After relating how city regulations in Chattanooga, Tenn., helped kill a small business, economist Mark J. Perry offers a sympathetic sentiment for failed entrepreneurs: To paraphrase President Obama: Look, if you’ve been unsuccessful, you didn’t get there on your own. If you were unsuccessful at opening or operating a small business, some government official along the line probably contributed to your failure. There was an overzealous civil servant somewhere who might have stood in your way with unreasonable regulations that...

Marvin Olasky, a Senior Fellow in Acton’s Research Department, has an article in World Magazine regarding evangelism and effective economic development in Ghana. There is an effort to teach strategic economic skills to budding entrepreneurs incorporating a wholistic bining not only economic lessons, but spiritual ones as well. The clubs teach about showing love to neighbors in concrete ways. For instance, young Esther Wood received business start-up money that allowed her to buy a small bowl and fill it with...

As the Presidential debates draw near, there is one question that tops my wish list of questions that should (but won’t be) asked of the candidates: What e range constitutes “middle class”? This undefined group of citizens seems to be a favorite of politicians on both ends of the political spectrum. Reagan and Bush cut their taxes. Clinton too. And Obama promised not to raise their taxes. But who are these people? Ask the janitor sweeping pany’s floors and he’ll...

A recent national Pew Research Center survey has found conflicting opinions regarding many Americans’ view of the rich: As Republicans gather for their national convention in Tampa to nominate a presidential candidate known, in part, as a wealthy businessman, a new nationwide Pew Research Center survey finds that many Americans believe the rich are different than other people. They are viewed as more intelligent and more hardworking but also greedier and less honest. Nearly six-in-ten survey respondents (58%) also say...

In his debut column at Forbes, Fr. Robert Sirico discusses how the collapse of European economies has exposed the false hope of the welfare state: [T]he great lie at the heart of the passing welfare state, with its empty promises of eternal security and freedom from want. The welfare state and its advocates would have us believe that they have a political solution for a world where scarcity and human brokenness still hold sway. This false hope is what Pope...

In his magnificent reflection on the nature of art, Real Presences, polymath George Steiner invites us to make a thought experiment: What if we lived in a city where all talk about art, mere talk about art, was prohibited? In other words, what would follow if we did away with artistic criticism qua criticism, an activity derivative by nature and one Steiner calls “high gossip”? In this posited city, what Steiner calls the Answerable City, the only permitted response to...

Order matters. So much in life builds on what e before and prepares us for those things that are in our future. So it is no accident that es before Monday. Since the Early Church, Sunday has been both the first day of the week and the day of rest and worship for Christians around the world. But have we stopped to ask why God gave us Sunday before Monday? What is supposed to happen on that first day of...

The subtitle of Lester DeKoster’s little classic, Work: The Meaning of Your Life–A Christian Perspective, can be a bit off-putting. Is work really the meaning of your life? On the one hand, when we understand DeKoster’s definition of work, we might be a bit more amenable to the suggestion. DeKoster says that work is essentially our “service of others.” This means that “work” as such is not strictly defined as waged labor outside the home, for instance. But there is...

What economic issues do America’s two main political parties agree on? The short answer: not much. But the New York Time‘s Annie Lowrey identifies eight areas of overlap: 1. Tax simplification 2. Regulatory simplification 3. Fannie and Freddie 4. Avoiding the fiscal cliff 5. Son of Debt Ceiling 6. Drill, baby, drill 7. Start-ups 8. Iran sanctions What is interesting about the list is that except for the items that are overly obvious (e.g., #4 could be restated as “Avoid...

At the Mackinac Center blog, I look at a really shabby piece of reportage in GQ Magazine on ArtPrize, the annual public petition in Grand Rapids, Mich. Grand Rapids is also where the Acton Institute is based and it’s a terrific Midwestern city doing a lot of things right. But when East Coast writer Matthew Power visited GR he saw only “flyover country,” a “provincial” mindset, “G.R.-usalem” (lots of churches) and “ordinary” local inhabitants. You know where this is going....