Click each cover for more info and a short review.
Thomas Sowell
The Housing Boom and Bust
I’m only on page 15 but this is an awesome book. It is the clearest explanation of the proximite cause of the current recession I’ve seen so far. One of the most important things I’ve learned is housing prices in California, the hottest real estate market leading up to the housing bust, was driven largely by political restrictions on land use. In San Mateo County for example, half of the land was designated off limits for housing. This artificial, political land shortage drove up the prices of even modest homes to mansion-like levels. Must continue reading.
Mark R. Levin
Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
This is a good book. I especially like how Mr. Levin ties opposition to growing statism to our founding principles and documents. I was shocked by the description of Mass v. EPA (2007) that declared carbon dioxide a poison to be regulated. Absurd. Statism has imposed unfunded ponze schemes like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The weakest chapter was chapter 9 on immigration. I counted 11 paragraphs in this chapter that dealt with the economics of immigration, none of which mentioned the fact of positive net benefits overall of immigration. I posted on this issue on 25 May 2009.
Despite one weak chapter, the book is a must read for anyone interested in an intelligent defense of freedom and prosperity.
Gregory Clark
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western
One of the most astounding claims in this fascinating book (though I’m still not convinced the industrial revolution’s take-off is explained by the survival of the richest) is the admission that a key, maybe the key insight in economics is based on faith and reason. Hmmmm…. You see the importance of faith?
The context of the claim is Clark’s description of Robert Solow’s model of growth as based on a simple equation involving four variables: labor, capital, land, and innovation. This last factor plays a decisive role. And yet:
“Note, however, that when we arrive at this final truth as to the nature of modern growth we have lost all ability to empirically test its truth. It is a statement of reason and faith, not an empirical proposition. Physical capital can be measured, as can the share of capital income in all income in the economy. But the generalized spillovers from innovation activities are not in practice measurable.” (p. 204)
I think this insight makes the dismal science much more interesting because now vulgar materialists and simplistic empiricists might actually have to believe in entrepreneurs without knowing exactly how much they contribute! “…we know they’re important; just not how important…”
Russell Roberts
The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance
This is a wonderful novelized principles textbook. Basic economic concepts are revealed through the dialogues between a high school economics teacher and his English teacher fiancee. When I taught high school economics at Marquette and my wife taught English, I was amazed how closely art resembled life, or was it the other way around?
Barbara Frale
The Templars: The Secret History Revealed
This is a great book. I have a mini-library on the Knights Templar and this is the best of the bunch. Barbara Frahle discovered the Chinon Parchment or trial transcripts of the Templar leadership from the early 1300’s. What I learned from her narrative was that Pope Clement V was not quite the scoundrel as other authors have made him out to be. In fact, he cleared the Templar of heresy, though did find that some of their initiation rites were out of line. In any case, he does not come off like Philip IV who positively salivated at the prospect of expropriating Templar wealth and was willing to use any excuse to enrich himself. May he reflect on all this during his time in Purgatory.
I also learned that the Papacy’s long, long struggle for independence from the monarchical governments of Europe created space within which detailed understandings of human freedom grew. In fact, the divine right of kings may be connected to Philip the (Un)Fair, who made a claim dating back to Clovis that the crowned princes, not the Popes of Rome, had responsibility for protecting the Church on earth. Ominous, most ominous.
Amity Shlaes
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
The quote from William Graham Sumner’s lecture explains the title of this first rate history of the New Deal:
‘As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine … what A, B, and C shall do for X.’ But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. What was wrong was the law, and the indenturing of C to the cause. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, ‘the man who never is thought of.’ (p. 12)
Thomas Sowell
Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
My favorite part is Dr. Sowell’s exchange with his teacher, Arthur Smithies of Harvard. Sowell explained his strong feelings in class for a given policy proposal. Dr. Smithies asked, “And then what will happen?” (p. 4) Smithies kept asking this question after each answer, illustrating a key skill of economic analysis in going beyond first stage thinking to consider costs. benefits, and unintended consequences of well-meaning policies like affordable housing, anti-discrimination, or income equalization policies. This is the principle of considering secondary effects.
David Schmidtz
Person, Polis, Planet: Essays in Applied Philosophy
Here is a wonderful quote from p. 176 quote: “In turn, citizens internalize responsibility when they face the world of tangled joint causation as it is, and do not rely on courts to save them from themselves.” Amen. No thanks, Nanny State. Give me personal responsibilty.
Diana Wood
Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks)
Chapters 7 and 8 contain illuminating dicussion of usury. This from p. 205: “Leo X [1515] canonized the attitude that ‘Usury and trewe interest be thinges as contrary as falshed is to trewth,’ in effect, admitting that the Church had come to terms with economic practice …. Paradoxically it was the Protestants, with their biblically based faith, who kept the usuary debate alive by returning to the traditional scholastic attitudes.”
