Correcting Pope Francis…Again

While I generally don’t think recycling is economically sensible, I am going to reuse this 2013 BBC interview because it’s time (again) to criticize the economic illiteracy of Pope Francis.

As I’ve previously explained, it’s good to care for the less fortunate. Indeed, as I explain in the interview, it’s part of being a good person.

It’s misguided, however, to think that higher taxes and bigger government are an effective way of lifting people out of poverty.

Indeed, we have centuries of evidence demonstrating that only capitalism produces mass prosperity.

Sadly, Pope Francis has a Peronist mindset on economic matters. So when he issues his thoughts on economic matters, we get erroneous cliches rather than helpful analysis.

A story from the Associated Press summarizes the Pope’s new attack on economic liberty.

Pope Francis says…the “magic theories” of market capitalism have failed and that the world needs a new type of politics that promotes dialogue and solidarity… The document draws its inspiration from…the pope’s previous preaching on the injustices of the global economy. “…not everything can be resolved by market freedom,” he wrote. …As an outgrowth of that, Francis rejected the concept of an absolute right to property for individuals… He repeated his criticism of the “perverse” global economic system, which he said consistently keeps the poor on the margins while enriching the few… Francis also rejected “trickle-down” economic theory… “Neo-liberalism simply reproduces itself by resorting to magic theories of ‘spillover’ or ‘trickle’ — without using the name — as the only solution to societal problems,” he wrote. “There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged ‘spillover’ does not resolve the inequality.

And here’s how NPR reported the Pope’s anti-market message.

The document..is a scathing description of laissez faire capitalism… Once the pandemic passes, the pope writes, “our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation.” …Francis says the marketplace cannot resolve every problem, and he denounces what he describes as “this dogma of neoliberal faith” that “resort[s] to the magic theories of ‘spillover’ or ‘trickle.’ ” A good economic policy, he says, creates jobs — it doesn’t eliminate them.

The Pope is right that good policy creates jobs, by the way, but he’s wildly wrong to think that there’s a better alternative than capitalism.

For what it’s worth, I’m guessing that he doesn’t like the fact that capitalism means “creative destruction,” which does result in millions of jobs being eliminated every year. But, barring a recession, that same process also leads to the creation of an even greater number of new jobs.

Equally important, this is the process that results in higher productivity, higher wages, and higher living standards.

The bottom line is that a statist economic agenda – at best – offers the poor a life of dependency (especially when you consider the very high implicit marginal tax rates created by redistribution programs).

Capitalism, by contrast, gives the poor opportunity and upward mobility (as I noted a few years ago, it would be much better to be a poor person in Hong Kong than in France).

P.S. I strongly recommend what Thomas Sowell and George Will wrote about the Pope’s anti-market ideology.

P.P.S. Mauritius is a powerful example of why the Pope is very fallible on economic matters.

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More Economic Illiteracy from Pope Francis

Back in 2013, I talked to the BBC about Pope Francis and his bizarre hostility to free enterprise.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear that the Pope took my advice (though I think it’s amusing that at least someone in the Vatican is paying attention).

There’s a wealth of evidence that markets are the best way of helping the poor. But the Pope wants more government.

Moreover, there’s also plenty of data showing that higher tax rates and more spending hurt the poor. Yet the Pope wants more government.

And there’s lots of research on capitalism and upward mobility for the less fortunate. Nonetheless, the Pope wants more government.

For instance, he’s once again advertising his ignorance about economics, development, and fiscal policy.

Pope Francis blasted the practice of tax cuts for the rich as part of a “structure of sin” and lamented the fact that “billions of dollars” end up in “tax haven accounts” instead of funding “healthcare and education.” Speaking at the seminar set up by the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences  the Pope criticized “the richest people” for receiving “repeated tax cuts” in the name of “investment and development.” These “tax haven accounts” impede “the possibility of the dignified and sustained development of all social agents,” claims the Pope.  He added that “the poor increase around us” as poverty is rising around the world. This poverty can be ended if the wealthiest gave more.

