No Hope for the Pope

 When Pope Francis was elevated to lead the Catholic Church, I had high hopes for him.  He eschewed the regal trappings of the role, opting for more modest dress and living quarters.  He immediately began to signal that he wished to de-emphasize sexuality as a centerpiece of church doctrine.  He halted the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference by Women Religious (organization of American nuns) by bishops from the Vatican.  He took steps to clean up the Vatican bank.  These steps were even noted at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago in an article by Italian Catholic professor Luigi Zingales, praising his management skills (http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/magazine/winter-2014/is-the-pope-a-good-manager).  As a fairly recent returning Catholic, I viewed a Pope that could turn the Church into a modern institution that understood the realities of the real world as a welcome development that could steer the Church away from the rigid, imperious, hierarchical, doctrinaire church I left so long ago.

The Pope's encyclical on climate change and economics smashed all that.  The Pope could have and should have said we need to be good stewards of the environment and that the wealthy have a moral obligation to find ways to help those less fortunate.  That's it.  But that is NOT what he said.  Instead, he launched into a diatribe against a "perverted economic system" and condemned the "short-term consumerist patterns" and that people allowed technological and economic paradigms to tell us what our values ought to be."  Richer nations should hand over "superfluous wealth" to poorer ones. "Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms,"  he asserts.   As a result of the consumer oriented West, the poor of the world are being exploited and the environment is being turned into "an immense pile of filth".  This view, in essence, is pure Obamunism--the notion that the West has exploited the poorer nations for their labor and resources.  Not content with making statements on helping the poor or taking care of the environment, he launches a frontal attack on capitalism.

The Pope inveighs against our "perverted economic system." What system does the Pope think will be an improvement?  Communism?  Feudalism?  Monarchy?  Military juntas?   We have tried all those.   It is only when capitalism begins to take hold that we see poverty lifted.  One need only look at poverty levels in all of Asia to see what liberalization has done.  All other systems in which the State controlled production have ended in disaster, misery and, often, mass murder.  Is that what the Pope wants?  Does he want to replicate his homeland?  Argentina should be a wealthy country.  Instead, it is a basket case, in constant turmoil and economic crisis caused by its redistributive policies.

Moreover, how are we supposed to transfer "superfluous wealth" to poorer countries?  Who seizes the wealth?  Who decides what is superfluous?  Why is that a better use that using that wealth to invest in companies, people and technologies that have promise?  Are we, in the West, supposed to hand it over to corrupt and authoritarian regimes that have impoverished these people?  Or distribute it directly?  Isn't it better that these people rise up and rid themselves of the thugs that rule them?  Has he not seen that these very regimes are much more devastating to the environment than liberal democracies?

The Pope also took issue with technology and progress.  What part doesn't he like?  The amazing medical breakthroughs that have eased the suffering of so many?  The drugs that have conquered devastating illnesses?  Does he not like the technology that has revolutionized agriculture, permitting us to feed millions more cheaply and on less land and control pests?  Or the advances in methods of distribution that permit us to deliver more and better food to more people more efficiently?  Or does he not like the technology that permits me to respond to my daughter instantaneously even when she is half a continent away?  Or, perhaps it is the technology that developed fracking and permitted the U.S. to move away from coal as an energy source?

He asserts that, "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 naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and sacralized workings of the  prevailing economic system." As a counterfactual, I offer Robert Lucas's observation that, "the poor in China, i.e., those subsisting on less than $1 a day, look very different today than they did 35 years ago."  Are we to exclude these millions, along with the millions in India and elsewhere in the Far East and now, increasingly in Africa, from the Pope's calculations?   

The Pope's encyclical echoes of Paul Ehrlich's work of 45 years ago (which I have read) and whose predictions were wildly wrong.   The advocates of "limits to growth" rely on extrapolation of data, i.e., "if present trends continue," blah, blah, blah.  But present trends never continue.  Things change. Technologies emerge.  This is the same crowd that talked about a new ice age 40 years ago, "peak oil" (we are now drowning in the stuff), and Ehrlich predicted worldwide mass starvation by the 1980's (actually, we have an obesity problem).

