The Pope will not be picking up the tab:
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic Pope Francis says it might be time for some sort of universal basic income.
“This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage” to “acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks” and to “achieve the ideal … of no worker without rights,” Pope Francis said in a letter to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, an organization representing global grassroots organizations, published on Sunday via the Vatican.
The Pope acknowledged that for many workers, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns are making it difficult, if not impossible, for people to earn money.
Go here to read the rest. Leaving aside the impossible task of paying for it, one likely effect of a universal basic income would be to swiftly set up a caste system between those who work and those who do not. Many a dystopian novel posits a society where work is a privilege and the vast majority of the population exists on some form of welfare in perpetual poverty. Drones will eventually become serfs, or simply die out as a result of the universal basic income producing a starveling existence. Welfare of course was meant to be a helping hand out of poverty. A universal basic income, to which people have a right merely by performing the feat of existing, will start out as a social minimum and rapidly become the social maximum for most of society. Leo XIII saw this coming:
9. But Catholic wisdom, sustained by the precepts of natural and divine law, provides with especial care for public and private tranquility in its doctrines and teachings regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods which are necessary for life and use. For, while the socialists would destroy the “right” of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate. For she knows that stealing and robbery were forbidden in so special a manner by God, the Author and Defender of right, that He would not allow man even to desire what belonged to another, and that thieves and despoilers, no less than adulterers and idolaters, are shut out from the Kingdom of Heaven. But not the less on this account does our holy Mother not neglect the care of the poor or omit to provide for their necessities; but, rather, drawing them to her with a mother’s embrace, and knowing that they bear the person of Christ Himself, who regards the smallest gift to the poor as a benefit conferred on Himself, holds them in great honor. She does all she can to help them; she provides homes and hospitals where they may be received, nourished, and cared for all the world over and watches over these. She is constantly pressing on the rich that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments. In fine, she does all she can to relieve and comfort the poor, either by holding up to them the example of Christ, “who being rich became poor for our sake,(18) or by reminding them of his own words, wherein he pronounced the poor blessed and bade them hope for the reward of eternal bliss. But who does not see that this is the best method of arranging the old struggle between the rich and poor? For, as the very evidence of facts and events shows, if this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.
QUOD APOSTOLICI MUNERIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON SOCIALISM
This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage” to “acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks” and to “achieve the ideal … of no worker without rights,“
There so many contradictions in these statements:
Wages without work. Essential tasks of no worth. Workers rights are to not earn income. Dignify with handouts. Laziness as noble.
This man is Pope?
First we contaminate Latin America with Marxist Liberation Theology, and then the world? Has he not read where another pope (Pius XI) said that violation of the Catholic Principle of Subsidiarity “is a grave evil”?
I feel like I’m back in history when we had that a second pope in Avignon saying something different. Whom do I believe…
Pius XI wins this one hands down.
Recall Fr. Neuhaus’ dictum: “If it is not necessary for the Church to speak, it is necessary for the Church not to speak”. The mainline protestant or anabaptist minister who by all appearances went into the ministry because it was free from operational measures of competence and offered the opportunity to ruminate at random, supervise sing-a-longs, organize youth groups, and yammer about public affairs is not as common among Catholic priests as it is in its foundational habitat. Now, we’ve got one of these types on the Chair of Peter. What’s interesting to me about this type is that when they get going on secular matters, they seldom if ever say anything insightful or offer an observation that does not incorporate at least one howler. A generation ago, the Conference of Catholic Bishops allowed themselves to be used as mouthpieces by their staff, issuing a ‘pastoral letter’ on political economy. A secular reviewer was impressed with its mediocrity (“the bishops’ non-tautological solutions are only slightly less disappointing”). This sort of thing gets so tiresome. They’d do their jobs better if they said nothing at all.
The US Constitution sets some fairly minimal guidelines for President, Representative and Senator. I would like to add two: must have successfully run a business (not “non-profit”) and made payroll for at least two employees a minimum of 10 years. Military experience optional, but we run through boot camp any elected official who didn’t serve.
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Our priests can forgo boot camp and actual business ownership, but should have served in some managerial capacity and have had to compile budget reports.
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I am no doubt missing something in these requirements, some perfectly logical, intelligent reason these are not already required. It is very distressing to me, a housewife who only took Econ 101 and read Sowell’s Basic Economics (and I forget easily), that our leaders–both elected and religious– have less understanding of how markets and money work than I do.
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First we contaminate Latin America with Marxist Liberation Theology, and then the world?
Unlike John Paul II, I doubt Francis knows his way around any texts on theology, philosophy, or social theory. His utterances suggest a man steeped in the mentality of Peronist Argentina, which is utterly alien to an orderly society where general prosperity is achieved by incremental improvements in process and technology implemented in the course of voluntary production and exchange. A nurse’s aide in this country currently enjoys a real income level on a par with that of the professional-managerial bourgeois among my grandparents’ contemporaries. Francis hasn’t a clue that that is so or why it is so.
