You should be! :) I hope you post your thoughts on it.

I meant to get it much earlier, but I ended up taking a summer class and have been a bit busy with that for the past two months. But my class ends this week and I will have some free time to pursue more interesting things now. I intend to start reading it as soon as it arrives. I’m actually really looking forward to it!

I don’t expect to be your first priority. I should hope not, geez, what a strange thing to say.

But whenever an argument doesn’t go your way and there is no easy way out, you often stop responding and change threads. I’ve never seen you admit you were wrong about anything.

You didn’t quite say that, now did you?

The argument from silence is noted :P

Sorry, I have been on the road for about 2 weeks. You are far from my first priority.

That’s why I didn’t just call it a lame quote. I gave a reason it was lame. I said it was lame because the quote amounts to name calling.

Great find, MM.

Dear sworn enemies of the private sector:

Economics is studying the price that makes demand = supply; equilibrium, disequilibrium, marginal propensities to save or consume, etc., elasticities of S and D, etc. It gives me brain freeze. I imagine it’s Greek to you all.

What your priest economist is speaking about is monopsony where the mythic sole buyer/employer of labor has an oversupply and can pay low wages. The polar opposite would be professional baseball players like A-Rod who has negotiated $25 million a year. It works both ways.

The capitalist must produce products at prices that will sell and cover costs, wages and provide a profit. The worker will try to get the most pay he can. The employer will try to pay the least he can. Bring in 12,000,000 more workers and wages go down. That’s how it works. Imagine 12,000,000 PhD’s abscond into the US next year. Say :”Goodbye” to tenure.

Most refuse to obey centuries of Church teachings on abortion, contraception, gay marriage, pre-marital sex, etc. So, red priests make up for it by telling them collective virtue trumps personal morality and it’s morally good to hate rich people and call it social justice teachings.

The priest and philosophers are entitled to superstitions and misappreciations of economics, climatology and, essential class hatred (i.e., rich white men), etc. Still, superstitions and misappreciations, like metaphors and opinions, are not truth.

My comment is based on the assumption that “capitalist system” is your commie, liberal swear word for “rich white man.” If it’s not: the US is not a purely capitalist nation. There are tens of thousands of regulations, minimum wages, unemployment insurance, deposit insurance, socialist security, food stamps, school meal programs, medicaid, government housing, etc.

Here’s the scoop: You want to make us all beggars then we’ll be easier to control.

Well, obviously. I mean, Cardinal Pell contributed an article to an Acton Institute periodical once. He’s one of Them.

Poli,

Have you actually listened to any of their lectures or read any of their material? I mean, I know it’s easier to criticize something when you aren’t actually dealing with the thing itself, but I think you’re better than that.

Come on – of course the Acton institute has a different “ethos” – they’re not the Church and they don’t claim to be. A lot of their ecumenical work incorporates the social teaching of the Church, but they never have once claimed to be an alternative to the Church.

The way you define what the institute is about shows how you really aren’t familiar with their work. You say their ethos begins with “the legitimacy of wealth creation” – this is manifestly not one of their first principles. They would not describe wealth creation as “legitimate”, but a reality and one that has moved innumerable people out of poverty. You say they support “the sustaining structures of the free market” – if this means advocating for free markets opposed to centrally planned economies, then you’re correct, but it’s such a strange way to phrase it. “Individual rights” – if you are referring to individual rights against any totalizing state that would deprive people of basic human choices, then you are correct – but none of their contributors would advocate an ideology of individualism.

Aren’t you guys tired of coming up with asinine, uncritical insults (can’t call it criticism)? They’re dealt out here at an unpleasant frequency.