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

[Bubba_Switzler]

Perhaps your characterization of the way the passage can be “broken down” into the two contrasting perspectives you list is not something to be swallowed uncritically.

I look forward to your criticism of it.

Perhaps there is also a large contingent of people who believe that a certain minimum standard of material SUSTENANCE (rather than ABUNDANCE) INCREASES THE ODDS of bringing about greater “justice and inclusiveness” in the world, rather than a priori guaranteeing it.

You can invent all the standards you want but they are meaningless until they are realized. Even setting aside the morality of redistribution by force, you have to grow food in order to redistribute it. Subsistent societies are generally living on the edge, if not the reality, of poverty and are vulnerable to natural catastrophe such as hurricanes and famines. But all of that entirely misses the point that there is more to life than bread, more to work than earning a living.

Perhaps it is possible that Francis recognizes and supports such a view, and that he has done so in this encyclical–that it is not a repudiation of the “welfare state,” but rather a repudiation of unbridled capitalism.

That assertion is contradicted by paragraphs 192, 202, and 204 (which, for some strage reason, have not gotten much exposure in the popular press).

 

[bilop]

There are issues that can be addressed through the government. One is child support. Maybe it should be greater to lessen the poverty felt by family raised by a single parent. Maybe there should be stronger legal consequences for failure to fulfill court ordered obligations.

Another is a recognition that some corporate policies are not just amoral, but actually immoral and, furthermore, bad business practices. The Holy Father speaks of lay-offs to raise profits and stock price. That certainly does occur, but has anyone tried to say it is immoral before. Also, companies that have frequent lay-offs seem to underperform the market, so it isn’t even good business practice.

Just a few thoughts…

The problem with most single parent families is not that the fathers don’t pay enough child support, it’s that they don’t work at all. You can’t get blood from a stone.

The whole tax and welfare system should be oriented towards supporting couples remaining married and together. For example, a poor family should get more Gov’t assistance if the father is present and married to the mother, than if there is no father.

Today it is the complete opposite. A woman who has three children by three different deadbeat dads get a ton of public assistance (Medicaid, Food Stamps, Section 8, cash benefits) while a woman with three children married to their father, who works for minimum wage, gets far, far less.

You can’t prevent companies from laying people off, otherwise they’ll never hire anyone. Companies and industries grow and shrink. If you make them keep more workers than they need, you’ll just push them into bankruptcy, and all will lose their jobs, rather than just some.

What you need is a reasonable trade and tariff policy so that companies can’t profit by moving all their manufacturing to China, and customer service to India. It’s impossible to have a just society if there aren’t decent blue collar jobs that an average person with a high school education can get.

God Bless

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

If you want to include those in your discussion and you feel they articulate your view clearly, then they should be welcome. It would be additionally helpful if you explain why they articulate your point of view so well. But too often, it seems posters just throw stuff up there without comment that articulates a party-line point of view without directly commenting on the document itself (RE: the national review article) dragging any discussion to a halt.

Like this?

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11441255&postcount=86

 

[seekerz]

This is the passage that refers to trickle-down economics.
In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which 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. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

I think instead of reading what others write about it; we should direct ourselves to the document itself.

If I could put it in one sentence, it would be that increasing economic prosperity by itself will not necessarily positively impact the most needy or powerless among us.

That’s only commonsense: just because some people get richer doesn’t automatically mean that they will set in motion mechanisms allowing this increased prosperity to filter to the less fortunate. It could simply mean that the rich leave the poor further behind in the dust.

How are these views even controversial? This is just human nature in a capsule.

 

[Crossbones]

Like this?

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11441255&postcount=86

Yes, that is an excellent post.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

Yes, that is an excellent post.

I’ll endeavor to do more like that.

 

[stinkcat_14]

This. Although I have seen a study that says that if you confiscated all the wealth of the top 1%, you’d only run the government for a matter of months.