Wow. Sounds more like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rather than a religious leader.

Libertarian Jesus must be very disappointed.

In an attempt to add some rigorous analysis to the discussion, Professors Antony Davies and James Harrigan wrote a column for the Foundation for Economic Education on capitalism and its role in global poverty reduction.

Galileo ran afoul of the Inquisition in 1633 when he was found “vehemently suspect of heresy.” …One might think that being this profoundly wrong about something well outside the realm of theology would cause the magisterium, and the pope specifically, to tread very carefully even 386 years later. But one would be wrong. Because here comes Pope Francis yet again, offering economic opinions from the bulliest of pulpits about something he understands no better than a garden-variety college freshman. …According to the pontiff, “the logic of the market” keeps people hungry. But “the market” has no logic. The market isn’t a thing, let alone a sentient thing. “The market” is the sum total of individual interactions among billions of people. …Whenever a trade occurs, both sides are better off for having made it. We know this because if they weren’t, the trade wouldn’t occur. …Not surprisingly to anyone but perhaps Pope Francis, some of the first financial speculation in which humans ever engaged involved food. Financial speculation and its more evolved cousins, options and futures contracts, evolved precisely as a means to fight hunger. …speculators took some of the risk of price fluctuations off the backs of farmers, and this made it possible for farmers to plant more food.

Davies and Harrigan inject some hard data into the debate.

If these arguments are too esoteric for Francis, there is also overwhelming evidence. Economic freedom measures the degree to which a country’s government permits and supports the very sorts of markets against which Francis rails. …If we list societies according to their economic freedom, the same pattern emerges again and again and again. Whether comparing countries, states, or cities, societies that are more economically free exhibit better social and economic outcomes than those that are less economically free. …even Francis should be able to see it quite clearly from his Vatican perch. …Extreme poverty rates for the half of countries that are less economically free are around seven times the extreme poverty rates for the half of countries that are more economically free.

Here’s one of the charts from their column.

As you can see, the state-controlled economies on the left have much higher levels of poverty than the market-driven economies on the right.

They also share some economic history.

…if the world around Francis doesn’t provide enough compelling evidence, the world prior to Francis certainly does. At the turn of the 18th century, around 95 percent of humans lived in extreme poverty. That was at the advent of the Industrial Revolution and of capitalism. …the extreme poverty rate fell from 95 percent to below ten percent. With the flourishing of capitalism, the extreme poverty rate fell tenfold at the same time that the number of humans grew tenfold.

Amen. Videos by Deirdre McCloskey and by Don Boudreaux confirm how the world went from near-universal poverty to mass prosperity (at least in the nations that embraced free markets and the rule of law).

By contrast, there’s not a single example of a nation that became rich and reduced poverty with big government.

P.S. Mauritius is a good test case of why Pope Francis is wrong. Very wrong.

P.P.S. To learn more about why Pope Francis is off base, I also recommend the wise words of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

P.P.P.S. To be fair, there was plenty of bad economics in the Vatican before Francis became Pope. And also some sound thinking.

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Pope Francis Rejects Prosperity for Developing Nations

I first opined about Pope Francis in 2013, when I told a BBC audience why the Pope was wrong on economic policy.

The following year, I expanded on that point, explaining that statist policies are bad for the poor. And I revisited the issue again last year.

I’m not the only one making these arguments. In a column for Reason, Stephanie Slade explained why Pope Francis is deeply misguided.

I’ve had some harsh words to describe Pope Francis. …the pontiff’s ignorance of basic economics has led him to a bad conclusion about which public policies are best able to reduce the crushing yoke of poverty in the world. …as a matter of empirical fact, markets are the single greatest engine for growth and enrichment that humanity has yet stumbled upon. …He seems to be arguing that an outlook that places the individual above “the common good” is morally suspect. …his statements betray a shallowness in his understanding of the philosophy he’s impugning. If he took the time to really engage with our ideas, he might be surprised by what he learned. …what Pope Francis calls an “antisocial” paradigm…is better known by another name: the liberty movement, a cooperative and sometimes even rather social endeavor among people who cherish peaceful, voluntary human interactions.

