Ross Douthat has noticed that Pope Francis is not exactly the Ted Cruz of the Vatican.
After Francis’s latest headline-making exhortation, which roves across the entire life of the church but includes a sharp critique of consumer capitalism and financial laissez-faire, politically conservative Catholics have reached for several explanations for why ... they aren't the new "cafeteria Catholics."
... they have insisted on the difference between church teaching on faith and morals, and papal pronouncements on economic issues, noting that there’s nothing that obliges Catholics to believe the pontiff is infallible on questions of public policy.
...Finally, it’s true that there is no Catholic position on, say, the correct marginal tax rate, and that Catholics are not obliged to heed the pope when he suggests that global inequality is increasing when the statistical evidence suggests otherwise
Well, pardon my French, but
damn that's handy. Pronouncement I like? Infallible! Pronouncement I don't like? Eh, not in the Pope's wheelhouse. Because, you know, things like policy toward women is a
moral issue while policy toward the poor is an
economic issue. And the Pope just don't do economy. All good here. Some might even say that's like, hmm, being a cafeteria Catholic, turbo edition.
The rest of the article consists of Douthat lecturing the Pope on capitalism because, you know, the Pontiff may not be infallible, but conservatives always are. Even better are his notes explaining the proper understanding of Catholic teaching.
...Catholic social teaching, properly understood, emphasizes both solidarity and subsidiarity — that is, a small-c conservative preference for local efforts over national ones, voluntarism over bureaucracy.
Won't someone please explain to the Pope what it means to be Catholic? And while you're at it, please, please show that bear where to find the woods.
Then come inside. We've got other pundits to visit.
Gary Gutting reverses the "why are so few people studying humanities" question.
Once we recognize that deeply caring about the humanities (including the arts) does not require majoring in philosophy, English or foreign languages, it’s not at all obvious that there is a crisis of interest in the humanities, at least in our universities.
Is the crisis rather one of harsh economic reality? Humanities majors on average start earning $31,000 per year and move to an average of $50,000 in their middle years. (The figures for writers and performing artists are much lower.) By contrast, business majors start with salaries 26 percent higher than humanities majors and move to salaries 51 percent higher.
...
This talk of “a subject they love” brings us to the real crisis, which is both economic and cultural (or even moral). The point of work should not be just to provide the material goods we need to survive. Since work typically takes the largest part of our time, it should also be an important part of what gives our life meaning. Our economic system works well for those who find meaning in economic competition and the material rewards it brings. To a lesser but still significant extent, our system provides meaningful work in service professions (like health and social work) for those fulfilled by helping people in great need. But for those with humanistic and artistic life interests, our economic system has almost nothing to offer.
The result is, for those chasing a career in arts, a very stark winnowing. Between the diminishment of teaching at all levels, and the digital disruption of every art from writing to music, our ability to sustain a meaningful cultural life for our society is in peril. Give it a read and see what you think of Gutting's proposed solutions.
Nicholas Kristof suggests some presents that may be difficult to wrap, but which will make much more difference that replacing last years' TV with one two inches larger.
Let’s start with helping prevent unwanted pregnancies here at home. When kids have kids, it’s often a disaster for both the mom, who drops out of school, and for the child, who starts life with a huge disadvantage. That’s a way that poverty self-replicates — and that’s the cycle that the Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program tries to interrupt.
... the curriculum includes comprehensive sex education but also financial literacy, job preparation and summer internships, S.A.T. coaching, and much more. The program has now spread to more than 20 states, and follow-up studies suggest that it reduces pregnancy rates by half. For $50, you can fund a student’s college savings account, part of the financial literacy element (information is at childrensaidsociety.org)
Half a world away, the United States is pulling troops out of Afghanistan, and the next few years may be a tough time for Afghan women and girls. So consider the Afghan Institute of Learning, founded by an extraordinary Afghan woman named Sakena Yacoobi. ...
You can buy a hand-embroidered scarf, made by widows in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for $50, and other gifts for under $30, at GlobalGoodsPartners.org. It has many other gift possibilities made by people all over the world.
For these and other suggestions, read the rest of Kristof's piece, but don't let that put an end to your search. There are needs everywhere. All those people whose first response to "what do you want for Christmas" is "oh, I don't really need anything?" Take them at their word, and use that money that might have purchased yet another tie to do some real good in the world.
Arindrajit Dube looks at improving the minimum wage with a minimum change.
During most of the 20th century, wages in the United States were set not just by employers but by a mix of market and institutional mechanisms. Supply and demand were important factors; collective bargaining and minimum wage laws also played a key role. Under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon, we even implemented more direct forms of wage controls.
These direct interventions, however, were temporary, and unions have become rare in most parts of the United States — virtually disappearing from the private sector. This leaves minimum wage policies as one of the few institutional levers for setting a wage standard. But while we can set a wage floor using policy, should we? Or should we leave it to the market and deal with any adverse consequences, like poverty and inequality, using other policies, like tax credits and transfers? These longstanding questions take on a particular urgency as wage inequality continues to grow, and as we consider specific proposals to raise the federal minimum wage — currently near a record low — and to index future increases to the cost of living.
...
Support for increasing the minimum wage stretches across the political spectrum. As Larry M. Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, shows in his book “Unequal Democracy,” support in surveys for increasing the minimum wage averaged between 60 and 70 percent between 1965 and 1975. As the minimum wage eroded relative to other wages and the cost of living, and inequality soared, Mr. Bartels found that the level of support rose to about 80 percent. He also demonstrates that reminding the respondents about possible negative consequences like job losses or price increases does not substantially diminish their support.
