In the West’s various efforts to alleviate global poverty, we continue to see the promotion of top-down solutions at the expense of bottom-up enterprises and institutions. Yet despite the setbacks and slowdowns caused by various governments and foreign aid, the entrepreneurs and workers on the ground aren’t sitting idly by. Across the developing world, people aren’t waiting for policies to change, conditions to improve, handouts to be given, or risks to evaporate. They are actively transforming their environments and creating...

Spain held a general election on Sunday, which saw Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party rout the center-right opposition. “For liberty-minded Christians, this was the worst possible e,” writes Ángel Manuel García Carmona in a detailed analysis of the process, and e, of the election posted today at Religion & Liberty Transatlantic. Socialists from PSOE [Sanchez’s Socialist Party] munists from Podemos will increase taxes and the bureaucratic burden of government regulation, while debt levels increase anyway. Their coalition will accelerate these trends...

On the heels of a record-smashing opening weekend for Avengers: Endgame, it seems appropriate to broach the subject of superheroes and subsidiarity, and specifically an intriguing lesson about subsidiarity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Sorry, this post will not be about the would-be superhero ‘Subsidiarity Man.’) In deference to those who weren’t among the people who contributed to the $1.2 billion opening, I’ll wait to post a bit more about Avengers: Endgame and specifically how it relates to the development...

Grand Rapids, home to the Acton Institute headquarters, is frequently ranked as one of the best cities to live in America. In 2018, Headlight Data ranked the city the seventh fastest growing economy in the U.S., based on Gross Regional Product (GRP) over the previous five years. With all that going for it, ask Acton’s foundation relations coordinator Tyler Groenendal, why do the hotels need to be publicly funded? In the face of such enormous economic impact, why is there...

Note: This is post #121 in a weekly video series on basic economics. If you heard a rumor that your bank was insolvent, asks economist Alex Tabarrok, what would you do? As Tabarrok says, a typical reaction is to panic. And if you can’t get your money out, your next step would likely be to try and get all of your cash in hand. The rumor could even be false, but if enough people responded as if it were true,...

On this episode of Acton Line, Caroline Roberts speaks with Andrew Kloster, deputy director of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University, about the student debt crisis. Kloster claims that the student debt crisis is the greatest moral hazard of our Nation and explains how he sees the crisis panning out in the future. On the second segment, Acton’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, sits down with Mustafa Akyol, senior research fellow at the...

Reading George Will’s latest article in National Review online Praising the normalcy of the former Vice President Joe Biden, I couldn’t help whispering to myself: What is properly normal about Uncle Joe? I am totally aware of his record as a moderate liberal in the Senate. He was against busing children to distant schools and supported a law-and-order policy to fight crime. However, I am also aware of his claim that a Mitt Romney victory in 2012 would have meant...

For months, French President Emmanuel Macron has asked European leaders to crack down on fake news. At last, someone has taken his advice. Last month, Vladimir Putin signed a law banning Russian websites from posting “fake news” stories. The government, of course, will be the arbiter of truth and falsehood. Coincidentally, the same day he signed a bill punishing websites that post stories insulting Vladimir Putin. The Moscow Times reported: The legislation will establish punishments for spreading information that “exhibits...

When e across a think piece so catastrophically wrong as David Bentley Hart’s April 27 New York Times column, “Can We Please Relax About ‘Socialism’?” you marvel at the effort, intentional or not. Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian and, as the Times puts it a “cultural critic,” says he knows that, “in this country we employ terms like ‘socialism’ with wanton indifference to historical details and conceptual distinctions.” He’s right, but not in the way he thinks he’s right. After...

Speaking at a recent a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) event, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said there there is a need for “banning right-to-work laws.” It’s unclear how Harris plans to do this from the federal level, as Right to Work laws are state laws that guarantee a person cannot pelled to join or pay dues to a labor union as a condition of employment. “Kamala Harris wants to make absolutely sure that we know she’s an authoritarian,” says...