Capitalism meets common good criteria better than any other economic system. It is also the single most effective means of alleviating poverty. In the past 20 years alone, it has lifted more than a billion people out of extreme poverty, according to the Economist. It is also single-handedly responsible for creating a global two-billion-person middle class over the past 300 years. But free markets only work within a moral culture. When business is unmoored from a concern for the common good, capitalism can slide into cronyism and corruption—exactly what Pope Francis has critiqued in recent months. It is such perversions of a free-market economy that do not fit Catholic teaching. These issues should be addressed in part through the education of future business leaders. Cronyism and corporate welfare are rampant across the world. Even in the U.S., they are increasingly evident in the interaction between business and politics. Business leaders now regularly and proudly collude with politicians and bureaucrats, boosting their companies’ bottom lines at the expense of economic growth. There are subsidies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, handouts, mandates, favorable regulations and so on.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 11:55:48 +0000
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