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Leo XIII Decried Socialism, 150 Years Later The USCCB Embraces It
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Alan55
Guest
Pretty darn ridiculous. The U.S. bishops – a politically conservative lot as a whole – are labeled “socialists” because they supported extending unemployment benefits. That’s just dumb. By that logic, most members of the Tea Party are socialists because they don’t want their Social Security or Medicare benefits reduced.
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markbrumbaugh
Guest
They have called for universal health care and amnesty. Name one conservative thought that has come out of that institution. By the way I would certainly like the money stolen from me on the aforementioned Ponzi schemes, to be returned and the programs cancelled. Very few people call me a socialist.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
One should not assume the USCCB represents the opinions of “the bishops” let alone the teachings of the Church. Bishops vary in their political opinions and in their views of such things as “social justice” and morality in a societal sense. And they vary a lot.
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Greg57
Guest
I agree. Just what type of response is it of a Christian to deny help to ANYONE who has lost his or her job during a severe recession and is having trouble finding another one? What would we rather have the person do - foreclose on their home and put the families out on the street? Or help them with food, clothing, shelter? Oh - but that sounds like the corporal works of mercy. Excuuuuuuse me! Whether it comes from the government or a charity, we cannot afford to leave even one citizen wanting. If that’s interpreted as socialism, so be it.
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fisheaters
Guest
You cannot perform a wrong in order to accomplish good. Catholicism 101. Seems even our bishops need a refresher course.
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Ghosty
Guest
Neither amnesty nor universal healthcare are “socialist” ideas. What Pope Leo denounced was state control and ownership of the means of productions, taking production out of the hands of the people.
I think many Americans have lost all sense of what “socialism” actually means.
Peace and God bless!
E
elts1956
Guest
Neither amnesty nor universal healthcare are “socialist” ideas. What Pope Leo denounced was state control and ownership of the means of productions, taking production out of the hands of the people.
I think many Americans have lost all sense of what “socialism” actually means.
Peace and God bless!
C
CPA2
Guest
Dear Father:
I attended mass this morning. I looked up the “Option for the Poor,” as you suggested. The bishops support the minimum wage and many other government programs. The U.S. Catholic bishops and I have major philosophical differences! The minimum wage is bad economics. If you want to help the poor, you do not support the minimum wage. As you will tell from my letter, I do not believe in “salvation by law.” I learned a lot by owning a business and traveling to India on business trips.
I was willing to hire the young and unskilled, but it was illegal to pay them what they were worth in the marketplace. The government makes it illegal to pay wages below the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a floor on wages that causes a surplus of young and unskilled workers. There is 50 years of solid economic research to support this contention. Are the bishops listening? The minimum wage that is above the equilibrium wage hurts the young and unskilled.
If I told you that I would take you to eat at some of the finest restaurants in New Orleans, and then proceeded to drive west on I10, you would know that I was going in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, most people do not know their directions when it comes to government promises. The end does not justify the means. The “means” is the end. Tell me the means and I will tell you the ending. Such is the beauty of economics. I am not interested in the government’s lofty objectives; I am only interested in the means they use to get there. If you want to help poor workers, abolish the minimum wage. If you want to protect citizens from violent crime, abolish the gun control laws. If you want to increase wealth and employment, abolish taxes.
“An individual who intends only to serve the public interest by fostering government intervention is led by an invisible hand to promote private interest, which was no part of his intention (Friedman).” The “invisible hand” is the reason Milton Friedman says that he is not aware of the government doing much good. The government heads west when it should be heading east.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays for “free lunches.” Economics is interesting because economics reads like a detective novel. “Who done it?” Who benefits and who pays?
Adam Smith’s genius was that he recognized the value of voluntary exchanges. Voluntary exchanges produce a win-win situation. Both buyers and sellers benefit. The price that they agree upon is the market price, or the equilibrium price. Adam Smith said that a seller, seeking only his interests, and through no conscious effort, is led by an invisible hand to seek the public good.
There was a time when the United States was the only game in town. If you wanted freedom, you had to come to the United States. However, the United States is no longer the only game in town.
India, for example, learned some very bad socialist ideas from England and the United States. They had a marginal tax rate of 85% and excise taxes of 100%. Is it any wonder that they never exported any jewelry? Today India is a major exporter of jewelry. I visited some of those factories, and they are more modern that our jewelry factories in the United States! Why? The Indians call it an “economic miracle.” I call it no taxes. There are no corporate taxes on exported jewelry!
