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Issue 02 – Assumption 2020

Features

A Catholic Economics

On a new perspective of macroeconomics.

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The problems that Catholicism and economics face are perfect opposites. Economics has a well-developed framework for understanding human society and for crafting policy, but it lacks any sense of moral direction and hence any telos. It is like one of the wily contraptions from a Dr. Seuss story: so much extravagant sophistication, all to no purpose. Catholicism, on the other hand, has the most perfectly developed framework to understand man and his place in the world ever conceived, but utterly lacks any means by which to realize this vision. It is like an overflowing cistern with a blocked tap: so much to give and so little means to give it.

That would be the polite way of putting it, the way I might put it if I were trying to throw a dinner party for Catholic economists. If I were not playing host, however, I would point out that mainstream neoclassical economics is inherently evil and totally at odds with Catholic social teaching; I would further point out that the lack of a Catholic response to this moral abomination is the reason that Catholic social teaching has been torn to shreds in country after country by neoliberal market dogma.


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About the author

"John Paul Maynard Keynes"