At InsideCatholic, Jeffrey Tucker, director of research at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, argues that Catholics don’t understand economics:
For years I’ve puzzled over the question of why Catholics have such trouble coming to terms with economics. This problem applies only to modern Catholics, for it was Catholics in 15th- and 16th-century Spain who systematized the discipline to begin with. That was long ago. Today, most of what is written about economics in Catholic circles is painful to read. The failing extends left and right, as likely to appear in “progressive” or “traditionalist” publications. In book publishing, the problem is so pervasive that it is difficult to review the newest batch.
It’s not just that the writers, as thoughtful as they might otherwise be on all matters of faith and morals, do not know anything about economic theory. The problem is even more foundational: The widespread tendency is to deny the validity of the science itself. It is treated as some kind of pseudo-science invented to thwart the achievement of social justice or the realization of the perfectly moral Catholic utopia. They therefore dismiss the entire discipline as forgettable and maybe even evil. It’s almost as if the entire subject is outside their field of intellectual vision.
I have what I think is a new theory about why this situation persists. People who live and work primarily within the Catholic milieu are dealing mainly with goods of an infinite nature. These are goods like salvation, the intercession of saints, prayers of an infinitely replicable nature, texts, images, and songs that constitute non-scarce goods, the nature of which requires no rationing, allocation, and choices regarding their distribution.
If one exists, lives, and thinks primarily in the realm of the non-scarce good, the problems associated with scarcity — the realm that concerns economics — will always be elusive.
Perhaps there is some particular nuance I’m missing that makes the claim specific to Catholics, but I don’t see why it would not apply equally to all Christians. I also missed the part where Mr. Tucker provides evidence—any evidence at all—for his theory. The assertion that believers are unable to understand that goods in the material realm (e.g., loaves, fishes) are not as abundant as goods in the spiritual realm (e.g., salvation, prayer) strikes me as peculiar.
I don’t like like claiming that an argument is a straw man. Usually it can be shown that someone, somewhere actually believes the proposition that is being claimed. But I believe this is a rare example of a true straw man. Has anyone, anywhere, ever held the mistaken belief that Tucker claims is common among Christians? Is it really true that modern believers are unaware that material goods are scarce?
It may indeed be the case that Catholics do not understand economics. But I believe all Mr. Tucker has established is that he does not understand Catholics.
(Via: Acton Institute PowerBlog)
August 30th, 2010 | 7:09 am
Tucker hasn’t put his finger on it, but there is a long history of relative deafness between economists and Catholic moralists. Pastoral leadership, at first reacting to the French Revolution, looked cynically on efforts to improve man’s material lot. Later, against the rise of socialism, and then especially in the era of John XXIII and the years that folllowed, leadership often felt the need to stress man’s calling to higher ideals over more immediately practical questions of distributive justice.
Economists, meanwhile, have often insisted on assessing rational action, and then defining “rational” from an anthropological base which has been not only non-Catholic but plainly stupid—ignoring all manner of social and moral instincts. Even today, one wonders whether the typical game theorist has read even an elementary book in philosophical anthropology.
August 30th, 2010 | 9:04 am
Well, I’m not sure why you would say that I was picking on a straw man. I’ve read dozens of books, left and right, on Catholic economics that never deal with the core economic problem, which is scarcity. Hilariously, some people in the comment box actually made my point for me by claiming that perceived scarcity is an illusion that can be fixed by a better attitude.
August 30th, 2010 | 9:04 am
Tucker might not understand Catholics in general, but he has hit on a particular grievance of mine. As a Catholic who knows something of economics (partly through study and partly through years of a business career), I am continually chagrined at the documents which emanate from, for example the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The latest blunder by the USCCB was their affirmation of Obamacare, with some very narrow exceptions. They seemed to have no sense of the deep systemic problems, which have now become clear to almost 2/3 of the population at large. These systemic problems, economic in nature, will result in life issues (direct and indirect euthanasia, for example) which the Bishops are ill-prepared to deal with, and which they will have brought upon themselves.
