The Pope and Populist Politics

Pope Francis plays populist politics by supposedly taking on an economic stand.

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system.

Harvard’s Greg Mankiw’s reaction (hat tip Mark Perry)

First, throughout history, free-market capitalism has been a great driver of economic growth, and as my colleague Ben Friedman has written, economic growth has been a great driver of a more moral society.

Second, "trickle-down" is not a theory but a pejorative used by those on the left to describe a viewpoint they oppose.  It is equivalent to those on the right referring to the "soak-the-rich" theories of the left.  It is sad to see the pope using a pejorative, rather than encouraging an open-minded discussion of opposing perspectives.

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.

Wall Street’s Mary O’Grady on Venezuela as example of the Pope’s model.

Heavy state intervention was supposed to produce justice for the poor in the breadbasket of South America. We all know how that turned out.

No Christian can doubt the love expressed in the pope's message, which aims to shepherd the flock away from materialism. But the charge that grinding poverty in the world is the outgrowth of "the absolute autonomy of the marketplace" ignores reality. To be sure, even prosperous economies regulate markets. But those that have a lighter touch do better. Human history clearly demonstrates that when men and women, employing their free will and God-given talents, are able to innovate, produce, accumulate capital and trade even the weakest and most vulnerable are better off.

Instead the pope trusts the state, "charged with vigilance for the common good." Why is it then that the world's most desperate poor are concentrated in places where the state has gained an outsize role in the economy specifically on just such grounds?

…

Venezuelans need a moral authority that defends their rights to run a business, make a living, own property and preserve the purchasing power of what they earn. In short, they need a champion for a rule of law that will limit the power of the state over their person. Mother Church ought to be that voice. In siding with Mr. Maduro, however inadvertently, she harms her cause in the region.

New York Stern Professor Mario Rizzo on the Pope’s omission of the scientific dimensions of social policies.

If we move beyond Jesus’ exhortations to individuals about their moral behavior to papal exhortations about government policies to achieve the goal of eliminating or reducing avoidable human suffering, a scientific dimension is added. Policies have consequences, often unintended. The social interaction of people is more than the acts of people taken individually.  There are complexities in these cases subject to scientific analysis.

The ultimate normative goals of action can be based on a religious insight or commitment. (I prefer to say on ethics.) But the means chosen to attain those goals are in large part a scientific question. Thus the proximate goals of action are largely in the domain of science. (An exception is where the means are considered intrinsically evil.)

The point is that policies are means to ends. They are not decrees about how the world should be. They can succeed or fail to achieve the desired moral ends. They can have consequences more undesirable than the problems they purport to solve. It is hard to see what the Church can authoritatively add to these discussions.  Issues like income redistribution, globalization and financial speculation, however, are either above or below the papal pay grade. As Jeremy Bentham said about the state, the job is basically to “be quiet.”

Obviously, for a Church wanting to be relevant in its growth areas in poor, less developed countries, this might not be enough. And yet there is more it can say about the state’s use of coercion, of its violation of the basic principles of just conduct in the creation of crony “capitalist” economies, of its secrecy and lack of accountability, of the use of torture, of trafficking in slaves, and war. The Church has to its credit tackled many of these. It will be seen, I suggest, that in most of these areas governments or others are violating the fundamental principles of individual just conduct: lying, cheating, stealing, physically harming innocent individuals, failing to aid others in distress (as opposed to failing to coerce people to aid others in distress), and even the use of force where turning the other cheek would be appropriate.

But where social policy is concerned, fundamentally scientific issues are crucially involved and the Church has no greater teaching authority than the rest of us. To confuse matters by combining superficial scientific analysis with strictly moral teaching does neither the Church nor the world much good.

Uttering feel good noble sounding populist political rhetoric with hardly a good understanding of the real social consequences from proposed repressive policies will do little to help society. For me, the Pope's major gaffe has been the failure to understand that the state is run by human beings who shares the same vulnerabilities as the rest.

As the great dean of the Austrian school of economics Murray Rothbard admonished:

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science." But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.