Pope John Paul and this Pope are on different ends of the spectrum.
(BBC) “There is a lot of scepticism among (US) Catholics,” says Stephen Moore, the chief economist at the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation, and himself a Catholic.
“I think this is a Pope who clearly has some Marxist leanings. It’s unquestionable that he has a very vocal scepticism (about) capitalism and free enterprise and… I find that to be very troubling.”
[….]
Most of John Paul’s early life was lived under totalitarian regimes – first the Nazi occupation during World War Two, then the long Stalinist and Soviet domination of Poland during the Cold War. Everything he experienced as a priest and a bishop taught him that communism was the enemy.
Another comment on the large difference between the Pope and his understanding of economics comes from his encyclical, and it notes the rhetoric of the left known to be merely that ~ an economic myth:
He said “some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”
So-called “trickle down” is not an economic theory. It is a pejorative term used by socialists and others in favor of wealth distribution to describe laissez-faire capitalism. A product of the Enlightenment, laissez-faire capitalism was “conceived as the way to unleash human potential through the restoration of a natural system, a system unhindered by the restrictions of government,” writes Toufic Gaspard. For political economist Adam Smith and other classical economists, the concept was inextricably connected to natural rights.
Capitalism Works, better than any other economic system that ~ again ~ WORKS — devised by man.