
Taxation
The Problem of Hyperindividualism and its Impact on American Life
“Hyper” – from the Greek “huper,” meaning over, beyond. “Individualism” – the stance or philosophy that values the moral worth of the individual as well as independence and self-reliance. In the US, individualism generally has a positive meaning and often (or at least should) lead to the development of each person’s fullest potential. Hyperindividualism, on the […]
Making Millions Off Others’ Suffering 2: The Way Things Could Be
In our previous Making Millions post, we examined a number of areas of American life that are negatively impacted by large corporations and their leaders. These entities and individuals have successfully pressured Congress for decades to pass legislation that favors them; whatever their individual psychological make-up or motives, many very wealthy Americans frequently make exponentially more money […]
Making Millions Off Others’ Suffering 1: The Way Things Are
We need to wake up to a harsh reality: much of what we see around us in the United States, which we often attribute to the free market or American ingenuity and resourcefulness, is actually creativity and money-making off people’s suffering and needs. As I have argued in past posts, other advanced nations do not […]
Initial Thoughts on the Common Good
In this blog, I will be referring frequently to the common good. While there are political, economic and philosophical ways of discussing this concept, I would like to keep it simple and straightforward. I will also be placing it in a theological context, since that is my training – and also since much of our […]