Since the era of Adam Smith economists have been asking, “What creates wealth?” One key answer is specialization and trade. On a timeline of human history, the recent rise in standards of living resembles a hockey stick — flatlining for all of human history and then skyrocketing in just the last few centuries. As economist Don Boudreaux explains, without specialization and trade, our ancient ancestors only consumed what they could make themselves. How can specialization and trade help explain the...

It’s mon misconception in public discourse that the global poor are trapped in poverty because of globalization. We frequently hear things from our public leaders about how markets are crushing the poor. “The reality is that the poor aren’t dominated by markets. They are excluded from them.” says Michael Matheson Miller in an article for The Stream. Miller hits on four different problems and misconceptions of how international economic development is currently addressed. He starts out by explaining how the...

Ask most Americans what they know about Jonathan Edwards and they are most likely to mention reading “”Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in high school. Being known for preaching the most famous sermon in U.S. history is no small plishment. But Edwards was one of our country’s foremost intellectuals and (arguably) our greatest Protestant theologian. He was also, as Greg Forster notes in an article for TGC, a champion of economic justice. As Forster says, Edwards believed...

The American Enterprise Institute and the Los Angeles Times have joined together to release a new survey of attitudes toward the poor, poverty, and welfare in the United States. Here are seven figures from the report you should know about: 1. The poor are more than twice as likely as those not in poverty (24 percent to 10 percent) to say the church has the greatest responsibility for helping the poor. The poor are also slightly less likely (31 percent...

The PowerBlog es Lisa Slayton with her review of A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World by Katelyn Beaty. Slayton joined Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation in 2005 to develop a leadership offering, the Leaders Collaborative, that integrated a biblical worldview with vocational discipleship and organizational effectiveness for the flourishing of our city. She became the President/CEO in 2012 and is passionate about moving faith/work/vocation from theory to praxis. Imago Dei—male and...

Earlier this month the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it is planning to lift its ban on federal funding of some research that creates chimeras by injecting human stem cells into animal embryos. The policy changeraises significant ethical concerns, both aboutthe prudence of creating animal-human hybrids and legitimacy of using taxpayerfunding for such controversial research. Unfortunately, while many people are unfamiliar with the research, it is not a new development.Chinese scientistsbegan in 2003 by fusing human cells with rabbit...

Today, we celebrate the 96th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ratified on August 18, 1920). Here are five facts you should know about women’s suffrage and the 19th Amendment: 1. The 19th Amendment doesn’t directly mention women. The text states: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article...

Writing two decades ago, Gertrude Himmelfarb observed: In Britain, as in America, more and more conservatives are returning to an older Burkean tradition, which appreciates the material advantages of a free-market economy (Edmund Burke himself was a disciple of Adam Smith), but also recognizes that such an economy does not automatically produce the moral social goods that they value—that it may even subvert those goods. –Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York: Alfred...

After a recent trip to Argentina, Samuel Gregg reflects on its current economic state in a piece for The Catholic World Report. Gregg highlights the role that current Argentine politics play on economic policy and how Pope Francis affects the Catholic Church in his home country. For the first time in 13 years, Argentina has elected a non-Perónist leader. Mauricio Macri replaced Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina in November 2015. The Kirchners represented a wave of Latin American leftist-populists...

Intheaters this week is a new film about an FBI agent who goes undercover to find and stop white supremacists. While the movie looks like a standard thriller the title is unusual: Imperium. Imperium isn’t a word we hear very often today. es from the Latin for mand” or “empire” and referred to the supreme executive power in the Roman state, involving both military and judicial authority. The word would later be adopted for the term imperator (emperor), a title...