There was talk about renaming the Krugman thread for this purpose, but that seems to be going nowhere. Besides which, I feel the Krugman thread should be left to discuss Krugman while this thread can be used for more general economic discussion.
Discuss:
- The merits of competing theories.
- The role of the government in managing the economy.
- The causes of and solutions to our current economic woes.
- Comparisons between the economic systems of different countries.
- Theoretical and existing alternatives to our current market system.
edited 17th Dec '12 10:58:52 AM by Topazan
He’s made similar statements before, the Catholic Church (alongside the Church of England and others) have generally been economically left-wing, it’s the whole “feed the hungry” thing.
Prosperity Gospel has always been the domain of White Evangelicals.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranJust going by the CNN Business summary of the encyclical, I can't disagree with Pope Francis: we've known for decades that "trickle-down" economics is a sham to keep the masses deluded into thinking that wealth inequality is good for them. But I mean... now that the Pope has said it, maybe someone will listen. That's sarcasm, in case you didn't realize.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I remember something about a bible story about "seven year of plenty, seven years of want", in which the government was told through prophetic dreams that they should stockpile now that things go well, so that they had something to fall back on when famine strikes.
So yeah, I guess Keynesian economics is a very Christian thing. Well, Abrahamic, really, since it was old testament stuff, but still.
The Pharoah had that dream and asked Joseph to interpret while the latter was still in prison. Pharoah put Joseph as Egypt's number two and had him oversee the collection of grain during the years of plenty.
Edited by megarockman on Oct 5th 2020 at 2:19:35 PM
The damned queen and the relentless knight.There's a whole load of different economic theories you can derive from Christianity, from the Protestant work ethic encouraging neoliberal individualism all the way to the early church members doing a kind of proto-communism by those who were able to selling their property so that those who had no food could eat - very much a "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" situation. A lot of the civic laws of the nation of Israel in the old testament also had a lot of built-in allowances for the poor that ensured that the wealth was distributed to a certain extent - things like owners of fruit trees and vinyards making sure that at least 1/3 of the crop and whatever falls on the ground is not harvested so that the poor and travellers through the land may have something to eat, or active encouragement of the practice of gleaning (a similar idea - don't harvest grain that's already fallen on the floor, leave that to the less fortunate). The general gist of the scripture is certainly in favour of establishing an economic system that provides for the poor - when you do the math, providing for the poor (as well as healing the sick tbh) is referenced many times more than most of the core hot button issues the religious right get up in arms over - so I think it's a fairly strong argument that anything to the right of a strong welfare state social democracy is pretty un-Christian.
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."Keynesianism does seem to fit into the Catholic teachings of economics since it also accepts the reality of trade imbalance between powerful and weak nations that benefits the former and harms the latter, which is also one of the main criticism leveled against the neoliberal free market model.
Well, guess that I finally found an economical school to follow.
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.Keynesianism is generally associated with social liberalism and regulated capitalism, while social democracy generally prefers the mixed economy. That said, I think there've been cases where social democracy has ran on Keynesianism, or at least the more 'right-wing' or liberal sector has, although probably not in Third Way's laissez-faire capitalism.
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The problem with the practices regarding both fruit and grain you mentioned is that it is all not really as positive as it sounds.
What the practice actually entailed at first was that the state mandated that the poor were entitled to whatever farmers didn't manage to bring in before the official end of the harvest season on the religious calendar (which was usually not the same as the material end of the harvest season).
And the main goals there were: a. to excuse the state from providing a share from the government stores to the poor as was religious custom (the theory being that the poor were 'provided for' via that regulation, the reality however was different) and b. to motivate farmers to bring in all of their production before the harvest festival that marked the end of the harvest season on the religious calendar, because that was when the state tallied up the final production and calculated its share.
The rule that orchard owners were required to leave one third of their fruit unharvested for the poor was implemented only when socially progressive members of the priesthood pointed out that the way these rules were structured meant that there was practically nothing actually available to the poor in their allotted time slot and the state was therefore shirking its religious duties.
And rather than take the responsibility of feeding the poor on itself (as it should have been in the first place) the secular government made it the orchard owners' problem by mandating that they needed to keep part of their total production unharvested.
Grain gleaning was also very insidious in that it was really less a way to feed the poor and more a way to get poor people to take on the laborious task of clearing the fields practically for free after harvest by allowing them to take whatever grain they found (which was very little) and those people were frequently so hungry and desperate to find any grain at all that they would do a much more thorough job than the other 'free' alternative (allowing the local shepherd and goatherds to graze their livestock on the harvested fields).
It was not charity towards the poor, it was exploitation of the desperate.
Edited by Robrecht on Oct 5th 2020 at 11:15:08 AM
Angry gets shit done.Do you have a citation for this more uncharitable reading of the text?
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."I was actually wondering the same about that sentence, De Marquis. I've even seen people refer to Keynesianism and "Mixed Economy" as pretty much synonyms. Throwing "Social democracies" into that mix smells of too many cooks in this soup to me.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesAlright, thanks for the added explanations on Keynesianism and mixed economies, y'all.
Doing more digging, Keynes himself is associated with helping build social democratic economic policies with his theories. So they're very much tied together.
Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Oct 6th 2020 at 8:32:12 AM
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I wonder what will be the reaction from the left leaning thinkers in general.
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.