A presidential season is a time of policies, proposals, and promises. All will guarantee they will increase national wealth and well-being, but history and rational analysis show that some reforms will hurt the very voters who support them. Continue Reading...
Latest Posts
January 30, 2020
Untangling the roots of wealth inequality is more complex than it appears
Inequality is one of those topics that is sure to spark quick and intense debate, wherever and whenever it is raised. In any such discussion, however, facts matter. That’s one reason why my attention was recently drawn to an article published in early December at Real Clear Markets, titled “Inequality Is Decidedly Not the Problem In the U.S.” Continue Reading...
January 29, 2020
Commentary: The court case that could end 150 years of anti-Catholic law
This week’s Acton Commentary focuses on a Supreme Court case that could strike down an eighteenth-century statute, borne of anti-Catholic animus, that now locks poor children in underperforming schools. A clear understanding of economics and solid Supreme Court precedent could sweep this relic of anti-Catholic discrimination, known as the Blaine amendment, into the past. Continue Reading...
January 29, 2020
Acton Line podcast: How we can save endangered species through markets
Did you know that there are over 1,300 endangered species in the United States? Polar bears, northern spotted owls, red wolves, Florida panthers and even monarch butterflies are all on the endangered species list. Continue Reading...
January 29, 2020
Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes: Corruption and economic freedom
Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, writes this morning in Forbes about the relationship between economic freedom and corruption. Transparency International released its 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index last week, and Chafuen correlates these results with countries’ rankings in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2020
Video: E.B. White’s forgotten story about the tyranny of good intentions
E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and co-author of The Elements of Style, once wrote a story that aptly demonstrates the folly of central planning. White, a Maine farmer who wrote for The New Yorker and Harper’s, saw the story turned into an animated short, which he narrated 36 years after its publication. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2020
Churches, tax exemption, and the common good
Are churches tax exempt as a matter of privilege or right? What does tax exception cost communities and churches? Christianity Today has been hosting an interesting debate on these issues. Paul Matzko, Assistant Editor for Tech and Innovation at the CATO Institute, argued in the cover story of this month’s issue that tax exemption comes at a high a cost to the communities in which they are located:
This feeling that churches don’t contribute to the common good is not uncommon in America. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2020
Will Michael Bloomberg enact ‘tikkun olam’?
Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg recently tweeted that his political program grows out of a Jewish religious teaching giving him the “responsibility” to use the government to “‘repair the world’ in the tradition of Tikkun Olam.” Continue Reading...
January 28, 2020
Amity Shlaes proves that LBJ’s Great Society was a “nightmare”
When President Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled the plans for his Great Society initiative at the University of Michigan in 1964, he promised to usher the United States into “a new age.” Continue Reading...
January 28, 2020
How an Argentine cooperative is empowering workers and entrepreneurs
Despite the once promising election of President Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s first non-Perónist leader in 13 years, the country has largely returned to its embrace of leftist economic policies, including recently imposed capital controls and interventionist price fixing. Continue Reading...