Pope Francis's Stinging Critique of Capitalism

at least he practices what he preaches. that said, the average person is far better off under capitalism. any injustices under capitalism pale in comparison to the atrocious, widespread poverty under socialism and communism.

You have to understand that this guy came from Argentina, the country that has had one of the most unstable economys since the Great Depression. A lot of the things he argues against; corruption, forced unemployment, no opportunity happened while he was getting paid comfortably by the richest church in the world.

I agree with @sb842, but that's because I love friedrich and milton...but perhaps the theory of "free" markets are a bit too idealistic.

I wonder if the CEO of Pederastry and Sex Guilt Inc. (sometimes referred to as the pope of the Catholic church) will consider smelting some of the massive amounts of gold the church possesses to help fight against "income inequality."

I don't really have an opinion either way, but he seems to be better than his hypocrite predecessor. I mean how badly do you have to fuck up, where they tell you to retire as pope?

Yeah, I heard of this and had to chuckle. The largest private landowner, most likely not paying taxes on that property and land, talking about the evils of capitalism.

This dude should just shut up and focus on helping people instead of bitching about topics outside of his realm.

Seems to me he's mostly attacking free market capitalism—while the implied alternative is socialism, it really is social democracy (as it often is in areas outside North America), i.e. capitalism with more regulations and a safety net (enabled by taxation of course) to "catch" the temporarily more unfortunate. That concept of socialism is vastly different from communism.

Keep in mind that the mainstream media has been regularly presenting Pope Francis in a more liberal light than he actually is, portraying him as a reformer, while when his words are read in contexts it's not difficult to realize that he's not deviating from the traditions of the Church. In this one for example, they are also emphasizing on the "evangelic" portion of his statement, playing on the concepts of Good Work (Catholic) and commonly perceived Evangelicalism (Protestant) to make him seem more controversial than he in fact is. My opinion is to take the whole article with a grain of salt.

I think he can eat a dick.

This critique of capitalism from the Pope is demonstrative of why I'm a Protestant--I do not want a central authority that declares himself infallible giving me bad advice and poor Biblical interpretations. This Pope is an embarrassment to mathematics and to logic, and to the Christian faith.

The fundamental issue with his critique of capitalism is that it is based on a false premise:

"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…"

I don't know of any supply-side/trickle-down-economics proponent who claims that it will bring about greater justice or inclusiveness. This is a completely fallacious claim. The idea of so-called trickle-down-economics is that those who are not wealthy will benefit from the wealthy becoming more successful. The Pope asserts that this is not backed up by facts--in fact, it is both backed up by facts and by simple logic. The U.S. is a mix of supply-side, monetarist, and Keynesian economics, but we do know that the standard of living in the U.S. has improved markedly for all persons in the last 30+ years since our economy has moved toward greater supply-side practice. Even as the gap between rich and poor has widened, everyone's standard of living has improved noticeably.

The only purpose of trickle-down-economics is to see the standard of living of everyone increase, even if some see greater benefit than others. The Pope, who is an Argentinian, has his understanding of the world colored by his own socialist beliefs--that it's better for everyone to be equally poor than it is for there to be inequality where some benefit more than others. He's a classic Latin American leftist. If I were an American conservative Catholic I would be ashamed to declare a man infallible who is as economically illiterate as Hugo Chavez.

BTW, I'd also love for the Pope to point to a single nation that practices the model that he claims is being practiced and used to hurt poor people. The U.S. would be the closest example in the world among a large, influential nation--every capitalist nation, including the U.S., has a mixed market economy. I don't even know who this Pope is criticizing. I honestly think he has no idea what he's even talking about.

The U.S., for example, has a progressive income tax, 100 million people are on government insurance, and half the population (155 million people) has some form of government benefit or entitlement. I'm just really curious what nation is practicing laissez-faire capitalism where the poor are being ignored.