Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Economic inequality'

May 19, 2014

Video: ‘Fighting Poverty: We’ve Been Doing it All Wrong’

Yahoo! Finance’s Stock Analyst, Kevin Chupka, recently interviewed Rev. Robert Sirico about the “Cure for Income Inequality” and the work of PovertyCure. Chupka begins by stating that “close to half the planet lives on less than $2 dollars a day” and that an alarming number of Americans are living below the poverty line. Continue Reading...
April 24, 2014

Capital Then and Now

Speaking of Thomas Piketty, here’s a very helpful and revealing interview with Matthew Yglesias, “Thomas Piketty doesn’t hate capitalism: He just wants to fix it.” (HT: PEG) A few highlights with some comment: On the need for a historical perspective in economics: Thomas Piketty: … It’s not only economists’ fault. Continue Reading...
March 26, 2014

The Forgotten Sin of Covetous Envy

Modern rhetoric of income inequality is driven by covetous envy, says Russell Nieli. Caritas, humility, gratitude, and goodwill toward others are a healthy society’s answer to the ancient curses of envy and pride: The problem of the chronically poor is that they are chronically poor, not that some people make a lot more money than other people and bring about “inequality.” Continue Reading...
March 05, 2014

Why Attitudes About Competition Matter

In an excerpt from the splendid PovertyCure series, Michael Fairbanks offers a helpful bit on why our attitudes about competition matter for economic development: I can predict the future of a developing nation better than any IMF team of economists by asking one question: “Do you believe in competition?” Continue Reading...
February 19, 2014

The 1%: Who Are They Really?

The much-maligned 1%. Websites are devoted to getting them to spread their wealth. They are called self-pitying, greedy…just all-around bad folk. Really? In today’s Wall Street Journal, James Piereson says the 1% are actually hard-working people like the rest of us. Continue Reading...