And this from p. 204: “[Pope Leo X] had undermined most of the foundations of the usury doctrine. By accepting the charging of interest by the montes from the beginning of a loan he had denied that loans were free, and also, by implication, suggested that time could be sold. By suggesting that a profit could be made, provided that it involved labor, cost, or risk, he was sanctioning the main extrinsic titles to interest, and so hinting that barren money could be made fruitful by the application of any of these three.”
And of course, a fascinating few pages on ‘clerical usury’ and papal lending practices and the understandings thereof, beginning on p. 171.
I believe the Catholic Church has the fullness of the means of salvation and does not need to coerce others like manipulating their looking at the cross above the teacher’s head for 16 years…. which can only have the opposite effect in the long run.
The Church steeples in Europe can be avoided with one’s free glance. In classrooms the children are captive by law and must face the teacher and the crucifix is generally over his head. It is religious coercion of those who do not believe. Cardinal Bertone is thinking of we and does not mention the dilemna of the parents that feel their non Catholic children are being brain washed slowly.
Why do we justify virtually anything untoward that we do either now or long ago?
Mr. Bannon, your comments caught my attention and I think they are worth discussing further. You point out that the Church has “the fullness of the means of salvation”, by which I think you mean that the Church is called always and everywhere to evangelize and announce the Gospel, which declares the good news that man can be saved through (and only through) Jesus Christ, and that salvation through Jesus Christ can only occur through the Church as His Body and Bride (see documents such as Dominus Iesus and Evangelii Nuntiandi). If we acknowledge that the Church is called to help bring all men to Jesus Christ, and if we further acknowledge that Christ has commanded the Church to do so, does the Church not have a moral obligation to announce the Gospel? What I found interesting is that you later state that the display of crucifixes qualifies as “religious coercion”. I’m curious as to what your logic is and hope that you will reply with a clarification. I would argue that the display of a crucifix does not necessarily mean one is being coerced into becoming Christian. The point of a crucifix is meditation. For an atheist, they may think about who the man was; for a Christian, the Incarnate Word; for a Jew or Muslim, the message of the prophet. To claim that the display of a crucifix is religious coercion is akin to claiming that the display of the Star of David is the same. Yet no one would claim this.
Thank you Bill for your comment. It is always great to hear from folks with interesting insights. You raise an interesting point about religious coercion. Maybe you can help me think it through. When you write that steeples can be avoided freely by simply averting one’s eyes, does this mean that atheists and those following other religious traditions can re-direct their glance away from Christian symbols? If so, is this practical or even safe? I foresee many traffic accidents in Europe, Italy in particular, though they drive pretty crazy there even without people averting their glances. But this averting glances could pose more problems. Wouldn’t the coercion come in in the likely re-shaping of the Italian skyline to take down the innumerable Christian symbolic distractions that permeate that country? Finally, does it work both ways? In other words, is it religious coercion in the sense you describe for Catholic parents to have pagan symbols like jackolanterns displayed in public school settings where their children attend, or does it only work the other way, for non-Catholic parents to feel coerced by the presence of Christian symbols?
I think from the signals in both your posts that you both simply already have your answer and you want to debate and then come out victorious. It’s simple. Within a classroom the student is captive and must look in that direction. Neither of you would want a picture of Mohammed up there at the front of the class and neither would I. Our obligation to preach presumes a non captive audience. Christ did not force Himself on people. I go out and pass out Aquinas and Augustine quotes in Manhattan but each person is free to place it in the next garbage can and some do and some take it onto the train.
But that is the point: they are not a captive audience as in the school room case.
There is a hint of relativism in the observation that pictures of Mohammed would be found just as objectionable and another example of religious coercion in a different form. Muslims do not allow such direct imagery of the prophet. It is regarded as idolatrous. The equivalence of Christian and Muslim symbols is the cross and the crescent moon and star. But there is not an equivalence between the cross and moon crescent and star. One is the symbol of salvation, the other is not. True, Christ respects free will and does not force himself. His invitation is sometimes an emphatic one, however, as in the temple when he declared the mixing of religious and commercial activities as inappropriate. Why regard public school students as captive? Aren’t all students part of a captive audience. All schooling involves some amount of coercion at the student level. Less so at the parental, educational decision-maker level. The issue is the degree of validity of the mother’s complaint that displaying the cross in the school prevented her from raising her child with the values she believes in, a position the court agreed with and with which I disagree. And to correct a presumption, I would not find a picture of Mohammed objectionable. He is depicted in the Divine Comedy as one of the schismatics. He is depicted in textbooks and encyclopedias. If he were depicted on a school wall I would exercise my parental right to not send my children to that school because symbols matter to me. Finally, are children of atheists in Catholic schools coerced like their counterparts in the public school in question? If they are not, why not? But if they are, it seems the implication of this position is the state has an obligation to re-create the symbolic landscape of Europe in the image and likeness of the loudest complainer. This is not my understanding of the proper role of the state.