One of the first five saints, Pope Benedict cannonized was St. Alberto Hurtado who represented labor as a christian activity.
Father Hurtado was a Chilean priest and intellectual who also studied the the worker priests movement in
France. He was dedicated to establishing regulations for child and domestic labor as he led the way in many social justice
issues. Suprisingly, Father Hurtado did all this only about sixty years ago and Pope Benedict did not let
time age the cannonization process. I was also hoping for some reference to the Catholic Workers. It is
time for the Church to recognize them in their quest for social justice and human dignity.
Following this, I was
hoping for more regarding workers dignity issues in the Pope's new encyclical.
There is too much left
out and unsaid about the failures of globalization and free trade.
It is discouraging to hear globalization as
being a phenomenon without any specific definition of what it is and how it came about. It is obvious that
globalization did not evolve in any natural economic way and was driven by powerful forces outside the will of the people
and any real democratic process.
I also was discouraged the encyclical did not define free trade since it is not
really trade as historically practiced and defined. Free trade is not about trading products per se but it is primarily
based on moving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor with no ending to the downward cycle. Workers
are the commodities being traded and they are put on a world trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs.
It is a matter of subtraction of good rather than the adding of good.
I also wonder about the encyclical's
analysis of tariffs. There are always tariffs. It is a pay me now or pay me later process. Historically, nations
did not need any other taxes when tariffs were used to support the general welfare. Today, President Obama bails out big money
interests first before the general welfare of workers and labor and these bails out of the financial communities act as tariffs
on future generations. ( We proposed taps instead of taxes. With globalization, our taxing systems are obsolete. We
suggest a low 3 percent transaction fee on all transactions and 6 percent total if the payment is for a imported
product to fill the voids caused by imported items. See
http://tapsearch.com/realtaxreform or
http://ezinearticles.com/?id=418231 )
Like the term free trade, "protectionism" also needs further definitions updated for our times.
President Roosevelt recognized the Great Depression was based on a money crisis and trade was a mute issue because
of the lack of money. Roosevelt said that he would not let the lack of dollars stand in his way and launched the Lend
Lease Act which ramped up industries and farms in the USA to supply the allies without worrying how the U.S. was to be paid.
This also was a good indicator proving you can not do business with people who do not have money. You have to first
find a way to get them the capital to do business. Pope Benedict does talk about micro financing but this will not do
much on a worldwide basis. However, it must be noted that President Roosevelt concenctrated on local value added economies
and with the Lend Lease process he did not move production and factories outside of the U.S. It is an economic model
that should get vast attention today but does not. ( See our most popular ezine article - Lend Lease was real free trade
and not chop liver as in the globalist world at
http://tapsearch.com/flatworld or
http://ezinearticles.com/?id=390710 )
We also hoped the encyclical would have mentioned the term Globalism. Globalization with its tool
being so called free trade represents a new "ism" that has come almost unannounced on the world scene.
It combines all other "isms" under one umbrella for the sake of investments and financial communities and will
use any means to reach their objectives for control of the wealth. Lech Walesa, the Polish leader of the Solidarity
movement that played a large part in the downfall of Communism, said this - I do not know that much about business and
economics , but I do know something is very wrong when ten percent of the population controls 100 percent of the wealth. This
is what Globalism is all about with individual states sovereignty sacrficed for the sake of globalization of money and production.
( A must read for all is - The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. See
http://www.bizarrepolitics.com/confessions-for-history 