Sadly, there’s zero evidence that Pope Francis has learned any economics since taking up residence in the Vatican.

For instance, he just visited Mauritius, a small island nation to the east of Madagascar.

His economic advice, as reported by Yahoo, was extremely primitive.

Pope Francis on Monday urged Mauritius, a prosperous magnet for tourists and a global tax haven, to shun an “idolatrous economic model” that excludes the youth and the poor… While the island is a beacon of stability and relative prosperity, Pope Francis honed in on the struggles of the youth… “It is a hard thing to say, but, despite the economic growth your country has known in recent decades, it is the young who are suffering the most. They suffer from unemployment, which not only creates uncertainty about the future, but also prevents them from believing that they play a significant part in your shared history,” said the pope. …Since independence in 1968, Mauritius has developed from a poor, agriculture-based economy, to one of Africa’s wealthiest nations and financial services hub. …General unemployment is low compared to the rest of the continent at 6.9 percent in 2018 according to the World Bank…

I’m glad the article acknowledges that Mauritius has been economically successful.

Though I’m frustrated by the failure to explain why.

So I’ll redress that error of omission by showing that Mauritius dramatically expanded economic liberty in the 1980s and 1990s. The nation’s absolute score jumped from 5.11 in 1980 to 8.07 in the most-recent estimates from Economic Freedom of the World.

It’s done such a good job that Mauritius is now ranked as the world’s 9th-freest economy.

So what has greater economic liberty produced?

More national prosperity.

A lot more. Based on the Maddison data, you can see that living standards (as measured by per-capita GDP) have tripled over the past three-plus decades.

I confess that I’ve never been to Mauritius.

So maybe it’s possible that the country is filled with “idolotrous” folks who think of nothing but money.

But I’m guessing that people in Mauritius are just like the rest of us. But with one key difference in that they’ve been following the recipe for growth and prosperity.

Too bad Pope Francis instead believes in the Peronist model that has wreaked so much havoc in Argentina.

P.S. The Pope should read Stephanie Slade’s column. Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell also should be on his list.

P.P.S. Methinks Pope Francis should have a conversation with Libertarian Jesus. He could start here, here, and here.

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Pope Francis Endorses Slower Growth and More Poverty

I almost feel guilty when I criticize the garbled economic thoughts of Pope Francis. After all, he was influenced by Peronist ideology as a youngster, so he was probably a lost cause from the beginning.

Moreover, Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have already dissected his irrational ramblings on economics and explained that free markets are better for the poor. Especially when compared to government dependency.

But since Pope Francis just attacked tax havens, and I consider myself the world’s foremost defender of these low-tax jurisdictions, I can’t resist adding my two cents. Here’s what the Wall Street Journal just reported about the Pope’s ideological opposition to market-friendly tax systems.

The Vatican denounced the use of offshore tax havens… The document, which was released jointly by the Vatican’s offices for Catholic doctrine and social justice, echoed past warnings by Pope Francis over the dangers of unbridled capitalism. …The teaching document, which was personally approved by the pope, suggested that greater regulation of the world’s financial markets was necessary to contain “predatory and speculative” practices and economic inequality.

He even embraced global regulation, not understanding that this increases systemic risk.

“The supranational dimension of the economic system makes it easy to bypass the regulations established by individual countries,” the Vatican said. “The current globalization of the financial system requires a stable, clear and effective coordination among various national regulatory authorities.”

And he said that governments should have more money to spend.

A section of the document was dedicated to criticizing offshore tax havens, which it said contribute to the “creation of economic systems founded on inequality,” by depriving nations of legitimate revenue.

