Latest Posts

August 19, 2016

The hockey stick of human prosperity

Since the era of Adam Smith economists have been asking, “What creates wealth?” One key answer is specialization and trade. On a timeline of human history, the recent rise in standards of living resembles a hockey stick — flatlining for all of human history and then skyrocketing in just the last few centuries. Continue Reading...
August 19, 2016

7 Figures: The 2016 poverty survey

The American Enterprise Institute and the Los Angeles Times have joined together to release a new survey of attitudes toward the poor, poverty, and welfare in the United States. Here are seven figures from the report you should know about: 1. Continue Reading...
August 18, 2016

The Burkean tradition in Britain and America

Writing two decades ago, Gertrude Himmelfarb observed: In Britain, as in America, more and more conservatives are returning to an older Burkean tradition, which appreciates the material advantages of a free-market economy (Edmund Burke himself was a disciple of Adam Smith), but also recognizes that such an economy does not automatically produce the moral social goods that they value—that it may even subvert those goods. Continue Reading...
August 17, 2016

The true face of ‘capitalism’

Frank Borman, then-chairman of the Eastern Airlines, said that “capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.” That’s one way to take Peter Heslam’s reflection on the closing of BHS in the UK, “Business with a Human Face.” Continue Reading...
August 17, 2016

Millennials should read Solzhenitsyn

“The appeal of Bernie Sanders’ socialism is a puzzle to many, but it shouldn’t be, not if we understand how most people think about economics,” says Rev. Johannes Jacobse in this week’s Acton Commentary. Continue Reading...
August 17, 2016

Grace renews nature (even in politics)

“We see immediately that grace is inseparably connected with nature, that grace and nature belong together.” –Abraham Kuyper In their new book, One Nation Under God: A Christian Hope for American Politics, Bruce Ashford and Chris Pappalardo offer a robust vision of Christian political engagement, one that neither retreats from the world nor accommodates to its ideological whims. Continue Reading...