Most jewelry manufacturers in the United States are out of business because of more economic freedom in other countries like India. For example, I counted only 7 employees at an old jewelry manufacturing plant in New York. I also visited a new and very modern jewelry manufacturing plant in Seeps, outside of Bombay, India. They had 4,000 employees!
I also visited New Zealand for three weeks. This was a country that was down and out because of socialism. Now the country has embraced political and economic freedom in a big way. Listening to New Zealand’s politicians and its people was like a breath of fresh air compared to what I get from the politicians in the United States.
Perhaps the best example was Hong Kong before it was turned over to Communist China. Maids and plumbers became multi-millionaires. “Hong Kong has no tariffs…no government direction of economic activity, no minimum wage laws, no fixing of prices…Low taxes preserve incentives. Businessmen can reap the benefits of their success but must also bear the costs of their mistakes (Freidman).”
When they left Hong Kong, very few people settled in the United States. Our taxes were too high. When Clinton passed the $500 billion tax bill, I think that we surpassed England as the most heavily taxed industrial nation. Most people from Hong Kong settled in Canada, not exactly a tax haven, but better than the United States.
I attended mass this morning. I looked up the “Option for the Poor,” as you suggested. The bishops support the minimum wage and many other government programs. The U.S. Catholic bishops and I have major philosophical differences! The minimum wage is bad economics. If you want to help the poor, you do not support the minimum wage. As you will tell from my letter, I do not believe in “salvation by law.” I learned a lot by owning a business and traveling to India on business trips.
I was willing to hire the young and unskilled, but it was illegal to pay them what they were worth in the marketplace. The government makes it illegal to pay wages below the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a floor on wages that causes a surplus of young and unskilled workers. There is 50 years of solid economic research to support this contention. Are the bishops listening? The minimum wage that is above the equilibrium wage hurts the young and unskilled.
If I told you that I would take you to eat at some of the finest restaurants in New Orleans, and then proceeded to drive west on I10, you would know that I was going in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, most people do not know their directions when it comes to government promises. The end does not justify the means. The “means” is the end. Tell me the means and I will tell you the ending. Such is the beauty of economics. I am not interested in the government’s lofty objectives; I am only interested in the means they use to get there. If you want to help poor workers, abolish the minimum wage. If you want to protect citizens from violent crime, abolish the gun control laws. If you want to increase wealth and employment, abolish taxes.
“An individual who intends only to serve the public interest by fostering government intervention is led by an invisible hand to promote private interest, which was no part of his intention (Friedman).” The “invisible hand” is the reason Milton Friedman says that he is not aware of the government doing much good. The government heads west when it should be heading east.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays for “free lunches.” Economics is interesting because economics reads like a detective novel. “Who done it?” Who benefits and who pays?
Adam Smith’s genius was that he recognized the value of voluntary exchanges. Voluntary exchanges produce a win-win situation. Both buyers and sellers benefit. The price that they agree upon is the market price, or the equilibrium price. Adam Smith said that a seller, seeking only his interests, and through no conscious effort, is led by an invisible hand to seek the public good.
There was a time when the United States was the only game in town. If you wanted freedom, you had to come to the United States. However, the United States is no longer the only game in town.
India, for example, learned some very bad socialist ideas from England and the United States. They had a marginal tax rate of 85% and excise taxes of 100%. Is it any wonder that they never exported any jewelry? Today India is a major exporter of jewelry. I visited some of those factories, and they are more modern that our jewelry factories in the United States! Why? The Indians call it an “economic miracle.” I call it no taxes. There are no corporate taxes on exported jewelry!
Most jewelry manufacturers in the United States are out of business because of more economic freedom in other countries like India. For example, I counted only 7 employees at an old jewelry manufacturing plant in New York. I also visited a new and very modern jewelry manufacturing plant in Seeps, outside of Bombay, India. They had 4,000 employees!
I also visited New Zealand for three weeks. This was a country that was down and out because of socialism. Now the country has embraced political and economic freedom in a big way. Listening to New Zealand’s politicians and its people was like a breath of fresh air compared to what I get from the politicians in the United States.
Perhaps the best example was Hong Kong before it was turned over to Communist China. Maids and plumbers became multi-millionaires. “Hong Kong has no tariffs…no government direction of economic activity, no minimum wage laws, no fixing of prices…Low taxes preserve incentives. Businessmen can reap the benefits of their success but must also bear the costs of their mistakes (Freidman).”
When they left Hong Kong, very few people settled in the United States. Our taxes were too high. When Clinton passed the $500 billion tax bill, I think that we surpassed England as the most heavily taxed industrial nation. Most people from Hong Kong settled in Canada, not exactly a tax haven, but better than the United States.
