Let's just do a quick pass on today's stupidity.
- "[Conservative Catholics] have insisted on the difference between church teaching on faith and morals, and papal pronouncements on economic issues, noting that there’s nothing that obliges Catholics to believe the pontiff is infallible on questions of public policy." So there should be no moral guidelines that define public policy? Economics should be completely cut free from a standard moral basis? What an asshole.
- "Finally, it’s true that there is no Catholic position on, say, the correct marginal tax rate, and that Catholics are not obliged to heed the pope when he suggests that global inequality is increasing when the statistical evidence suggests otherwise." Which contains a link to this page, which is a whole new level of garbage.
- "Hey! Look! Sure, internal measures of inequality [those within one country] are fucking skyrocketing, but! BUT! If you instead look at external measures [between countries], they're decreasing! DECREASING! INEQUALITY DOESN'T EXIST!" Let's break down why you're also an idiot, James Pethokoukis:
- "Normalized on their means." Sigh. This is more just a peeve, but look at the "within" line. See how it's biased low, then takes off? Maybe the median would have given a better plot. Maybe I should ensure that's engraved on my tombstone: "Wait, have you considered using a robust statistic instead of what you're planning?"
- Second, I can't imagine what method of combination results in the "total" line. I can't get the paper to load, so I guess it'll remain a mystery.
- Fundamentally, external inequality should really never enter into policy decisions. Policy decisions are made per country, so noting that although the inequality in your country is shooting up, but it's ok because China and Africa largely makes you the worst politician ever.
- Sure, the church, as a multi-national entity should be concerned with this, but "getting better" isn't really the same as "good." Again, arbitrary normalization and slow Italian servers keep real numbers away, but claiming that "things are better in the past ten years relative to the past forty, therefore this isn't a problem" is just being lazy.
- This is largely unrelated, but I've just come up with a wonderful long con. It works like this.
- Position yourself as a conservative policy blogger/advisor/whatever.
- Get hired by one of these think tanks that provide policy advice for a price.
- Write paper after paper that spell out exactly what will happen according to real (or, "non-conservative" if you want to be picky) economics/science, but ensure that you phrase it in such a way as to bury the truth. Something to the effect of "Sure, some people claim doing X will force people out of well paying jobs, but that's just nonsense," right after showing the math on why that would happen.
- When your secret predictions come true, pointing out how your conclusions were wrong, ignore that fact and pretend you have always been right.
- See how long you can keep that position.
- "[...] explain why a worldview that inspires left-leaning papal rhetoric also allows for right-of-center conclusions". Oh, so Ross has already come up with that scheme. Ok then.
- "Third, that on recent evidence, the most expansive welfare states can crowd out what Christianity considers the most basic human goods — by lowering birthrates, discouraging private charity and restricting the church’s freedom to minister in subtle but increasingly consequential ways."
- No. We don't live in stone age agrarian societies, Ross. We don't need the highest birthrate possible. Making a bunch of people that then have to compete for food/resources/employment and hoping that things magically work is dumb.
- I don't care. Private charity is dumb. Why have a bunch of independent food banks that each serve a small community when you can institute a national food stamp system that ensures everyone in the country has food security? This is basically an insurance system, so make the base huge. Then you don't have to worry about each communities stability. Plus, that link you have there, "His organisation reckons that just over 1.5m people give 42p of every pound that is donated." It's the inequality, stupid! If everyone is just making ends meet, they're less likely to feel up to donating.
- "Ministering" according to your article seems to be "playing by our own rules, and ignoring what any one else believes." Should a hospital run by a church be able to decide they don't want to cover things? No, because it's a fucking hospital. You also spend a lot of this link talking about what is basically a factionalization of society. I would argue that the focus conservatives have on "family" is a large part of this problem. If you consider your family to be the only unit to care about, and everyone else can go fuck themselves, then you get shit like this. I think a little collectivization would really help a lot of people.
- "This Catholic case for limited government, however, is not a case for the Ayn Randian temptation inherent to a capitalism-friendly politics."
- Paul Ryan.
- Marco Rubio.
- Sam Brownback. (This one's weak, I'll give you that.)
- "His Catholic liberalism didn’t go into eclipse because it failed to let the Vatican dictate every jot and tittle of its social agenda. Rather, it lost influence because it failed to articulate any kind of clear Catholic difference, within the bigger liberal tent, on issues like abortion, sex and marriage." As a heretic myself, I can state quickly that although the Church can be right on some things, it can also be stubbornly wrong about other things. How is it possible to claim that economic inequality is un-Catholic, but sexual and social inequality (you know, the abortion, sex, and marriage things) is perfectly Catholic? I suggest that those things were added after the fact, and will eventually be removed from doctrine as well.
- "[...] an economic vision that remains conservative, but in the details reminds the world that our Catholic faith comes first." Hey. You know. Good luck with that.
Link.
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