Employer/employee relationships, in themselves, are not morally neutral, says Wayne Grudem, but are fundamentally good and pleasing to God because they provide many opportunities to imitate God’s character and so glorify him. Employer/employee relationships provide many opportunities for glorifying God. On both sides of the transaction, we can imitate God, and he will take pleasure in us when he sees us showing honesty, fairness, trustworthiness, kindness, wisdom, and skill, and keeping our word regarding how much we promised to pay...

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, unemployment across the country is at about 6.1 percent (here in Michigan, it’s at 7.4 percent, which puts us in the bottom 10 states.) That means a lot of folks are still struggling to find a job, or a job where they are not underemployed. Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland give 5 reasons for this. Have all the “good” jobs moved overseas? Do we need to raise the minimum...

I listen to National Public Radio nearly on a daily basis even though I know there are far-more productive ways to spend one’s time. On today’s “Diane Rehm Show,” the discussion was on the American Legislative Exchange Council, how much cash it received from bogeymen-of-the-left Charles and David Koch, and climate change. ALEC Chief Executive Officer Lisa B. Nelson appeared on the program and predictably endured rude interruptions from her host, ical charges from fellow guests, Tom Hamburger, Washington Post...

Sam Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, bemoans the state of Europe in The American Spectator today. In a piece entitled, “Something is Rotten in the State of Europe,” Gregg begins by noting that Germany seems to have lost mon sense. William Shakespeare knew a thing or two about human psychology. But he also understood a great deal about the body-politic and how small signs can be indicative of deeper traumas. So when Marcellus tells Horatio at the beginning of Hamlet...

On Tuesday Istituto Acton, the Acton Institute’s Rome pleted its two-day PovertyCure conference for seminarians and faculty of the Pontifical Urban College in Rome. The conference served as part of the students’ pastoral formation before the academic year begins next week. The event also marked the first full and official screening of the PovertyCure DVD Series in the Italian language. Episodes 1-4 of the DVD Series were shown on day one of the conference, Sept. 29, and Episodes 5-6 were...

This past Sunday, for the first time in 2,000 years, no Christians received Holy Communion in Nineveh. The Islamic militants have eradicated the Christian population in the northern Iraqi city. The few Christians that remain are either too old or sick to escape. Canon Andrew White, Anglican vicar of Baghdad, told The Telegraph that churches have been turned into offices for the Islamic militants, crosses removed. No Christians, he says, want to be there. Last week there was munion in...

On Tuesday, Acton’s Todd Huizinga took part in a West Michigan World Trade Association panel discussion on “US and EU Sanctions on Russia: How They Affect You.” He was joined by three other panelists who focused respectively on the legal, economic, and political ramifications of the current Russian/Ukrainian conflict and the sanctions it has evoked. Though each of the panelists focused on a different angle of the conflict, mon thread emerged: the desire of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his...

Imagine you have a family member who has been in prison for a month. You decide to send them some money to buy a tube of toothpaste from the prison store. How much would you need to send them? At some prisons you’d need to send $130. Jails often deduct intake fees, medical co-pays, and the cost of basic toiletries first, leaving the prisoner’s account with a negative balance. To provide enough money for them to buy that initial tube...

Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. A 2011 study of the long-term unemployed published by the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University found that half of participants experienced shame and embarrassment that led...

Having already shrugged my shoulders at our society’s peculiar paranoia over whether having kids is “too expensive,” I was delighted to see Rich Cromwell take up the question at The Federalist, pointing out what is only recentlythe not-so-obvious. “Children are people, not toasters or cars,” he writes, “and deserve to be more than the product of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats analysis.” Alas, as we continue to accelerate in partmentalization and transactionalization of every area of life, we appearincreasingly bent...