Well, how about that? Here’s another highly influential voice getting on the right side of the austerity debate:
Pope Francis on Wednesday urged political leaders to make every effort to create jobs and said unemployment was caused by economic thinking “outside the bounds of social justice.”
“I call on politicians to make every effort to relaunch the labour market,” the pope told thousands of followers at his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square.
Wait, there’s more:
“I think about those who are unemployed often because of an economic conception of society that seeks egoistic profit regardless of social justice,” the pope told a crowd in St. Peter’s Square for a May Day audience.
“Neither should we be moved by Rogoff and Reinhart’s flawed analysis! There is no debt threshold at 90% of GDP!”
OK, I made that last part up. But the rest comes straight from Il Papa. And you know where he gets it from.
I think it’s great that the Pope is speaking out like this, making key linkages between unemployment, profitability, and a flawed model that fails to put those variables together in an ethical manner consistent with a just society.
Who would have suspected that the Pope reads Paul Krugman’s blog?!?
Catholic Church “option” – or “preference” for the poor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_for_the_poor
That’s nice, but the Church puts its money behind things like opposition to gay marriage, reproductive rights of women (not just abortion but birth control, as well), and so on. And when it really counted, during the Argentine “dirty war,” he was, well, not on the front lines, shall we say.
Talk, talk, talk. It’s cheap.
And saying nice things about the poor is often a crowd pleaser. But I somehow doubt that devout Catholics who happen to run businesses, large or small, are suddenly going to be more ‘generous’ with their employees…