'I'm no Marxist', Pope Francis tells conservative critics

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And per this article from the same talk, Pope Francis further addresses the “trickle down” economics criticism, indicating to me that it was not all just some sort of translation misunderstanding.

religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/14/pope-im-not-a-marxist/

"The pope said in a new interview Saturday. “The promise that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger and nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

So true! The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
 
=christofirst;11502880]And per this article from the same talk, Pope Francis further addresses the “trickle down” economics criticism, indicating to me that it was not all just some sort of translation misunderstanding.
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Regardless of how it’s interpreted, capitalism works best.

Pope Francis saying it does or doesn’t will not change that.

Problem in the West there are too many liberal politicians who use the force of government to pick and choose winners and losers. :tsktsk:
 
ReConverted said:
Viva Papa Francesco! 😃
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👍👍

It’s high time someone re-drew the line between examining issues from the wider faith/morals perspective versus the more limited political/ideological angle. Important social issues demand critical analysis and no amount of negative attacks on the pope should be allowed to squelch discussion.
 
SuperLuigi said:
Regardless of how it’s interpreted, capitalism works best.:
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Was capitalism handed to us in Genesis, or did God-given human ingenuity develop it? Who is there to say that an improved version of capitalism or a totally new system cannot be similarly developed? Man-made systems are not sancrosant - only God-made ones are.
 
christofirst said:
And per this article from the same talk, Pope Francis further addresses the “trickle down” economics criticism, indicating to me that it was not all just some sort of translation misunderstanding.

religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/14/pope-im-not-a-marxist/

"The pope said in a new interview Saturday. “The promise that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger and nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

So true! The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Click to expand...
You forgot this little tidbit:
“The only specific quote I used was the one regarding the ‘trickle-down theories,’ which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and social inclusiveness in the world,” the Pope said in the new interview on Saturday.
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Capitalism needs a conscience and even capitalists will argue that.

Looks like the Western left is going to have find their excuses to support feel-good solutions and politicians elsewhere.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I like Pope Francis’ reply to the question “What does it feel like to be called a ‘Marxist’?”

“The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.”
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I wonder if anyone has asked Pope Francis if he has met any anarcho-capitalists and whether they are good people too.
 
seekerz said:
Was capitalism handed to us in Genesis, or did God-given human ingenuity develop it? Who is there to say that an improved version of capitalism or a totally new system cannot be similarly developed?
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I don’t see anyone saying that can’t happen. But given human incentive, it’s not something in our near future.

But we have seen what big government does to people for 12,000 years.

I’m not interested in Western utopian ideals of what could be, I’m interested in what works and what the results are.

The idea of feel-good solutions or liberal Catholics jumping all over these quotes the Pope is making as some kind of permission slip that what they think ideologically is correct is a path that will not help the poor and oppressed. As history has shown, this kind of thinking will make it much worse.

Capitalism is based on human incentive and natural law, which God created.

To paraphrase Jason Lewis, all capitalism is is a fundamental understanding based on math and science of “what used to be called the animal spirits” of fortune.

It is time for liberal Catholics to accept that helping the poor is not rooted in easy-looking government-based solutions.

People just then think they can pay taxes and vote to help the poor instead of giving of their own. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Gospel, and frankly it leads to (and is often the product of ) personal selfishness. In today’s culture, people have managed to cover that up with all kinds of rationalizing.
Man-made systems not sancrosant - only God-made ones are.
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That’s fine, but a broader, secular approach to economics is fine too. I don’t want left-wing big moral government any more than I want right-wing big government, and I’ve heard cases in so many words for both cases on here.

It doesn’t matter what the utopian ideology is, it doesn’t work with big government and based on human nature probably never will unless there is some major evolution of man. But I doubt that is coming anytime soon because we are starting to go backwards. All of the innovation and job-creating that is being today is, to quote Gingrich, “done in spite of, not because of government.”

**If the left continues to insist on using government, then some of us will just have to tell the poor and unemployed to call Washington DC **because that’s where all the money we have that they rightfully deserve is going.

And I wouldn’t bet in their favor, because I’ve lived in DC and there’s plenty of poor, homeless folks making their best lot in life under the shadow of Capitol Hill (they can’t get close enough to the White House for security reasons).
 
christofirst said:
And per this article from the same talk, Pope Francis further addresses the “trickle down” economics criticism, indicating to me that it was not all just some sort of translation misunderstanding.

religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/14/pope-im-not-a-marxist/

"The pope said in a new interview Saturday. “The promise that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger and nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

So true! The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Click to expand...
No. No.

