In today’s American Spectator, Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg discusses the ousting of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott and what that means for the Australian economy and beyond. Gregg points out that the Australian economy “is on the brink of substantial economic regression.” What’s especially worrying is the across-the-board decline in Australia’s economic productivity: something long masked by the resources boom but now more visible than ever. The basic problem, however, that lies at the root of what...

Is free market capitalism moral or immoral? If it’s based on greed and selfishness, should it be rejected for an alternative economic system? And if capitalism is moral, what makes it so? Walter Williams, a economist at George Mason University, answers these questions and explains why the free market is morally superior to any other approaches to organizing economic behavior. ...

As we prepare to kick off the fall portion of the 2015 Acton Lecture Series tomorrow (featuring Don Devine speaking about how America can find its way back to a harmony between freedom and tradition), we take a look back at thefinal lecture of the spring series, which was delivered on May 21 by Jonathan Witt, who aside from being aformer English professor, a Research and Media Fellow at the Acton Institute, and Managing Editor of The Stream, is also...

Anyone not touched by Pope Francis’ appearance on ABC television earlier this month may want to have their pulse checked for signs of a heart. Quite frankly, he knocked it out of the park in this writer’s humble opinion. Whether speaking to the plight of immigrant children, obviously enjoying a young girl’s vocal rendition of a hymn, or offering encouragement to a single mother of two, Francis was in his element. As I marveled at the Pope on primetime, national...

After getting home from work you get a statement in the mail from the local government saying you owe $20,000 for college tuition. You’re surprised to receive the billsince (a) you never went to college yourself and (b) your own children are still in preschool. Upon reading the fine print you discover the expected payment is not to cover any costs you’ve incurred but to pay for the tuition of college students in your neighborhood. Outraged, you turn to your...

Why aren’t church leaders who are so quick to condemn capitalism, asks Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky in this week’s Acton Commentary, decrying Big Government bureaucracy? The warnings of recent papal teachings on questions of social justice rarely – if ever – identify the dangers of a highly bureaucratized central government. Apparently most of the sinful and corrosive “love for es from private sector capitalists, not government public sector agencies. Certainly corporate capitalistic greed can and does have serious economic consequences....

Israel M. Kirzner While reading economist (and rabbi) Israel M. Kirzner’s Competition & Entrepreneurship (1973), it occurred to me that his description of what the “pure entrepreneur” does could also be applied to what a good interdisciplinary scholar, such as someone who studies faith and economics, does (or at least aspires to do). In our world of imperfect knowledge, Kirzner writes, there are likely to exist, at any given time, a multitude of opportunities that have not yet been taken...

Recently a number of religious groups—including some connected to the World Council of Churches and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—have urged the U.S. government to resettle 100,000 Syrian refugees ing fiscal year, in addition to increasing the total U.S. mitment to 100,000 refugees from other parts of the world. Although President Obama has not agreed to increase the amount nearly that much, last week he ordered his administration to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted to the United...

What isthe main source of violent conflict in the world? If you judged solely by media reports you might assume that religion would be at the top of the list. Today, for example, there is news that Islamic State—a terrorist group that wants to create an Islamic caliphate—set off two car bombs in Syria. But as Johannes Vüllers, Alexander De Juan and Jan H. Pierskalla explain, parison of religious with other forms of violence shows that the religious violenceis not...

Constitution Day is celebrated in America every year on September 17, the anniversary of the day the framers signed the document. Here are five facts you should know about the U.S. Constitution. 1. The Constitution contains 4,543 words, including the signatures and has four sheets, 28-3/4 inches by 23-5/8 inches each. It contains 7,591 words including the 27 amendments. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world. 2. Thomas Jefferson did not sign...