Finally, does he not see that his "limits to growth" position directly contradicts the Church's position on abortion and birth control?  More people, less innovation,  elimination of economic incentives will lead inexorably to something that looks more much more like North Korea or Cuba than the relatively prosperous, educated, healthy, and happy societies we have in the West.

Yes, I am skeptical of the climate change hysteria.  The Pope's encyclical, like Al Gore's book, is riddled with errors and massive errors in logic.  But most insidiously, it is a condemnation of a form of government and economic system that has alleviated more poverty, brought more justice and respect for individuals and individual rights, eased more suffering and has evidenced more respect for the environment than any other.  The Pope has joined in the chorus of people that wish to use climate change to advance their own agenda for a much larger role of government that will ultimately dictate how we should live.

There are many (and I among them) give as much credit Pope John Paul II as Ronald Reagan for the collapse of Communism.  He saw the devastation that system wrought on the human condition, and he rejected it entirely and helped to hasten its downfall.  Francis, in contrast, is using the climate change boogeyman to embrace and promote the redistributive policies of HIS native land, which have sent that country into a tailspin (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21596582-one-hundred-years-ago-argentina-was-future-what-went-wrong-century-decline).

The Pope has strayed far afield from his span of knowledge and waded directly into science and economics and has mixed them in a way that has proven itself time and time again to be toxic and deadly to the human condition and has pitched rocks at the system that has by far the best track record of elevating humanity.  I am shocked and dismayed by his hubris and overreach.  I can't help but conclude that he is not much better than the left wing populist politicians that have so ruined the economies of Latin America and South America and is merely pandering to his constituency.

For the second time in my life, I am in a crisis over my religion and am contemplating leaving the Catholic Church.  Several years ago, I answered the "Catholics Come Home" initiative, which attempted to bring back Catholics that had fallen away and attempted earnestly to practice my faith again.  After a promising start, Pope Francis has shaken my relationship with the Catholicism in a significant way.  I will have to think hard about whether I remain with this institution.  If I do, it will certainly be with much less enthusiasm.

No Strategy

It's  now clear to me that President Obama likes to think about the things he likes to think about--mostly redistributive and identity politics and golf, and hopes everything else would just go away.

Ten months after he made the stunning announcement that "we don't have a strategy yet" to deal with ISIS, President Obama this week announced that we STILL don't have a strategy for ISIS.  He carefully laid blame on the Pentagon and on the Iraqi government (whatever that is) for the vacuum, but it is clear that after the fall of Mosul, Ramadi and Palmyra, this administration is completely and frighteningly at sea when it comes to assessing and dealing with foreign threats.  Moreover, we are now sending more men and women into harm's way without a strategy.  Worse, Obama appears not to have any ability to identify the threat or develop a coherent strategy or lead an effort to appropriately confront it.  Our enemies now know this and are acting accordingly.

We are seeing patterns emerge.  Obama consistently refuses to either acknowledge the threat or to correctly identify the enemy or its aims.

Every high school football coach in America knows that you NEVER underestimate your opponent.  In sports and war, upsets happen.  Look at our own Revolutionary War.  Obama consistently downplays our adversaries.  In the '08 election, he sneered that "Iran is just a tiny country and doesn't represent a threat to us the way the Soviet Union did (he has evidently never heard of the EMP (electromagnetic pulse from a single nuclear detonation).  In the 2012 election, he mocked Mitt Romney when Romney raised Russia as a threat, "The 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because ...the Cold War's been over for 20 years." Less than two years later, Putin took Crimea and now asserts that he considered using nuclear weapons over it.  And, of course he famously stated that, "If a JV team puts on a Lakers uniform, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant."
The JV team has been rolling up victories through Iraq, Syria and now has a point of entry into Western Europe through Libya (created by Obama's "leading from behind" initiative).  Reports are now that ISIS has stolen enough nuclear materials to make a dirty bomb.  The JV has evidently made it varsity.

