It was once mon practice of saloons in America to provide a “free lunch” to patrons who had purchased at least one drink. Many foods on offer were high in salt (ham, cheese, salted crackers, etc.), so those who ate them naturally ended up buying a lot of beer. In his 1966 sci-fi novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein used this practice in a saloon on the moon to highlight an economic principle: “It was when you...

As the most widely observed cultural holiday in the world, Christmas produces many things — joy, happiness, gratitude, reverence. And numbers. Lots of peculiar, often large, numbers. Here are a few to contemplate this season: $39.50– Average amount U.S. consumers spent on real Christmas trees in 2014. $63.60– Average amount U.S. consumers spent on fake Christmas trees in 2014. 33,000,000 – Number of real Christmas trees sold in the U.S. each year. 9,500,000 – Number of fake Christmas trees sold...

While it may be difficult to imagine, there was once an era when the New York Times was concerned about the poor. Consider, for example,a 1987editorial they ran with the headline, “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.” As the editors noted at the time, [Raising the minimum wage] would increase unemployment: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired. If a higher minimum means fewer jobs, why does it...

During the Spanish Civil War, an American farmer named Dan West served as an aid worker on the front lines. His mission was to provide relief to weary soldiers, but all he was allotted to give them was a single cup of milk. This meager ration led West to wonder if more could be done. “What if they had not a cup,” thought West, “but a cow?” The “teach a man to fish” philosophy behind that question inspired West to...

Christmas is the most widely observed cultural holiday in the world. Here are five factsyou should know about the memoration of the birth of Jesus: 1. No one knows what day or month Jesus was born (though some scholars speculate that it was in September). The earliest evidence for the observance of December 25 as the birthday of Christappears in the Philocalian posed in Rome in 336. 2. Despite the impression given by many nativity plays and Christmas carols, the...

Bernie Sanders appears to think all we need to be happy is more money,” says Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, but Alexis de Tocqueville dismantled that idea two centuries ago. Tocqueville’s first reproach was that socialism—whatever its expression—has an inherently materialistic understanding of humans. “The first characteristic of all socialist ideologies is,” Tocqueville insisted, “an incessant, vigorous and extreme appeal to the material passions of man.” Tocqueville may have wrestled with religious questions for much of his life. Nevertheless,...

For this week’s Acton Commentary, we have a Christmas meditation by the Dutch statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper. If we should ever be envious, shouldn’t we envy the shepherds out in Bethlehem’s fields? Those men singled out for their exceptionally glorious privilege! The ones awestruck on that holy night by the flood of heavenly glory that no one else had ever seen! Those who saw God’s heavenly hosts swooping and glistening above the fields! The men whose ears were ringing...

From mass shootings to terrorist attacks, political petence to racial unrest, there has been no shortage of bad news stories in 2015. Death, destruction, and divisiveness tend to dominate the news cycle, leading us to despair over the direction our world is headed. But our incessant focus on the negative can lead us to overlook or downplay the positive changes that are happening across the globe. That is especially true of the most important good news story of 2015, one...

With Christmas just around the corner, we at the Acton Institute would like to pause and share with all of you our warmest wishes for a blessed Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous new year to all of our friends and supporters. Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico recorded thispersonal Christmas greeting, and we’re pleased to share it with you now. ...

For most of my life, much of what I’ve learned about the world came from watching movies. This was especially true in 1983, when I was in junior high. That was the year I learned about astronauts (The Right Stuff), thermonuclear war (War Games), and ewoks (Return of the Jedi). I also learned about financial crimes—specifically insider trading— from the Eddie Murphy/Dan edy, Trading Places. If you’ve forgotten the plot, here’s a brief summary by Gary Gensler, the former Chairperson...