Screenshot of Google Earth Satellite image of Chaeha Market in Sinuiju. Screenshot taken 11/23/2016. “If North Korea shuts downs markets, it will collapse too,” defector Cha Ri-hyuk explains. Satellite images and testimonies from those who have fled the oppressive regime of Kim Jong-un are demonstrating the power of markets. A new report from Hyung-Jin Kim looks at this phenomenon in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. These markets, jangamadangs, are primarily supplied with goods smuggled from China or South...

While it may not seem like it when you’re at the supermarket checkout, Americans benefit tremendously from relatively low food prices. Consider the typical Thanksgiving feast. According to an informal price survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving meal for ten people is $49.87—less than $5 per person. The AFBF survey shopping list includes turkey, bread stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped...

How are we to be in the world but not of it? How are Christians to live and engage, create and exchange, cultivate and steward our gifts and relationships and resources here on earth? Beyond getting a “free ticket to heaven,” what is our salvation actually for? These questions are at the center of Acton’s film series, For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, whichbeginswith a critique of mon approaches to Christian cultural engagement: fortification (“hide! hunker...

Fidel Castro, the former dictator of Cuba, died this past weekend at the age of 90. Here are five facts you should know about the long-ruling Marxist despot. 1. Castro was baptized a Catholic at the age of 8 and attended several Jesuit-run boarding schools. After graduation in the mid-1940s Castrobegan studying law at the Havana University, where he became politically active in socialist and nationalist causes, in particular opposition to U.S. involvement in the Caribbean. By the end of...

Note: This is the eleventhpost in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Who bears the burden of a tax, the buyer or the seller? Or what about the health insurance mandate in Obamacare—does the employer or the worker pay the tax? In this video, Marginal Revolution University examines these questions and explains why the more elastic side of the market tends to pay a smaller share of a tax. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow,...

Families across the country are aboutto celebrate Thanksgiving, expressing gratitude for God’s overwhelming grace and abundance. And yet even as we offer thanks to God for his provision — materially, socially, spiritually, or otherwise — how often do we pause and reflect on the freedoms and channels that God uses in the process? Will we remember that the very foods we are sure to enjoy on Thanksgiving Day required a great deal of investment, cultivation, and risk-taking? Will we reflect...

Today is the unofficial first day of the holiday shopping season. Here are five facts you should know about “Black Friday.” 1. The term “Black Friday” was coined by the Philadelphia Police Department’s traffic squad in the 1950s. According to Philadelphia newspaper reporter Joseph P. Barrett, “It was the day that Santa Claus took his chair in the department stores and every kid in the city wanted to see him. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season.”...

In a new article at The Stream, Acton Director of Research Samuel Gregg offersgood reasons why a move toward economic nationalism is not in the best interest of America. He starts with this: Whatever the motivations for such policies, their costs vastly outweigh their benefits. In the first place, protectionism discourages American businesses and workers from focusing on producing those goods and services where they enjoy parative advantage vis-à-vis other nations. Not only does this undermine productivity, efficiency, and petitiveness...

In this week’s Acton Commentary I weigh in with some reflections on the US presidential results: “Naming, Blaming, and Lessons Learned from the 2016 Election.” I focus on much of the reaction on the Democratic side, which has understandably had some soul-searching to do. The gist of my argument is that “the New Left forgot the Old Left and got left out this election cycle.” For further elaborations on this theme, I mend the following: “The Real Forgotten Man Of...

“In our search for economic principles in the Bible, we need to begin with the story of Creation found in the first two chapters of Genesis,” says Hugh Whelchel. “Here we see God’s normative intentions for life. We see life as ‘the way it ought to be.’ Man is free from sin, living out his high calling as God’s vice regent in a creation that is ‘very good.’” Whelchel lists three major economic principles laid out in Creation, the first...