DJH, to my knowledge, Ronald Reagan never ran a business. And he turned out to be one of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century,
Trump’s business acumen was questionable. He certainly wasn’t as great a business man as he says. There were a lot of things about Trump University that didn’t quite pass the smell test. But yet, as president, I think Trump has been a pretty good one. That’s saying something coming from me given my Never Trump sympathies going into the 2016 election.
Conservatives who say government should be run like a business do not understand that government, by its very nature, is not subject to the same market discipline a private business is. In Trump’s defense I think he understands this. In this light, having run a successful business can (and I stress the word can) be a hindrance. I mean, the most successful businessmen today are leftists (e.g. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates etc.). Would you want any of those guys as president?
“This man is Pope?” Like the statement, “Is the Pope Catholic”, some things may not be rhetorical anymore. The silver lining here is that even he knows he “dare not say any more”. That’s right, there will be nothing dogmatic coming from this papacy.
Government services, if the government has stayed in its lane, are those which cannot be readily provided by businessmen and voluntary exchange. That having been said, we might benefit from certain practices common to business enterprises: accrual accounting, a requirement that fringes for government employees be actuarially sound, a requirement that compensation per employee in the public sector not exceed the mean of the private economy, an end to tenure for public employees, and a restoration of a serious examination system for recruitment and promotion in the public services. We might also benefit from more orderly lines of authority in government and controls on the multiplication of senior executives.
DJH, to my knowledge, Ronald Reagan never ran a business.
No, but he did run the Screen Actors Guild (which had a six-figure membership if I’m not mistaken) and the California state government. Note, Richard Nixon was a wretched administrator, and one reason for that was that he was learning by doing in the Oval Office.
First of all, is running a union, which is what the screen actors guild is, comparable to running a business? Secondly, I do agree that having prior governmental executive experience is an advantage for the presidency.
A union is a business.
“A union is a business.”
I am sure that many business owners who have dealt with unions would beg to differ with you on that. To be sure, running a union requires organizational and leadership skills (which include but are not limited to twisting arms, literally and figuratively) that translate into government. But then again, so do non-profits. But you excluded them. You gonna tell me a union is more like a private business than a non-profit?
First of all, is running a union, which is what the screen actors guild is, comparable to running a business?
IDK. Wasn’t my point. My point was that he’d run organizations that had an abiding institutional mission (as opposed to John Kerry, who had a staff whose mission was to serve him). Lyndon Johnson had minimal executive experience; John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Barack Obama had none at all. As a rule, you don’t want to go there. (It is true that some of our experienced executives made wretched decisions anyway – Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter come to mind; not a panacea).
Exercising common sense for the common good of all that is needed.
In the Old Testament if an employer did not pay his day worker his wages and the day worker died on his way home the employer was guilty of murder. The vineyard owner paid his employees a days wages so that they could get home safely and return the next day no matter how long they worked. The employer was indeed generous.
Christ taught us what is capitalism in the Temple. The customer gets what he needs to survive. The vendor gets the gift of value in return and both vendor and customer survive in an act of charity.
Greed has no place in Christianity.
The virtue of charity is a matter between man and his conscience and God. No government or Pope gets to dictate what a man and his conscience before God must decide for himself.
A union is a business, selling labor, I suppose. Or protecting their members from Evil Business Owners. Or at least making a mess of things. They have a bottom line and full time employees. Non-profits are also businesses, and maybe it was unfair to exclude them. Planned Parenthood is a non-profit, and they do a robust business. Unfortunately.
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I am under the impression that non-profits, however, really don’t understand the bit about the bottom line. And a lot of them seem punch drunk of someone else’s money, be it government money or “Community Foundation” money to plug the budget holes. I could be totally wrong and too hard (and yes, Worse than Murder Inc certainly loves tax payer $$$) on them.
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My point was less about organizational skills than a simple understanding of what it takes to make money and where it comes from. I am quite certain there are many people out there who do not understand why we can’t all just stay home and get government checks.
I pay no attention to anything which that Marxist Peronist Caudillo heretic occupying the See of St. Peter says. May God Almighty depose, anathematize and deport that man back to Argentina from whence he came. And may he be held in Damnatione Memoriae!
Business risks money to produce income. Non-profits accept donations, free will donations to accomplish their work. Basically non-profits do not have income to be taxed.
Abortion is worshiped as God. Planned Parenthood is legally treated as a church. Slaughtering our constitutional Posterity is not women’s health care. The devil is a murderer from the beginning . The anti-Right to Lifers repudiate our Founding Principles. The anti-Right to Lifers shed citizenship, patriotism and statesmanship along with their innate, human rights.
Communists take our money and give us back what they choose.
Dumb idea. How is all the dissatisfaction to be handled?