Economics

[1] “Who’s fault is it?” “It ain’t nobody. It’s a company.” “Then who do I shoot?” “Brother, I don’t know. If I did, I’d tell ya. I just don’t know who’s to blame.”   [2] This famous bit of dialogue from The Grapes of Wrath points to a critical issue in corporate responsibility. The question […]

[1] I serve as a pastor in Toledo’s North End neighborhood of Vistula. In our neighborhood, over half of the area residents (53%) live at or below the federal poverty level. Eleven years ago, when I began serving at Salem Lutheran Church, those figures were closer to 60% of people living at or below the […]

[1] We like to imagine greed as the key to success in business: the CEO must be strong and decisive, must move fast and break things, and above all must turn a profit. But success is like holding a fish. Grip it too hard and it shoots out of your grasp. When businesses fail, it […]

Introduction [1] In recent years, the American public has experienced different impacts upon their standard of living. First, the cost of living has increased significantly, stemming from external factors like an increase in food and energy prices. Second, artificial intelligence[1] has become more prevalent in daily life. Third, and as important a factor as the […]

[1] On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released a whitepaper describing the protocol for Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.[1] We do not know whether the founder of Bitcoin was aware that Protestants celebrate October 31st as Reformation Day, but the date is fitting, for, in the years that have followed, Bitcoin has initiated a […]

[1] A chaplain once shared with me his practice of entering a patient’s room by asking the patient who had already visited. He would name the likely guests — fear, guilt, uncertainty — not as a diagnosis, but to open a door. Whatever the patient confirmed or corrected, a conversation had already begun. He arrived […]

[1] To describe the concerns raised by artificial intelligence (AI) would require us to speak of a broad swath of concerns: the environment, energy supply, human rights, privacy, employment, the future of the arts, and scholarship. While those who aim to profit financially from AI focus on its potential, which does indeed seem remarkable, other […]

[1] Our church confesses: “As a church we confess that we are in bondage to sin and submit too readily to the idols and injustices of economic life. We often rely on wealth and material goods more than God and close ourselves off from the needs of others. Too uncritically we accept assumptions, policies, and […]

[1] No doubt economics plays a role in our polarization and social fragmentation.  Harvard Law School Deputy Dean John Coates has authored a cutting edge book on economic trends that Lutheran ethicists need to address and that we all need to master in order to educate the Lutherans we serve to the new realities of […]

[1] When I was growing up, I remember hearing the theme song to the popular American television show Cheers proclaim: “Making your way in the world today takes everything you got.” For many people across the world, in wildly different contexts, that sentence rings profoundly, and sadly, true. Humans endure unsustainably long workdays at a […]