True help for the poor recognizes that they are people, says J. E. Dyer, not e-levels in a “redistribution” equation. After many years, we have learned what happens when we seek to “redistribute” e or wealth. The goal of “redistribution” es more important than actually helping the poor. The abstract idea of removing e or wealth from some and transferring it to others trumps everything else. Seeking to “redistribute” e or wealth is not, in fact, a very good method...

Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...

The Washington Post recentlyreported on what looked like an interesting development in education reform going on in California: The national battle over the best way to fix failing schools is ripping through this desert town like a sandstorm, tearing apart munity that is testing a radical new approach: the parent takeover. Parents here are trying to e the first in the country to use a trigger law, which allows a majority of families at a struggling school to force major...

A 2009 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research says that the number of people in the world living on less than $1 per day fell from 403 million in 1970 to 152 million in 2006. An analysis from the American Enterprise Institute says the biggest factor was the rise of the middle class in China and India, at a time when the world’s population grew by 3 billion. Is capitalism a greater asset than liability in the fight...

One of the most problematic aspects of the U.S. educational system is the persistence of the achievement gap. White students generally perform better on tests than black students. Rich students generally perform better than poor students. And students of similar socioeconomic background perform differently across classrooms and school systems. The effect is not only felt on the individual level—low school performance has been linked to crime, low earnings and poor health—but on our country’s economy. The consulting firm McKinsey &...

In a new analysis in Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg examines “the shifting critiques” of the pontificate of Benedict XVI including the latest appraisal that the world is losing interest in the Catholic Church particularly because of its declining geopolitical “relevance.” But how do some of these critiques understand relevance? On one reading, it parisons with Benedict’s heroic predecessor, who played an indispensible role in demolishing the Communist thug-ocracies that once brutalized much of Europe. But it’s also...

Galatians 2:10 reads, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.” This is the conclusion to the Jerusalem Council, in which Paul and the leaders in Jerusalem are reconciled and unified, and where is decided that Paul and Barnabas “should go to the Gentiles, and they [James, Peter, and John] to the circumcised” (v. 9). The concluding point that both groups are to keep in...

Former Acton Research fellow Jay Richards’ new co-authored book, Indivisible, has climbed onto The New York Times Bestseller list, holding onto a top ten spot for a second week. The book was published by FaithWords and, in an interesting cross-publishing arrangement, is also available in an Ignatius press edition with a foreword by Ignatius founder Fr. Joseph Fessio. Jay’s co-author, James Robison, is the co-host of the evangelical daily show LIFE Today. If you’ve had the chance to hear Jay...

Phillip Long is a professor of Bible and Biblical Languages at Grace Bible College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and blogs over at Reading Acts. Phil does not normally review this kind of book, but was drawn to it due to Abraham Kuyper’s popularity and his contribution to worldview issues today. Long shares some good observations and this book and its relevance for Christianity today, particularly those with an aversion to the study of science and the pursuit of a career...

“The power of population,” wrote the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798, “is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” In other words, unless population growth is checked by moral restraint (refraining from having babies) or disaster (disease, famine, war) widespread poverty and degradation inevitably result. Or so thought Malthus and many other intellectuals of his era. Unfortunately, methods of population control range from the unpleasant (disease, famine, war) to the downright horrifying (abstinence)....