Pope Francis denounces ‘trickle-down’ economic theories in critique of inequality

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Ender said:
These citations are from the summary to the source you provided.
  • *Children were food insecure at times during the year in 10.0 percent of households with children. These 3.9 million households were unable at times during the year to provide adequate, nutritious food for their children. *
  • Typically, households classified as having very low food security experienced the condition in 7 months of the year, for a few days in each of those months.
You can get to 16 million children affected by hunger only if the average “food insecure” household has four children, which is double the national average but the key thing to note is that hunger affects these children not daily but for “a few days” in just over half of the months. While we can all wish that no child went hungry, the assertion that 16 million go hungry every day is a rather gross exaggeration.

Ender
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IMO it is the divine duty of the wealthy to help out these persons. Not the government. The trouble is that all wealthy do not feel that way. We have all the resources and money to feed everyone now.
 
Michael_Mayo said:
Why would you ask that? The term refers to the idea that tax breaks or other economic benefits provided to businesses and upper income levels will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole. or, as the Pope stated, “assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”
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I know unemployment goes down in that way. But that can be done with central banks too.
 
billcu1 said:
IMO it is the divine duty of the wealthy to help out these persons. Not the government. The trouble is that all wealthy do not feel that way. We have all the resources and money to feed everyone now.
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Yes, if the wealthy exclude the powerless rather than share with them the common good suffers. and “a new tyranny is born”.
 
Michael_Mayo said:
Why would you ask that?
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I asked because I want to point out that the term has no particular meaning.
The term refers to the idea that tax breaks or other economic benefits provided to businesses and upper income levels will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole.
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This definition comes right out of Wikipedia so let me provide other citations from that same article:*Although the term “trickle down” is mainly political and does not denote a specific economic theory, some economic theories reflect the meaning of this pejorative. *

Economist Thomas Sowell has written that the actual path of money in a private enterprise economy is quite the opposite of that claimed by people who refer to the trickle-down theory.
There are two points here:
  1. The term trickle-down has no particular meaning and doesn’t refer to any specific economic theory. It is simply a way to disparage something without having to present an actual argument.
  2. Whatever a trickle-down economy is, it isn’t a private enterprise economy, which is what we have in this country … or at least had at one time.
Ender
 
billcu1 said:
IMO it is the divine duty of the wealthy to help out these persons. Not the government. The trouble is that all wealthy do not feel that way. We have all the resources and money to feed everyone now.
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One point at a time. The question I was addressing was not how best to help the hungry but how many hungry there are. The assertion that 16 million children in the US go to bed hungry every day is a pretty grave misinterpretation of the facts.

Ender
 
Ceil-1 said:
I don’t know, but in a Public Health Nursing Neighborhood Assessment and through my practicum with a Master’s in Public Health Nurse at a school teeming with the above, there were certain common denominators:

a. no fathers
b. incompetent parenting
c. neglected children
d. plenty of public assistance, plenty of help from the school

Yes, it was a food desert, but, the government, with the help of private companies were doing their level best. People choose the junk foods. A store, between the crime, and the poor choices, could not sustain itself.

The problem with poverty in THIS country is cultural and moral. That poverty is what leads to the hunger and the want, and it is spreading in this country. Spreading very rapidly.

I wish our pope would stick to the spiritual side of things, and leave the worldly worries to the secular world. 😦
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My wife works as a school nurse…from what she tells me all what you say is true…the only point I would add is that part of the problem is that in our politically correct society if you dare to mention that a majority of these kids in those situations are of a certain color…well…you can kiss your career and whatever else goodbye…so nothing gets done…and most of these problems ARE spiritual in nature and have been taken over by secular government…just like abortion…same sex marriage etc…this is what happens when the secular world thinks it can replace God with its own set of values…the Pope is only saying what (we) the church should have been doing all along and not have left it to the secular world
 
CaptFun responds in RED emphases below (bold, italitcs, etc.) are mostly mine
gnjsdad said:
While the Pope would never direct such a comment at one country in particluar (in this case, there IS no one particular country; the Pope is attacking the ideology of capitalism and globalization), might there be at least an infinitesimally small chance that he is referring to the beating heart of predatory capitalism, aka Wall Street, nourished and breast fed by the “socialist” Obama, housed in the United States of America?

As a social experiment I’m toying with introducing the phrase “that trickle-down Obama” into conversations just to see who will be confused and who will say “Hey, yeah!” 😉

Just learned from Jimmy Akin’s NCR article:
(Usually, the pope does not draft the document himself, but it is drafted based on his decisions, and he has final approval over what it says.)
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CrossofChrist said:
It’s a cultural thing. If we better followed Jesus’ example we wouldn’t have this problem.

Perhaps we should listen to the insight of Keynes:

“I see men free to go back to some of the most solid and true principles of religion and traditional virtues such as these: the love of money is despicable and some … really walking on the path of virtue and deep wisdom … will prefer the good to the useful. We shall honor those who can appreciate the lilies of the field that they do not sow nor spin. The commitment to do to others will continue to have a reason, even when it has ceased to have the right to do to their own advantage”
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I wonder what Jesus thinks of the Federal Reserve System and the trillions of dollars they counterfeit.
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
Perfect post. With all due respect to the Holy Father, unless he is speaking of Latin American oligarchies only, it seems (note that: seems) that he is absolutely mistaken and rejecting the papal teachings of the last 125+ years.
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That seems like a very Protestant point of view. Many abortionists take the same approach. I think we need to take extreme care to understand the Pope’s words completely - it feeds the opposition when Catholics appear to dismiss them arbitrarily.