Wow, it’s like the Pope is applying for a job at the IMF or OECD. Or even with the scam charity Oxfam.

In any event, he’s definitely wrong on how to generate more prosperity. Maybe he should watch this video.

Or read Marian Tupy.

Or see what Nobel Prize winners have to say.

P.S. And if the all that doesn’t work, methinks Pope Francis should have a conversation with Libertarian Jesus. He could start here, here, and here.

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In the Debate over Capitalism and the Poor, the Score Is: Thomas Sowell 1 – Pope Francis 0

Two days ago, I contrasted the views of Pope Francis and Walter Williams about capitalism and morality.

I explained that Walter had the upper hand because free markets are a positive-sum game based on voluntary exchange while redistribution (at best) is a zero-sum game based on coercion.

That’s the theoretical argument. Now let’s look at the empirical data, specifically focusing on which approach is best for the less fortunate.

Thomas Sowell, the great economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is not impressed by the Pope’s analysis. Here some of what Prof. Sowell wrote for Investor’s Business Daily.

Pope Francis has created political controversy…by blaming capitalism for many of the problems of the poor. …putting aside religious or philosophical questions, we have more than two centuries of historical evidence… Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. …which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate — fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie? …the official poverty level in the U.S. is the upper middle class in Mexico. The much criticized market economy of the U.S. has done far more for the poor than the ideology of the left. Pope Francis’ own native Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions he is now promoting around the world.

I briefly discussed the failure of the Peronist Argentinian model last month, but let’s take a closer look at Professor Sowell’s assertions about the U.S. and Argentina.

My colleague at the Cato Institute, Marian Tupy, has put together a great fact-filled website called Human Progress, and it allows users to access all sorts of databases to produce their own charts and tables.

And here’s what the data shows about per-capita economic output in Argentina and the United States.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the supposedly more compassionate system in Argentina.

As you can see from this table, Argentina actually was slightly richer than the U.S. back in 1896. But that nation’s shift to statism, particularly after World War II, hindered Argentina’s growth rates.

And seemingly modest differences in growth, compounded over decades, have a huge impact on living standards for ordinary people (i.e., inflation-adjusted GDP per person climbing nearly $27,000 in the U.S. vs an increase of less than $6,700 in Argentina).

By the way, this is not an endorsement of America’s economic policy. We have far too much statism in the United States.

But compared to Argentina, which generally has ranked in the bottom quartile for economic freedom, the United States has a more market-friendly track record.

To help make the bigger point about the importance of economic liberty, let’s now compare the United States with a jurisdiction that consistently has been ranked as the world’s freest economy.

Look at changes in economic output in America and Hong Kong from 1950 to the present. As you can see, Hong Kong started the period as a very poor jurisdiction, with per-capita output only about one-fourth of American levels.

But thanks to better policy, which led to faster growth compounding over several decades, Hong Kong has now caught up to the United States.

What’s most remarkable, if you look at the table, is that per-capita output over the past 65 years has soared by more than 1,275 percent in Hong Kong.

Needless to say, if the U.S. is out-performing Argentina and Hong Kong is out-performing the U.S., then a comparison of Hong Kong and Argentina would yield ever starker results.

I actually did something like that back in 2011 and the results further underscore that there’s a very powerful relationship between economic policy and economic performance.

Which brings us back to the fundamental issue of what system is best for the less fortunate in society?

I suppose that’s a judgement call, but poor people obviously have higher incomes and more opportunity when there’s strong economic growth.

But as Margaret Thatcher famously explained, some people are so consumed by disdain for success that they’re willing to accept more suffering for poor people if they can simultaneously lower the incomes of rich people.

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In the Debate over Capitalism and Morality, the Score Is: Walter Williams 1 – Pope Francis 0

The biggest mistake of well-meaning leftists is that they place too much value on good intentions and don’t seem to care nearly as much about good results.