August 30th, 2010 | 9:06 am
Let me further add that the problem of failing to come to terms with scarcity is of course not limited to Catholics. My argument could help explain a more general problem among sectors that deal primarily with nonscarce goods, e.g. artists and intellectuals overall. This article dealt most particularly with the Catholic problem.
August 30th, 2010 | 9:36 am
Time: the fundamental scare resource.
August 30th, 2010 | 9:50 am
Mr. Tucker:
I would suggest that it’s not “Catholics” who do not understand economics, it’s the vast majority of Humanity, to include most economists who do not understand economics.
I’m perfectly willing, by the way, to lump myself in with that “don’t understand” group.
August 30th, 2010 | 10:00 am
Mr. Tucker:
“Catholic economics that never deal with the core economic problem, which is scarcity. ”
Oh. You just put yourself in that category.
Scarcity is not a “core” problem in economics. Not in a long time. There really is no “core” problem in economics, or if there is one it is “how does the market work”, which is so broad as to be meaningless as a question.
August 30th, 2010 | 10:17 am
Mr. B’Livion: “How does the market work” is not a problem. You can’t solve or compensate for “How does the market work?” — its a question you ask.
Scarcity is a problem — that is, a limiting factor which must be overcome or compensated for in some fashion.
August 30th, 2010 | 10:39 am
Well, half of them are ignorant enough of economics to fall for Saul Alinsky’s marxist pitch, and it has devastated half the church. See Michael Voris’s (Catholic Investigative Agency) well-researched expose on YouTube about how the Hard Left has targeted the American Catholic Church. A little dry, but by the time you get to the middle of Part 3, you should be shaking with anger:
http://tinyurl.com/2bc7um2
August 30th, 2010 | 10:56 am
With the stunning exception of Centessimus Annus, Catholic social teaching displays an almost total ignorance of economics. The simplest explanation is that universal principles of morality don’t get you very far in economic policy, an area overwhelmingly dominated by prudential questions. Bishops have little expertise in these matters. So what you hear from the clergy is pious platitudes.
Who doesn’t want the working man to have a job that pays a living wage sufficient to meet the needs of his family? The bishops as a whole have no idea how this can be brought about. Nor should we expect them to. And the nostrums that some of them peddle are guaranteed to prevent it from happening.
I imagine it was the unique experiences of JP2 with communism, the consumer society, the welfare state and libertarian ideas that makes CA such a profound contribution to Catholic social teaching.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:06 am
>>Who doesn’t want the working man to have a job that pays a living wage sufficient to meet the needs of his family?
In fact, there are lots of people who object that this presupposes women are not routine participants in the work force. Doesn’t this question illustrate my earlier point, that economists are blind to anthropology? Isn’t the expectation that one wage-earner should suffice as much a reflection of culture as of scarcity? The call for a living wage may be construed as economically ignorant only by those who are themselves philosophically ignorant.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:06 am
Just to answer Joe’s question directly: back in my early formation as a pentecostal, I read Pat Robertson’s book The Secret Kingdom which introduced me to the “name it and claim it” economy of interpreting Matthew 6:33 and Malachi 3:10. as meaning that if I seek after God with all my heart, all my needs would be provided. As a Catholic, I believe it still, tempered with reason and the understanding that God created the laws of economics as surely as He did the laws of physics. He can intervene according to His sovereign will – as He did when He fed the five thousand, as He did when prompted someone to leave several sacks of groceries on my porch when I was at my lowest ebb of faith.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:43 am
Mr. Carter:
I don’t know that Mr. Tucker need point out people thinking those exact thoughts about infinite prayers, etc., in order to have a non-strawman point. Religion shapes worldviews and imagination in ways large and small, secular and sacred, conscious and unconscious. I myself once suggested that evangelical soteriology works against drama and could be seen in FIREPROOF and lesser “Junk for Jesus” works (briefly: the once-and-for-all nature of “becoming saved” made hairpin plot turns and unmotivated psychology plausible to the artists’ imaginations). This is an insight of scores of Catholic and non-Catholic political philosophers from de Maistre to Weber. Indeed it was Carl Schmitt who suggested that modern politics was just secularized theology (e.g., deism begat the “night watchman” state).
