David Harsanyi on What the Pope Gets Wrong About Capitalism

You could always detect a pinch of socialistic seasoning in the
church’s theological stew. But in this case, the pope doesn’t
simply point out that the wealthy aren’t doing enough to help
alleviate poverty. He uses the recognizable rhetoric of the
political left to accuse free market systems of generating and
nurturing that poverty. For starters, it’s troubling that the pope
fails to make any genuine distinction between Western poverty
(terrible) and the poverty of the Third World (unimaginably
terrible). But is it really true that “absolute autonomy of markets
and financial speculation” are the driving reasons for poverty and
inequality? David Harsanyi says the Pope should recognize the
powerful role that markets have had in alleviating global poverty
and furthermore, he should not conflate poverty with
inequality. 

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