You may be confusing wealth with income here. Total wealth in the US is around $55 trillion and the top 1% own about 45% of that. Government spending is around $3.5 trillion per year, so you could run the government for quite a while if you confiscated the wealth of the top 1%.

 

[Crossbones]

The problem with most single parent families is not that the fathers don’t pay enough child support, it’s that they don’t work at all. You can’t get blood from a stone.

The whole tax and welfare system should be oriented towards supporting couples remaining married and together. For example, a poor family should get more Gov’t assistance if the father is present and married to the mother, than if there is no father.

Today it is the complete opposite. A woman who has three children by three different deadbeat dads get a ton of public assistance (Medicaid, Food Stamps, Section 8, cash benefits) while a woman with three children married to their father, who works for minimum wage, gets far, far less.

You can’t prevent companies from laying people off, otherwise they’ll never hire anyone. Companies and industries grow and shrink. If you make them keep more workers than they need, you’ll just push them into bankruptcy, and all will lose their jobs, rather than just some.

What you need is a reasonable trade and tariff policy so that companies can’t profit by moving all their manufacturing to China, and customer service to India. It’s impossible to have a just society if there aren’t decent blue collar jobs that an average person with a high school education can get.

God Bless

Not sure about the specific examples you pointed out, but there are certainly ways for government to ensure that parents meet their obligations. Yes, there are examples where fathers cannot meet obligations because they might not have a job, but there are court remedies for such things. I think this is not talked about enough though. Look at the long thread on WalMart on the World News forum; while the obligations of parents isn’t brought up at all.

For companies, I don’t think companies should never lay off or fire, but I do think Wall Street needs to stop rewarding behavior that is long-term contrary to the bottom line. In general, US corporations tend to be overly short-sited to the detriment of the larger society as well as the long-term success. It is behavior taught in business schools and reinforced by poorly thought out reward systems inside the corporation. Government could force changes to corporate governance that result in more active stockholders and a check on the CEO/BOD cronyism.

Trade barriers are specific to issues within the United States, but generally, I do think that the government should only buy products made in the United States to stimulate the economy and lessen what I perceive to be a national security risk.

 

[SuperLuigi]

You may be confusing wealth with income here. Total wealth in the US is around $55 trillion and the top 1% own about 45% of that. Government spending is around $3.5 trillion per year, so you could run the government for quite a while if you confiscated the wealth of the top 1%.

Sure, provided you could sell off everything at once at market value.

That won’t happen.

And 55/3.5= 15.7.

Factor in the tax revenue you get maybe 20-25 years.

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”

-Thatcher

 

[SuperLuigi]

I guess Enron, Citibank, and AIG pretty much prove your point, right?

The results of economic and social Darwinism (unfettered free markets) can be nothing but catastrophic, in a “natural” state.

Francis is making, essentially, this same point. You might want to read what he is saying more closely.

Actually, the free market works great with commerce and charity.

The problem is when government decides to intervene and decides who wins and who loses.

BTW, the American government is acting just like Enron, but instead of going out of business or going to jail, they get free passes because most of them are leftists.

 

[stinkcat_14]

Sure, provided you could sell off everything at once at market value.

That won’t happen.

And 55/3.5= 15.7.

Factor in the tax revenue you get maybe 20-25 years.

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”

-Thatcher

But of course your argument was that we couldn’t run the government for more than a few months if we confiscated all the wealth. I was just correcting your factual error. On the other hand, if you are arguing that confiscating all the wealth of the top 1% would be imprudent, I think then you are arguing a straw man because nobody has seriously proposed that.

 

[Darryl1958]

Actually, the free market works great with commerce and charity.

The problem is when government decides to intervene and decides who wins and who loses.

BTW, the American government is acting just like Enron, but instead of going out of business or going to jail, they get free passes because most of them are leftists.

The lies that were used to sell Obamacare were the largest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people.

 

[Darryl1958]

Confiscating the total wealth of the top 1 percent would be exactly the same thing as killing the goose the laid the golden eggs.

