Friday, July 26, 2013

Al Jazeera — Pope sends message of hope to Brazil's poor

Pope Francis has issued the first social manifesto of his young pontificate, telling slum dwellers in Brazil that the world's rich must do much more to wipe out vast inequalities between the haves and the have-nots.

History's first Latin American pope, in a speech on Thursday to residents of Manguinhos, blasted the "culture of selfishness and individualism" that persists in the world and encouraged efforts in Brazil to end hunger and poverty.
"No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world," he said.
Al Jazeera
Pope sends message of hope to Brazil's poor

18 comments:

James said...

Sorry to go off topic again Tom, but I came across this short pamphlet that I'd never read before and thought it was worth sharing. It's Ezra Pound's 'what is money for?', I'm sure many of you have already come across it at some point, but for those who haven't it's an interesting read imo.

Obviously to anyone who's familiar with Pound, you will know about his anti-semitism, unfortunately that probably puts some people off reading things like this, but his grasp of monetary systems is excellent, and is very MMT at times. So if you can get past his feelings towards Jewish people, it's actually not too bad in this, and it's well worth a read.

http://archive.org/stream/WhatIsMoneyFor#page/n0/mode/2up

Matt Franko said...

"the world's rich must do much more to wipe out vast inequalities between the haves and the have-nots."

Right because everybody knows that "money" comes from "the rich people"...

This is more "voluntarily re-distribute the metals by our free will charity..." He too is stuck in metallic standard thinking.

It wont work.

No role for civil government here.

Francis is a step backwards from Benedict in that at least Benedict was starting to get on the case of govt leadership to get involved in righting these wrongs... ie our human institution that can REALLY do something about it...

Francis probably has in mind a big network of soup kitchens funded by charitable donations from the wealthy who can have periodic champagne banquets where they toast each other and pat each other on the back and think about what great people they are by endowing all those soup kitchens to feed the great unwashed...

Matt Franko said...

"Pope sends message of hope"

Oh yes, we should "hope" that these elites would some day pry open their wallets and let some of "their money" trickle down those made poor among us... yes we always have "hope"... we can "hope"... blah, blah, blah....

This guy is WEAK!

The Rombach Report said...

Matt - You are hopelessly lost here. The Pope doesn't claim any authority over the social and economic policies of secular governments. However, for Catholic believers and others who are influenced by the message of Christ, the Pope's main job is to exercise moral and spiritual authority to emulate Christ's example and provide charity and alleviate suffering. The problem with the church is that it has evolved into a "religious" empire that is largely about power, and palaces, and treasure and corruption, not to mention sexual scandals that would make Anthony Weiner cringe. Not what Jesus had in mind, I think.

That said, Acts 20:35 pretty much sums up the message......

In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Moreover, you don't have to be Christian to be charitable.....

Hebrews 13:16

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Ralph Musgrave said...

Meanwhile the Church of England invests in a loan shark firm – or “pay day lender”, to put it more politely.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jul/25/church-england-stake-wonga-backer

Unknown said...

RR,

Amen of course (since you quote the Bible), but nevertheless Christians should use whatever influence they have to eliminate systemic injustice and not just rely on private charity to ameliorate it. And there is such a thing as RESTITUTION and that is mediated by government.

So where's the RCC wrt the government-backed usury for stolen purchasing power cartel, the banks?

Tom Hickey said...

TEheh pope is right in line with many contemporary economists like Jamie Galbraith, Michael Hudson, Randy Wray, Bill Mitchell, Michal Kalecki, Richard D. Wolf, DAvid Ruccio, Michael Perelman, the list goes on.

It's about institutionalized power and the privilege it allows the wealthy to exact that enables them to create artificial scarcity in order to extract economic rent, i.e., non-productive gain, which is parasitical on circular flow, socially disruptive, and politically poisonous due to cronyism and corruption. This as little to do with "taking from those to have to give it to those who have-not," i.e., "redistribution," but rather distributive justice along with recognition of the community and society instead of individual "ration" (amoral) pursuit of max u. It's an indictment of the system, and the pope put his finger right on it in attacking "selfishness" and "individualism." I'd like to hear Paul Ryan's response to this indictment of economic liberalism and Randism.

Unknown said...

Re Ezra Pound:

Yes, it's sad when the Devil lures people with otherwise sound ideas on money into antisemitism.

But the Bible allows Jews (and I suppose others) to collect interest from foreigners (Deuteronomy 23:19-20). What excuse do we Gentiles have for collecting it from each other when money can just as well be issued as Equity? What excuse do we have for government subsidies for debt-creation?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Tom,

Restitution does not necessarily mean redistribution, not even in real terms, since to the extent that deposits are not 100% backed by reserves, new fiat can be created and given to the victims until deposits are 100% backed by reserves WITHOUT a significant risk of price inflation IF the distribution is combined with at least a temporary ban on new credit creation and metered to just replace existing credit as it is repaid.

Of course fundamental reform is needed too, such as eliminating all government privileges for debt creation.

The Rombach Report said...

F. Beard - Sounds euthanization of the banks.

Unknown said...

RR, exactly.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and will have to be fought sooner or later is…The PEOPLE vs The BANKS – Lord Acton 1875 from http://www.linkedin.com/groups/PEOPLE-vs-BANKS-1328087.S.214645113

Note: My use of historic quotes from a website is not necessarily an endorsement of that website.

James said...

F.
'Yes, it's sad when the Devil lures people with otherwise sound ideas on money into antisemitism'.

Exactly, It's silly, and unfortunately will put people off reading it. I hope no-one thought I was endorsing that view in any way, I just thought it was an interesting little pamphlet that came to many of the conclusions that MMT has as well. I have no time for any type of bigotry, so I apologize if it offended anyone.

Unknown said...

James, I think you were perfectly clear and should have offended no one.

Matt Franko said...

'No one can remain insensitive to...."

This is obviously false too....

The guy is completely lost....

Unknown said...

What excuse do we Gentiles have for collecting it from each other when money can just as well be issued as Equity? moi

Correction: when money can just as well be issued as shares in Equity.

I apologize for any confusion my sloppy word usage may have caused.

googleheim said...

I have to say that Matt Franko is way off here.

The fire consisting of the gold bug mentality must be back burned into extinguished, robbing it of the fuel it needs.

There is nothing wrong with Francis fighting the metal heads with metal.

He is simply saying that the metal is worthless ultimately, and that they should release it for the benefit of the poor if these right wing "Christians" are Christian at all.

So Matt you are patently wrong. If Francis comes out with some nonsense MMT spiel ( which by the way is never fully differentiate from the Japanese Morass ), then he will not have any listeners.

He is speaking to a broad audience, and he has done well to tell the Gold Bugs to release their gold in the name of the Beatitudes.

He would tell those holding paper also to do the same. He would tell the coin minters to release their coins.

He is basically rephrasing the breaking of the bread to share to feed the poor.

Benedict knew Francis was the Answer and he first knocked off the Scottish pedophile Cardinal because it was the only way to get the Scottish Cardinal's contingency not to form a block against Francis due to the Argentina vs UK Falklands BS.

Matt Franko said...

Goog,

Thanks for the input Ill consider it....

Imo 'the church ' can't fix this... only apply band aids...

He ought to be on our government leaderships case as that institution is the only one that can really fix this.... 'the church ' has no authority ....

Rsp