Pope Francis is an example of this unfortunate tendency. His concern for the poor presumably is genuine, but he puts ideology above evidence when he argues against capitalism and in favor of coercive government.

Here are some passages from a CNN report on the Pope’s bias.

Pope Francis makes his first official visit to the United States this week. There’s a lot of angst about what he might say, especially when he addresses Congress Thursday morning. …He’ll probably discuss American capitalism’s flaws, a theme he has hit on since the 1990s. Pope Francis wrote a book in 1998 with an entire chapter focused on “the limits of capitalism.” …Francis argued that…capitalism lacks morals and promotes selfish behavior. …He has been especially critical of how capitalism has increased inequality… He’s tweeted: “inequality is the root of all evil.” …he’s a major critic of greed and excessive wealth. …”Capitalism has been the cause of many sufferings…”

Wow, I almost don’t know how to respond. So many bad ideas crammed in so few words.

If you want to know why Pope Francis is wrong about capitalism and human well-being, these videos narrated by Don Boudreaux and Deirdre McCloskey will explain how free markets have generated unimaginable prosperity for ordinary people.

But the Pope isn’t just wrong on facts. He’s also wrong on morality. This video by Walter Williams explains why voluntary exchange in a free-market system is far more ethical than a regime based on government coercion.

Very well stated. And I especially like how Walter explains that markets are a positive-sum game, whereas government-coerced redistribution is (at best) a zero-sum game.

Professor Williams wasn’t specifically seeking to counter the muddled economic views of Pope Francis, but others have taken up that challenge.

Writing for the Washington Post, George Will specifically addresses the Pope’s moral preening.

Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak… Francis deplores “compulsive consumerism,” a sin to which the 1.3 billion persons without even electricity can only aspire.

He specifically explains that people with genuine concern for the poor should celebrate industrialization and utilization of natural resources.

Poverty has probably decreased more in the past two centuries than in the preceding three millennia because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels. Only economic growth has ever produced broad amelioration of poverty, and since growth began in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels. …The capitalist commerce that Francis disdains is the reason the portion of the planet’s population living in “absolute poverty” ($1.25 a day) declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981.

So why doesn’t Pope Francis understand economics?

Perhaps because he learned the wrong lesson from his nation’s disastrous experiment with an especially corrupt and cronyist version of statism.

Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism, the sterile redistributionism that has reduced his Argentina from the world’s 14th highest per-capita gross domestic product in 1900 to 63rd today. Francis’s agenda for the planet — “global regulatory norms” — would globalize Argentina’s downward mobility.

Amen (no pun intended).

George Will is right that Argentina is not a good role model.

And he’s even more right about the dangers of “global norms” that inevitably would pressure all nations to impose equally bad levels of taxation and regulation.

Returning to the economic views of Pope Francis, the BBC asked for my thoughts back in 2013 and everything I said still applies today.

P.S. Let’s close by taking a look at a few examples of how the world is getting better thanks to capitalism.

We’ll start with an example of how China’s modest shift toward markets has generated huge reductions in poverty (h/t: Cato Institute).

Now let’s look at how a wealthier society is also a safer society (h/t: David Frum).

Or how about this remarkable measure of higher living standards (h/t: Mark Perry).

Here’s an amazing chart showing how something as basic as light used to be a luxury good but now is astoundingly inexpensive for the masses (h/t: Max Roser).

These are just a few random examples of how free markets, when not overly stifled by government, can produce amazing things for ordinary people.

We may not notice the results from one year to the next, but the results are remarkable when we examine data over longer periods of time.

And if our specific goal is to help the poor, there’s no question that economic growth is far more effective than government dependency.

Which is why I’ve explained that it’s better to be a poor person in a capitalist jurisdiction.

I’d much rather be a poor person in a jurisdiction such as Hong Kong or Singapore rather than in a “compassionate” country such as France. France might give me lots of handouts, but I’d remain poor. In a free-market society, by contrast, I could climb out of poverty.