“Trickle down” is totally a political slur on the part of the left in the U.S., made in response to Reagan’s (later, G.W. Bush’s) tax reduction for all taxpayers. Reagan’s even put the lowest earners on a “negative” tax, through the Earned Income Credit. They received money they didn’t earn. The leftist misrepresentation, which they called “trickle down” is that the tax cuts benefitted ONLY the rich because the rich benefitted too; a manifestly false proposition.

I don’t know what the Pope does or doesn’t know about economics. But it certainly can be observed that despite pretty strong (and for the most part widespread) prosperity during the last decades of the 20th Century and into the 21st, nobody in any administration did anything for the truly poor; those who can’t help themselves. That’s true, and it’s true to this very day. By definition, such people are dependant on someone else of necessity.

It often seems to me the U.S. Left’s real problem is growing income disparity between the middle class and the wealthy, regardless of the state of the economy. Nobody in either party addresses the genuinely poor.

The current administration has enacted various middle class welfare schemes (Cash for Clunkers being surely the worst of them) but the Pope is entirely correct in saying neither a full nor an empty glass does anything for the truly poor. By “truly poor” I don’t mean middle class people who would like to have a piece of some rich man’s income, and I don’t have any reason to think the Pope does either.

What’s missing in the current economic situation in the U.S. is employment. Labor’s share of GDP is always highest at full employment. It drops relative to total GDP when unemployment is high, and income disparity increases. Unfortunately, we presently have an “anti-employment” administration.

So, the leftist ideology, taken as a whole, encourages income disparity.

But “the poor” are a different issue. Perhaps if this country ceased with the middle class welfare and turned more attention to the truly poor, a more just result could be achieved. But the purpose of middle class welfare (like Cash for Clunkers and Obamacare) is vote-buying. There aren’t enough truly poor people to make much difference at the ballot box, so they’re ignored.

Of course, the Pope is addressing the whole world, not just the U.S. Undoubtedly there are plenty of places where the plight of the truly poor is much worse, no matter what happens in the economy in those places.
 
Bubba_Switzler said:
I wonder if anyone has asked Pope Francis if he has met any anarcho-capitalists and whether they are good people too.
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This post made me chuckle. There are not too many of those around, it’s just the liberal media labeling various conservative groups that in America (ie “if you had your way, we’d be like Somalia!!!”). When in fact, Europe is starting to look a lot more Somalia than American is, I can tell you that!
 
“I am no marxist” - Karl Marx

Even Marx himself wasn’t a marxist:)
 
christofirst said:
And per this article from the same talk, Pope Francis further addresses the “trickle down” economics criticism, indicating to me that it was not all just some sort of translation misunderstanding.

religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/14/pope-im-not-a-marxist/

"The pope said in a new interview Saturday. “The promise that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger and nothing ever comes out for the poor.”

So true! The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Click to expand...
Look at globalization it isn’t a global village it is a global pillage. Women in Mexico get murdered all the time in this one Mexican state and the only thing they have in common is that they all work in the Maquiladoras and we stand by and do nothing. The only one really benefitting from NAFTA is the US.
 
KP3243 said:
Look at globalization it isn’t a global village it is a global pillage. Women in Mexico get murdered all the time in this one Mexican state and the only thing they have in common is that they all work in the Maquiladoras and we stand by and do nothing. The only one really benefitting from NAFTA is the US.
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I’m not sure the U.S. does either, and it certainly doesn’t benefit from open borders that encourage not only crime in Mexico, but its importation to the U.S. as well.

Politically, though, people would scream. Also, consider what a huge jump in prices in all the “Super Mercados” in the U.S. would cause. A lot of immigrants use those, and they would yell to high heaven if Mexican-manufactured foods and goods suddenly cost a lot more.

Personally, I could live with both things, but will the political class do so?
 
SuperLuigi said:
People who become Marxist (or liberal for that matter) seem to think that they will get more, not have to give up things.
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That sounds more like a HUMAN affliction as common and as generalized as sin itself: grab all I can and fight to keep it at any cost.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I’m not sure the U.S. does either, and it certainly doesn’t benefit from open borders that encourage not only crime in Mexico, but its importation to the U.S. as well.

Politically, though, people would scream. Also, consider what a huge jump in prices in all the “Super Mercados” in the U.S. would cause. A lot of immigrants use those, and they would yell to high heaven if Mexican-manufactured foods and goods suddenly cost a lot more.

Personally, I could live with both things, but will the political class do so?
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As a whole I don’t think we benefit the best although the drug trafficking increase in Mexico is a result of 9/11 and airplane standards changing in and out of the US but US corporations benefit big time at the expense of poor people, the American people not standing up for justice, to me, makes us just as guilty. Our clothes and household items are cheap at the expense of human labor that our country would most likely outlaw and that we would never subject ourselves to.
 
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