This is your "read it all then clip it out for reference" read of the morning. Of particular note: the evidence that the biggest reason that the minimum wage isn't indexed, is precisely because even politicians who support increases milk the issue for their own benefit.
Kathleen Parker reminds conservatives that it's all about the visuals.
The holiday season provides new corridors of shame. Last week, Gene Sperling, a White House economic adviser, put a Thanksgiving spin on the GOP’s efforts to extract the federal food stamp funding from the farm bill. "At a time when people are about to sit around the table with their families to celebrate a meal," Sperling intoned, "it hardly seems the right time to be pulling food off the table for millions of our neighbors."
Mission accomplished. Imprinted on the collective mind is a craftily placed message: Republicans don’t care about poor people. Distilling further, given that Republicans are mostly white — and the welfare model is associated with the Ronald Reagan-generated, African American “welfare queen” — the inference can be made that Republicans don’t care about non-whites. Ergo, Republicans are selfish, greedy “haters.” ...
Whether Republicans are correct on the economic merits of spending cuts is politically less significant than the more urgent reality of perception. What could seem more heartless than cutting nutrition aid for 47 million poor people, including 210,000 children whose school meals likely would be eliminated or reduced, in the midst of an anemic recovery from recession, a still-lousy job market and, as Sperling pointed out, the holiday season? Forget optics; this is the visceral equivalent of puppy mills.
Parker's real advice? Republicans should focus on blaming the hungry kids, and everything else, on Obama (which is such a novel idea that Parker then pauses to pat herself on the back for suggesting it). Still, when you get past the arm-waving justifications, some of Parker's positions on food stamps are actually quite decent. If it takes reminding her fellow Republicans that voting to feed children might make them look a bit less like a cross between Mr. Bumble and Marie Antoinette to voters, I'm okay with that.
Dana Milbank is coming for your kids... in a different way.
As I make my rounds each day in the capital, chronicling our leaders’ plentiful foibles, failings, screw-ups, inanities, outrages and overall dysfunction, I’m often asked if there’s anything that could clean up the mess.
... one change, over time, could reverse the problems that have built up over the past few decades: We should mandate military service for all Americans, men and women alike, when they turn 18. The idea is radical, unlikely and impractical — but it just might work.
There is no better explanation for what has gone wrong in Washington in recent years than the tabulation done every two years of how many members of Congress served in the military.
A Congressional Quarterly count of the current Congress finds that just 86 of the 435 members of the House are veterans, as are only 17 of 100 senators, which puts the overall rate at 19 percent. This is the lowest percentage of veterans in Congress since World War II...
Milbank, with side trips to bemoan filibuster reform, blames this low military involvement rate for everything from partisanship to budget issues--the "oh, if they had but worn a common uniform" argument. An argument that might be easier to believe if you forget absolutely everything about the 2004 presidential election.
I'm a big believer in the idea of pulling every American into a period of service to the nation, not necessarily through the military. However, Milbank's multiple leaps of logic, massive assumptions, and inability to shy away from taking partisan potshots makes this a very weak attempt to sell the idea.
Colbert King looks in on the state of the Obamacare debate.
There was a lot of bloviating about the Affordable Care Act on the talk shows last weekend. The Obamacare critics’ chief focus was the open-enrollment fiasco, the un-kept presidential promise and the millions of cancellation notices. Overlaying the palaver was the unrestrained glee of health-reform opponents.
The same weekend, in a section of our nation’s capital where pompous politicians and self-important opinion-makers seldom venture, the Affordable Care Act was the subject of thanks and praise at the First Baptist Church at Randolph Street and New Hampshire Avenue NW.
The talk-show criticism and the pulpit defense crystallized the Obamacare debate. Drawn into sharp relief is the struggle taking place in this country between doing what is right and good and an unashamed indulgence in the immorality of indifference.
The issue couldn’t be put more simply.
Forty-nine million Americans do not have health insurance. For many of them, the ability to deal with their illnesses and injuries depends on their ability to pay. Lacking the money, some of them just go without the care they need. Better to put food on the table for the kids than to check out that awful pain in the gut. Can’t afford to do both.
Might someone remind the media that there are real people involved here? It's a foolish suggestion, I know, since the Sunday talk show circuit is all about tossing softballs to a pre-filtered set of conservative guests, to think that any mention of things like
people getting health care might actually enter the conversation.
Carl Hiaasen looks at the second act of Charlie Crist and a potential second term for Rick Scott.
[Crist] wants to be governor again, and polls show he would beat Rick Scott if the election were held today.
Big deal. Richie Incognito would beat Scott if the election were held today.
The polls don’t mean much because Scott, although one of the most unpopular governors ever, is about to spend $100 million to get re-elected. Anybody who thinks Florida voters won’t get fooled again has been dipping into the bath salts.
Despite a stumbling first term, Scott’s prospects for 2014 are much better than they were in 2010.
Back then he was a political newcomer with zero charisma, zero credentials for public office and a ton of money. Today he’s a sitting governor with zero charisma, zero credentials for public office and even more money.
During the last campaign, Scott spent about $75 million of his own dough, having made a fortune presiding over a healthcare conglomerate that perpetrated one of the largest Medicare frauds since the beginning of Medicare.
In a sane and sensible place, that’s a résumé that would kill a person’s chances for high office. But not in Florida, the eternal land of suckers.
You know, some of us who have spent decades with Midwestern winters and Midwestern lack of... well, anything that anyone would put into a landscape painting, really would like to retire to somewhere warmer. Maybe somewhere near the ocean. If only that place wasn't #%&!ing insane.
