Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Effective Compassion

February 14, 2014

The (Silent) War On Men

According to a recent study in the journal Crime & Delinquency nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23. Continue Reading...
February 05, 2014

The Boring Work Of Development

Helping people get out of poverty is hard, dirty work. It isn’t glamorous. Most of those involved do not get to wander around the developing world wearing cool blue shades and giving sound bites. Continue Reading...
February 04, 2014

From Aid to Enterprise

Can the current model of humanitarian aid generated by networks of large philanthropic foundations, NGOs, and Western governments actually alleviate global poverty? The latest Liberty Law Talk podcast asks Acton’s Michael Miller, director of the new Poverty Cure Initiative, to address that question and to explain what conditions can lead to prosperity: As Miller discusses, the prevalent humanitarian aid model frequently uproots the very beginnings of the circles of exchange that must exist for wealth to be created in these societies. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2014

Poverty, Development, and the Idealist

In the latest EconTalk podcast, Nina Munk, journalist and author of The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, talks about how she spent six years following Jeffrey Sachs and the evolution of the Millennium Villages Project — an attempt to jumpstart a set of African villages in hopes of discovering a new template for development. Continue Reading...
January 17, 2014

How to Prove That Everyone Knows Raising Minimum Wages Increases Unemployment

Yesterday I mentioned that translating economic principles into intuitive concepts is one of the most urgent and necessary tasks to prevent such evils as harm to the poor. Today, William Poole provides an excellent example of what is needed with his “common-sense thought experiment” on minimum wage increases: Suppose Congress were to enact a minimum wage $50 higher than the current one of $7.25 per hour. Continue Reading...