For decades, researchers have documented large differences in average test scores between minority and white students and between poor and wealthy students. But a new study finds that Americans are more concerned about—and more supportive of proposals to close—wealth-based achievement gaps than Black-White or Hispanic-White gaps.

“The achievement gap’s ubiquity in policy discourse and implications for American society make it important to understand the public’s beliefs about it,” say the study’s authors, Jon Valant and Daniel A. Newark. “Many proposals for closing gaps require action from policymakers, and policymakers’ actions depend on the public’s views. Yet despite the import of public opinion, there have been few attempts to assess and compare what Americans believe about today’s gaps between students of different races, ethnicities, and economic statuses.”
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If you’ve attended Acton University in the past few years you’ve probably had the good fortune to take the required foundational class “Economic Way of Thinking” from Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse.

Morse became a leading economist of the family a few decades ago after discovering an assumption made by Adam Smith: The economy depends on the intact family raising children. Morse brought this common sense observation into direct contact with economic analysis in her seminal work Love and Economics, first published in 2001. Several years later Morse founded the Ruth Institute to help religiously serious students understand why a free society requires socially conservative values.

In the latest edition of National Review, John J. Miller has a profile of Morse that focuses on her social utility of the family:
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The Global Poor Desperately Need a Thing You Can’t Taste or Touch: Property Rights
Michael Matheson Miller, The Stream

Rio’s poor lack a much more important ticket than one to the Olympics. They lack a ticket into the game of capitalism. They lack property rights.

The Left’s War on Grit
Eric Bolling, The Daily Signal

I hate the question, “What’s the secret of your success?” There is no secret to being successful. Ask anybody who is successful and they will say some version of the same thing—perseverance, mental toughness, or my personal favorite: grit.

Here’s What You Can Do To Keep Government From Crushing Religious Charities
Frank Pavone, The Federalist

Despite losing in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Obama administration is still reluctant to stop forcing charities to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. But we can help.

The Millions of Americans Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Barely Mention: The Poor
Binyamin Appelbaum, New York Times

The United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth, also abides the deepest poverty of any developed nation, but you would not know it by listening to Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump, the major parties’ presidential nominees.

Almost a decade has passed since the start of the Great Recession of 2008 and yet many of us are still confused about what caused the financial crisis. We know financial intermediaries like Lehman Brothers played a part, though we’re often unclear on the details.

In this video, economist Tyler Cowen explains the role of the “shadow banking” system and how the incentives led to them to take on too much risk and leverage.

Black Pastors Are Breaking the Law to Get Hillary Clinton Elected
Emma Green, The Atlantic

According to a new survey from Pew Research Center, roughly 9 percent of people who have attended religious services in the last few months have heard clergy speak out in favor of a political candidate, and roughly 11 percent have heard clergy speak in opposition. What’s remarkable, though, is how much this is apparently happening at one particular kind of church: those run by black Protestants.

How Wal-Mart Serves the Poorest Americans
Tom Rogan, Opportunity Lives

Regularly lambasted as an enemy of working people and a destroyer of local communities, Wal-Mart isn’t exactly America’s favorite company. Yet if liberals were truly focused on raising opportunity for low-income Americans, they would shower Wal-Mart with praise.

The Pay Gap Myth and Other Lies That Won’t Die
Thomas Sowell, National Review

Rigorous research demonstrates that pay levels are determined by career decisions, not by the prejudices of employers.

Unpacking the Lies We Believe about Work (and the Biblical Truths to Counter Them)
Art Lindsley, Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics

The culture of a workplace influences the satisfaction of the people who work there. What is culture in this context? The values, attitudes, and actions of people from the top leadership on down. And all of these things are influenced by character.

Note: This is the latest entry in the Acton blog series, “What Christians Should Know About Economics.” For other entries in the series see this post.

What it means: A marginal tax rate is the amount of tax paid on an additional dollar of income.

The Explanation: What is the tax rate you pay on your current income?

For most Americans, the question is surprisingly difficult to answer. The reason we don’t know our tax rate is because we have a progressive system of taxation on income — and most of us don’t fully grasp the concept of marginal tax rates.

Fortunately, the concept is easy to understand once you get past the confusing jargon. So let’s unpack what it means.
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Popeyes CEO Cheryl Bachelder

Questions about what makes a good or a bad leader dominate many conversations as we approach the 2016 presidential election. Real leadership happens all around us, not just in the Oval Office. As we pulled together the various pieces for this Summer 2016 issue of Religion & Liberty, the informal theme of leadership seemed to connect all the content. For the interview, I was able to sit down with the CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Cheryl Bachelder, to discuss her unique approach to leading the casual fried chicken corporation. Rev. Robert Sirico also addresses leadership in his column as he asks the question, Where are the leaders? He reflects on the legacies of Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II, and contemplates the qualities that make for a truly great leader. (more…)