The Pope, the Bible and ‘Trickle-Down’
[Below is a lightly edited reprise of my December 2013 response to the criticism of Pope Francis’ courageous Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) apostolic exhortation. I can only imagine the hateful attacks he would endure from the MAGA oligarchs and their cronies if he had written it today.]
American capitalists and right-wing pundits paused their vampire feasting on the blood of the poor to attack Pope Francis for daring to criticize the excesses of the capitalist economic order in his November address, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”). In it he charged capitalism with being “unjust at its root” and “incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor… as though all this were someone else’s responsibility.” We know that speaking about responsibility for your neighbor always causes capitalists’ eyes to glaze over dismissively. But what raised conservatives’ blood pressure was the pope’s read of trickle-down economics, which pervades America’s conservative economic thinking:
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 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.
Angry critics declared his words foolish. Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano condemned the pope’s statements as “wide of the mark.” The radio hate monger, Rush Limbaugh, said, “[the pope] doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism.” One Catholic leader called him “the Joe Biden of our era,” referring to Biden’s penchant for making verbal gaffes. An anonymous Catholic blogger speculated that the Pope is “perhaps a pawn, to be used by liberals...?”
But it is they who are foolish, because Pope Francis is right on both economic and religious grounds.
The term “trickle down” is attributed to a quip by Will Rogers: “Money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.” The basic idea of the trickle-down approach to economic policy is that if the government takes steps to further enrich the already rich, some of their increased wealth will necessarily trickle down to poorer Americans. Capitalist champion George Gilder’s rationalization of trickle-down paints it as almost magnanimous: “A successful economy depends on the proliferation of the rich,” he said. “The function of the rich is fostering opportunities for the classes below.” Such blather only serves to justify greed. An anonymous folksy adage offers a better description: “If the horse has better hay to eat, the birds will eat better, too.”
Despite its proponents’ claims otherwise, in reality trickle-down economics does not rise to the level of economic theory. Rather, it is an economic rationale for an elitist ideology of privilege that gives primacy to the interests of the rich, because it requires the existence of an extremely wealthy class in order to function, which ican only be accomplished by maintaining a high degree of economic inequality. And what is the nature of the wealth that is supposed to trickle-down to the rest of us? As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith put it, it is whatever is left after the rich have satisfied all their wants. Indeed, there is exceedingly little evidence that proponents of trickle-down have given much consideration to whether it actually does result in wealth trickling down to the lower reaches of economic society, nor to how much will trickle down and at what velocity. What is known is that the primary tool of trickle down – reduction of taxes on income, capital gains and financial estates, and loosened financial regulatory protections – is solely aimed at an extremely small group and no one else: society’s wealthiest.
In fact, as Pope Francis points out in Evangelii Gaudium, there is no hard evidence that trickle-down economics has worked for anyone except the rich. Instead of wealth trickling down, it has actually trickled up. The Reagan administration, its main ideological proponent, tried to obscure this fact and render trickle-down more palatable by calling it “supply-side” economics. David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director, publicly admitted as much. But name changes cannot mask facts. Between the years 1981 and 1990, nearly all of them during Reagan’s presidency, the after-tax incomes of the poorest 20 percent of Americans dropped by 12 percent, while the after-tax incomes of the wealthiest one percent increased by 136 percent. Largely because of Reagan’s open elevation of trickle-down to the primary economic ideology of his party, the chasm between rich and poor today is the widest on record and getting wider. Reagan’s abiding iconic status among conservatives and their constant praise of his policies are reflective of how deeply entrenched trickle-down ideology remains in their political philosophy and policy prescriptions.
Significantly, in his address the pope did not go as far as to criticize capitalism in toto, however, as some of his critics have charged; what he decried was undue, idolatrous faith in the power of markets to be the final arbiters of what is just. He condemned capitalism’s most exploitive, unethical aspects, including its “idolatry of money,” “inordinate consumption,” and what he called a “throw away culture” that treats people as “goods to be used and then discarded.” By so passionately decrying how deleterious trickle-down economic policies are to the common good, Pope Francis effectively highlighted the need for an alternative that serves the interests of the many, rather than the few.
Actually, there is an alternative to trickle-down economics: call it trickle-up, or demand-side economics. Instead of lowering taxes on the rich with the hope that wealth will flow to those below as with trickle-down, under trickle-up policies taxes are reduced on the lower economic classes, with the increase in after-tax income going directly to them. Therefore, rather than the increased income from lowered taxes going into the coffers of the rich as in trickle-down, trickle-up economics places the increased income directly into the pockets of the middle-class and the working poor. Because the middle-class is the largest segment of the American economy, more dollars in middle-class hands means greater consumer spending, thus increasing demand, ultimately strengthening the economy from the bottom up and giving the economic benefit of reduced taxes directly to those most in need of it.
Therefore, in economic terms, the pope’s critique of trickle-down economics is on decidely firm ground. In religious terms, his ground is even more firm, for the overarching concern of the Bible is not the rich, as in trickle-down ideology, but the non-rich. In every division of the Hebrew Bible both individuals and governing authorities are admonished with the responsibility to focus on the needs of the poor. For instance, in its description of the ideal ruler, Psalm 72:1-4 declares his primary responsibility: “May he judge… your poor with justice…. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy.” Elsewhere, Jeremiah the prophet explains to a king the kind of governance God expects of those in power and authority by invoking the deeds of that king’s father: “‘He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 22:15-16). Moreover, the biblical Law Codes prescribe measures for keeping economic inequality from becoming too extreme, including rudimentary market regulations (e.g., Exodus 20:22-23:33; Deuteronomy 12-16; Lev. 17-26). And a primary theme of biblical prophets like Amos, Isaiah, Micah and Ezekiel is divine condemnation of those in power for their mistreatment of the poor.
As for the Jesus of the gospels, he speaks of the poor and their plight more than any subject other than God. In what Luke portrays as Jesus’ first public pronouncement, he declared that his spirit-driven messianic (“anointed”) purpose was to “bring good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18), which openly heralds structural change into a more equitable economic order. In the midst of the spiritual loftiness of the Beatitudes he declared the poor and the hungry “blessed,” while pronouncing “woe” to the rich “who are well fed now” (Luke 6:20-24). Jesus condemned those who shirk their responsibility to the poor, as in Matthew 25: 31-46: “as you did not do it [feed, clothe, shelter] to the least of these, you did not do it to me,” not to mention his raging in the Temple against economic exploitation of the common people (“a den of robbers,” Mark 11: 15-18). In what has come to be called “the Lord’s Prayer” Jesus counseled his disciples to use their spiritual energy to ask God to remove the devastating debt-system that enriched the rich and further impoverished the poor: “release (ophiemi) our financial debts (opheileimata),” Matthew 6:12). The list goes on. (For a fuller treatment, see chap. 3 of my book, The Universe Bends toward Justice).
in Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis spoke out against some of the most painfully exploitive and destructive aspects of capitalism as a function of his love and compassion for all humanity. Indeed, he has spent the balance of his life endeavoring to faithfully serve the poor and the downtrodden. It is through the prism of his love for those in need that he judged the prevailing economic policy-making ideology and found it wanting. That divine angle of vision moved him to decry the reality that in the final analysis, trickle-down policies have succeeded in making the rich richer and the poor poorer, effectively diminishing the life chances of those Jesus pronounced “blessed,” thus spitting in the face of the Gospel’s admonition to love our neighbors as ourselves and every biblical notion of justice .