Obama has also misidentified the threat. He has continued, in a cartoonish way, to assert that ISIS is not Islamic.  ISIS begs to differ.  Graeme Wood wrote a masterful article in The Atlantic, "What ISIS Really Wants." (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/).  The punchline is that ISIS IS Islamic.  Failure to comprehend that and ignoring that has had devastating consequences.  Obama's failure to talk about and condemn their atrocities against Christians....BECAUSE THEY ARE CHRISTIANS is both appalling and puzzling because his handpicked UN ambassador Samantha Power's signature work centers around the prevention of genocide, and in her book, The Problem from Hell, the savagery of ISIS falls squarely within the definition and demands forceful action.  Have we even heard a peep from Power?  No.  She has been completely MIA during the rise of ISIS.   Ironically, Obamas rationale for deposing Gaddafi was to prevent genocide.  All he accomplished was to pave the way for ISIS the perpetrate its own and open a conduit to Europe.  We left the Libyan people completely stranded.  The "you break it, you own it" principle has evidently gone the way of the dial phone.  The reality is that Obama's policies are now responsible for more deaths in Libya than the lunatic regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

In the same week that Obama admitted that he had no strategy for ISIS, he unveiled a strategy to diversify wealthy neighborhoods through HUD.  He simply cannot stand the fact that some people live in nicer places than others.  Beheadings of Christians don't really get his blood boiling.  But a gated community?  Intolerable.  THAT he has thought about a lot and has a clear strategy for.

The frightening reality is that Obama has no strategy for ISIS.  But ISIS has a strategy for the West.

Trifecta!

The University of Chicago is a phenomenal place.  I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a presentation of three- count them- three Nobel Laureates in economics this weekend:  Robert Lucas, Jr., Lars Peter Hansen, and James Heckman.  Moreover, I had the opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with Mr. Hansen at the cocktail reception that followed.  It was an amazing experience to have so much real intellectual heft in one room at one time...and an even more marvelous experience to be able to spend some time with Mr. Hansen.

Lucas spoke about the tremendous progress that the world has made since the industrial revolution (chart below), and pointed out that in Adam Smith's time, sustainable economic growth simply did not exist. And over the past 35 years, the per capita GDP of Asia has shifted completely over to the right.  He chided the Left's claim that income equality is THE MAJOR issue of our time.  "If Jeff Bezos has more money than I do, so what?"  The overall progress has been astounding. "We live in a lucky time," he said, "and it's going to get better.  If you really like equality, 1750 was your year," he joked, referring to the universally low per capita GDP.  

Heckman spent most of his presentation debunking the commonly held notion that Europe has more social mobility than the U.S. and showed that the U.S. pays a greater premium for education than European countries.  Denmark, in particular, provides free tuition because it has to.  There is no great economic incentive to pursue higher education.   Absent government transfer payments, there really isn't much difference.  Heckman also argued that the one place that government should spend money is in basic research.  "There is a huge return on that.  There is no return on police pensions."

Lars Peter Hansen talked about his work in risk and uncertainty and the limitation of models.  His slide of Mark Twain's quote that, "Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty," was a succinct summary of his comments.  "Models are often very wrong," he asserted, and this notion has applicability in the current debate on climate change.

In my private conversation with him, I asked, "You said in your presentation that you had your own thoughts on the macro-economy, but then didn't elaborate.  What are they?"

"We are going to get back to historical growth levels.  Larry Summers is trying to argue that our economic performance is permanently altered and that we are in an era of secular stagnation.  He is trying to make the case for permanent stimulus [i.e. permanently bigger government].  I do not believe that."

After 6 1/2 years of a tepid, halting recovery, I came away with some optimism for the future.  And in any event, it was a tremendous experience to get the thoughts of three truly brilliant, world class minds.

I couldn't help but make the observations that Mr. Hansen won a Nobel Prize for what Yogi Berra recognized a long time ago, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."