Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'humanitarian aid'

April 18, 2016

Should we give smartphones to the homeless?

Across the globe, extreme poverty has been reduced by the advent and ubiquity of a simple tool: cell phones. As USAID says, mobile phones “fundamentally transform the way people in the developing world interact with one another and their governments, and access basic health, education, business and financial services.” Continue Reading...
December 03, 2015

Why Emergency Food Assistance Can Prolong War and Conflict

There are ten vital foundational lessons that should be taught in any introductory course on economics, says Don Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University. The first three lessons on his list are, (1) [T]he world is full of both desirable and undesirable unintended consequences – consequences that are largely invisible but that even a course in ‘mere’ principles of economics gives us great vision that enables us to “see,” (2) intentions are not results; (3) our world is unavoidably one of trade-offs and not “solutions,” … While these lessons can be easily understood in theory, applying them to the real world can often be surprisingly difficult. Continue Reading...
November 17, 2015

How Access to Cars Helps the Poor

One of the most important socio-economic factors in America is social mobility, the ability of an individual or family to improve (or lower) their economic status. And one of the major factors in increasing social mobility is to simply increase mobility. Continue Reading...