At the exact same moment the government brings down the axe on all that wealth, is the exact same moment that all those golden eggs stop being produced.

It is the same mistake that the Spanish made by going after the gold of the New World. They never became wealthier, because the value of gold lies not in the gold but in the mind of the beholder.
Confiscate all the mansions of all the rich, and all the money of their rich buddies, and who will be able to buy those mansions once they are put back up on the market?

Wealth involves much more than an accumulation of things.

 

[stinkcat_14]

Confiscating the total wealth of the top 1 percent would be exactly the same thing as killing the goose the laid the golden eggs.

I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that. I am not sure why superluigi suggested it.

 

[BCole]

If Pope Francis was suggesting that we should live under the boot heals of Statism, well, that suggestion can only be diabolical.

 

[SuperLuigi]

But of course your argument was that we couldn’t run the government for more than a few months if we confiscated all the wealth. I was just correcting your factual error.

You were responding to someone else and you really didn’t correct them, you were arguing semantics in the high hopes of promoting a liberal agenda.

On the other hand, if you are arguing that confiscating all the wealth of the top 1% would be imprudent, I think then you are arguing a straw man because nobody has seriously proposed that.

 

[SuperLuigi]

I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that. I am not sure why superluigi suggested it.

Sorry, Stinkcat_14. My bad.

 

[SuperLuigi]

If Pope Francis was suggesting that we should live under the boot heals of Statism, well, that suggestion can only be diabolical.

Getting back to the issue, I can’t possibly believe a Pope would support that. The catechism is crystal clear on central planning.

But the Pope needs a better understanding of localized Catholic economics, and when you give speeches like that you need to know your audience.

 

[Darryl1958]

I don’t think anyone here disagrees with that. I am not sure why superluigi suggested it.

I think if you go back, that was not what SL suggested. It was just something he brought up as an interesting little point while agreeing with another poster on the failure of big spending, big government policies to either be effective tools against poverty, or be effective in the maintenance of the dignity of the human persons such polices are purported to serve.

For myself. my contribution mostly was to agree with that author who came to conclusion that all he ever really needed to know he learned in kindgergarten. Taking away all of the wealth of the rich, which *maybe *nobody here believes in, would be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. That kind of action would destroy the system. I doubt that even Chavez was insane enough to do that in one fell swoop of the axe anyway.

Anyway, I am not sure if the people here that think that capitalism is the enemy, and that the pope has their back on that, don’t think that confiscating the wealth of the rich is such a bad idea.
I am sure that is not what you think, but for some here, I think that they might be okay with that.

 

[gnjsdad]

If Pope Francis was suggesting that we should live under the boot heals of Statism, well, that suggestion can only be diabolical.

The Pope was not suggesting that…at all.

It is Catholic teaching that the state has a legitimate function in human affairs: to promote the common good.

The state, per se, is not the enemy, despite what some conservatives of a libertarian bent might say.

Since we in America now have no real Catholic influence in political affairs any more, our understanding of the state is necessarily distorted by ideological perspectives.

I don’t quite understand what you mean by “boot heals of Statism”. If, in using that term you mean that the state has no legitimate or compelling reason to take actions to alleviate the effects of poverty or unemployment through the use of the taxing power, then I would point out that the use of such power for such reasons has always been recognized as just by the Church. If, on the other hand, “boot heals of Statism” refers to socialist systems which make it a point to confiscate the wealth and property of those who “have” (in effect, depriving them of their private property) then I would say you are correct. The Church has always condemned such systems.

The Church has always recognized that public policy is a delicate balancing act. Private property is not an absolute right. Yet state measures to confiscate all of the property of others is also an injustice.

Unfortunately, we Catholics in America are handicapped because we don’t have anyone powerful or influential enough (and I’m referring to our Bishops) to remind those in authority of the real Catholic teaching on social policy. Our “conservatives” are way too influenced by libertarian ideology and our “liberals” are way too influenced by Enlightenment notions of the “public will”.