August 30th, 2010 | 12:21 pm
Mr. Tucker writes from the perspective of the school of economics that understands all economic activity starts with human action, embracing the full range of what those two words mean. This school of economics was mocked by Lord Keynes, who lumped so much human action under the term “animal spirits.”
If theology is the most difficult area of study, economics must rank right below it. We consider the Divine Person lacking Divine knowledge, so we see dimly as through a mirror. Economics, rightly considered, includes study of the human person, made in the divine image and carrying the stain of Original Sin. It cannot be reduced to equations and statistical analysis, but some of its laws can be discerned.
There is no Hippocratic Oath for economists. The human inclination to hubris is nowhere more visible than in the world of professional economists, and the arrogant declarations of Keynesians like Paul Krugman soar like the Tower of Babel and make as much sense.
August 30th, 2010 | 12:27 pm
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution recently discussed the scarcity of Catholic economists. Lots of comments here:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/05/who-are-the-catholic-economists.html
August 30th, 2010 | 1:05 pm
ahem gets it exactly right, in the opinion of this Catholic, who will add one comment in the form of a riddle.
You’re in a room with 20 guys in civilian clothes. How do you spot the Bishop?
He’s the one with the most ideas about what do with other people’s money.
August 30th, 2010 | 2:30 pm
I’ve read Jeffrey Tucker for years at the NLM blogspot and, like him, am a Catholic convert and (ahem) wannabe Thomist of the Strict Observance. I agree with Jeffrey’s theory and I think I understand what he’s getting at and what he’s observed. I cite a passage somewhere that I’ve read from Fr Romanus Cessario, OP (and of course can’t put my finger on) — in The Nature/Grace distinction there is always the possibility of devaluing Nature and I think the eclipse of Natural Theology and the Philosophy of Nature in Catholic thinking has set up an environment where there is a rupture or split that tends to devalue economic thinking. Also, and I’d be curious to hear other’s thoughts on this — in the Protestant world everyone seems to implicitly understand that they have to do the heavy lifting themselves if they want to institute change (yes, yes I know that smacks of Pelagianism) but they know there’s no magic pot of gold in Rome or hierarchy that is going to swoop in and do things for them. I think as Protestants or Pagans convert to Catholicism one thing they may notice is that — contra Newman’s thinking on the laity — there can oftentimes be a presumed monarchical aspect to their Catholic parishes that belies the innovations made by Thomists in economics in the 15th or 16th century. That’s a shame, and I think the head of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at Berkeley, Fr Michael Sweeney had an excellent keynote on that very topic awhile back and he discusses the subject often on his blog.
August 30th, 2010 | 3:55 pm
The charge seems oddly specific, in that over the past year or so there has been intense and very public discussion, in part between famous economists, as to whether macroeconomics is a functioning science or a big old mess. Add that most people who are known as “economists” don’t think that the Austrian school has nailed down the “true science” in this field, and the stance of bewilderment becomes completely ludicrous. When economists themselves don’t agree about the scope and competence of their discipline, why search for some special “Catholic factor”?
August 30th, 2010 | 4:43 pm
I wonder how much of the strange thinking found on the Catholic right (of which I consider myself a member, BTW) is due to the influence of Chesterton. Chesterton was an inbcredible genius, and no one has greater veneration of him than I do. (As a teenager, I would scour old book stores in Manhattan to find copies of anything by GKC. I think I have read most of what he wrote.) But it is hard to deny that a lot of what GKC said on economics and politics was drivel. He was always praising the French Revolution, for Pete’s sake! And his constant animadversions against “plutocracy” seem more rhetorical pose than serious analysis. GKC was a prophet and a profound social critic, but there is no evidence that he knew anything at all about economics. (I am prepared to be corrected on this.)
