Where Pope Francis Goes Horribly Wrong With His Economics

forbes.com ^ | Tim Worstall

[BenLurkin]

Much of what Pope Francis says in his latest encyclical, Laudato Si, is entirely in line with standard Catholic socio-economic teaching. Sadly, that’s so much the worse for standard Catholic socio-economic teaching, as at the heart of it there’s a couple of assumptions that are simply entirely untrue. And given that these mistakes are at the heart of the argument they do work to rather disprove the rest of the teaching.

However, the two mistakes are here:

““The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology . . . is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit,” wrote Pope Francis.

The first mistake here is a definitional one. The idea that economists think that there’s an infinite supply of the earth’s goods. I’m sorry but this is simply nonsense. Because economics doesn’t have anything at all to say about something that’s in infinite supply. Economics is all about scarce goods and their allocation. We do not, for example, have an economics of seawater. Supply isn’t infinite, there’s some knowable and known amount of it out there. But compared to what humans use seawater for there is an infinite supply. Thus there is no constraint, there’s no scarcity: thus there’s no economics about it.

We do have a scarcity of farmland, thus we have an economics of farmland: indeed some of the foundations of the subject in the modern era were about exactly that, Ricardo on rent for example. We do have an economics of fresh water because we do have a scarcity of fresh water given all of the things that humans like to do with fresh water.

[RginTN]

Looks like the Pope is too focused on things instead of salvation.

[exPBRrat]

I hope our Peronist Pope isn’t using the climate as an income distribution plan ...like the leftys.

After the great flood God promised Noah that the earth would always have hot and cold, summer, winter, planting and harvest so the seasons stay dependable.

If we want to preserve precious resources encourage the Chinese to stop producing the disposable junk it makes.

Good grief they can’t even make a simple cloths pin that will last a year...

...and I can’t ever remember my mother ever buying cloths pins...they were just made to last.

[hosepipe]

Francis is wrong ONLY if he is NOT a Socialist..
He seems to be one..

The question is: IS Socialism WRONG?...
further: How wrong is it?...
AND: Has it ever been RIGHT?...

................... * * * ......................

** Fact: Socialists have murdered 100 to 300 million people in the last century.. AND.... made BILLIONS miserable..

Communism, Fascism, Naziism are all forms of socialism..
made possible by democracy...... (and Russia and China)

---

Democracy is the road to socialism. -Karl Marx

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism .-Karl Marx

[RFEngineer]

“Francis is the False Prophet.”

Francis is just a man. An incredibly stupid and ignorant man who will kill the poor with his stupidity.

He’s sullied his church in much the same way our president has sullied our Constitution.