Greeted by hundreds of thousands of euphoric young Catholics gathered in the city to celebrate World Youth Day the Pontiff chose to highlight the difficulties facing young people in his first address of the four-day visit.
“Many young people look worriedly to the future, as they search for work, or because they have lost their job or because the one they have is precarious or uncertain,” he said in a speech delivered in Spanish.
He arrived in recession-hit Spain ”“ where unemployment is 20 per cent rising to above 40 per cent in the under 25s ”“ with a thinly veiled attack on financial institutions.
A bit difficult to work out what this article wants to convey. Its report doesn’t match up too closely with the events of the first day (18 Aug.) which I watched live on-line from start to finish.
But anyway – not content with denouncing the economic system on the first day, Pope Benedict XVI went on to offer a critique of modern higher education’s pandering to secular economic values on the second day:
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/the-vatican/detail/articolo/gmg-2011-7191/
quite incisively and eloquently too, as a former German academic might be expected to do. And millions of youth listening will be better off for it.
Doesn’t Spain have universal health care, generous vacations, generous family leave, and huge penalties for laying off employees. It sounds like not caring enough about profits and granting unsustainable benefits it the problem, not the solution.
Who would you rather work for, a profitable company or one losing money?
Who would you rather invest in, a profitable company or one losing money?
Who pays more taxes, a profitable company or one losing money?
I like profitable companies. Ones that are not profitable, in long term, will not be.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that, #2. What the Pope is criticizing is much bigger and far more evil than that.
What little was included in the article originally posted said he was criticizing economic structures that put “profits ahead of people”, and continued to condemn “the prevailing superficiality, consumerism and hedonism, the widespread banalisation of sexuality, the lack of solidarity, the corruption,” and “intolerable youth unemployment”. I did not hear the full speech and it not find a link to it so this article may not be representative of the full speech. Base on what is in the article, he in included all things things together.
Economic structures are intended to produce profits and that is what they should do. What individuals do with those profits is what the Pope should criticize. If the economic structures focus on people instead of profits, then the economic structures start doing things that make things worse for both. People start thinking they are entitled to things from economic structures that they did not earn and instead of contributing to society, they look at society as owing them something. The become selfish, leading to all the other problems the Pope mentioned. Additionally, since the economic structures are not making profits, these people that expect more from society find that society has less to offer.
Where is that information from, #2, in particular the huge penalties for laying off employees? With Spain at 20% unemployment now, 40% among the under25s I think – the government must have collected a lot of $$ in penalties since employment was higher a decade ago. Perhaps it did, I don’t know – but the issues are more complex, as #3 said. The govt. evidently can’t make a dent in the unemployment (hmmmm, where else have we seen that??), even though they collected a lot of penalty $ ? And, this Spanish socialist government’s social policies [i]caused[/i] many of the problems the Pope was addressing in Madrid.
I think the article may mingle quotes from both the statement B16 made on the plane to Madrid, and the address he gave at the airport welcoming ceremony. The latter is findable online:
http://www.news.va/en/news/a-scent-of-confidence-before-the-future-of-the-chu
There may be another statement he made on his first day elsewhere that contributed to the Telegraph article as well.
The penalties are what the employer has to pay the employees. 45 days for each year of service:
From: [url=http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/emire/SPAIN/COMPENSATIONFORDISMISSALSEVERANCEPAY-ES.htm]here[/url]
If you were running a company and had a little extra work, would you hire someone for a year, risking that the extra work would not continue and you would have to pay this severance or would you just turn the work down? What do you think this does to the growth of companies?
Ah! Sorry, #7, I misunderstood about the layoff penalty payments.
Here are, I believe, the words B16 said on the flight to Madrid:
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/gmg-2011-7128/
JustOneVoice,
You stated:
[i]Economic structures are intended to produce profits and that is what they should do. What individuals do with those profits is what the Pope should criticize. If the economic structures focus on people instead of profits, then the economic structures start doing things that make things worse for both.[/i]
Taken as written, that would imply that anything goes as long as profits are the result (which I imagine is not your intention). What is clear, however, is that [b]how[/b] an economic structure generates profits can sometimes be a moral as well as an economic question. Were it not so the sweatshop would be an unexceptionable part of any business plan.
I believe that in the long run profitable companies are good companies and good companies are profitable companies. In the case of a sweatshop, it may be profitable in the short term, but it can be more profitable by treating it’s workers better. It can get more production out of workers by treating them better, and develop a local market for their products by paying them better. Additionally it will cost less to maintain order. In order to maintain a company over the long term and make profit, you must treat your customers and employees well. Unfortunately this is too often forgotten or not understood in the first place.