Had U.S. baby formula producers not been protected from petition, there would have been many more options available to parents when one lab became contaminated. And a 70-year-old wartime act would have remained a trivia question. Read More… The world is an economics classroom if we allow ourselves to learn from it. Every day we’re bombarded with puzzles that the economic way of thinking can help solve. One of the more recent examples of this is the infant-formula shortagethat plagued...

Whatever the reasons behind “The Great Resignation,” Gen Z must keep in mind that we were designed to work, to produce, to create. Read More… Is there any value to work in today’s world? This is a question that many in Generation Z find themselves asking. I started working at a very young age. By 12 years old, I already had two part-time jobs plus a side business of my own. At age 11, I started mowing lawns and doing...

When money intended to address immediate international crises e decades’-long dependency projects, it is time to reconsider how taxpayers’ money is spent and on whom. Read More… When we speak of good intentions, foreign es immediately to mind. It e as no surprise to Acton readers that sound economics are not always attached to those intentions. In the U.S., billions of dollars are earmarked annually for foreign aid, and the results are less than satisfactory. Can foreign aid as we...

Of the two Conservative Party candidates poised to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, neither seems particularly, or at least consistently, conservative. Read More… We’re down to the final two candidates: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The next prime minister of the United Kingdom with be either our third female premier (all Conservative) or the nation’s first ethnic Indian (and Hindu) leader. Unlike the U.S. president, the British prime minister is not directly elected. The PM is whoever mand a...

While religious freedom is the ultimate goal in Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries, singling out blasphemy laws as the problem will only impede the spread of democracy and usher in an unintended violent backlash. Read More… Blasphemy laws pose a real challenge to religious liberty and democracy in several Muslim-majority countries, with 32 nations criminalizing blasphemy; in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia, it is punishable by death. In Pakistan alone, according to the National Commission for Justice...

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently admitted to having significant doubts about capitalism, owing to growing wealth inequality. But is greater government intervention the answer, or the problem? Read More… In recent weeks, the New York Times has been running opinion pieces in which various columnists expound on a topic about which they have changed their views. On July 21 it was David Brooks’ turn to lay out his mea culpa. The subject turned out to be capitalism, or...

Oscar and Emmy Award–winning writer-director Barry Levinson has adapted the true-life story of Holocaust survivor and professional boxer Harry Haft for HBO. Is this a fitting summation of a long, topsy-turvy career? Read More… Barry Levinson is 80. The Oscar-winning writer-director has played a part in several of the best movies and TV shows of the past half century—and a few of the worst. That pattern of mixing abominable stinkers with memorable successes has continued into the past decade. In...

The transgressive stand-up is back with another Netflix special, this time lecturing high school kids on the power of family and education. But is it funny? Read More… The edian America has produced in the post–Cold War era is Dave Chappelle, and if you listen to his new Netflix show, What’s in a Name: Speech at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, he’ll tell you that himself. I suppose it’s not bragging if it’s true, but it’s unusual for celebrities...

While many were shocked by the recent SCOTUS ruling that overturned a right to abortion, it should e as no surprise that if you live by the court, you can die by the court. Yet the debate over abortion peting rights has only just begun. Read More… Weeks after the Supreme Court’s landmark 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion, the...

She’s not the first Republican to want to do away with the DoE, and with good reason. But as with all deeply entrenched bureaucracies, it may no longer be possible. Read More… Betsy DeVos thinks the Department of Education “should not exist.” She’s not the first secretary of education we’ve had who understood her central purpose to be the dissolution of the agency of which she was in charge (until she resigned on January 7, 2021). Ronald Reagan famously pledged...