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Saturday, November 30, 2013

Greg Mankiw — The Pope's Rhetoric


Greg Mankiw weighs in on Evangelii Guadium — quite predictably, of course. You don't need to read it to know how he feels: "Capitalism" has raised global GDP more than any alternative ever did, so this alone excuses anything else that happened. Even Karl Marx attributed that positive attribute to capitalism, while documenting its excesses. Mankiw argues to the contrary that free market capitalism has led to economic growth and economic growth has resulted in a more moral society.

Greg Mankiw's Blog
N. Gregory Mankiw | Professor of Economics at Harvard University


5 comments:

  1. It's worth mentioning that in the entire 200+ pages of Evangelii Gaudium, the word "capitalism" does not appear even once.

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  3. It's funny how Mankiw tries to make himself sound reasonable; criticizing the pope's use of a 'pejorative' term ('trickle-down') "rather than encouraging an open-minded discussion of opposing perspectives".

    And at the same time Mankiw totally fails to mention that there might be anything wrong with capitalism in the real world at all.

    According to Mankiw the pope is really unreasonable for failing to mention some of the good things about capitalism, and Mankiw is really reasonable for failing to mention any of the bad things about capitalism.

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  4. Pretty brief and weak response from Mankiw....

    But he writes here: "Third, as far as I know, the pope did not address the tax-exempt status of the church. I would be eager to hear his views on that issue. Maybe he thinks the tax benefits the church receives do some good when they trickle down."

    The Vatican will not be able to respond to this as the Vatican does not possess the required knowledge to be able to do so.

    Mankiw looks at "charity" as a form of 'trickle down' and imo its fair to say it is.

    Mankiw is more or less saying that "we should have capitalism and then the surplus cohort that results out of that can provide free will charity...."

    The Vatican's thinking does not seem too far from this itself... "charity" is just another form of "trickle down" imo.

    Where does ANY surplus come from???

    Both sides in this think "money is money" and that the "govt gets the money from the non-govt".

    Both sides remain blind and all WE can witness is two sides talking past each other...

    Operative scripture:

    "14 Leave them! Blind guides are they of the blind! Now if the blind should be guiding the blind, both shall be falling into a pit." Mat 15:14

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  5. Nor does Mankiw mention the tax-exemption for political donors that front–loads elections to entrench a power structure by legitimizing bribery of representatives and officials, which results in state capture by the ruling class and makes a mockery of democracy.

    BTW, Mankiw needs to explain how the Vatican can be tax-exempt when Vatican City is sovereign nation.

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