Shikha Dalmia to the Pope: Capitalism Is Not Your Enemy

The
Pope last week issued yet another rant against capitalism. But,
notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia in the
Washington Examiner, if charity, his pet cause, is the
balm for poverty, capitalism is the cure. She notes:

Far from promoting Social Darwinism that thrives on “the
survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the
powerless,” as the Pope claimed, capitalism does the opposite: It
uses economic competition among producers to prevent consumers from
having to compete for scarce goods. That’s why, in 1900, it took an
average worker in the West about an hour to earn a half a gallon of
milk. In 930, half an hour. And today? Scarcely a few minutes.

Importantly, notes Dalmia, the church itself is a big
beneficiary of this capitalist largesse with its U.S. wing alone
contributing 60 percent to its overall global wealth

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