Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Crony capitalism'

March 07, 2016

Just how bad is crony capitalism?

The Bosses of the Senate, a cartoon by Joseph Keppler. First published in Puck 1889. Cronyism is ugly. It hurts the economy, it’s unjust, and corrupts the core of democracy.  “The damage that cronyism has inflicted on the economy is considerable,” Samuel Gregg writes in a new piece for Public Discourse. Continue Reading...
October 16, 2015

Bernie Sanders Loves to Decry ‘Casino Capitalism,’ But What About Economic Freedom?

In last Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders stayed true to his famed aversion to capitalism, proclaiming the fanciful virtues of “democratic socialism.” Yet when prodded by Anderson Cooper — who asked, “you don’t consider yourself a capitalist?” — Sanders responded not by attacking free markets, but by targeting a more popular target of discontent: Wall Street and the banks. Continue Reading...
August 18, 2015

Video: Timothy P. Carney On The Threat To Liberty From Big Business

We’ve had our busiest Acton Lecture Series in institute history over the course of the first six months of 2015 – we’ve had more public events at the Acton Building in that period of time than we had all of last year, I believe; I’d venture to say that 2015 is already the busiest year in that regard in the 25-year history of the Acton Institute. Continue Reading...
July 23, 2015

The Moral Crisis of Cronyism and Corporate Welfare

U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, in an article for www.mlive.com, discussed the recent charter expiration of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) and how that is a good first-step toward reducing the corporate welfare and crony capitalism that has infected American politics and economics: If a man swipes your wallet, he’s a thief. Continue Reading...
February 18, 2015

How U.S. Farm Subsidies Hurt the Global Poor

In the following clip from the PovertyCure series, Doug Seebeck explains how U.S. agricultural subsidies have significant negative consequences both at home and abroad — misaligning human action, distorting market signals, and diminishing opportunities for the least of these. Continue Reading...
October 30, 2014

When Should We Be Worried About Economic Inequality?

The topic of economic inequality continues to be at the forefront of our current political discussions, thanks in no small part by a president who calls it “the defining challenge of our time.” But although such concerns are more typically lobbed about rather carelessly and thoughtlessly — cause folks to fret over the “power” of small business owners and entrepreneurs in a mythological zero-sum market ecosystem — there are indeed scenarios in which the rise of such inequality ought to give us pause. Continue Reading...
August 20, 2014

Radio Free Acton: The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke, Part II

This week on Radio Free Acton, Michael Matheson Miller continues his conversation with David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University, on the thought of Edmund Burke. Bromwich is the author of The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke, the first volume of what will be a two-volume intellectual biography of Burke. Continue Reading...