True help for the poor recognizes that they are people, says J. E. Dyer, not income-levels in a “redistribution” equation.

Read more on Redistributing Other People’s Income Is Not the Way to Help the Poor…

“The power of population,” wrote the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798, “is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” In other words, unless population growth is checked by moral restraint (refraining from having babies) or disaster (disease, famine, war) widespread poverty and degradation inevitably result. Or so thought Malthus and many other intellectuals of his era.

Unfortunately, methods of population control range from the unpleasant (disease, famine, war) to the downright horrifying (abstinence).
Read more on Malthus and the Contraceptive Mandate…

Former Acton Research fellow Jay Richards’ new co-authored book, Indivisible, has climbed onto The New York Times Bestseller list, holding onto a top ten spot for a second week. The book was published by FaithWords and, in an interesting cross-publishing arrangement, is also available in an Ignatius press edition with a foreword by Ignatius founder Fr. Joseph Fessio. Jay’s co-author, James Robison, is the co-host of the evangelical daily show LIFE Today.

Read more on Indivisible a New York Times Bestseller…

A 2009 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research says that the number of people in the world living on less than $1 per day fell from 403 million in 1970 to 152 million in 2006.

Read more on Do the Poor Need Capitalism?…

One of the most problematic aspects of the U.S. educational system is the persistence of the achievement gap. White students generally perform better on tests than black students. Rich students generally perform better than poor students. And students of similar socioeconomic background perform differently across classrooms and school systems.

Read more on Faith and Family Can Close the Achievement Gap…

The Washington Post recently reported on what looked like an interesting development in education reform going on in California:

Read more on The School Zone to Serfdom…

In a new analysis in Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg examines “the shifting critiques” of the pontificate of Benedict XVI including the latest appraisal that the world is losing interest in the Catholic Church particularly because of its declining geopolitical “relevance.” But how do some of these critiques understand relevance?

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Benedict XVI and the Irrelevance of ‘Relevance’…

Galatians 2:10 reads, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.” This is the conclusion to the Jerusalem Council, in which Paul and the leaders in Jerusalem are reconciled and unified, and where is decided that Paul and Barnabas “should go to the Gentiles, and they [James, Peter, and John] to the circumcised” (v. 9).

Read more on The Temptations of Poverty…

Last week, in reply to a post by Jacqueline Otto, I wrote an article asking What is a Christian Libertarian? Ms. Otto has written an additional reply entitled, “Four Things Christian Libertarians Believe.”

Read more on Christian Libertarianism Revisited…

In an Acton Commentary last month, Jordan Ballor presented a helpful explanation of the differences between “capitalism” and “corporatism”, a capitalist system that has been corrupted:

Read more on Where Corporatism and Crony Contraceptives Collide…