Pope Francis Responds to Rush Limbaugh: “Marxist Ideology Is Wrong”

From another current thread on FR:

"The bottom line: 29 million, or 0.6% of those with any actual assets under their name, own $87.4 trillion, or 39.3% of all global assets."

These assets don't do a thing for those on the lower rungs of society.

a rising tide lifts all boats but when you print money and cause undue inflation that theory doesn’t hold water. The real crime here isn’t capitalism; it’s the transfer of wealth (from the poor to the rich)through quantitative easing and other inflationary policies

Does the Pope respond to Rush?

“The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.” ...Pope Francis

Mat 19:17
(17) And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

Luk 18:19
(19) And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.

Mark 10:18
(18) And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Rom 3:10-12
(10) As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
(11) There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
(12) They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Of course the assets help everybody else out. That is the money that’s lent to other people, that pays salaries, that does research and development, that starts businesses, that builds homes, invests in companies... It would help to know what form the assets are in, but I would guess a lot of that is the value of companies those people own, like Walmart. And obviously successful companies create satisfied customers every single day.

The question is always how was the money or wealth acquired? In our country, we can be generally confident that it was earned by producing goods and services. If someone Bill Gates or Steve Jobs makes a brilliant product that millions of people buy, of course they’re going to accumulate a lot of wealth. But not only was nobody not hurt in the process, they gained the use of some really innovative products. Without the profit motive, those products would never have been made.

Pope Francis and Capitalism

By Walter E. Williams
12/18/2013

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation, levied charges against free market capitalism, denying that “economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world” and concluding that “this opinion ... has never been confirmed by the facts.” He went on to label unfettered capitalism as “a new tyranny.” Let’s look at the pope’s tragic vision.

First, I acknowledge that capitalism fails miserably when compared with heaven or a utopia. Any earthly system is going to come up short in such a comparison. However, mankind must make choices among alternative economic systems that actually exist on earth. For the common man, capitalism is superior to any system yet devised to deal with his everyday needs and desires.

Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and pleasing your fellow man.

Capitalists seek to discover what people want and produce and market it as efficiently as possible as a means to profit. A couple of examples would be J.D. Rockefeller, whose successful marketing drove kerosene prices down from 58 cents a gallon in 1865 to 7 cents in 1900. Henry Ford became rich by producing cars for the common man.

Both Ford’s and Rockefeller’s personal benefits pale in comparison with that received by the common man by having cheaper kerosene and cheaper transportation. There are literally thousands of examples of how mankind’s life has been made better by those in the pursuit of profits.

Here’s my question to you: Are people who, by their actions, created unprecedented convenience, longer life expectancy and a more pleasant life for the ordinary person — and became wealthy in the process — deserving of all the scorn and ridicule heaped upon them by intellectuals, politicians and now the pope?

Let’s examine the role of profits but first put it in perspective in terms of magnitude. Between 1960 and 2012, after-tax corporate profit averaged a bit over 6 percent of the gross domestic product, while wages averaged 47 percent of the GDP. Far more important than simple statistics about the magnitude of profits is its role in guiding resources to their highest-valued uses and satisfying people.

Try polling people with a few questions. Ask them what services they are more satisfied with and what they are less satisfied with. On the “more satisfied” list would be profit-making enterprises, such as supermarkets, theaters, clothing stores and computer stores. They’d find less satisfaction with services provided by nonprofit government organizations, such as public schools, post offices and departments of motor vehicles.

Profits force entrepreneurs to find ways to please people in the most efficient ways or go out of business. Of course, they can mess up and stay in business if they can get government to bail them out or give them protection against competition. Nonprofits have an easier time of it.

Public schools, for example, continue to operate whether they do a good job or not and whether they please parents or not. That’s because politicians provide their compensation through coercive property taxes. I’m sure that we’d be less satisfied with supermarkets if they, too, had the power to take our money through taxes, as opposed to being forced to find ways to get us to voluntarily give them our earnings.

Arthur C. Brooks, president at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Who Really Cares,” shows that Americans are the most generous people on the face of the earth. In fact, if you look for generosity around the world, you find virtually all of it in countries that are closer to the free market end of the economic spectrum than they are to the socialist or communist end. Seeing as Pope Francis sees charity as a key part of godliness, he ought to stop demonizing capitalism.

FREE ENTERPRISE THE FAIREST SYSTEM, KEY TO ENDING POVEERTY -

Arthur Brooks AEI
May 18, 2012

By Peter Samuel

Briefs poverty free enterpise aei

“The (biggest) recipients of the blessings of free enterprise are the poor themselves. How do I know it?

“Go back to 1970, and compare 1970 around the world to today. It turns out that between 1970 and 2010 the worst poverty in the world - people who live on one dollar a day or less - has decreased by 80 percent. You never hear about that.

“It is the greatest achievement in human history, and you never hear about it.
“80 percent of the world’s worst poverty has been eradicated (in 40 years.)

“That has never ever happened before.

“So what did that? What accounts for that?

“United Nations?

“US foreign aid?

“The International Monetary Fund?

“Central planning?

“...nah.

“It was globalization, free trade, the boom in international entrepreneurship. In short it was the free enterprise system, American style, which is our gift to the world.

“...I will assert and defend the statement that if you love the poor, if you are a good Samaritan you must stand for the free enterprise system, and you must defend it not just for ourselves but for people around the world.

“It is the best anti-poverty measure ever invented.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss80iuEBC6A

A somewhat late post I admit, but hear my take on it:

Capitalism has obvious flaws. The problem with socialism, however, is that the adherents see no flaws in it whatsoever. Where you see flaws, you are able to correct them. Where you don’t, you aren’t. Flaws that go ignored don’t go away, they just get bigger. Hense the failure of socialism whenever it is atempted.

To quote a couple English prime ministers, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of everyone else’s money. And that Capitalism is the worst system except for all the other ones.