Another factor may be that the very richness of Catholic theology and philosophy diverts the attention of many of the brightest Catholic minds from the study of more mundane fields like natural science and economics. The Church has great need of people who combine strong and orthodox faith, deep theological grounding, and rigorous technical training in such fields as economics and science.
Part of the problem is that economic theory and natural science are quite “new” fields from the perspective of 2,000 years of Catholic history. Catholic thought took shape in the context of classical philosophy. It appears to be hard to “graft in” the insights of the more recent quantitative areas of thought. But it must be done. It requires that Catholics become impatient with fuzzy thinking on such subjects.
August 30th, 2010 | 4:54 pm
With the stunning exception of Centessimus Annus, Catholic social teaching displays an almost total ignorance of economics. The simplest explanation is that universal principles of morality don’t get you very far in economic policy, an area overwhelmingly dominated by prudential questions. Bishops have little expertise in these matters. So what you hear from the clergy is pious platitudes.
Social teaching is not just “clergy” giving “pious platitudes.” Catholic social teaching is integral to Catholic doctrine. Secondly – and something that is problematic in much of this discussion, Catholic social teaching is not meant to espouse a system of economics. As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states: “The Church’s social doctrine ‘belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology’. It cannot be defined according to socio- economic parameters. It is not an ideological or pragmatic system intended to define and generate economic, political and social relationships, but is a category unto itself.” (No. 72)
Thirdly, one cannot accept Centissimus Annus and reject, in whole or in part, Solicitudo rei Socialis, Pacem in Terris, or any other social document. Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate expressly warns against this, stating:
“In this sense, clarity is not served by certain abstract subdivisions of the Church’s social doctrine, which apply categories to Papal social teaching that are extraneous to it. It is not a case of two typologies of social doctrine, one pre- conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: on the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new. It is one thing to draw attention to the particular characteristics of one Encyclical or another, of the teaching of one Pope or another, but quite another to lose sight of the coherence of the overall doctrinal corpus.” (No. 12)
In short, a person – at least a Catholic – cannot accept or reject parts of the Church’s social doctrine because it does not appear to agree with that person’s understanding of economics. If they conflict, the person should humbly seek a better understanding of economics.
August 30th, 2010 | 5:06 pm
The problem isn’t the Catholic Church per se, it’s that fellow Jesus of Nazareth, who wouldn’t have lasted a day at Goldman Sachs. Jesus, I’m embarrassed to note, advocated debt forgiveness, spending personal savings to pay for the health care of crime victims, and encouraging frivolous lawsuits by settling for payment of both cloak and tunic. He also eschewed networking with wealthy neighbors in favor of giving dinner parties for the poor and the blind.
All of the above as part of a questionable investment scheme in which ROI is paid in the form of “treasure’ at some indeterminate time in the future, in a vague place called “heaven”. There isn’t a trading pit on the planet where you can buy that kind of a futures contract.
Talk about minimizing his utility.
August 30th, 2010 | 5:40 pm
One of the foregoing comments perfectly illustrates the problem: piety, while indispensable, is not a substitute for thought.
August 30th, 2010 | 6:20 pm
I “love” [sic] how the careful formulation
“Catholic social teaching [generally] displays an almost total ignorance of economics … universal principles of morality don’t get you very far in economic policy, an area overwhelmingly dominated by prudential questions. Bishops have little expertise in these matters. So what you hear from the clergy is pious platitudes.”
… becomes “Social teaching is not just ‘clergy’ giving ‘pious platitudes’.”
It’s as if someone had written, prior to the medieval era, that
“Catholic sacramental theology displays an almost total ignorance of physics and chemistry. The simplest explanation is that sacramental theology doesn’t get you very far in knowledge of physics and chemistry, an area defined by experiential matters of the natural world. Bishops have little expertise in these matters. So what you hear from the clergy is pious platitudes about how the Eucharist really does taste like flesh and blood because ‘hoc est corpus’ and ‘it will be shed for you’.”
