poverty

Writing in Singularity Hub, Raya Bidshahri, founder of Aweacademy, draws data from Steven Pinker’s newest book, Enlightenment Now, to demonstrate human progress proceeds apace, and human flourishing, as measured by health, lifespans, peace, prosperity, and safety, is increasing. And all this even as climate changes.

Why is the free enterprise or capitalist economic system so widely disliked, hated and opposed?

In January, 6.7 million people are gathering to celebrate and demand more school choice at some 30,000 events and rallies nationwide, yet government schools continue to usurp the role of parents at an alarming pace.

The free enterprise, or capitalist, system has done more to improve the material condition of humanity than any other economic arrangement of human cooperation in all of recorded history.

Among the most powerful panels at The Heartland Institute’s 12th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-12) was the session on sustainability, in which the speakers universally condemned the concept as it is being used to restrict fossil fuel use and carbon emissions to prevent purported global warming and supposed resource depletion.

Through almost all mankind’s history, the human condition was one of abject poverty and hardship.

Heartland Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara joins the Made In America radio show with host Neal Asbury to talk about a new Heartland policy brief titled “Why the United States Has Suffered the Worst Economic Recovery Since the Great Depression.”

Several years ago, physician, statistician, sword swallower and vibrant lecturer Hans Rosling produced a fascinating 4-minute video that presented 120,000 data points and showcased how mostly western nations became healthy and prosperous in just 200 years – after countless millennia of malnutrition, disease, wretched poverty and early death.

Friday, April 22, will mark the 47th Earth Day. You may think it is all about planting trees and cleaning up neighborhoods. But this year’s anniversary will be closer to its radical roots than, perhaps, any other since its founding in 1970. Considered the birth of the environmental movement, the first Earth Day took place during the height of America’s counterculture era. According to EarthDay.org, it gave voice to an “emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns on the front page.”

It was fitting for The Heartland Institute’s President and CEO Joe Bast to feature Yaron Brook President of the Ayn Rand Institute, in a discussion of his new book, “Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality.” Both organizations are fighting for the principles of freedom and liberty as set forth by our Founding Fathers.

Political campaign years are filled with candidates’ promises to solve people’s problems. Government policies will “create jobs,” will reduce or even block the “unfair” competition of market rivals in foreign lands, will restore or create prosperity for all, and will assure “fairness” for everyone, even if it means imposing regulatory or special tax burdens on some to guarantee politically provided privileges and benefits for others who are deemed “deserving.”

The Network for Public Education (NPE), an anti-educational choice organization, released a new publication titled “Valuing Public Education: A 50 State Report Card,” which, distressingly, many media outlets are reporting as an honest-to-goodness objective study, instead of the piece of subjective advocacy it truly is.

Mississippi took a step in the right direction when, at the beginning of the month, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced it would implement work requirements for single people between the ages of 18 and 49 who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. Although this is a positive development, there is still much that could be done to better help the State of Mississippi move people in poverty from government dependency to self-sufficiency.