Does spending more money locally keep money in munity, creating jobs and improving the economic situation of our immediate neighbors? Probably not. EconomistDon Boudreaux shows that if we bought everything because it was “local” (rather than because it was the best product or service) we would just bevoluntarily making ourselves poorer. ...

Is the average American better off today economically than they were 4 years ago? What about 40 years ago? How would you go about answering those questions? In this video economist Alex Tabarrok explains the difference between nominal and real GDP and shows us a simple tool that can help us determine if our economic well-being as a nation is increasing or decreasing. ...

Pope Francis’s recently released apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitiahas received considerable attention because of the issue of divorce munion. But the 60,000+ word document has much more to say about family life than the dissolution of marriage. For example, it provides pelling reasons for all Christians (not just Catholics) to support school choice. The term “school choice” refers to programs that give parents the power and opportunity to choose the schools their children attend, whether public, private, parochial, or homeschool. While...

In almost every long-term clash over a cultural or political policy, es a point that I’d call the fort-level concession.” If the agenda of one side has been won — or has at least moved sufficiently toward achieving victory — the winning side often fortable making concessions about claims that they may have previously denied. Initially, they will firmly state, “The claims of our opponents are overblown; the detrimental effect they predict will never happen.” Once they’ve won the public...

Pope Francis has made support for migrants and refugees a priority of his pontificate, and has encouraged nations to adopt an open-door immigration policy. But few countries, especially in Europe, appear interested in adopting his approach, underscoring just how limited an influence thepope has on foreign policy. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighting the pope’s inability to stronglyaffect geopolitical affairs quotes Kishore Jayabalan, director of Acton Institute’s Rome office and a former Vatican policy analyst: Starting with...

It’s been a while since your writer began reporting on religious shareholder activism in this space. The term “religious” is used here to describe the vocations of the priests, nuns, clergy and other religious involved in shareholder activism – rather than serving as an accurate descriptor for essentially progressive political and social activities. These shareholder activists pursue agendas having little to do with the true nature of the faiths they no doubt believe, but too often relegate beneath their pursuit...

On Friday, Pope Francis releasedthe apostolic exhortationAmoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), a lengthy (325 paragraphs, 256 pages, 391 footnotes) letterthat follows the Synods on the Family held in 2014 and 2015. The following 50 key quotes fromthe text are intended not to be the “best” quotes from the letter, but merely to provide a general sense ofwhat theexhortation is about: Introduction Since “time is greater than space”, I would make it clear that not all discussions of doctrinal, moral...

I oppose implementing Skynet and increasing minimum wage laws for the same reason: to forestall the robots. It’s probably inevitable that a T-1000 will return from the future to terminate John Connor. But there is still something we can do to prevent (at least for a time) a TIOS from eliminating the cashier at your local McDonalds. In Europe, McDonalds has ordered 7,000 TIOSs (Touch Interface Ordering Systems) to take food orders and payment. In America, Panera Bread will replace...

Three years ago, Dalier Hinojosa was making the equivalent of $5 to $20 per month playing baseball in the state-run Cuban league. Having nowdefectedfrom the country, escaping first to Haiti and now to America, Hinojosa will make $514,000 this season, playing for the Phillies. In a profile at , we learn more about the trials of his journey, which involved a high-risk, 12-hour escape at sea, joined by his wife and a smuggler in a small motorboat: You never think...

In an earlier post pared the political economy of superheroes in the DC and Marvel universes. And today I have a piece up at The Stream examining the figure of Lex Luthor, the crony capitalist villain featured in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. As I write in that piece, Luthor is certainly more than a crony capitalist, but he is not less than one, and it is this corruption of democratic capitalism that serves as a backdrop for his...