“The story did not end the way it was meant to,” Pope Francis wrote recently, deftly excommunicating about a half-century’s worth of economic ideology.
In a striking, 43,000-word-long encyclical published last Sunday, the pope put his stamp on efforts to shape what's been termed a Great Reset of the global economy in response to the devastation of COVID-19.
The “story” he’s referring to is neoliberalism, a philosophy espousing austerity, privatization, deregulation, unbridled markets, and relatively weak labour laws. While it’s been faithfully told through innumerable economists and policy-makers since the 1970s, and put into practice in prominent ways, the pope believes this tale has now worn thin. He is not alone.
Neoliberalism’s free-market orthodoxy has been blamed for making health care systems and livelihoods especially vulnerable to the pandemic, and has drawn a clearer line under the need for active government intervention.
Pope Francis criticizes the...
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