How much is a homemaker worth? Financial pany Investopedia recently added up what it would cost to hire someone to do cooking, cleaning, child care, driving, laundry, and lawn service equivalent to a full-time homemaker. The pensation would total $96,261. Studies like this one are perennial, as Greg Forster notes, and have been around since at least the 1950s. But whilethe intentions are well-meaning, such studieshave a tendency to reinforce materialistic assumptions about the nature of human relationships in both...

What are the best ways to help the poor in developing countries? Answering that question is not as straightforward as you might assume, says development economist Bruce Wydick in Christianity Today. As Wydick notes, most relief and development organizations carry out self-assessments and measure impact based on self-studies, methods that are neither unbiased nor empirically rigorous. So to get a better answer to the question Wydick polled ten other top development economists. He asked them to rate, from 0 to...

Beroud, Louis (1852–1930) Central Dome of the World Fair in Paris 1889The newest edition of the Journal of Markets & Morality is now available online to subscribers. This issue of the journal (14.2) is actually a theme issue on Modern Christian Social Thought. Accordingly, all ten articles engage the history and substance of various approaches to Modern Christian Social Thought, with special emphasis on the Reformed and Roman Catholic traditions. There is also another installment of our Controversy section, featuring...

From websites promoting help with Monday morning atheism, to an ever present ‘TGIF,’ a place of honor toward work seems to do nothing but diminish within our culture. The mere suggestion that work is not a curse of the fall is unfortunately quite foreign in many circles. Joseph Sunde at Remnant Culture has written a blog based on his reading of Booker T. Washington’s biography entitled Up From Slavery in which he highlights the high ethic and dignity Washington placed...

On Thursday, March 1 at 7pm, Acton Institute president Rev. Robert Siricowill speak about the implications of the recent mandate for religious organizations handed down by the Health and Human Services Department of the federalgovernmentunder the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Rev. Sirico will explain the mandate and the February 2012 revision of that mandate, as well as the Constitutional protections for religion and conscience in the United States. The implications for Catholic hospitals, Christian schools, and all faith-based organizations...

Rev. Sirico on why we shouldn’t have a bleak outlook on the future: Many people I know are rather despairing about our future. This is contributing to a real and growing pessimism throughout society. I can understand all of these feelings but there is a potential mistake here. I’ve begun to think that those who are too attached to the day’s headline news develop a bias toward thinking that the world is on a permanent downhill slide. The mistake is...

What does Lent, which starts today, have to do with markets and morals (and Cuba)? Sociologist Margarita Mooney explains: Free markets are good because they are free. Free markets allow people to live by morals that lead people to almsgiving, passion, and to sometimes being willing to not consume something. munist economy leaves no room for freedom in production and consumption, and that lack of economic freedom is enforced by restricting political and religious freedom. There is nothing morally good...

I have been highlighting James Madison’s words on religious conscience on the PowerBlog over the past several weeks. The HHS Mandate is not simply an issue that can be promised, or willed away. Rick Warren’s statement, “I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a government mandate that violates what mands us to do” is tied to Madison’s thoughts below. Madison has an understanding here that a citizen must be faithful to his religious conscience above and beyond any...

(HT: Catholic Culture) Note: One in six patients receives care in a Catholic hospital in the United States. February 26, 2012 What are you going to give up this Lent? By Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. The Lenten rules about fasting from food and abstaining from meat have been considerably reduced in the last forty years, but reminders of them remain in the fast days on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and in the abstinence from meat on all the Fridays...

Today marks the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church. Not simply a fast, it is a time for that true asceticism which, according to Fr. Georges Florovsky, “is inspired not by contempt, but by the urge of transformation.” There is something of this true asceticism, even if imperfect and plete, at the basis of all human society. One must, even to only a small extent, renounce self-will to be a member of a family, a clan, or a...