131 Million. This is not a population statistic, nor is it the answer to some clever math problem. It’s the number of people you reached through Acton over the past year.
Your support made possible a wide range of conferences, publications, media products, television interviews, and social media outreach that impacted leaders around the globe. For this, we are truly grateful.
As you know, Acton has been promoting liberty and virtue for 25 years now. Alumni of our programs and users of our products include heads of state, members of the U.S. House, Fortune 500 business executives, influential clergy, and professors and students from preeminent universities and seminaries. Many of these individuals have gone on to promote Acton insights in their own realms of influence and authority.
But you did. Over the years, you’ve supported us generously with your prayers, encouragement, and resources. That generosity has made us one of the most unique and respected organizations in the free-market movement.
As you read this Founders’ Report – and all of them, for that matter – we hope you will see yourself not as a passive supporter, but as an active collaborator. Over the last 25 years, your support has brought us to this place. And of that, you ought to be proud.
With gratitude,
Kris Mauren
Annual Dinner Information
131 Million. This is not a population statistic, nor is it the answer to some clever math problem. It’s the number of people you reached through Acton over the past year.
Your support made possible a wide range of conferences, publications, media products, television interviews, and social media outreach that impacted leaders around the globe. For this, we are truly grateful.
As you know, Acton has been promoting liberty and virtue for 25 years now. Alumni of our programs and users of our products include heads of state, members of the U.S. House, Fortune 500 business executives, influential clergy, and professors and students from preeminent universities and seminaries. Many of these individuals have gone on to promote Acton insights in their own realms of influence and authority.
But you did. Over the years, you’ve supported us generously with your prayers, encouragement, and resources. That generosity has made us one of the most unique and respected organizations in the free-market movement.
As you read this Founders’ Report – and all of them, for that matter – we hope you will see yourself not as a passive supporter, but as an active collaborator. Over the last 25 years, your support has brought us to this place. And of that, you ought to be proud.
With gratitude,
Kris Mauren
Poverty Cure Information
Help us move people beyond their good intentions. Help us share a vision of the material poor as full of creative capacity, dignity, and potential. Only then will we see true, human flourishing in the poorest corners of the earth.
PovertyCure, being an initiative of the Acton Institute, seeks to connect good intentions with sounds economics. So often the efforts of well-meaning people and organizations to address poverty do more harm than good. Our goal is to equip these same people and organizations with resources that promote satisfying and fruitful work, within the context of a free and virtuous society, as the best, and most sustainable, pathway out of poverty.
Your donations will help us reach additional schools, churches, nonprofits, and other organizations with this message. Through screenings of the PovertyCure Video Series, simple training sessions with organizations, and conferences with influential nonprofit leaders, we hope more and more people will move away from aid and embrace enterprise in their fight against material poverty.
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Why have nations like Hong Kong and Singapore risen to become global economic powerhouses, while resource-rich African nations remain mired in poverty? Abir Doumit, an economist at George Mason University, has identified six pillars capable of lifting a nation to prosperity, no matter where it starts.
One of the most important is a small government. “If sustainable economic growth is the goal, there is no substitute for an overall policy agenda of a small state, open markets, stable money, property rights, and deregulation,” she says in a new video for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) Foundation.
Using the Fraser Institute’s annual report on the Economic Freedom of the World, she contrasts the bustling Asian tigers’ economic openness with impoverished African states where corruption and instability reign.
Chile, which until recently followed neoliberal economic policies, illustrates the power of policy to enrich a formerly struggling people. Capitalists in Santiago, instructed by Milton Friedman personally, took a profoundly different trajectory from Venezuela, where socialist policies have hungry families breaking apart just to survive.
Americans have a vested interest in keeping this narrative straight. International organizations such as the UN and the OECD cite the U.S. and UK as proof that high taxes and economic regulation lead to human flourishing. Doumit corrects the historical record:
The Western world became rich when government was very small. As you can see, government spending in Western nations consumed only about 10 percent of GDP back in the 1800s and early 1900s, when those countries became rich. And there was little to no redistribution spending until even later.
In other words, countries like the U.S. became rich first, and then adopted policies such as welfare states and income taxation. The international bureaucracies want the opposite approach…
There is no nation anywhere in the world that has become rich with big government.
Restricting government’s scope and power allows society to develop spontaneously and organically, engaging the gifts of every citizen instead of the diktats of the few and powerful.
Doumit, who hails from Lebanon, knows personally that just limiting government is not enough, especially if it undermines the rule of law. Hezbollah is more powerful than the Lebanese army – or, according to Israeli officials, stronger than any Arab army. That kind of power can drag Lebanon’s historicallyindustrious and hardworking population, especially its beleaguered Christian community, into wars they never desired.
That points to a deeper, unarticulated reality: The six policies Doumit emphasizes must rest upon the pillar of a healthy culture. A healthy culture, in turn, is the byproduct of an uplifting worldview – or a philanthropic religion – that makes human flourishing its natural outgrowth.
Rev. Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest and served as Executive Editor of the Acton Institute (2016-2021), editing Religion & Liberty, the Powerblog, and its transatlantic website. He has extensively researched the Alt-Right. Previously, he worked for LifeSiteNews and FrontPageMag.com, where he wrote three books including Party of Defeat (with David Horowitz, 2008). His work has appeared at DailyWire.com, National Review, The American Spectator, The Guardian, Daily Caller, National Catholic Register, Spectator USA, FEE Online, RealClear Policy, The Blaze, The Stream, American Greatness, Aleteia, Providence Magazine, Charisma, Jewish World Review, Human Events, Intellectual Takeout, CatholicVote.org, Issues & Insights, The Conservative, Rare.us, and The American Orthodox Institute. His personal websites are therightswriter.com and RevBenJohnson.com. His views are his own.