P.P.S. Methinks Pope Francis would benefit from a discussion with Libertarian Jesus.

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Pope Francis Needs a Better Role Model for Economic Policy

What’s the greatest economic tragedy in modern history?

The obvious answer is communism, which produced tens of millions of needless deaths and untold misery for ordinary people. Just compare living standards in North Korea and South Korea, or Chile and Cuba.

But if there was a second-place prize for the world’s biggest economic failure, Argentina would be a strong contender.

Here’s one fact that tells you everything you need to know. In 1946, when Juan Perón came to power, Argentina was one of the 10-richest nations in the world. Economic policy certainly wasn’t perfect, but government wasn’t overly large are markets generally were allowed to function. Combined with an abundance of natural resources, that enabled considerable prosperity.

But Perón decided to conduct an experiment in statism.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes his economic policy.

Campaigning among workers with promises of land, higher wages, and social security, he won a decisive victory in the 1946 presidential elections. Under Perón, the number of unionized workers expanded as he helped to establish the powerful General Confederation of Labor. Perón turned Argentina into a corporatist country in which powerful organized interest groups negotiated for positions and resources. …The state’s role in the economy increased, reflected in the increase in state-owned property, interventionism (including control of rents and prices) and higher levels of public inversion, mainly financed by the inflationary tax. The expansive macroeconomic policy, which aimed at the redistribution of wealth and the increase of spending to finance populist policies, led to inflation. …Perón erected a system of almost complete protection against imports, largely cutting off Argentina from the international market. In 1947, he announced his first Five-Year Plan based on growth of nationalized industries.

So were these policies successful?

Not exactly. In an article published last year, The Economist wrote about Argentina’s sad decline.

…its standing as one of the world’s most vibrant economies is a distant memory… Its income per head is now 43% of those same 16 rich economies… After the second world war, when the rich world began its slow return to free trade with the negotiation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, Argentina had become a more closed economy—and it kept moving in that direction under Perón. An institution to control foreign trade was created in 1946; an existing policy of import substitution deepened; the share of trade as a percentage of GDP continued to fall. …As the urban, working-class population swelled, so did the constituency susceptible to Perón’s promise to support industry and strengthen workers’ rights. There have been periods of liberalisation since, but interventionism retains its allure.

The bottom line is that Perón was a disaster for his nation. Not only did he sabotage Argentina’s economy, he also apparently undermined the social capital of the country by somehow convincing a big chunk of the population that “Peronism” is an alluring economic philosophy.

Sadly, Pope Francis appears to be one of those people.

Here are some excerpts from a column in the New York Times.

The Economist recently called Francis “the Peronist Pope,” referring to his known sympathies for Argentina’s three-time president, Juan Perón. In the 1940s and ’50s, the populist general upended Argentina’s class structure by championing the country’s downtrodden. …“Neither Marxists nor Capitalists. Peronists!” was the chant of Perón’s supporters. And it was borrowing from the church’s political thinking that enabled Perón to found his “Third Way.” …It comes naturally, then, to Francis, who became a priest in Argentina’s politically engaged church hierarchy, to adopt a populist political tone… He speaks directly to the region’s poor with a fire found in the “liberation theology” that inspired South America’s leftist revolutionaries of the 1970s. …“If you were to read one of the sermons of the first fathers of the church, from the second or third centuries, about how you should treat the poor, you’d say it was Maoist or Trotskyist,” he said in 2010, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Pope Francis’ infatuation with statism is very unfortunate for a couple of reasons.

The obvious reason is that he is in a position of influence and he’s using that power to promote policies that will reduce prosperity. And poor people will be the biggest victims, as I explained in this BBC interview.

But there’s another problem with the Pope’s approach. Being charitable to the poor is supposed to be an act of free will, not the result of government coercion. Yet by making statements that – at the very least – are interpreted as supportive of a bigger welfare state, he’s taking free will out of the equation.

