Rick Kelo – Engaging People in the State of Our Economy

When discussions about the United States economy arise in casual conversation, most people’s eyes immediately gloss over. This is for two reasons. First, the vast majority of Americans have only a superficial understanding of the United States economy and that can make these types of discussions very disarming. Second, there is a serious apathy that exists around discussion about the nation’s economic wellbeing, despite being arguably the most important topic in our culture. The sources for these two problems are arguably the education system and deeply ingrained aversion in our society towards talking about important topics. So how can we change this negative aspect of our society?

For economists and educator such as RickKelo, education is a priority. Helping people to better understand what is going on around them has a natural effect of making them care more. On his blog, Rick Kelo writes about important topics such as “The Minimum Wage Issue”, “What is the Optimal Progressive Tax?”, “Answering for the 2008 Global Economic Crash”, and “Free Market Capitalism and the Drive Towards Progress”. Before you let your eyes glaze over at those titles, he has also published articles such as “Socialism and Star Wars” in which he compares traditional socialist theories to the political structure of the Star Wars universe. By writing about economics in engaging ways, he is helping people understand the issues in our society and encouraging people to voice their own opinions.

He has also used social media and the digital world as his primary means of communicating. This has had a significant impact on the response to his writings. Many millennials, and in fact more than 60% of all people in the United States, get their news exclusively from social media. Because of this, it is crucial that thought-leaders and those who care about the economy take to the web as a battleground for sharing information. By getting information out there to the majority of people, Rick Kelo and other economists like him are making sure that our country is more informed, even if it is in a relatively small way.

Finally, for Rick Kelo, exposing thefault lines of our economies is a crucial step in getting people to care about our country. It is easy to remain apathetic when you think that everything is okay, or only slightly bad. When articles such as “American Poverty vs. African Wealth” show that the United States standard (specifically in Detroit) is lower than that of some African nations, it’s hard not to be upset and care about the situation.

Rick Kelo – Are You Really a Liberal?

Asking someone, “are you liberal?” is a very different question than asking someone “are you a liberal?” That single article makes a big difference in the response to this questions and it forces people to realize that they might not have the best working knowledge of what a liberal is, what liberalism is, and where they fall along this line. Modern American liberalism is the dominant version of liberalism in the United States and it is characterized by social liberalism and a mixed economy. Taken outside of the United States, this issue becomes more complicated so we will stay within the borders of our country. The previous definition is the typical definition that most Americans call to mind when faced with questions about their understanding of liberalism.

However, in a recent article about classicliberalism by Rick Kelo, the economist and financial expert explains how this is only one side of the liberal coin. The term liberalism diverged into classic liberalism and social liberalism in the late 1800s, with social liberals hijacking the term liberty and using it in a different way than was traditionally intended. According to Lord Acton, “a liberal’s polar star is liberty—who deems those things right in politics which, taken all round, promote, increase, perpetuate freedom, and those things wrong which impede it.” If we unpack this quote about classic liberalism, we can draw obvious contrasts between this definition and our modern understanding.

Classic liberalists promote economic individuality that is relatively free from government constraints. In contrast to modern liberalists who tend to promote more government regulation in order to forward their social agendas. True liberalism began as a philosophy that put control over economic decisions into the hands of individuals, allowing them to make the economic decisions that best suited their personal interests and families. So a major point of contention between classic liberals and modern liberals is this idea of government intervention.

For Richard Arthur Kelo, a guardianof liberal democracy (on SlideShare and other blogging platforms), drawing comparisons between modern and classic liberals is a means of helping clear some of the misunderstandings of the rhetoric surrounding current American politics. When talking about any economic or political issue with another, it is important to have the same working definitions as whomever you are speaking with. That is why the term “liberal” needs to be more clearly defined and used with a bit more prudence in mainstream political dialogue.