Jordan J. Ballor's Blog, page 23
September 19, 2013
College and the Value of a Paycheck
Floyd “Money” Mayweather
Over at Think Christian today, I explore the connection between higher education as a means to greater earning power in “The myth of lucrative college majors.”I argue that “the size of a paycheck is not the only factor worth considering,” and go on to detail what a paycheck does and does not represent.
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September 11, 2013
Callings and the Childfree Life
Photo Credit: akatrya via Compfight cc
I share Fr. Robert Barron’s concern about many of the attitudes on display in this Time magazine cover story on “the childfree life.” As Barron writes, much of the problem stems from the basic American attitude toward a life of “having it all.”
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September 4, 2013
Bonanza’s Adam Cartwright, a Cowboy in Black
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I adapt a section from my latest book focusing on an instance of “cowboy compassion” we find in an episode of Bonanza. I focus on the example of Adam Cartwright, who helps out an economically-depressed family faced with the tyranny of a greedy scrooge, Jedediah Milbank.
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August 29, 2013
Maximizing Labor, Minimizing Wages
For this week’s Acton Commentary, ahead of Labor Day weekend, I write about “working harder and smarter,” lessons we can learn from Ashton Kutcher and Mike Rowe.
One of the implications of connecting hard work with smart work is that the difficulty of work on its own does not determine its value in the marketplace. It isn’t a question of how hard you are working, but how hard you are working in productive service. This is why Lester DeKoster writes,
August 27, 2013
A ‘Golden’ Opportunity for GM Foods
A piece of news analysis over the weekend by Amy Harmon, a national correspondent for the New York Times, captures well the dynamics of the current debates about the merits of genetically-modified organisms (GMO’s).
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August 23, 2013
Is Augustine Obnoxious, Too?
Earlier this week, Elise noted an essay by Rev. Schall, which asked, “Do Christians Love Poverty?”
Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter also responded to the piece, with the comment, “Almost everything about this essay is obnoxious.”
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The Economics of Profiling
I ran across this video yesterday (courtesy of ESA), which I thought presented some interesting challenges and issues:
The video was presented on Upworthy as an example of something “all white people could do to make the world a better place,” that is, use their white privilege to address injustices.
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August 21, 2013
The Politics of Civil Society
At the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney writes (HT: The Transom), “When liberals talk about community, conservatives are too quick to raise the Gadsden Flag and shout, ‘Leave me alone!’” He goes on to examine “the reactions to catchphrases made famous by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — ‘You didn’t build that’ and ‘It takes a village.’”
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August 19, 2013
Detroit, Urban Development, and D.G. Hart
Darryl Hart has a bit of a go at “the hyperventilation that goes on in some neo-Calvinist circles when folks talk about the power of the gospel to redeem all of life,” using the woes of the city of Detroit as a trump card.
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August 15, 2013
Chris ‘Ashton’ Kutcher on Opportunity as Hard Work
PowerBlog readers will be excused for missing this, as I suspect there are not many who frequent the MTV Teen Choice Awards. But don’t let your skepticism prevent you from watching this video of Ashton (really, “Christopher Ashton”) Kutcher’s acceptance speech, in which he exhorts the younger generation to get its hands dirty with hard work:
“Opportunity looks a lot like hard work.” There are many connections to be made here with this insight, not least of which is with Lester DeKoster’s view...