“Libertarian Jesus” would not approve.

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Message for the Pope: Caring for the Poor Doesn’t Make You a Communist, but Advancing Statism Makes You Misguided

I’ve always objected when leftists engage in moral preening about how they supposedly are more compassionate.

Europeans statists, for instance, claim to be more compassionate because their governments have greater levels of coercive redistribution. But I ask them why they think it’s compassionate to give away other people’s money. Then I shame them by showing data on how Americans are far more generous in terms of trying to help others with their own money.

I have the same debate in America. Take the issues of unemployment benefits. My leftist friends say that compassionate people should favor extended benefits. To which I reply by asking them why it’s good to pay people to not work and assert instead that genuine compassion should be defined by policies that enable people to find jobs and become self reliant.

I raise this topic because the Pope recently made news by urging more compassion for the less fortunate, and he specifically said that raising the issue will lead some to think he’s a communist.

Here are some excerpts from a news report in the U.K.-based Independent.

In one his longest speeches as Pope, the Holy See outlined his views on a wide range of issues– from poverty and the injustices of unemployment to the need to protect the environment. …Anticipating how his letter would be received by his critics, Francis declared that “land, housing and work are increasingly unavailable to the majority’ of the world’s population,” but said “If I talk about this, some will think that the Pope is communist.” “They don’t understand that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel,” he said. “Demanding this isn’t unusual, it’s the social doctrine of the church.”

Several people have asked my opinion about what the Pope said.

My initial instinct was to be very critical. After all, various news reports interpreted the Pope’s statement as an attack on capitalism and an embrace of the welfare state.

But since I know that the establishment media is biased and would want to portray the Pope’s comments as being supportive of statism, I didn’t want to make any unwarranted assumptions. So I tracked down a transcript of the speech. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s only available (at least as of this writing) in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French.

But with the help of Google Translate, I looked at what the Pope actually said. And if the translation software is accurate, I can now offer my opinion about the Pope’s views: To be succinct, I have no idea what he thinks. And if you want me to elaborate, all I can say is that he calls for lots of action to help the poor, but he doesn’t endorse government coercion to make it happen

On the other hand, he doesn’t say that government shouldn’t be involved. And the tone of the speech certainly seems left wing, but that may simply be a result of me hearing a lot of statists making similar remarks and then calling for government-coerced redistribution policies.

The bottom line, as I suggested above, is that the Pope may be wrong…or he may be right. Which seems inconsistent but accurate. After all, the Vatican sometimes has been very good on economic issues and at times very disappointing.

But I will say something definitive. If anybody, including the Pope, thinks that bigger government is the way to help the poor, they are very misguided.

I’ve already shared some powerful data to show that poverty was falling in America after World War II, but then the progress came to a halt once the federal government launched a “War on Poverty” and dramatically expanded the welfare state.

Let’s augment that data today with a specific look at what happened when the federal government decided to “help” folks in Appalachia. Here are some excerpts from a very compelling National Review column.

Appalachian whites suffer from many of the same social ills as working-class blacks: broken families, substance abuse, poor health, and high poverty. …Early anti-poverty efforts focused largely on the white population. …It was, as Ira Katznelson argued in an explosive book, a type of affirmative action — for white people. …Two federally chartered organizations — the Depression-era Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Johnson’s Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) — pumped millions of development dollars into predominantly white rural locales. …The aid came not just in the form of direct welfare payments, but also as government jobs. The country-music anthem “Song of the South” tells a familiar tale: “Papa got a job with the TVA; we bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet.” …From 1965 until 1981, when the federal government began to scrutinize the cash flowing to Appalachia, federal appropriation to the ARC exceeded $1 billion (in today’s dollars) every single year. Even today, Congress sends about $80 million to the ARC; no other regionally focused entity spends more. As late as 2000, Appalachians received more federal money per capita than average, despite their minimal cost of living and the low number of federal employees in the region.

