If you suffer from acid reflux, your doctor may prescribe Nexium. But at $9 a pill, the price is enough to give you a worse case of heartburn. That’s the lowest price in the U.S. If you live in Canada, though, you can get the drug for less than a $1 a pill. This price disparity leads many politicians to think the solution is obvious: Americans should just buy drugs from Canada or other countries where they are cheaper. Its...

At the Catholic Herald, Samuel Gregg, research director for the Acton Institute, reviews Oliver Roy’s new book, Is Europe Christian? Is Europe Christian? A professor at Florence’s European University Institute, Roy seeks to outline what is happening in Europe vis-à-vis religion and what this means for Europe’s self-understanding. The first thing to note is that Roy does not have an agenda. His book is not concerned with bolstering or damaging any particular cause, whether it is liberal religion, Catholicism, Islam...

This is the second in a series of essays on Peter Drucker’s early works. In The End of Economic Man, Peter Drucker was impressed (not pleased, but impressed) with the ability of fascists munists to gain the support of millions of people by offering an alternative to economic status within a society. In both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, a person might not have status within their profession, but he or she could have great status and possibly some real...

With some Americans wondering whether the United States is headed for a recession, it’s worth looking across the Atlantic to see what is happening to the economies of Western Europe. Alas, there are many indicators that much of the old continent is headed, yet again, for a significant economic slide. The economy to watch is Europe’s largest. Germany’s unemployment rate ticked up in July, and industrial production and factory orders declined in June. That is bad news for an export-orientated...

It’s not unusual to hear modern-day America (and more broadly, the modern pared with the late stages of the Roman Republic, which crumbled and gave way to totalitarian rule by caesars. But is parison valid? On August 8, the Acton Institute ed Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, to talk about that topic as part of the 2019 Acton Lecture Series. We’re pleased to share the video of the event with you below. ...

About a third of Americans today believe socialism is a form of “social kindness” by the government. But true socialism isn’t the social safety net, but rather when the government controls most prices, businesses, property, and other aspects of economic life. As this video by PolicyEd explains, the historical record of socialism has been a wreckage of stagnating economies and human rights violations. The truth of a hundred years of hard experience is that people do not prosper in socialist...

Is President Trump finally beginning to understand how tariffs harm Americans? On Tuesday Trump said he was backing off his September 1 deadline for 10% tariffs on some Chinese imports. “We’re doing this for Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers,” Trump told reporters. “Just in case they might have an impact on people, what we’ve done is we’ve delayed it so that they won’t be relevant to the Christmas shopping...

Luc Plamondon’s Le Temps des cathédrales, the opening number of the 1998 musical Notre-Dame de Paris, ends on a somber note somewhat at odds with the rest of the song: But it is doomed, the age of the cathedrals. The horde of barbarians Is at the city gates. Let them enter, these pagans and these vandals. The end of this world Is foretold for the year two thousand Is foretold for the year two thousand. I won’t pretend to know...

If you live or work in a city you likely pass them on the streets and sidewalks every day. Holding a sign reading “Homeless, please help” or an old coffee cup to collect spare change, the itinerant panhandlers and chronic homeless look you in the eye and ask for your money. What do you do in such situations? What should you do? Jim Antle recounts some of the experiences he’s had with panhandlers and explains why he gives them money:...

Representative Joaquin Castro, D-TX, opened a controversy this week when he tweeted a list of Republican donors who live in his El Paso congressional district. Politics aside, its most important es in revealing one of the greatest spiritualcrises currently gripping the West: political idolatry. On Monday, Rep. Castro tweeted: Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump — the owner of ⁦@BillMillerBarBQ⁩, owner of the ⁦@HistoricPearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc⁩. Their contributions are fueling...