And I don’t mean to point you out individually - there are several posts on this thread here that seem to have a similar dismissal.
 
CaptFun said:
CaptFun responds in RED emphases below (bold, italitcs, etc.) are mostly mine
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Personally involved. This is the key. And the source of much of my disagreement with those on the left.

I am called to be my brother’s keeper. I am not called to have someone else do it, when I am able to. Subsidiarity, in other words, is what is called for.
 
Crossbones said:
I think we need to take extreme care to understand the Pope’s words completely.
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I really hope Fr. Barron does a podcast on this. I always feel that I can trust his commentaries on such things, that he doesn’t put a conservative or liberal spin on his comments about these kinds of statements.
 
Crossbones said:
That seems like a very Protestant point of view. Many abortionists take the same approach. I think we need to take extreme care to understand the Pope’s words completely - it feeds the opposition when Catholics appear to dismiss them arbitrarily.

And I don’t mean to point you out individually - there are several posts on this thread here that seem to have a similar dismissal.
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I think that you are absolutely correct. I have not had time to read the entire document; only snippets really. Which is why I said “seems”. I will read it over the holidays and get back to you all.

Just a clarification. I am uncomfortable using the tags “right” and “left” when discussing the Church. Neither American political party is perfect. Republicans can certainly be too much about profits (I, for one, am no fan of many big corporations-I think that they should be rare, and only exist for those few cases when smaller private enterprise can not perform a function); Democrats’ support of gay so called marriage and abortion and (at the very least soft) socialism means that they are even more at odds with my Church.

I will listen (read) the Holy Father because I am a loyal son of the Church above all else.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
No one can complain that the bottom 50% pay little-to-nothing in effective income taxes while they’re forced to compete for the 2% scraps because the top 50% horde 98% of taxable wealth. Trickle-down economics has only ever made the rich richer, sometimes at the expense of the poor, and it is the achilles heel of the conservative bootstrap philosophy.
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Exactly. When I was single I made about 26k per year, and I paid taxes. So, that means 50% of the country makes even less than that. I don’t whine, “Why don’t they pay taxes?” I ask in outrage, “What is wrong with our society that they don’t earn enough to pay taxes?”
 
Ender said:
I asked because I want to point out that the term has no particular meaning.
This definition comes right out of Wikipedia so let me provide other citations from that same article:*Although the term “trickle down” is mainly political and does not denote a specific economic theory, some economic theories reflect the meaning of this pejorative. *

Economist Thomas Sowell has written that the actual path of money in a private enterprise economy is quite the opposite of that claimed by people who refer to the trickle-down theory.
There are two points here:
  1. The term trickle-down has no particular meaning and doesn’t refer to any specific economic theory. It is simply a way to disparage something without having to present an actual argument.
  2. Whatever a trickle-down economy is, it isn’t a private enterprise economy, which is what we have in this country … or at least had at one time.
Ender
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I think you are correct trickle down simplifies an idea of how some thing that improving the wealthy will help the poor. The Orignal article coming from the Post which is very liberal would love to say this. It makes the pope sound more “liberal” but it is incorrect to think of the pope in this way. As I said earlier the Pope is Catholic not some political pundit. He views the world in the eyes of the Church no some political ideology.

from my preliminary reading of this I think the Pope is trying to say that ethics and morality must govern the economy not greed, not the love of money. I don’t think the Pope is making any stances on certain economic view points, he doesn’t condemn capitalism he doesn’t endorse distributism or something else, he is rather saying that what ever economic system rules the world should be regulated by ethics and morality.
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
I think that you are absolutely correct. I have not had time to read the entire document; only snippets really. Which is why I said “seems”. I will read it over the holidays and get back to you all.

Just a clarification. I am uncomfortable using the tags “right” and “left” when discussing the Church. Neither American political party is perfect. Republicans can certainly be too much about profits (I, for one, am no fan of many big corporations-I think that they should be rare, and only exist for those few cases when smaller private enterprise can not perform a function); Democrats’ support of gay so called marriage and abortion and (at the very least soft) socialism means that they are even more at odds with my Church.

I will listen (read) the Holy Father because I am a loyal son of the Church above all else.
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you are spot on about these labels they are only destructive and do no good, and don’t explain what is going on. Our political system wants to define everything by the political and liberal labels. People will say the pope is liberal, the pope is not conservative enough blah blah. What matters it that the Pope is Catholic and he is speaking with the eyes of the church.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
No one can complain that the bottom 50% pay little-to-nothing in effective income taxes while they’re forced to compete for the 2% scraps because the top 50% horde 98% of taxable wealth. Trickle-down economics has only ever made the rich richer, sometimes at the expense of the poor, and it is the achilles heel of the conservative bootstrap philosophy.
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They aren’t hoarding it. A lot of that is EARNED INCOME built-in investment that creates JOBS for people.

Or do you think the nanny fed can just keep printing money out of thin air?

If you want to see hoarding, look at rich liberals out in NY or CA in the movie business who don’t anything with their money but let it rust in a bank. :tsktsk:

But I guess they get a free pass because of the mutual support of the Democratic Party. :rolleyes:

Wouldn’t want the success your favourite American political party to get in the way of those principles, now, eh? :o

Look at your stuffed closet before your so inclined to criticize others.
 
Ender said:
One point at a time. The question I was addressing was not how best to help the hungry but how many hungry there are. The assertion that 16 million children in the US go to bed hungry every day is a pretty grave misinterpretation of the facts.

Ender
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Private charity.

Western governments have horrible track records when they try and help people.

But for the left, results do not matter. Only feeling good about trying, and by trying I mean showing up every 2-4 years to vote for liberal, anti-Catholic politicians.
 
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