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