What do markets have to do with monasticism? Quite a lot to the Benedictine monks of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Southern California, according to a recent press release. Their prior Fr. Joseph Brennan describes MonksInk, the monks’ business selling ink and toner cartridges:

Read more on MonksInk: Business as Hospitality to Christ…

One of the most basic concepts in economics and business is marginal or incremental cost, the additional cost needed to produce or purchase one more unit of a good or service. For example, if a business can produce 100 widgets at a total cost of $5,000 and 101 widgets for $5,500, the marginal cost of the 151st unit is $500. At that rate, the company has a disincentive to produce more than 100 widgets since the cost rises sharply (an average additional cost of $4.45 per widget).

The same principle applies to the cost of labor. Imagine a worker who makes $16 an hour for 29 hours per week but whose incremental cost for the 30th hour of work each week rises to $112.15. For the 29 hours of labor, the cost is $464 while for 30 the cost is $576.15. That sharp increase would prevent many employers from hiring workers for more than 29 hours per week.

According to Jed Graham at Investor’s Business Daily, that is exactly what effect Obamacare will have on wages.
Read more on The 30-Hours-Per-Week Job Hurdle…

Kishore Jayabalan, Rome director of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, clarified remarks made by Pope Francis at a May 16 reception of new Vatican ambassadors. The pope, calling for an examination of the world’s relationship with money, said we are facing “dire consequences” due to the power we give money.

Jayabalan had this to say:

If we look at money as wealth itself, we can very easily place it above everything else. But if we look at money as a representation of wealth, as a measure by which we can judge whether we are using our resources well, it need not be an idol, but a useful instrument. The same goes for finance and the allocation of capital needed for new ventures and progress.

Read more on ‘Economic Examination of Conscience’…

Over at Rough Trade, the always intriguing James Poulos celebrates the increased attention  now being given to the “relationship between economic and religious life,” pointing to the Acton Institute’s very own Samuel Gregg to kick things off.

Yet he remains unsatisfied, fearful of a return to what he views to be unhelpful “conceptual frameworks and cultural antagonisms” of the past, and urging us to push toward “a new mode of analysis that breaks away from the old, exhausting debates.” For Poulos, this means embracing an “economics of grace,” an interrelated component of something he has called “radicaltarianism” in the past (see more on this here and here).

Poulos observes the typical divides among Christians as follows:

Christians who accept these teachings [about the fall of man and grace] tend to split into two economic camps: those who lean toward an uncritical embrace of free-market capitalism, and those who tilt toward a far more skeptical, suspicious attitude. For the first group, the social upshot of Christianity is an institutional framework that supports flourishing with minimal reliance on the state. Christianity supplies a good foundation for market activity. For the second, the most durable and authentic institutional frameworks supplied by Christianity raise damning questions about the sustainability of neoliberalism — the secular “democratic faith” that gives market capitalism its modern philosophical foundations. For both groups, the key is that, ultimately, religion drives sustainable economic life. The difference is that the first group typically understands religion in a Protestant way, as a driver of explosive, and morally legitimate, economic growth, while the second takes a more Catholic view, doubtful of the moral purity of explosive growth, and focused much less on growing capital than other sorts of things, like families.

Although I disagree with where precisely Poulos draw his lines — sharing much of Rodney Stark’s skepticism about an explicitly Protestant ethic (etc.) — such divides do exist, labels aside.

Describing the state of the debate more broadly, Poulos argues that our political factions have also proven unhelpful, using terms like “economic growth” based on limited materialistic assumptions. Read more on Radicaltarianism: Toward an Economics of Possibility and Grace…

Pope Francis has made interesting comments on poverty, some of which have been misconstrued by the media and in the Church itself. Samuel Gregg, Director of Research for the Acton Institute, discusses both the meaning of poverty within Church teaching and what Pope Francis is truly referring to when he addresses poverty in our world today. In Crisis Magazine, Gregg points out that Christians are never to be forgetful of economic disparities, but that “poverty” has a richer and far more important meaning that just the economic one. Read more on Samuel Gregg: Pope Francis And The True Meaning Of Poverty…

The Dark Ages: that time when people knew the Earth was flat, the civilization of the Western Roman Empire had collapsed, and people basically sat around waiting for something – anything – good to happen.

Read more on The Dark Ages – Not So Dark, Really…

30 Public Universities Adopt More Christian-Friendly Policies After Legal Group’s Campaign
Alex Murashko, Christian Post

A legal effort by the faith-based organization Alliance Defending Freedom launched last year has resulted in 30 of the nation’s public universities and colleges changing their policies to ensure that students’ First-Amendment freedoms are protected, including Christian students’ right to free speech and choice of leadership.

Read more on PowerLinks 06.05.13…

We live in a society that really wants us to feel good. We have weight-loss programs, 24-hour gyms, hair color for men and women, and scads of “self-help” books. We laugh at videos on the internet of people doing dumb stuff, just so we know we are better than that. If we’ve got a job, a reasonably well-trained dog and no parking tickets to pay, we are good. Right?

Read more on Feeling ‘Good’ All The Time: Isn’t That Enough?…

Acton University is fast approaching. As a way to greet our speakers and attendees we’ve placed this billboard on 131 South near the Wealthy St. Exit. If you’re in Grand Rapids, be sure to check it out!

Read more on New Acton University Billboard in Grand Rapids…

From 1990 to 2010, the global poverty rate dipped from 43% to 21%. The Economist explains why the rate halved in twenty years:

How did this happen? Presidents and prime ministers in the West have made grandiloquent speeches about making poverty history for fifty years. In 2000 the United Nations announced a series of eight Millenium Development Goals to reduce poverty, improve health and so on. The impact of such initiatives has been marginal at best.

Read more on How Did the Global Poverty Rate Halve in 20 Years?…