So has all this federal largesse helped?

Well, not exactly.

…there are now precious few jobs in Tennessee valleys and too few drivers on those wide mountain roads. If Papa bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet, Junior is buying oxy or meth: West Virginia leads the nation in drug-overdose deaths, with Kentucky third and Tennessee eighth. …Today, the inheritors of Katznelson’s affirmative action for whites occupy the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. West Virginia, Kentucky, northern Georgia, and South Carolina all nabbed more than their fair share of federal aid, but now they are among the poorest parts of the country. …Residents of these states suffer the worst consequences. In many Appalachian counties, inhabitants can expect to live only 67 years, more than a decade less than the average American. …Alongside the grim statistics is a spiritual poverty more difficult to measure but easier to see. There’s the high-school teacher who has only once had a class without a pregnant student. …Young students in eastern Kentucky sometimes tell their teachers that they hope to “draw” when they grow up. But they’re not talking about a career as an artist; they’re talking about drawing a government check. These kids weren’t programmed like that at birth; they were taught something destructive by their communities.

There are some lessons to be learned.

…the failure of the effort gives us ample reason to question the wisdom of federally led development efforts no matter the intended beneficiaries. Government cannot create a sustainable economy, no matter how hard it tries. And traditional welfare, while defensible as a way of alleviating immediate deprivation, too often fails to place people on the road to self-sufficiency. …encouraging family stability — or at least not discouraging it through the tax code or needless incarceration — promotes upward mobility more effectively than transfer payments…if the failures of Appalachia are any guide, a narrower policy agenda might actually serve the poor — white and black alike.

Amen. If you want to help the poor, push for economic growth rather than redistribution.

There are even some honest liberals who now admit that big government promotes long-run dependency.

P.S. Since the first part of this post dealt with religion and compassion, it’s time to share Libertarian Jesus as well as the thoughts of Cal Thomas on whether Jesus was a socialist.

P.P.S. Since the last part of this post dealt with Appalachia, I guess it’s appropriate to share this redneck joke.

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The Pope Is Wrong about Capitalism: Free Markets Are Best for the Less Fortunate

Forget the debate over whether Obama is a socialist.

Now we’re discussing whether Jesus is for big government. Or, to be more accurate, the Pope has started a debate about whether free markets are bad, particularly for the poor.

Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute wrote about the underlying theological issues in an article for National Review, but I hope I also contributed to the secular aspect of the debate in this BBC interview.

The first thing I said was the rather obvious point that there’s a lot more to life than accumulating wealth.

My most important point was that capitalism is the only successful model for creating broadly shared prosperity and I used examples from the Pope’s home region of Latin America to show that nations with more economic liberty are far more successful.

But I emphasized that supporters of freedom have a challenge because many people mistakenly associate capitalism with cronyism and bailouts for big business. In reality, free markets are a system based on voluntary exchange and private property, which means no special favors for any industry or company.

To bolster my point that economic growth is the best way to help the poor, I cited Hong Kong as a role model, both for creating growth and for enabling upward mobility.

My second most important point, which came near the end of the interview, was that genuine compassion is when you give away your own money, not when you vote for politicians who will use coercion to redistribute other people’s money. I should have used the opportunity to cite the data showing that Americans are far more compassionate – in the right sense – than their European counterparts.

I’m sure “Libertarian Jesus” would have agreed.

Now we need to get others to climb on the freedom bandwagon. I suspect the Pope will be more receptive to that message than politicians, though the Vatican sometimes has been very good on these issues and at times very disappointing.

P.S. I was worried I made up a word when I stated that I wanted to make a “theologic” point, but it’s actually in the dictionary, so I got lucky. But even if it turned out it wasn’t a word, it wouldn’t have been nearly as embarrassing as the time in the 1990s when I wanted to say “annals” and pronounced it “anals.”

P.P.S. Thomas Sowell has some insightful analysis on whether Obama is a socialist.

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