C
CPA2
Guest
This is Milton Friedman’s conclusion in his book, Free to Choose: “The two ideas of human freedom and economic freedom working together came to their greatest fruition in the United States…We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else. We have persuaded ourselves that it is safe to grant power, provided it is for good purposes.”
“We are again recognizing the dangers of an over-governed society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.”
We have been following the fiscal policy of Keynes, a socialist, for a long time. He proposed stimulating the economy during a recession. One method is to cut interest rates. Cutting interest rates usually leads to an expansion of money and credit through a process known as fractional banking. Alan Greenspan reduced interest rates 11 times to no avail.
I like the Austrian School of Economics. Ludwig von Misses, Murray Rothbard and Freidrich Hayek all warned us about the bad effects of credit expansion. I think that we are just beginning to pay the price for 70 years of credit expansion.
I am fascinated by the consequences of debt and government funny money (fiat money). Honest money is what I want from the government, but that is not what I get. What are the economic consequences of government credit expansion (inflation)? My personal prediction is that we will see the dollar go bankrupt. When the dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world, the United States will become a third world country overnight.
“Authority or command is not the fundamental source of order in an economy, and it in fact may be a source of disorder in economic affairs. In the place usually accorded authority as the source of orderliness in a community, we will place enlightened self-interest, i.e. the freedom to act in accordance with one’s own interests properly bounded by a regard for the welfare of others and the preservation of the institutions of civil society (note that one of those institutions is government). Without the moderating effects of a proper concern for institutions and for interests other than one’s own, social order deteriorates under the weight of appetites. Of particular interest is what Wilhelm Roepke called the “wonder” of market coordinated activity, i.e. the superiority of voluntarism over command as a means for ordering or coordinating human actions which are based on enlightened self-interest.”
“Economics has many definitions. I gave three of the best definitions. All three definitions are useful and represent particular emphases within a broader discipline. The third definition (coordination/information problem) may be understood as an information problem because at the heart of the coordination problem is the problem of dispersed information, i.e. the information is not amenable to the usual kinds of problem solving techniques with which we are most familiar. Economic order is not like solving a jigsaw puzzle because the information (the pieces of the puzzle) are dispersed across millions of people and are forever changing. This information can never be held in the mind of one or a few people. Given the problem of dispersed information, a much more complex kind of problem solving technique is required to continuously “solve” the problem, i.e. to coordinate economic activity.”
“We are again recognizing the dangers of an over-governed society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.”
We have been following the fiscal policy of Keynes, a socialist, for a long time. He proposed stimulating the economy during a recession. One method is to cut interest rates. Cutting interest rates usually leads to an expansion of money and credit through a process known as fractional banking. Alan Greenspan reduced interest rates 11 times to no avail.
I like the Austrian School of Economics. Ludwig von Misses, Murray Rothbard and Freidrich Hayek all warned us about the bad effects of credit expansion. I think that we are just beginning to pay the price for 70 years of credit expansion.
I am fascinated by the consequences of debt and government funny money (fiat money). Honest money is what I want from the government, but that is not what I get. What are the economic consequences of government credit expansion (inflation)? My personal prediction is that we will see the dollar go bankrupt. When the dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world, the United States will become a third world country overnight.
“Authority or command is not the fundamental source of order in an economy, and it in fact may be a source of disorder in economic affairs. In the place usually accorded authority as the source of orderliness in a community, we will place enlightened self-interest, i.e. the freedom to act in accordance with one’s own interests properly bounded by a regard for the welfare of others and the preservation of the institutions of civil society (note that one of those institutions is government). Without the moderating effects of a proper concern for institutions and for interests other than one’s own, social order deteriorates under the weight of appetites. Of particular interest is what Wilhelm Roepke called the “wonder” of market coordinated activity, i.e. the superiority of voluntarism over command as a means for ordering or coordinating human actions which are based on enlightened self-interest.”
“Economics has many definitions. I gave three of the best definitions. All three definitions are useful and represent particular emphases within a broader discipline. The third definition (coordination/information problem) may be understood as an information problem because at the heart of the coordination problem is the problem of dispersed information, i.e. the information is not amenable to the usual kinds of problem solving techniques with which we are most familiar. Economic order is not like solving a jigsaw puzzle because the information (the pieces of the puzzle) are dispersed across millions of people and are forever changing. This information can never be held in the mind of one or a few people. Given the problem of dispersed information, a much more complex kind of problem solving technique is required to continuously “solve” the problem, i.e. to coordinate economic activity.”
