Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries from Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Americans Giving at Record Numbers

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Charitable giving in America has risen for the third consecutive year. The picture behind this recent report is rather interesting. Due to the absence of natural disasters, both nationally and internationally, large giving to major relief projects declined. Giving to human services also fell. The giving of corporate America rose only 1.5%. But in a shift from previous years giving to the arts and to cultural and humanities organizations grew rather significantly. The lion’s share of giving is still done by individuals, not by foundations, bequests and corporations. In fact, individual giving was about four times the amount given by all of these other sources combined, demonstrating once again that when individuals have the freedom to gain wealth they are enabled to share. But, as always, the largest percentage of giving was not among the rich. (This comment is not one meant to oppose affluence since there are several reasons why this remains true, and not all of these reasons suggest that the rich are universally uncharitable in the least. There is not a simple pattern here to explain this fact.)

(Continue reading the rest of the article at the John H. Armstrong blog...)

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Effective Compassion at 12:12 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
charity, giving, philanthropy

The Cause and Cure of Poverty

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

What causes poverty? The question presently plagues many serious Christian thinkers and leaders. The answers vary but the proposed solutions are the stuff of our political campaigns every four years. We can already hear the discussion from the various candidates for the presidency in 2008, both Republican and Democrat. One candidate, John Edwards, actually wants to make poverty a major issue in the next election, maybe as important as the Iraq War. He openly presents his version of a solution and thus makes it a major part of his stump speech these days.

Many Christians, who think about these kinds of questions, will argue that poverty can not be solved in a free-market context. They believe the problem is economic since capitalism is fundamentally rooted in greed. The idea here is quite simple. The rich have all the wealth, they are the ones who create the products, make the money and drive the markets. The poor suffer all the more when this happens. Because capitalism has this perceived inherent flaw it will always, or at least ultimately, foster huge inequities in income and create greater poverty. These inequities will actually increase grinding poverty for millions of people, making things even worse for more poor people as the wealthy class grows. Since the percentage of monetary growth in the present economy shows the rich are getting richer and the poor and middleclass are gaining ground by a much smaller percentage this seems to favor these kinds of arguments against capitalism. (I will not get into this issue in this article, but there are different answers to this question that are both appropriate and sound.)

In 1981 author and political advisor, George Gilder, wrote a huge best-seller, Wealth & Poverty. This popular book influenced a new generation. It did so by challenging the “greed thesis” at its core. I have always admired George Gilder. I realized back in the 1980s that it was his thinking that powerfully influenced the Reagan administration to adopt what became known as Reaganomics, a much maligned and oft-debated theory of wealth, poverty and economics.

(Continue reading the rest of the article at the ACT 3 website...)

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Effective Compassion at 11:03 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
capitalism, George Gilder, greed, poverty

The Least Advantaged and Closed Society

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Here’s more from David Schmidtz’s Elements of Justice, in which he is engaging Rawls’ thought experiment on original position that presumes a closed society as the basis for his social thought. In a closed society we only enter by birth and leave by dying. Schmidtz observes that

as a matter of historical record the least advantaged have always been better off in open societies, societies where people are free to move in search of better opportunities. if we are theorizing about what kind of society is best for the least advantaged - if that is the desired conclusion - then is anything more fundamental than the freedom of movement? Indeed, why not deem freedom of movement the core of the first principle: Everyone has a right to live in a maximally open society, a society where they have no obligation to stay if they would rather be elsewhere? (222)

My guess is that Rawls is concerned with describing a grand (perhaps utopian) global vision for human society, which ultimately is closed and in which migration wouldn’t be of consequence. But Schmidtz is right to point out that practically that vision is not within our grasp, and is of little use when comparing the various actual different human societies.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 09:22 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
immigration, migration, rights, society