If you’re out of work and can’t earn an e, it’s easy to slide down the economic ladder from working-poor to just plain poor. So it’s no surprise that the poverty rate in America has, since at least 1970, moved in sync with the unemployment rate. During each recession we would see a spike in the poverty rate and then a decline as the economy recovers and employment levels began to rise. But around 2010, something seems to have changed....

In the United States, we’veonly begun to see how impediments to religious liberty can harm and hinder certain businesses and entrepreneurial efforts. Elsewhere, however, particularly in the developing world, religious restrictions and hostilities have long been a barrier to economic growth. To identify theserealities, Brian Grim of Georgetown University and Greg Clark and Robert Edward Snyder of Brigham Young University conducted an extensive study, “Is Religious Freedom Good for Business?,” which concludes that “religious freedom contributes to better economic and...

Those of you in West Michigan with a taste for libertarian cinema may want to to join local restaurateur Tommy Brann for a special screening of “Atlas Shrugged 3: Who is John Galt?” Brann is hosting the showing at Celebration Cinema North at Knapp’s Corner tomorrow (Sept. 12) at 7 p.m. Tickets are $7.75 and email [email protected] to reserve your seat. Before you go, read Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s essay “Who Really Was John Galt, Anyway?” published at in 2011....

In his Epidemics, Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, wrote that the physician has two special objects in view: to do good or to do no harm. That same principle should be the special object of every educator. While they may not always know what is required to do good, the least they can do is to do no harm. By applying that standard, it es inexplicable why educators are pushing for Common Core standards. A study released last year...

To be a Christian requires, at a minimum, that a person subscribe to certain beliefs (such as that Jesus is God). For an organization to be labeled Christian would therefore imply that the members (or at least the leaders) also subscribe to certain beliefs. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) is, as the name implies, a Christian organization, so it isn’t surprising that it requires it leaders to subscribe to Christian beliefs. Sadly, it’s also not surprising that some people are offended...

There is a near universal agreement that America’s experience with chattel slavery, where people are treated as the chattel or personal property of an owner and are bought and sold as if they modities, was one of our country’s gravest moral horrors. But some people seem to believe that the despicable institution aided the nation’s prosperity. That’s not the case, explains economist Scott Sumner, who points out that countries with free labor tend to be more prosperous: Between 1850 and...

The Polaris Project is one of the most highly-respected human trafficking organizations in the nation. Based in Washington, D.C., the Polaris Project (named after the North Star that guided slaves to freedom in the 1800s) is home to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. The hotline is able to receive calls or texts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Does it work? Apparently so. Jennifer Kimball was monitoring calls and texts at the hotline a few months ago. In...

Vatican Radio reports that the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development is adjusting its economic forecast for major developed economies downward, with growth in the Eurozone projected to be only 0.8% in ing year. Along with this forecast, the OCED is encouraging the European Central Bank to engage in a program of stimulus to offset the negative effects of such weak levels of growth. For analysis on this story, Vatican Radio turned to Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in...

It may not be the silver bullet for every financial challenge facing states at the present, but those states adopting right-to-work (RTW) legislation are ing petitive. In your writer’s native Michigan, for example, RTW was signed by Gov. Rick Snyder in December 2012, and the results have been impressive. The American Legislative Exchange Council’s recently released 2014 “Rich States, Poor States” report places the Great Lakes State 12th out of 50. ALEC’s 2013 report placed Michigan at 25 between 1999...

“Prison is a hopeless place.” That’s how one former inmate describes it. What can give hope? The freedom to practice one’s faith, even behind bars and barbed wire. In October, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Holt v. Hobbs, which involves the following: Abdul Muhammad, an Arkansas inmate, has been denied the ability to grow the ½ inch beard his Muslim mands—even though Arkansas already allows inmates to grow beards for medical reasons, and Mr. Muhammad’s beard would...