by Ryan Cummins The truth is there is no accepted definition in Indiana now of what constitutes “economic development.” And that is part of the problem. For when something like economic development can mean anything, which it often does, then it can just as easily become meaningless, which it often is. Economic development should mean the actions undertaken by individuals or groups of individuals to improve the short-term and long-term economic conditions for themselves, their…

by Leo Morris This is actually a Christmas column. But it will take a while to get there, so please bear with me. My first job at my first newspaper was wire editor for the Wabash Plain Dealer. That meant that, in addition to being a reporter charged with gathering information and writing local stories, I got to come in early and, as they said back then, “strip the wire.” It was my duty to…

by T. Norman Van Cott, Ph.D. The Bible’s account of Joseph in Genesis (Chapters 37, 39- 49) presents a story rich in lessons. One is an economics lesson. To wit: Speculation in markets can play a positive role in promoting overall economic well-being. This is an important lesson because speculators are typically classified as societal thieves. Before drawing the economics lesson out of the account, let’s first look at its highlights. Joseph was one of…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. “Moral virtue belongs to all of them; but the temperance of a woman and that of a man are not the same, nor their courage and justice, as Socrates thought.” (Aristotle, Politics, 1260a 21-2) Decades ago, when I was an undergrad and the world was different, what with society being more attentive to one sex over the other, many students set aside a day to skip classes and protest the Viet…

TO ENSURE THAT YOU GET a copy of the winter journal, please click here. An individual membership is $50 and a corporate membership is $120. The Eco-Devo Promises: Let’s Unwrap Them Unelected redevelopment commissions should not have the power to take away money from other parts of government for a Tax Increment Financing project, especially ones that never come to reality like the charades in my city. “It’s a Ponzi scheme” our county auditor said of the way TIF is used. One project would…

by Leo Morris I think there are two Americas. But the two I see are not the two a lot of people seem to be obsessing about these days. I experience one America through the fevered rantings of politicians and their media co-conspirators, and it seems so vivid I sometimes forget it is the fake one. I live in the other one, the real America, and sometimes I forget that, too. I recently put an…

by Leo Morris My reading habits have taken a strange turn lately, but it’s not really my fault. My Kindle has been bossing me around. It started when I discovered and downloaded a mystery novel about a small- college librarian named Charlie who solves murders when not walking his Maine Coon cat around town on a leash. Then there was a whole series of books about Charlie and his cat. The Kindle algorithm, armed with…

Eric Schansberg November 11th (11/11) at 11:00 a.m. is the 100th anniversary of the armistice with Germany that ended World War I. At the time, it was considered “the war to end all wars.. It was soon replaced in the public imagination by an even larger war. Still, World War I was important both for what happened in the war and what came from it. Like most people, I know little about it. But I have…

Listening to the acceptance speeches after a harrowing midterm election, was it clear what the winners thought had been won? Some seemed to have counted the votes in their heads and concluded that the number represented fellow citizens who had astutely assessed character, intelligence and experience and had chosen him or her specifically to be their “leader,” whatever they imagine that to mean in a democracy-driven constitutional republic. The political economist Jude Wanniski deflated such…

by Mark Franke I’m not a veteran, and therein lies a story. I was in college during the height of the Vietnam War and all the protests that were de rigueur on college campuses in those days. I was getting sick of going to school and since I was a a card-carrying member of Young Americans for Freedom, I decided it was my duty to do something more constructive than just debating left-wingers in the…