#Plutocracy example full
#Plutocracy example free

#Plutocracy example full

Government policy must therefore commit itself to full employment, protecting against what John Paul II calls the “social disaster” of unemployment. Labor has an “intrinsic priority” over capital in the Catholic view, and all people deserve the opportunity to support themselves and their families.

Again and again, church teaching explicitly calls for the “redistribution” of wealth, and demands that government action show what John Paul II calls a “preference for the poor” by maintaining a safety net to protect the most vulnerable against poverty, homelessness, hunger, and poor access to health care.Ībove all, the church advocates policies protecting the dignity of work. According to John Paul II, markets must be “appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied.”īeyond these basic needs, church doctrine consistently cites equality as a core measure of economic well-being, warning that growing disparities in wealth not only violate basic principles of justice but create concentrations of power that threaten social cohesion and democratic integrity. Laws are needed to enforce contracts, insure transparency, and prevent corruption, and regulation is needed to prevent what Benedict XVI calls the “scandalous speculation” in the financial sector that recklessly risks the security of those in the larger economy. To ensure they do this, markets need government. Their value, however, is instrumental rather than intrinsic they are beneficial to the extent that they contribute to the good of all, creating a widely shared prosperity.

#Plutocracy example free

The Catholic tradition is not opposed to wealth, private property, or free markets. This is a goal best realized, furthermore, through a vibrant market economy based on private property, the economic arrangement that most efficiently creates wealth, respects human initiative, and allows people to support themselves and their families with dignity.

In the words of John Paul II, the “first principle of the whole ethical and social order” is that of the “universal destination of goods,” which requires that all persons have access to sufficient goods to live in dignity and develop to their fullest potential. As voters and as Catholics, how should we evaluate the country’s economy and the government’s role in regulating it? More than a century of Catholic social doctrine, drawn together in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and expressed most recently in Benedict XVI’s Caritas in veritate, provides some basic standards. economy will be the primary issue in this year’s election. It is clear by now that the state of the U.S.