Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Wilhelm Röpke'

February 24, 2014

Orthodoxy and Ordoliberalism

Today at Red River Orthodox, I offer a brief introduction to the liberal tradition for Orthodox Christians living in the West: Liberalism, historically, is a broad intellectual tradition including a large and disparate group of thinkers. Continue Reading...
December 11, 2013

Inflation and the Minimum Wage

In yesterday’s edition of The Transom, which I highly recommend, Ben Domenech included a discussion that places the debates over raising the minimum wage within the broader context of the effects of inflation more generally. Continue Reading...
September 27, 2013

Surplus = Happiness, Deficit = Misery

Joe Carter points to a Lifehacker article that sums up two basic equations that lead to the creation of wealth (with what I consider to be a clarifying correction applied in the first formula): Income spending = surplus Surplus x time = wealth Likewise, Wilhelm Röpke, in his A Humane Economy, points to two equations arising from classical literature that connect surplus with happiness and deficit to misery (the Micawber Principle). Continue Reading...
September 11, 2013

What You Need to Know About Wilhelm Röpke

Wilhelm Röpke is one of the most important 20th century economists that almost no Americans know anything about. To really learn about the man whose influence was considered largely responsible for enabling Germany’s post-World War II economic “miracle,” you should read Samuel Gregg’s Wilhelm Ropke’s Political Economy. Continue Reading...
September 09, 2013

Samuel Gregg: Politics, Ideas, and the West

In a new article at Intercollegiate Review, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at the current state of “idea conservatives” and their place in the broader context of American conservative thought encompassing an amazing diversity of ideological subspecies. Continue Reading...
May 09, 2013

Less Ayn Rand, More Wilhelm Röpke

Some Christian free market enthusiasts mistakenly believe we have to make a choice between socialism and Randianism. But as Joel Miller points out, there are far better intellectual leaders than Ayn Rand. Continue Reading...
February 20, 2013

Check Your Rhetoric: What Common Good?

In the Winter-Fall 2012 issue of Modern Age (54, nos. 1-4), Jonathan Daly contributes a helpful exploration of what happens when desire for the common good goes bad. His article, “Bolshevik Power and Ideas of the Common Good,” focuses on the disastrously ill-conceived effort by the Russian revolutionaries to promote the common good through their self-proclaimed “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” Continue Reading...
September 11, 2012

Rand or Röpke?

On his personal blog, author and publishing industry executive Joel J. Miller asks, “What if we dumped Rand for Röpke?” Good question. Miller says that it’s simply unnecessary for Christians to invoke Rand in their defense of the free market. Continue Reading...