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This is from a noting I made in my diary dated 20 December, 2013. If I recollect correctly, it was from an email correspondence with a friend.
The quote is attributed to Pope Francis, incumbent since 13 March, 2013. It speaks for itself. Importantly, it shows the need to bring back common-sense founded on compassion as the foundation of 'lay economic thinking'. It is not a critique of the economists but a critique of those who subvert the thinking of economists in pursuit of their own ends.
To wit, to directly quote someone I know quoting a quote: "In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it is the other way around."
"In this context, some people continue to defend the 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 never has been confirmed by facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting."
The quote does beg a follow-up remark: Unfortunately, at some point in the study of economics a student comes across, even in passing, the notion that "Man is a rational animal". Sometimes this is made to sound as the first principle of economics. A change in semiotics is imperative if the discipline has to influence the student's mind correctly. As an alternative, one is tempted to propose: "Man is meant to be a rational human(e) being".
Otherwise, a subject premised on 'animal instincts' will never rise beyond those 'instincts'. Once an animal in guise of an economic agent, one will always remain an animal in guise of an economic agent. The difference may be some animals may rise above others in only one manner: in viewing, treating and controlling other animals as economic agents. One could almost say: for all said and done, George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is all one needs to get the gist of economics. Rest is all avoidable and cumbersome theory for the laity.
P.S.: A few more excerpts on the words of the same man from a New York Times review of the english translation of a book (The Name of God is Mercy) penned by Pope Francis. The article is Review: In a New Book, Pope Francis Calls Mercy Essential.
"The centrality of mercy, Francis says, is "Jesus' most important message." Mercy is essential because all men are sinners, in need of God's forgiveness and grace, and it's especially necessary today, at a time when "humanity is wounded," suffering from "the many slaveries of the third millenium" --- not just war and poverty and social exclusion, but also fatalism, hardheartedness and self-righteousness.
The theme of mercy, it turns out, also provides Francis with a metaphor for articulating his broader aim of shaking up the Roman Catholic Church, which he laid out in detail in a voluminous document called "Evangelli Gaudium" ("The Joy of Gospel") that was issued in November 2013. That document --- a manifesto, really --- advocated decentralizing power in the church, condemned economic justice and called for focusing on the needs of the marginalized and disenfranchised.
...
In "The Name of God is Mercy," Francis speaks succintly --- and with refreshing forthrightness --- about the same matters, chastising "scholars of the law" who "live attached to the letter of the law but who neglect love; men who only know how to close the doors and draw boundaries." Instead, he urges people to think of the church as a "field hospital, where treatment is given above all to those who are most wounded." Often speaking here more as a pastor than as the vicar of Christ, he emphasizes moral sincerity over dogma, an understanding of the complexities of the world and individual experience over rigid doctrine.
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The pope is most critical of those eager to cast stones. Pride, hypocrisy and the urge to judge others in terms of "preconceived notions and ritual purity" are the targets of his ire. He has chastised church bureaucrats for their "theological narcissim," and he says in this book that "we must avoid the attitude of someone who judges and condemns from the lofty heights of his own certainty, looking for the splinter in his brother's eye while remaining unaware of the beam in his own."
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