Economist Anthony Annett has delivered a book that should be required reading not only for those of us who have long been interested in Catholic social doctrine, but for anyone who is serious about bringing their Catholic faith to bear on decisions relating to public life. Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy should especially find its way onto the required reading list at every Catholic business school.
As Annett relates, after the mountains of evidence of financial wrongdoings that led to the 2008 economic meltdown, economist Luigi Zingales asked, pointedly “whether business schools incubated criminals.” The approach to economics Annett advocates in this book would keep such an incubation from happening in the first place.
…Annett manages to consistently introduce moral considerations in provocative and incisive ways. For example, he prefers universal programs and warns that “means tested” social programs pose three risks: stigmatization of the assistance given and its recipients, the creation of poverty traps, and delinking contributions from benefits in a way that makes the programs vulnerable politically. Reading that passage, I was hoping someone might arrange for Annett to make this moral argument to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who has argued for means-testing the child tax credit.
…The chapter on inequality is probably the strongest in the entire book, and the chapter on care for creation is concise and brilliant. I was especially glad to see him skewer the idea of carbon taxes, which economist Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out is deeply problematic and which Annett points out does not require the shift away from the faulty intellectual premises that got us into this mess in the first place.
If, like me, you have trouble grasping the economic complexities of issues related to globalization and sovereign debt, you will be less confused after reading Annett’s chapter on those subjects.
In my line of work, you read a lot of Catholic social teaching books. Annett’s is one of the best, perhaps the best I have read. Very few people understand the complexities of economic arguments and demonstrate an ability to write in good English. Very few people see not just the moral but the anthropological issues that undergird Catholic social teaching as clearly as Annett does. Very few people have the breadth of knowledge and the precision of intellect to marshal so many texts, craft so many arguments, indict so many errors and propose so many humane solutions to the conundrums that afflict we humans in the 21st century.
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