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it requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality

His good intentions are clear; however you can't go out, rob a bank and give the stolen money out to the poor and needy. Solutions should make sense.

In this case we all, as the society, are facing a serious problem: employees are not needed anymore. A thousand years ago every able worker could find work because the human labor was not very productive. If all you can do is manually plant seeds, the farmer needs hundreds and hundreds of workers to do *anything* on his land. He would pay very little for this work, since he, in turn, would also gain very little from this work.

Today the farmer does not need to hire crowds of workers. (Well, some cultures still require them. But this is just an example.) Today one person can work a huge field; he is very efficient. In cities robots assemble cars, computers, and other products. Most of what we see around us is assembled by robots. Some products cannot even be assembled by hand (electronic components, as an example.) We do not need millions of ditch diggers anymore. We need scientists, engineers, programmers, technologists, doctors, writers. But those avenues are closed to many people. It takes effort and some talent to study complex math; it takes very good memory to remember all the bones and all the muscles and all the nerves in the human body; it takes fertile imagination to write an interesting book or to produce an entertaining movie. It is hard enough to learn when you are young; it is ten times as hard when you are 50 years old and have bills to pay. This transition is not just difficult; it's plain impossible (unless you are a hidden genius - I knew at least one such guy.)

This means that automation and ever-growing efficiency of manufacturing are eliminating the need for simple manual labor. 50 years ago a worker would be making a crude gear on a lathe or on a specialized milling machine, and he'd spend a day doing it. Today one worker only monitors ten computer-controlled machining centers, and his only job is to load materials and tools, and remove finished parts. To make things worse, this machining cannot be done by hand anymore. Nine machinists are looking for a job now. Will they find it? Only if they become MasterCAM programmers, or mechanical engineers, or technologists, or designers. Even then we'd be wondering if we need so many engineers: 100 developers at Apple made 100 million iPhones happen. This is a huge step outside of "cell phone makers' guild," where each master would need a month to make one phone.

All this has nothing to do with Capitalism, of course. Socialism only offers a make-work solution. Communism offers no solutions in principle; in a Communist society people do not work at all, or they do whatever they care to do. (That would be the Knockout Kings game, because lazy people do not become smarter.) There are no jobs simply because nobody needs the low level labor anymore (approximately, of course; construction, port workers, transportation still require some manual labor. But the age of coolies is gone.)

The Bishop of Rome sees this problem, as he should - but he does not look deeper, he is not talking about the social causes. He should. Humankind went through several social revolutions already, and another one is not far in the future. He cannot make bad things disappear just by wishing them away. I would like to read his serious analysis of processes in the modern society, starting with the rapid growth of the class of the privileged, entitled poor. Unfortunately, more and more often I see opinions that simply propose to feed unemployed. This is not going to work, for many obvious reasons (such as it doesn't work already.) If the Pope wants a challenge, here it is: propose a specific plan how we can change the society to eliminate poverty and to provide everyone with a satisfying, but not back-breaking job. How to stop bored ghetto kids from committing senseless crimes. How to convince people to not use drugs. How to be honest. I do not see a way to survive the upcoming social crisis without making humans better. If humans don't improve, they are bound to kill each other, again. Worse still, it will be the bad part of the society that dominates and kills the good part - as it is happening already.

I’ve analyzed several products (markets, expenses, prices, etc.) that could be made with cheap machines in a small shop and would provide great profits for an individual machinist. But it’s against the law to do so (zoning against any and all manufacturing), even on a large piece of private, cheap land in the middle of nowhere (here—very few people in the County). Going into hock for extremely expensive equipment is not always the best way, and paying flooring cost to some crook with an industrial park is a nearly universally known no-go.

Automation is not the problem, but regulations against uppity domestic competition from truly conservative slaves is part of the problem (not to mention the family-busting divorce/cohabitation paradigm in law and social politics). There are also environmentalist and animal-worship fronts used as anti-competition measures with the help of local governments. And yes, there are monopoly interests behind at least some of those fronts.

You cannot gaze into a healthy market economy and second guess it.

If you try, and you are the government, it is highly likely you will do net damage.

Today one worker only monitors ten computer-controlled machining centers, and his only job is to load materials and tools, and remove finished parts. To make things worse, this machining cannot be done by hand anymore. Nine machinists are looking for a job now.

That is a market optimization. Those former machinists should now be doing something else that computer-controlled machining centers cannot do. If they are smart enough to be machinists, that shouldn't be a problem. Of course, if they insist on remaining machinists, then we count the weeks, up to 99 or whatever.

And, as to the Bishop of Rome, I care about the magnitude of my net worth, not the ratio of Mr Bill's net worth to mine. He needs to shut up and focus his intellectual bandwidth on transubstantiation.