R
rwoehmke
Guest
What is in a name? The socialism condemned by Leo XIII may be quite a different fish than what is being bandied about today as socialism. We need a reality check here. If I have learned one thing from this particular forum, it is that words like liberal, conservative, etc. appear to mean something entirely different than the meaning attached in say1850 or so.
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pnewton
Guest
The writer of this article seems to deliberately deceive by using the same term for these two different policies. He needs to clear his own log of deception out of his eye before concerning himself with the politics of his betters.
G
Ghosty
Guest
elts1956:
In case you’re not, neither of these things deal with the socialization of the means of production, which is all Pope Leo’s encyclical dealt with.
Peace and God bless!
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.Hasn’t that happened with Obamacare? And immigration?
In case you’re not, neither of these things deal with the socialization of the means of production, which is all Pope Leo’s encyclical dealt with.
Peace and God bless!
G
Greg57
Guest
So, what you saying is that a governmnet which engages in some form of the corporal works of mercy is a wrong. Wow.
R
rwoehmke
Guest
One need only look at the history of the industrial revolution and of the early industrial growth in our own country to see what happens when unfettered capitalism is allowed to call the tune. Even slaves had it better because they were valuable property to be taken care of. In those days if a workman was sick or injured or died he and his family were no longer worth anything. Check out why the Knights of Columbus was founded by Fr. McGivny and you will have some clue as to how it was. The opposite situation involving communism or socialism as defined by Leo XIII proves to be equally toxic to human beings. It becomes clear that some middle road is most appropriate. Totally free markets are not free except for those getting rich off the backs of their fellows.
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FaithBuild18
Guest
Well Ghosty, you sure were right about one thing: Americans have lost a sense of what socialism means. That is, assuming you are American.
T
tafan
Guest
The socialism that Leo XIII condemned was explicitly aimed at the state ownership of means of production and the elimination of private property. Extending unemployment benefits, while not that great of an idea IMO, is not comparable at all.
F
fish90
Guest
Respectfully, I find the better question to ask is: which positions of the USCCB can faithful Catholics disagree on and which involve sound Catholic teaching?
For instance, I have had this trouble understanding the recent disapproval from the bishops regarding the Arizona immigration policy. I have to understand that the bishops are not “liberal” by all means they advocate secure borders and a pathway to citizenship that involves learning English and perhaps a fine. These are certainly not modern “liberal” positions. I was humbled when a poster on this site posted about migrant rights, which this position, the idea of breaking up families and “possible” ( trying to stay neutral and please don’t comment) racial profiling that proposition may cause.
zenit.org/article-30037?l=english
Now, I would have trouble if the bishops started to talk about global warming or which tax rate on whom is correct. They are stating opinions on 1. scientific theory and 2. economic law.
I would like to point out that it is a very good idea to trust in the bishops teaching unless they are certainly going against Church teaching.
Best,
fish90
For instance, I have had this trouble understanding the recent disapproval from the bishops regarding the Arizona immigration policy. I have to understand that the bishops are not “liberal” by all means they advocate secure borders and a pathway to citizenship that involves learning English and perhaps a fine. These are certainly not modern “liberal” positions. I was humbled when a poster on this site posted about migrant rights, which this position, the idea of breaking up families and “possible” ( trying to stay neutral and please don’t comment) racial profiling that proposition may cause.
zenit.org/article-30037?l=english
Now, I would have trouble if the bishops started to talk about global warming or which tax rate on whom is correct. They are stating opinions on 1. scientific theory and 2. economic law.
I would like to point out that it is a very good idea to trust in the bishops teaching unless they are certainly going against Church teaching.
Best,
fish90
P
pnewton
Guest
That is a loaded question. All of the USCCB positions involve sound teaching from at least one point of view. I think it is inappropriate to label something as unsound based on our individual dissent.
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fish90
Guest
I agree and my apologies.
Perhaps, I should have posted: maybe the better question to ask is when do the bishops support a position with which faithful Catholics may have a legitimate diversity of opinion? (Did not the current Holy Father use that phrase “legitimate diversity of opinion” with regard to just war and the application of the death penalty?)
I invite everyone to critique my posts. Please show me where I am incorrect.
fish90
Perhaps, I should have posted: maybe the better question to ask is when do the bishops support a position with which faithful Catholics may have a legitimate diversity of opinion? (Did not the current Holy Father use that phrase “legitimate diversity of opinion” with regard to just war and the application of the death penalty?)
I invite everyone to critique my posts. Please show me where I am incorrect.
fish90
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