Francis on wealth and poverty

View 801 Thursday, December 05, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

 

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

 

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

 

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

 

Cogito ergo sum.

Descartes

 

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. Cogito,

Ambrose Bierce

Quote of the day:

"Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon.The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game." Vladimir Putin

The Pope has said that unrestricted capitalism is evil, or words to that effect. What His Holiness said is close enough to truth. I have said for many years that unrestricted capitalism leads to the sale of human flesh in the public markets, and I have seen no convincing refutation. It is not that capitalism is evil, or that all capitalists are evil, or that evil is intended.

It is also true that capitalism is the most powerful engine for generating wealth that we know of. That has been clear for a long time, but politicians and regulators must be reminded of that with some frequency. We have also long known that the greed for money is the root of most evil, and that we need reminding of that with some frequency as well.

The Pope also condemned the growing disparity in wealth between rich and poor. This is hardly a new message, nor is it confined to Christian apologists. Aristotle spoke of the merits of rule by the middle class, defined as those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation, and the deficits of rule by those of great wealth have been discussed from classical times to the present. The Pope said nothing particularly new, but then people seldom need educating but often need reminding. The obligations of the wealthy have been known from Biblical times, and for most of the time from then to now have been ignored.

Capitalism generates wealth, and inevitably aggravates the discrepancies between rich and poor. This is obvious to everyone. What is easy to overlook, or dismiss as trickle-down, is the absolute rise in wealth of the poor. When I was born no one had a right to sulfa drugs or penicillin; now these are an entitlement of nearly everyone in what we call the First World, and thanks to Bill Gates and those like him are becoming available to those in what we are pleased to call the developing counties; indeed the only reason we have for using the term developing countries is that the wealthy nations have generated so much wealth – generally through the engines of capitalism – have exported technology to them. Meanwhile, in the United States, the poorest in the land have access to wonders that did not exist when I was young, and few starve. The Christian world has always been under the command to respond if anyone asks for charity (“If anyone ask of thee, give generously”) although many need reminding of that. But that, says the Pope, is not quite enough: to spend one’s life accumulating wealth without attention to one’s responsibilities s to lose one’s reason for being. All may not agree with that, but it is hardly astonishing that a Christian bishop would say it.

 

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.

* * *

Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect, and promote the poor. I exhort you to a generous solidarity and to the return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favors human beings.

Francis Bishop of Rome

I don’t find that an astonishing thing for a Pope to say.

RIP: Nelson Mandela, former President of the Republic of South Africa. The transition from apartheid to integration has not been entirely peaceful, but it never rose to civil war, and if South Africa still has a chance of emerging as a civilized society and nation it is due to him. He could have been a dictator. Instead he was a President.

RIP Lt. Col. T. R. Fehrenbach, AUS Ret. Author of This Kind of War, the best book on the Korean War I know of. I had a sporadic correspondence with him for years, and I count myself one of his admirers. http://www.mysanantonio.com/obituaries/article/T-R-Fehrenbach-made-history-read-like-the-news-5026139.php

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.