Gehring on Francis and Redistribution | National Catholic Reporter

Gehring on Francis and Redistribution | National Catholic Reporter by MSW.  MGB: Anyone who pays attention to doctrine knows all this.  The problem is that the conservatives berating Francis publicly are paid off by rich people who fund their efforts.  Suddenly telling the truth in that siutation will get you fired, as my friend Bruce Bartlett found out when he wrote a book criticizing Bush.  The wealthy will always pay for apologists. It is why conservative intellectual life more and more resembles public relations than scholarship.  As for the right wing theory on redistribution - they claim that in the long run, a free economy produces equality of results for all.  Possibly, because rich kids and grandkids tend to dissipate fortunes with regularity.  This is not true, however, in the short run unless the rich give away fortures at the end of life (when they no longer need them - but that is not an automatic thing).  The problem is that the apologists of the rich tell the biggest lie in their economics, that capitalism is the free market. It is not. Capitalism is about the cornering of resources and markets for the advantage of the capitalist, and Devil take the rest.  Indeed, a bit of human suffering makes it easier to keep wages low and competitors out of business.  There is nothing in either economics or Catholic social teaching that allows that and it is something that the pbulic relations of the left needs to do a better job of explaining.