Acton Institute Powerblog

Promoting free societies characterized by liberty & religious principles

Wealth and Political Rhetoric in Ancient Christian Perspective

Last Thursday, NPR ran an interesting piece by Alan Greenblat that featured the perspective of several of the nation’s rich (read: annual household income over $250,000) in relation to President Obama’s determination that the Bush era tax increases end for the nation’s rich as part of any deal related to the looming “fiscal cliff.” Continue Reading...

Why Soaking the Rich Won’t Fix the Deficit

In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll on methods to avoid the “fiscal cliff”, sixty percent of Americans support raising taxes on incomes more than $250,000 a year (73 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents, and 39 percent of Republicans). Continue Reading...

Inflation and the Minimum Wage

In yesterday’s edition of The Transom, which I highly recommend, Ben Domenech included a discussion that places the debates over raising the minimum wage within the broader context of the effects of inflation more generally. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg: Americans’ ‘Absurd Expectations’ and the Economic Crisis

Samuel Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research and author of the book “Becoming Europe“, says one of America’s real debt dangers is our increasing sense of entitlement from the government. In today’s Investor’s Business Daily editorial, Gregg states our “insatiable appetites” are getting us into the very deep economic trouble that no one, least of all politicians, seems to want to face: …Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker famously lamented in 2007: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.” Continue Reading...

Asceticism and the Free Society

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to present a paper at the Sophia Institute annual conference at Union Theological Seminary. This year’s topic was “Marriage, Family, and Love in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.” Continue Reading...