Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Regarding the Pope's Tweet on Inequality

There was massive excitement on the Catholic Social Justice group that I kind of follow when the pope's twitter account put out the tweet:

"Inequality is the root of social evil."

I just kind of sigh about these things, but I felt as if I should have something more substantive to say. Now I've perhaps been relieved of that responsibility because Josiah Neeley has written a piece which expressed some very good thinking on the issue:
I confess that when Evangelii Gaudium came out, I was a little annoyed by it. Part of it was that the document seemed to be a bit casual with respect to the facts (suggesting that inequality was on the rise worldwide, when global inequality has fallen in recent decades). Just a few months prior to the release of the apostolic exhortation, U2 front-man Bono gave a speech where he noted that capitalism had lifted more people out of poverty than any other force in human history. And he’s right! In the last few decades alone hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in India, China, and elsewhere due to the forces of market globalization. Bono, like the Pope, doesn’t have any special training in economics, and by temperament is pretty left wing. Yet he seemed to have grasped an important truth about the world that has so far eluded Francis. I found myself thinking something very strange: why can’t the Pope be more like Bono?

It was particularly galling to me given that this Pope is from Argentina. A hundred years ago, Argentina was one of the richest nations in the world. Then a century’s worth of Peronist led autarky, welfarism, and right-wing socialism intervened, with the result that Argentina is now the world’s only “formerly developed” country. And yet the lesson Francis seems to have drawn from this is that Argentina’s problem was too much capitalism.

On the other hand, the Pope’s statements about inequality make a lot more sense when viewed in the context of his Argentine origins. As a conservative, free-market-loving American, when I hear about inequality my mind immediately envisions a creative entrepreneur who got rich by making people’s lives better. Inequality, in that case, seems like just a necessary byproduct of prosperity. But in much of the world, inequality has a very different character. Great fortunes are amassed and maintained not through improving people’s lives, but through connections, and government favors. For Latin America, the stereotypical rich guy is not Steve Jobs but Carlos Slim, who became one of the world’s richest men through a telephone monopoly in Mexico.

And if I’m honest about it, I’ve got to admit that even in the United States a lot of inequality is the result not of the heroic innovator but of government favoritism. I’m thinking here not just of the obvious examples like Goldman Sachs or Archer Daniels Midland, but even folks like doctors and lawyers, who benefit from overly restrictive licensing regimes.

This isn’t the sort of thing that is captured in inequality statistics. To my way of thinking, any measure that ranks Canada (which has a Gini of 32.6) alongside Egypt (30.8) and Bangladesh (32.1) is probably not a reliable indicator of societal well-being. Still, there clearly is a form of inequality that is socially toxic, and it’s more common than those of us who believe in the power of the free market might like to admit. It may be that, like cholesterol, there are good and bad types of inequality, and we need to focus more on combatting malignant inequalities, rather than just dismissing the issue out of hand.

Flannery O’Connor once said that “the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.” In the grand scheme of things, hearing the Pope say things about economics that make me cringe is not that great a form of suffering (whether this cringing is really my fault I will leave for God to judge). And if Pope Francis’ statements help me to think more deeply about how our society does or doesn’t live up to its own principles, then that’s a form of “suffering” I am more than willing to endure.

I quoted only the latter half, so go read the whole thing.

4 comments:

JenniO said...

I like what a writer at The Guardian newspaper said:

"Inequality is the root of social evil, Pope Francis has tweeted, only a day after he canonised Pope John Paul II, a man regarded by American rightwingers as the spiritual arm of Ronald Reagan"
and
"the voices of largely American conservatives explaining that he has been misunderstood get a little less self-assured. It is – even for a Republican party hack – difficult to mistake what the Pope meant"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/28/pope-francis-condemns-inequality-john-paul

Cojuanco said...

IIRC the Latin counterpart of the tweet said something like, "Inequity is the root of all evil".

Nonetheless, both the English and the Latin are correct. But with the English, the inequality cannot be confined to merely inequality in money, though that's a part of it (Steve Jobs is in many ways as much an oligopolist as Slim or Gates or Rockefeller was, by the way). There is inequality in power, the kind that makes it so that the unborn are senselessly devalued because they don't vote, for example.

Or take adultery, for example. Is it not saying to yourself, "My perceived needs are of greater importance than the duties and needs of my spouse and children?" That's inequality - elevating yourself as if you are worth more than your wife or children.

When our culture elevates those particular forms of inequality, we get the social evils we know of as the abortion endemic and the culture of divorce.

Brandon said...

Looking at the Twitter accounts, they look like they split more or less down the middle. The Spanish, English, and German have 'inequality'/'desigualdad'/'Chancenungleichheit'; the Italian, Latin, and French have 'inequita'/'iniquitas'/'manque d'equite' .

Renee said...

The Pope likes a good troll.

It could be an inequality of fathers vs fatherless. Having an engaged father increases your chance of graduating college by 98.