… and was responded to with …
In short, a person – at least a Catholic – cannot accept or reject parts of the Church’s sacramental theology because it does not appear to agree with that person’s understanding of the taste of flesh and blood. If they conflict, the person should humbly seek a better understanding of physics and chemistry.
August 30th, 2010 | 6:37 pm
Actually, Stephen, you understate …
That comment proves Mr. Tucker is not dealing with a strawman. That real people, and not stupid ones, actually think you think of the Kingdom of Heaven and the world in the absolute same way, with no equivocation, analogy, etc. Admittedly few writing on economics would put it quite that baldly in that specific context. But it is a habit of the heart that is, for the specific purpose of studying the dismal science, an unhealthy habit.
August 30th, 2010 | 8:16 pm
I think Victor’s comments about my post demonstrate the very problem with economics. Unlike physics and chemistry, economics is a pure science. Indeed, let us not forget that the Church teaches that the economy, unlike the natural world, is a human institution. Economics becomes the study by man of man.
Although the Church does not propose or espouse an economic system she recognizes it for what it is faults and all. Moreover, unlike the case with the natural world, it is her place to reflect upon and set forth criteria for judging the economy and economic theories.
Perhaps I am not stating it best, but I find seriously troubling the notion that one can disregard official church teaching because a person thinks it does not fit their view of the economy.
August 31st, 2010 | 3:00 pm
ctd: the disconnect might work something like this:
Social teaching: Employers should pay a living wage.
Business owner: if I pay a living wage, and my competitors persist in not paying a living wage, I’ll be out of business within months, if not weeks, and my employees’ steady stream of wages – adequate or not – will dry up for good.
So, there is a gap: we all agree that employees should receive a living wage, but the economic system decrees otherwise, much as the weather system decrees that it will rain today, regardless of how much we wish it were sunny.
September 1st, 2010 | 12:16 pm
Pauwels,
I don’t think the business opposition is opposed to living wage because of the competition, but that a living wage would be unsustainable even if everybody practiced it. I think an argument can be made that a business which fails to provide adequately for those that maintain it is a failing business.
What would happen if spouses and children were allowed to help any employee, and even fill in for sick days or vacations? (What else are they good for?)
September 1st, 2010 | 2:21 pm
Timon: if it were possible to somehow get the owner and his competitors (i.e. “supply” or “labor market”) to all adjust their employees’ wages such that they were all paying living wages – which probably would qualify as collusion, but inasmuch as worker salaries went up, the workers probably wouldn’t object – then in theory, the producers would raise the prices for their goods and services to cover the increased labor cost (or slash costs somewhere else). Consumers who wanted to pay the new price would do so; those who didn’t, wouldn’t; and we’d have a new market equilibrium.
The problem for an individual owner with a conscience is when the labor market as a whole is paying sub-living wages, and paying uncompetitively high wages in her business would force her to raise her prices to the point that she would lose business. If the market is for overpriced coffee served by comely baristas, then civilization would continue to limp along with one fewer supplier, or even with the disappearance of the entire supplier part of the market. (Btw, I have no specific reason to suspect that such purveyors pay sub-living wages as a rule; it’s just an example of a non-essential good or service).
But if it’s an essential industry with a history of low wages (such as agriculture) or one that pays low wages but contributes significant social capital (such as Catholic schools), then the question ‘what do we do about the low wages?’ becomes more complicated to answer.
It would have been helpful for the conversation had Jeffrey Tucker supplied examples of what he had in mind regarding Catholic economic ignorance. I ventured the living-wage example as something he might be thinking of. The ‘obvious’ solution to sub-living wages – impose a minimum wage, or increase it – is a classic example of something that plays well in social-justice circles but that practicioners of the dismal science know will have unintended but bad consequences. Sometimes, the way to raise wages is to increase productivity via tax policy, or removing tariffs, or lowering interest rates so businesses will invest, or something equally unintuitive and lacking in social-justice sizzle.
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