Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is running for president in 2020, and she has gained attention for proposing an “ultramillionaire” tax: a 2 percent tax on households with a net worth over $50 million and an additional 1 percent on households worth over $1 billion. Warren’s proposal has more popular support than Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) proposal to raise the marginal e tax rate on top earners to 70 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. Indeed, Warren’s proposal has support among a majority of...

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s proposed Green New Deal is getting a lot of attention these days. Democratic Presidential hopefuls Cory Booker,Kirsten Gillibrand,Kamala Harris, andElizabeth Warren are all supporters, as is Senator Bernie Sanders. Former Greek Minister of Finance and Economist Yanis Varoufakis has been aggressively promoting his own vision of a Green New Deal for Europe. Many of the policy proposals and programs are similar and so are the proposed methods of funding: The great advantage of...

There are a lot of campaigns and organizations dedicated to alleviating extreme poverty found in the developing world. These same groups advocate for the provision of what the material poor often lack: clean water, decent housing, financial capital, nutrition, etc. But this deficit of material goods, what we typically call “poverty,” is symptomatic of larger problems. People are not poor because they lack “stuff.” People are poor mainly because they do not have access to secure property rights, the rule...

Panera has announced that it will close the last of its charitable stores, which allowed people to pay whatever they wished for a meal, because it was costing too much dough. The Boston store will shut its doors permanently this Friday, February 15. “Panera Cares” were indistinguishable from other Panera eateries in their branding, menu, or furnishings, except they announced that no one would be turned away if they did not pay one cent of the “suggested prices.” Those who...

On this episode of Acton Line, producer Caroline Roberts speaks with Sarah Estelle, professor of economics at Hope College. Estelle breaks down mon misconceptions about economics and shares what our love for those around us has to do with economics. Register for the ing lunch and lecture event at the Acton Institute on February 14, to hear Estelle share more about integrating sound economics with a Christian perspective. After that, Acton’sPoverty Initiatives Manager, Andrew Vanderput, speaks with Scott Sabin, the...

Note: This is post #110 in a weekly video series on basic economics. A concept that can help us understand business fluctuation is the aggregate demand–aggregate supplymodel, or AD-AS model.The aggregate demand curve shows us all of the binations of inflation and real growth that are consistent with a specified rate of spending growth. In the video by Marginal Revolution University,Alex Tabarrok explains howthe aggregate demand curve show us all of the binations of inflation and real growth that are...

During Ethiopia’s bout munism in the 1970s and 1980s, the government nationalized the land and converted much of it for agriculture, leaving only 5% of the country’s forests—a 45% decrease from the beginning of the century. Now, thanks to a growing partnership between ecologists and the country’s Tewahedo churches, biodiversity is making eback. “If you see a forest in Ethiopia, you know there is very likely to be a church in the middle,” writes Alison Abbott in Nature. “…These small...

Though certainly not well known in North America, Juan Bautista Alberdi is a towering figure in the history of Argentina. He was a major influence on the Argentine constitution and was an intellectual force in 19th-century South America. He was an adherent of classical liberal views but also a convinced Christian. His Christianity has at times been overlooked—the New Catholic Encyclopedia, for instance, devotes an entire page to Alberdi but gives no mention of his Christianity or his views on...

Fox News and the Washington Post reported that actor Rob Lowe came under fire last week for making a joke on Twitter that poked fun at Senator Elizabeth Warren and her claims of Native American ancestry. After Senator Warren declared her candidacy for President, Lowe tweeted, Lowe was immediately scolded by fellow actors like Mark Hamill and journalist Soledad O’Brien. Lowe deleted the tweet with a half-hearted apology, and lamented people’s “inability to laugh at anything” anymore Critics lambasted Lowe...

True thinkers are those capable of provoking in their readers and listeners the ability to think outside of ordinary life, to look beyond the merely conventional, and to understand that tensions, contradictions, and nuances are part of the process of growing. Camille Paglia gets it all and much more in the new collection of her essays in Provocations (Pantheon, 2018), a title that could not have been better chosen. Paglia is a feminist, atheist, and lesbian arts professor, sympathetic to...