Fueled by a mix of misguided cultural pressures and misaligned government incentives, much of our educational system has e geared toward “college readiness,” promoting a narrow, one-size-fits-all vision for vocational and educational destiny. As a result, we continue to see a widening skills gap in the economy at large, as well as a shrinking cultural imagination for what constitutes a “good job” or a “meaningful career.” Despite these growing problems, politicians seemincreasingly set on cementing the status quo, whether by...

When es to government programs for redistributing e, nothing is quite as malevolently effective as state lotteries. Every year state lotteries redistribute the e of mostly poor Americans (who spend between 4-9 percent of their e on lottery tickets) to a handful of other citizens—and tothe state’s coffers. A prime example is thePowerball jackpot. The third largest jackpot in U.S. history—now an estimated $750 million—will be available tomorrow. But even if someone wins this time around, millions of Americans will...

Can avoiding a handful of socially harmful activities virtually guarantee someone will not live in poverty? Social scientists in the United States said they have found the secret, and a new report from Canada has found it also applies across the northern border. The “success sequence” began with Isabel V. Sawhill and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, whofoundthat meeting a fewcriteriagreatly reduced the likelihood of a family living in poverty: finish high school, work full time, wait until age...

Today’s parents are fixated on setting their children on strategic paths to “success”— cramming their days with lessons, sports, clubs, camps, and so on. The goal: to enrich their kids’ lives with new knowledge and experiences. Or, monly, “to keep them busy.” We do the same for ourselves, of course, stocking our calendars with tasks and activities and our free time with the excessive consumption of media and entertainment. It’s a dangerous rhythm that keeps us swaying between anxious, in-the-moment...

Recently Adam Silver, missioner of the National Basketball Association, spoke about unhappiness among many NBA players, When I meet with them, what surprises me is that they’re truly unhappy. A lot of these men are generally unhappy. With a salary minimum of $838,464 (about 26 times the $31,561.49 medium pensation of all American workers) it is safe to say the unhappiness is not rooted in material frustrations but spiritual. Silver attributes this unhappiness to social media fueled anxiety, We are...

March 25 is the feast of the Annunciation, exactly nine months before Christmas Day, and marks the moment that Jesus Christ was conceived “of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became Man.” The primary importance of this event – which is recorded in St. Luke 1:24-28 – is the salvation of the world, but it also reveals how God sanctifies the world through our work. The Archangel Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she has been...

Twenty-two years ago the Detroit Red Wings played the Colorado Avalanche in their final regular season matchup. The Avalanche had defeated the Red Wings in the previous season’s conference finals on their way to a Stanley Cup Championship, and the series included a dirty hit on Wings center Kris Draper, which ended his season. As Draper would later put it, “I didn’t know my face was caved in, but I knew it wasn’t good.” Justice was to be enacted in...

On this episode of Acton Line, Acton’s director munications, John Couretas, speaks with Tim Carney, who an editor at the Wahsington Examiner and a visiting fellow at AEI. They talk about Tim’s new book, “Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse.” The “American Dream” is fading away in much of the country, and the problem isn’t pure economics, nor is it a case of stubborn old white men falling behind because they refuse embrace progress. Tim argues that...

Two and a half years after the left created the farce – spread across the country by the established media and by resentful politicians such as the late Senator John McCain – that President Donald J. Trump had colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russian government, the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller and a team full of Democratic Party’s supporters concluded that the president is innocent. Since 2015, President Trump has been describing the established media and its reporters as...

Note: This is post #116 in a weekly video series on basic economics. The Austrian school of economic thought emphasizes market price signals and how municate decentralized information in an economy, says economist Tyler Cowen. The Austrian business cycle theory focuses on how central banks can distort those price signals. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Cowen notes that while Austrians can helpfully explain some features of booms and busts, it remains to be seen whether it can be...