As with a leaky roof, it is better to pay for repair work sooner, reducing debt, rather than letting the roof collapse and ending up with much higher costs.
Economics
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
How Trump’s tariffs are threatening this Irish Christian art workshop
Trump’s tariffs hit an unlikely target—handmade Irish Christian art—and echo an ancient struggle over the sacred across borders.
Posted inPolitics & Society, The Weekly Dispatch
The global impact of Pope Francis: From migration to taxes to A.I. weapons
The pope’s attention to migration and climate change were well known, but the pope was also attentive to a number of other global issues and challenges like nuclear disarmament, tax justice, development, and the rise of autonomous (A.I.) weapons systems.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
Trump’s trade war misses the point: Americans do not save enough
The root cause of the chronic U.S. trade imbalance is macroeconomic: We save too little relative to our major trading partners. Tariffs will not address that problem.
Posted inPolitics & Society, The Weekly Dispatch
Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on Pope Francis, Trump, jubilee and debt forgiveness
An interview on economics and Catholic social teaching with Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist and a professor at Columbia University.
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Europe was a world leader in A.I. regulation. Will Trump change that?
E.U. regulations on artificial intelligence may not be global in scope, but they affect 450 million consumers and companies will have to implement E.U. rules and adopt them for other territories for cost-saving reasons.
Posted inInterviews, Politics & Society
What Catholic social teaching says about Trump’s tariffs
Economist and Jesuit priest Stephen Pitts, S.J., weighs in on President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Vatican Dispatch
Pope Francis denounces deregulation, neoliberalism and the breakdown of global cooperation in new letter
“Endorsing utilitarian deregulation and global neoliberalism means imposing the law of the strongest as the only rule; and it is a law that dehumanizes,” the pope wrote in a letter to members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
The future of the G.O.P. and the working class: What Trump’s cabinet pick tells us
President Trump has nominated Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman backed by unions, as secretary of labor. Is it a sign of an improved relationship between labor and the G.O.P. ?
Posted inDispatches, Faith
Catholic institutions in Africa seek alternative funding as support from former missionaries fades
Catholic institutions in Zimbabwe and other African states once could rely on support from retired missionaries. Now the decline in missionary numbers has left African religious communities facing a financial crunch.