“There has always been a generous spirit in America towards the downtrodden, but it’s time to realize that we are no longer being generous: the government is leading us merrily along the path of fiscal fugue,” writes Elise Hilton. So why are federal officials advising benefit applicants that they shouldn’t be “discouraged by funding issues”? The full text of her essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Commentary: Buying Off Discontent…

My friend John Teevan of Grace College sends out a monthly newsletter, “Economic Prospect.” He passes along this in the current edition:

I found this note from a newly retired accountant (age 66) who has not gone on social security yet. His income as a part-time accountant in his town was $60,000.

Read more on Toiling for Pharaoh…

“Our world is overpopulated.” If you repeat something often enough, it becomes “truth”. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, warning that we’d all soon be fighting over food, space, and power as the earth sagged under the weight of all those darned people.

He was wrong, of course, and not just wrong: spectacularly wrong. It didn’t keep him from being a celebrity or from his ridiculous notion from being believed. But he was still wrong.

In What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, author Jonathan V. Last attempts to point out the fallacies of Ehrlich and his ilk. Last is clear: our world is not overpopulated; we are vastly under-populated, and it’s a problem. He goes so far as to say that America has a self-imposed “One-Child Policy” that is leading us to demographic disaster.

Last is chiefly concerned with the problems under-population will cause America, but he uses several other countries to illustrate where we are headed. There are a lot of numbers in this book: financial figures about the costs of raising children, population numbers, fertility rates, the changing age of marriage. The conclusion doesn’t get lost in all the numbers: we don’t have the ability – population-wise – to take care of ourselves. That is, with programs like Social Security and Medicaid requiring a vast army of workers to keep them propped up and paying out, we can’t keep up. And if there aren’t enough workers to pay into these systems, there certainly aren’t enough people to take care of Grandma and Grandpa as they age and need more and more care. Read more on America’s Looming Demographic Disaster…

Some proponents of limited government understandably yearn to see Mitt Romney’s recently announced running mate, Paul Ryan, as something like the pure intellectual descendent of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Some on the left, meanwhile, will be tempted to portray him as a heartless monster who only wants to enrich the 1 percent. Paul Ryan the politician is more complex than either portrait. Far from throwing granny under the bus, his efforts at budget reform are an essential step in saving Social Security and Medicare, along with improving the long-term fiscal health of the nation. On the other hand, and although his American Conservative Union score is a solid 91.69, he did vote for TARP, the bank bailout, and the auto bailout–government intrusions he has said he now partially regrets.

Read more on The Complexities of Paul Ryan…

Conference: “Free Markets with Solidarity and Sustainability: Facing the Challenge”

Ethical human agency is only possible with freedom. Freely turning to the good, which the Creator has given us, is the highest sign of human dignity. The proper exercise of freedom requires “specific conditions of an economic, social, juridic, political and cultural order”. (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n. 137) The free market is one of these institutions. The free market is the most efficient instrument to guarantee the distribution of goods and services in society. Beyond efficiency, however, markets need sound ethical and cultural foundations. Only free markets can be ethical markets, and only ethical markets can function in freedom. One of these primary and universally recognized ethical principles is charity.

Call for Papers: “The State of the Consecrated Life in Contemporary Canada”

Read more on ResearchLinks – 07.13.12…

I recently came across an interesting academic journal, Diaconia: Journal for the Study of Christian Social Practice. One of the sample articles available is by Herman Noordegraaf of the Protestant Theological University in Leiden. His piece is titled, “Aid Under Protest? Churches in the Netherlands and Material Aid to the Poor” (PDF).

Read more on From Christian Giving to the Welfare State in the Netherlands…

Over at National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at a new study which shows a growing wealth gap between the senior set and those under the age of 35. The boomer generation also has the political clout to protect that security:

Read more on Samuel Gregg: America’s Gerontocracy…

Roger Scruton has written an excellent piece on the moral basis of free markets; it’s up at MercatorNet. He begins with the Islamic proscriptions of interest charged, insurance, and other trade in unreal things:

Read more on Roger Scruton: No Escaping Morality in Economics…

In the National Catholic Register, Kathryn Jean Lopez looks at the current debate on Social Security and asks: “So, is it a Ponzi scheme? Is it time to blow it up? Are these questions freaking people out — and missing the point?” Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg is extensively quoted in the article. Here he is explaining how the principle of subsidiarity plays into the debate.

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Social Security and Subsidiarity…

Yesterday Senator Harry Reid finally proposed a budget plan – one week before the United States is set to default. It is about time that Senate Democrats joined President Obama and House Republicans in offering a concrete budget proposal; however, their budget plan passes the buck onto future generations.

Read more on Senator Reid Punts on Necessary Reforms…