Latest Posts

July 24, 2019

Religion in Europe? It’s complicated

It’s not unusual for Europe—especially Western Europe—to be portrayed as a continent in which religion and, more specifically, religious practice is in decline. No doubt there’s much truth to that. When you start looking at the hard information, however, it soon becomes apparent that the situation is more complicated. Continue Reading...
July 24, 2019

Explainer: What you should know about federal deficits

What just happened? The White House Office of Management and Budget recently released a forecast that the federal deficit would exceed $1 trillion this year. As Fox News points out, this would be the first time since the four years following the Great Recession that the deficit reached that level. Continue Reading...
July 24, 2019

Acton Line rebroadcast: Tackling populism with Ben Domenech

Populism is gaining traction, both abroad and in the United States. In 2017, the Swedish libertarian think tank Timbro and the European Policy Information Center released their “Authoritarian Populism Index,” showing that populist parties have gained the highest percentage of the vote in nine countries, including Hungary (65.2%), Poland (46.4%) and Greece (45.1%). Continue Reading...
July 23, 2019

How ideologues devalue and dismiss economics

Economics is often dismissed as ideological, reductionist, and mendacious. In the United States we see these criticisms increasingly from both the political left and right. This should come as no surprise as the lessons of economics have implications for the prudential decisions that make up much of our political life. Continue Reading...