On the episode of Acton Line, Andrew Klavan, award winning novelist, screenwriter, and regular host at the Daily Wire, joins the show to talk about the new Netflix documentary, “Knock Down the House.” The new political documentary follows four far left-leaning women during their run for congress in 2018, eventually leading up to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional win. Klavan explains the ideas under girding the movie and why he defines it as propaganda. After that, Acton’s co-founder and president, Rev. Robert...

I find some of the work of behavioral economists, especially that of Daniel Kahneman to be very interesting and important. Thinking Fast and Slow is essential reading. His distinctions between what he calls Type I and Type II thinking is very insightful, and the broad critique that human beings don’t always act like rational maximizers is a correct. Jennifer Roback Morse deals with this issue well in her excellent book, Love and Economics. Yet despite many good elements of behavioral...

Of all the ponents of a market economy, I don’t think that any are as misunderstood — or reviled — as capital markets. They have never been held in high esteem, and the financial crisis of 2008 did enormous damage to their already low reputation. Yes, there has been, is, and will be considerable bad behavior in financial markets. That also happens to be true of all sectors of the economy. I also know that without capital markets, all of...

Note:This article is part of the ‘Principles Project,’ a list of principles, axioms, and beliefs that undergirda Christian view of economics, liberty, and virtue. Clickhereto read the introduction and other posts in this series. The Principle: #5F — Because protecting parental authority is an issue of social justice, society should promote policies that allow families the highest degree of freedom in making choices about the education of their children. The Explanation:Social justice is a term and concept frequently associated with...

“Moral Consensus is a great goal for the moral fabric of a nation, except for one slight problem,” says Kyle Ferguson, “moral consensus tends to shift over time.” How then do Christians shift the moral consensus back in our direction? Fersuson argues that the answer lies in the gospel: Debate is a start but it will be ineffective to bring about moral change. Politics will certainly fail as has been demonstrated time and time again over the last century. The...

Note: This is post #122 in a weekly video series on basic economics. If you think through all of the variables that shape a country’s economy, it’s no wonder that monetary policy is difficult, says economist Alex Tabarrok. It should e as no surprise that the Federal Reserve doesn’t always get it right. In fact, sometimes the Fed’s actions have made the economy worse off. Prior to the Great Recession, and in response to the recession of 2001, the Fed...

mon claim made by those who focus on economic inequality is that if business people have acquired massive wealth they must have done so at the expense of others. The solution, they claim, would be a tax on wealth that allows could be redistributed to the working poor. A key problem with this line of thinking is that the business rich aren’t as rich as we may assume. The reality, as economist Timothy Terrell explains, is that most business wealth...

My colleague Dan Hugger’s latest post on the PowerBlog titled “The dangers of Catholic anti-liberalism” got me thinking about a subject that has always intrigued me: The relationship between the Catholic Church and liberalism. In my view, there are at least two problems in the argument presented by Hugger in his article and the discussion developed by Korey D. Maas on anti-Catholicism—fully adopted by Hugger. In the first place, there is no precise definition of the nature of liberalism, and...

This morning three events took place that deserve the attention of those who support a free and virtuous society: Persecuted Christian Asia Bibi has received asylum in Canada, the royal baby’s name has been revealed, and it is the birthday of one of the greatest economic theorists of our time. 1. Asia Bibi arrives safely in Canada Asia Bibi, the Pakistani convert to Christianity who spent years on death row for “blasphemy,” has arrived safely in Canada to be with...

The membership of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches will fall by half in Germany by 2060, experts forecast. Most of that will be due less to Germans’ low birth rate than to Christians actively renouncing their religion. The number of Catholics and Lutherans will drop from 45 million today to 22.7 million in a generation, according to a new missioned by the Catholic German Bishops Conference and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). The writing has been on the...