There has been a surprising amount of criticism of the Pope since he was elected less than a month ago. As Catholics were are supposed to believe that the election was the work of the Holy Spirit. Since it is impossible to assess the performance of someone in the situation of a Pope for at least fifty years after they have died, how about relaxing, keeping quiet, watching and getting on with the business that we can actually attend to on our own doorsteps? Obviously what happens in Rome is important but it does no harm to take our eyes off what is happening there for a while.
I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
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