“You may already be aware that many state and local public pensions are in trouble,” says Victor V. Claar in this week’s Acton Commentary. “By one estimate, the nation’s state, county, and municipal governments face bined funding shortfall of about $5 trillion. . . But what you may not know is that many private pension funds are in trouble, too.” How did this happen? It depends on who you ask, but one can point to various culprits that include roller-coaster...

Images of persecuted Christians have not inflicted less emotional pain for the fact that they have e altogether monplace. Their fellow believers, and benevolent people of all backgrounds, have asked what they can do about it. A new book delves deeply into the topic ing to a surprising conclusion: The first step to aiding the tortured Body of Christ is for the West to mit itself to, and to reassert,Western values. The Persecution and Genocide of Christians in the Middle...

Unless you’re a nostalgic Gen-Xer or a parent of a small child that likes old cartoons, you probably haven’t given much thought to the Care Bears. But since their debut in 1981, they’ve popped up everywhere. Although they were originally characters created for a line of greeting cards, the Care Bears have since appeared in a TV series, two TV specials, five feature films, several music albums, a video game, and ic book series. Books in which they’ve appeared have...

Earlier this week I asked why conservative Christian outlets are increasingly promoting socialist ideas and policies. Yesterday, my friend Jake Meador weighed in to help provide some perspective on this trend. Jake himself is the editor of an online Christian magazine—Mere Orthodoxy—that would be described as traditionalist conservative. While he is not a socialist, he admits he is somewhat sympathetic to the “emerging leftism” of young Christians, especially those within Catholic and evangelical circles. I appreciate how Jake has extended...

Note: This is post #43 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. panies, being able to predict expected profits—or expected losses—is a very useful tool. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Alex Tabarrok introduces the third concept you need to maximize profit — average cost. When looked at in conjunction with the marginal revenue and marginal cost, the average cost curve will show you how to accurately predict how much profit you can make! (If you find the...

In assessing solutions to global poverty, it can be easy to counter the failures of foreign aid by focusing only on the problems with viewing handouts as a path to economic development (there are many). If only we’d “teach a man to fish,” as the saying goes, he’d eat for a lifetime. But what if most of the world’s poor already know how to fish? What if the problem has more to do with a lack of “access to the...

Christians seeking to be good stewards of God’s creation sometimes find themselves torn. The environmentalist movement tells them that the most destructive force ever unleashed upon Mother Nature is rapacious “neoliberal” capitalism, which they also know has has been thegreatest producer of wealthin history. If this teaching, which is mon among church leaders, is true, how should a person of faith view free markets? Thankfully, many of the environmental concerns about free trade are misguided, according to a new essay...

Note: Last week I asked why conservative Christian outlets areincreasingly promoting socialist ideas and policies. My friend Jake Meador weighed in to help provide some perspective on this trend. Jake himself is the editor of an online Christian magazine—Mere Orthodoxy—that would be described as traditionalist conservative. While he is not a socialist, he admits he is somewhat sympathetic to the “emerging leftism” of young Christians, especially those within Catholic and evangelical circles. There’s a lot to say in response to...

The trouble with modern politics is not merely that it is tribal. It is that the tunnel vision these tribal allegiances demand blind us to the permanent things. In Europe, a rhetorical battle wages over Europeans’ self-image. One side supports Angela Merkel’s open-door immigration policy and EU migration quotas for member states. It sees itself as cosmopolitan, Europhile, and offering the passionate response to the refugee crisis. This view, dominant in Brussels and the centers of political and academic influence,...

How popular is populism in Europe? A new study reveals that populist parties have displaced traditional advocates of liberty among European voters. It also reveals the nations where populism attracts the greatest support. The information is found in the 2017 “Authoritarian Populism Index,” released by the Swedish libertarian think tank Timbro, along with the European Policy Information Center. The report refers to the philosophy of limited government, free markets, and respect for individual rights as “Liberalism,” in the European sense....